Program
Program Notes
Biographies

Axelrod Quartet

The Fugue in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven

Saturday, February 13, 2010 8:00 pm Synod Hall

Seduce your “immortal beloved” with the sensuous interplay of subject and countersubject in three different “takes” on the fugue, originating with Bach’s The Art of the Fugue and leading to Haydn’s Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2, Mozart’s Quartet in G Major, K. 387, and Beethoven’s Quartet in C sharp Minor, Opus 131.
G-strings not included!

The Axelrod String Quartet

Marc Destrubé & Marilyn McDonald, violins
James Dunham, viola
Kenneth Slowik, cello

Program

The Fugue in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven

Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685-1750)
Fugue in G Major, BWV 874
from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II
arranged for string quartet by W. A. Mozart (ca. 1782)

Joseph Haydn
(1732-1809)
Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2 (1772)
Moderato
Capriccio. Adagio
Menuet. Allegro
Fuga a 4tro soggetti. Allegro

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791)
Quartet in G Major, K387 (1785)
Allegro vivace assai
Menuetto. Allegro
Andante cantabile
Molto Allegro

INTERMISSION

Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 (1826)
No. 1: Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo
No. 2: Allegro molto vivace
No. 3: Allegro moderato
No. 4: Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile
No. 5: Presto
No. 6: Adagio quasi un poco andante
No. 7: Allegro

Each of the three large-scale quartets on this evening’s concerts contains a fugue. We therefore have chosen to preface the program with one of the five fugues which Mozart arranged, ca. 1782, from the second book of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.

Program Notes

The Fugue in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven

“Haydn’s quartets . . . please equally on the Danube and on the Thames, on the Seine and on the Neva, and are as treasured across the seas as in our own part of the world. Original and abundant ideas, deep feeling, fantasy wisely controlled by penetrating study of the art, skill in the development of an idea basically simple, calculation of effect by clever distribution of light and shadow, pouring forth of the slyest humor, and easy flow and free movement: these are the qualities that distinguish Haydn’s earliest and latest productions alike.” Georg August Griesinger made an astute assessment when he began his 1810 biography of Haydn with the above observation, for Haydn’s sixty-eight surviving essays in the form he virtually invented, spanning nearly four decades of his prolific creativity, are attractive to the least experienced listener, yet offer connoisseurs innumerable subtle delights. Of the opus 20 quartets (often called the “Sun” quartets, since the title page of their original edition of 1774 depicted a rising sun), the eminent English musical scholar Donald Francis Tovey opined that “every page is of historical and aesthetic importance. . . Perhaps no single collection in the history of instrumental music has achieved so much.” Among their striking features are an intensely contrapuntal focus—three of the quartets end with fugal movements—and a new level of equality among the various parts. Both of these attributes are exhibited to great advantage in the C major quartet Op. 20, No. 2. Of particular interest is the bold Capriccio, alternately severe and suavely charming, and the tightly-controlled fugue a 4tro soggetti (“with four subjects”), marked sotto voce throughout until its explosive finish.

*****

Haydn’s next quartet publication following the “Sun” quartets was the half-dozen works of Op. 33, which appeared in 1782 with a note from the composer claiming that they were “written in a new and special way.” The new manner of composition, which resulted in an unparalleled integration of all four voices, was not lost on Mozart, who shortly thereafter began work on his fourteenth quartet, that in G major, K387 (completed December 31, 1782), heard this evening. By mid-January of 1785, after a long period of gestation (unusual for Mozart’s fertile muse), six quartets (K387; K421/417b; K. 428/421b; K458, the “Hunt,” K464; and K465, the “Dissonance”) were ready for publication. The set was printed by Artaria with the following well-known and touching dedication:

To my dear friend Haydn! A father, having resolved to send his sons into the great world, finds it advisable to entrust them to the protection and guidance of a highly celebrated man, the more so since this man, by a stroke of luck, is his best friend. Here then, celebrated man and my dearest friend, are my six sons. Truly, they are the fruit of a long and laborious endeavor, but the hope, strengthened by several of my friends, that this effort would, at least in some small measure, be rewarded, encouraged me and comforts me that one day these children may be a source of consolation to me. You yourself, dearest friend, during your sojourn in this capital, expressed to me your satisfaction with these works. This, your approval, encourages me more than anything else, and thus I entrust them to your care, and hope that they are not entirely unworthy of your favor. Do but receive them kindly, and be their father, guide, and friend! From this moment I cede to you all my rights over them. I pray you to be indulgent to their mistakes, which a father’s partial eye may have overlooked, and, despite their faults, to cloak them in the mantle of generosity which they value so highly.”

These six quartets, known as “Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ quartets,” are arguably his greatest achievement in the genre. Haydn’s appreciation of the result may be judged by a remark he made to Mozart’s father, Leopold, in February of 1785 immediately following a performance of the last three quartets of the set: “Before God, and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.”

Haydn’s early biographer, Albert Christoph Dies, observed that the relationship of the two composers, twenty-four years apart in age, was rather unusual, “for, in the usual course of events, two artists like H. and M. ought to hate and persecute one another. No doubt, too, both would have indulged in fury if they had been ordinary men. Nature, however, was pleased to make, as it were, extravagant use of the harmonic stuff necessary in the formation of two such superior beings, so I find it no wonder that they valued one another highly and were joined by a bond of sincere friendship.” This friendship was, however, to be of even shorter duration than Mozart’s all-too-brief life, for in December of 1790, Haydn left Vienna, in the company of the impresario Johann Peter Salomon, for the first of his two visits to London. According to Dies, many of Haydn’s friends had “reminded him of his age (nearly sixty years), of the discomforts of a long journey, and of many other things to shake his resolve to make this trip. But in vain! Mozart especially took pains to say, ‘Papa!’ (as he usually called him), ‘you have no training for the great world, and you speak too few languages.’ ‘Oh,’ replied Haydn, ‘my language is understood all over the world!’ Thus we see that even the remonstrances of a Mozart could not shake Haydn’s firm resolution. On the day Haydn was to leave, Mozart never left his friend’s side. He dined with him, and said at the moment of parting, ‘We are probably saying our last farewell in this life.’ Tears welled from the eyes of both. Haydn was deeply moved, for he applied Mozart’s words to himself, and the possibility never occurred to him that the thread of Mozart’s life could be cut off by the inexorable Parcae within the following year.”

The Quartet in G Major, K387, is perhaps the most outwardly brilliant of the six works. Its Finale combines elements of sonata form with a fugue of the multi-subject sort Haydn utilized in his Op. 20 quartets, and each of the other movements is distinctive in its own way. Mozart’s reasoning in placing the G major quartet as the opening work in his homage to Haydn seems clear: he wanted to show that he was capable of incorporating both the elder master’s mastery of string quartet writing technique and Johann Sebastian Bach’s polyphony (which had recently been revealed to him, thanks in no small measure to the offices of Baron Gottfried van Swieten) into his own sublime musical language.

*****

According to the violinist Karl Holz, one of Beethoven’s closest associates in his last years, the composer himself felt the C-sharp minor quartet, Op. 131, to be his greatest, though he was reluctant to call it so without the qualification that the others, too, were great, “each in its own way,” adding “art demands of us that we shall not stand still . . . You will find a new manner of voice treatment, and, thank God, there is less lack of fancy than ever before (an Phantasie fehlts, Gottlob, weniger als je zuvor).” In his magisterial study of the quartets, Joseph Kerman comments: “Less lack of fantasy. That is an understatement to leave us all speechless.” To describe all of the ways in which Beethoven shows his invention in this seven-movement work (which begins with a fugue) has filled hundreds of pages in the musicological literature, including major essays by writers as diverse as Kerman, Donald Francis Tovey, and Richard Wagner. Perhaps Wagner’s comment on the Finale can stand alone, not only for that movement, or indeed for the whole of Op. 131, but for the entire legacy of the Beethoven quartets. “Das ist der Tanz der Welt selbst,” he wrote—“It is the very dance of the world itself.”

—Kenneth Slowik

   

Biographies

The Axelrod Quartet

THE AXELROD QUARTET is one of the constituent member ensembles of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society. On its Museum series in Washington, the Quartet regularly presents concerts on the magnificent Stradivari and Amati quartets, gifts from Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Axelrod, from the Smithsonian collection. The Axelrods’ endowment of the Quartet’s concerts was acknowledged by renaming the Smithson Quartet in their honor.

MARC DESTRUBÉ studied quartet playing under the eminent Hungarian pedagogue and quartet leader Sandor Végh and with another well known quartet-leader, Norbert Brainin of the Amadeus Quartet. Co-concertmaster of Frans Brüggen’s Orchestra of the 18th Century (Amsterdam), he played and recorded regularly with Anner Bylsma's L'Archibudelli. He lives in Vancouver, where he was until recently concertmaster of the CBC Radio Orchestra. He was founding director of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra and served for eight years as concertmaster for the Oregon Bach Festival. He is a frequent guest leader and soloist with other orchestras such as the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, the Anima Eterna Orchestra, and with various symphony orchestras in Canada. He has taught at international academies in Mateus (Portugal), Jerusalem, Stuttgart, Crakow, Oberlin, and Vancouver as well as giving master classes at the Paris, Moscow and Utrecht Conservatories. In addition to his work with period instruments, he is a member of the Turning Point Ensemble, specializing in music of the 20th Century.

Violin by Jean Babtiste Vuillaume, Paris, 1874

MARILYN MCDONALD, a founding member of the Castle Trio and the Smithson and Axelrod quartets, has toured world-wide as a chamber musician playing repertoire that runs the gamut from baroque to contemporary. She has appeared as recitalist in the complete Beethoven sonatas, the Bach solo sonatas, and has been a soloist with orchestras throughout the United States. Concertmaster of the Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra and Boston Baroque, her appearances reflect her versatility: soloist with the Milwaukee and Omaha symphonies, concerts at the Caramoor Festival, Yale University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and the Utrecht Festival, among others. Professor of Violin at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and a faculty member of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute as well as visiting professor at numerous colleges and conservatories (including Indiana University and the Eastman School of Music), she has gained an international reputation as an outstanding pedagogue of both baroque and modern violin.

Violin by Andrea Guarneri, Cremona, ca. 1660

Violist JAMES F. DUNHAM’s rich quartet background includes having been a founding member of the Naumburg Award winning Sequoia String Quartet as well as having played for eight years in the Grammy Award winning Cleveland Quartet. An impassioned advocate of new music, he has collaborated on contemporary and standard repertoire with such renowned artists as Emmanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Lynn Harrell, Cho-Liang Lin and members of the American, Cassatt, Guarneri, Juilliard, Takács, and Tokyo quartets. His recording with the Ying Quartet and cellist Paul Katz of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence was nominated for a 2008 Grammy. Formerly on the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts, the Eastman School of Music, and the New England Conservatory (where he chaired the string department and received the Louis & Adrienne Krasner Teaching Excellence Award), Mr. Dunham is Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, and directs its Master of Music in String Quartet program.

Viola by Gasparo da Salò, Brescia, ca. 1585

KENNETH SLOWIK is artistic director of the Chamber Music Program at the National Museum of American History. He is a founding member of the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Axelrod and Smithson quartets, the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, and the Castle Trio, appeared frequently in performance and recordings with L’Archibudelli, and has been a soloist and/or conductor with numerous orchestras in the United States, Canada, and Europe. His extensive discography, spanning composers from Monteverdi to Richard Strauss, includes more than sixty recordings—many of them international prize winners—featuring him as cellist, violist da gamba, keyboard player, baryton player, and conductor. His recording, in the latter role, of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde received a 2008 Grammy Award nomination, and a new CD/DVD set explores Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony and Verklärte Nacht. A member of the University of Maryland and L’Académie de musique du Domaine Forget faculties, Slowik is also artistic director of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute.

Violoncello by Carlo Antonio Testore, Milan, ca. 1730