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Our 2008--2009
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PROGRAM NOTESRavel wrote his only string quartet in 1902-03 while still a student at the Paris Conservatory. Its form and musical language reflect the influences on his musical style. He admired the transparent textures and structural logic of Mozart, the reserved expression of his teacher Gabriel Faure, the pastel harmonies of Debussy, and the shimmering sonorities of the Javanese gamelan orchestra that first enthralled him and other Parisians at the World Exposition in 1889. The work's opening theme belongs not only to the fist movement but plays a role in the rest of the quartet. Ravel's use of the cyclic procedure of bringing earlier themes into succeeding movements effectively unifies what otherwise could be considered disparate movements. The second subject, a lovely violin melody accompanied by scalar harmonies in the lower instruments, "rises and falls through a long arc with the elegance and ease of a thrush on the wing," says Richard Edda. Throughout the development of this movement's sonata form, rustling configurations accompany its elegant themes. As in the Mozartian model, the recapitulation returns to earlier themes to balance and complete the first movement. Marked "rather fast and very rhythmic," the second movement is a modern scherzo in three sections, the first beginning pizzicato. Here Ravel conjures up the sound of the Javanese gamelan orchestra by having the inner and outer strings play in different rhythms. The opening theme derives from the first subject of the first movement. The middle section begins slowly and highlights the deeper sonorities of the cello, which now initiates a kind of rhapsody on the scherzo's earlier themes. A shortened version of the opening pizzicato section returns to conclude the movement. The third movement recaptures the mood of the scherzo's middle section. Cast in a minor key, it features considerable solo playing in the various instruments. It serves as a structural foil to the carefully defined forms of the earlier movements with its quickly changing sonorities, its frequent juxtapositions of mood and tempo, and its continually evolving themes. It is much like "an improvisation for quartet" (Edda). A powerful, metrically irregular motive launches the finale; this motive returns as the movement proceeds, much like a rondo. It separates contrasting episodes that recall familiar material from earlier movements, such as the theme of the first movement, the pizzicato figures of the second, and the shimmering tremolos of the second and third. Structurally the movement's awkward five-beat meter contributes to its unsettled character. Following a dramatic statement of the finale theme, a triumphant ascending arpeggio crescendos to a resounding F Major chord, concluding the work fortissimo.
Notes for the Haydn and Beethoven quartets are not available, due to a last-minute change in the program. |