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Our 2008--2009
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PROGRAM NOTESBeethoven was aware of the outstanding abilities of many instrumentalists of his day, and he wrote music to extend the best players he knew. Bernhard Romberg, cellist, evidently was not willing to extend himself. He was reported to have said that the Opus 18 quartets were "absurd stuff". Beethoven wrote the six quartets of this opus between 1798 and 1800. Dedicated to a patron, Prince Karl Lobkowitz, the first three were published in the summer of 1801 and the last three in October of that year. Although published as #4 of Opus 18, the C Minor Quartet was actually the last of the six, according to Alexander Thayer, an American authority on Beethoven. In the same vein, Quartet #3 in D Major was the first to be composed in 1798. It is interesting to note that these quartets were first performed by Beethoven and some friends on a set of string instruments given to him by another patron, Prince Karl Lichnowsky. The instruments included a Joseph Guarnerius violin (1718), a Nicholas Amati violin (1667), a Vincenzo Ruger viola (1690), and an Andreas Guarnerius cello (1712). This set of instruments is now on display at the Beethoven Museum in Bonn. As Beethoven was completing this set of six quartets in 1800, he was far from idle, also composing that same year three major piano pieces; an aria for soprano and orchestra; Symphony #1; the Septet for winds and strings, Opus 20; the Sonata for French Horn and Piano, Opus 17, Piano Concerto #3; and Variations for Piano, Violin and Cello, Opus 44.
ASTOR PIAZZOLLA. Four for Tango (1989) A late work of Piazzolla (he died only three years later, in 1992), Four for Tango is written for one of his strongest influences, the Kronos String Quartet. The Tango genre, with Piazzolla, is transformed from its traditional roots in the late nineteenth century into something utterly different. His works -- over a thousand of them -- are termed "Tango Nuevo," and are the product of an eclectic mix of ideas, exemplified by the people with whom he studied and with whom he performed. Many of those were classically trained musicians, beginning with Herman Scherchen, Nadia Boulanger, and Alberto Ginastera, with whom he studied composition, and Mstislav Rostropovich, the Kronos Quartet, and Gidon Kremer, with whom he occasionally recorded. But Piazzolla's roots were always in the folk idioms of his home in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and in Buenos Aires, where the Tango took form. He was born March 11, 1921 and by the age of four had moved to New York City, where apart from one year in Argentina he lived until he was 17. His father bought him a bandoneón, a South American folk instrument, at a pawn shop when he was eight, and he became a devoted bandoneónista for the rest of his life. Moving back to Argentina in 1937, he immersed himself in the study of the Tango, playing with several groups, and simultaneously studying Classical music, working with a pupil of Rachmaninov, Bela Wilda, and pianist Raul Spivak. In 1953 he won the Fabien Sevitzky Competition with a work for two bandoneóns and symphony orchestra, and at the Buenos Aires premiere a fistfight broke out between purists of both Classical music and Tango, all of whom felt offended by the mixture of genres. But with the money he won, he went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, who urged him to abandon Classical studies for the Tango. Finding his authentic voice, he wrote and performed with the greatest Classical and Jazz musicians of his time from the Fifties on, and achieved immense popular success.
Additional notes on the Tango -- Desire + Syncopation + Anguish + Licentiousness, ain't the minuet, Williamsburgers. Creeping up into the northern hemisphere from its origins in the underbelly of Argentina, the distinctive slow walking 4 in a measure rhythm and harmonic progressions of the tango were first associated in the popular imagination with an unbridled display of sexuality and aggressive, even savage, masculinity. Bodies might move in unfamiliar and potentially menacing ways. YIKES. Then, like jazz, the tango became one of the points of departure for new "classical music" in the 20th Century -- but, could they tame the growling tiger, the purring kitten, le tigre ... ? You decide! Malheureusement, the Fire Marshall prohibits dancing in the aisles.
TCHAIKOVSKY. String Quartet No. 1 in D Major, Opus 11, "Accordion". In 1871, despite an increase in his salary as professor at the Moscow Conservatory, Tchaikovsky was in straitened financial circumstances. When a friend suggested a concert of his music to raise funds, the composer, realizing that an orchestra would be too expensive, decided on a program of solo and chamber works. Lacking a major chamber work, he sat down in the month of February 1871 and tossed off this quartet. It is, however, anything but a pedestrian, formula-derived creation. When it had its premiere in Moscow a month later, at the concert which was a huge artistic and financial success, the quartet was an instant hit and it has been a staple of the chamber repertoire ever since. The work acquired its nickname or subtitle, "Accordion," from a Moscow reviewer who noted the similarity of the rising and falling dynamics of its opening chords to the sound of that instrument which is taken more seriously in classical music in Central and Eastern Europe than it is in this country. Much of the quartet's fame, however, comes from its second movement, Andante Cantabile, which over the years has been arranged for every conceivable instrumental and vocal combination, most notably as the melody of a song, "Isle of May," which was popular in the so-called Big Band Era of the late 1930s. Tchaikovsky based the melody on a folk song, "Sidel Vanya," which he heard while visiting his sister in the Ukraine in the summer of 1869. Between statements of the folk melody Tchaikovsky introduces another highly expressive theme played twice by the first violin over a pizzicato accompaniment. After a jolly, colorful Scherzo which has something of the character of a Russian peasant dance, the Finale offers an exuberant dance in the first theme and a soulful Slavic melody in the second before the resolution of the two themes and a whirlwind coda.
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