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BS
YORK
THE ŠKAMPA
STRING QUARTET
Thursday, 14 March 1996
Programme: 50p
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Ian Theakston Memorial Trust
A trust fund is being set up in memory of the bass player lan Theakston
who was so large a presence in York music-making. In aid of the fund a
concert will be given on Saturday 27 April in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert
Hall by the Sorrell Quartet, late resident at the University. For details of
the programme, see Forthcoming Concerts near the end of this book.
Sarah Beth Briggs
The pianist Sarah Beth Briggs needs no introduction to BMS audiences.
She has recently made a cassette, including the following works: a
Scarlatti sonata, Mozart's C minor Piano Sonata, Rawsthorne Bagatelles,
Schumann's Arabeske, Beethoven's Andante favori, two Brahms pieces
(Intermezzo, Op.118/2, and Rhapsody Op.119/4), two Debussy Preludes (Des
pas sur la neige and La fille aux cheveux de lin) and Chopin's First
Ballade. The cassette costs £6.00 and will be on sale in the foyer during
the interval of this concert.
Your views
The BMS is a society run for the benefit of its members by a committee
elected from those members. If there is something you think we should be
doing, or should not be doing, don't keep it to yourself; please tell a
committee member. They should all be wearing their badges and they do
want to hear from you.
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BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY of YORK
Thursday, 14 March 1996
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
75th Season
THE ŠKAMPA STRING QUARTET
Pavel Fischer & Jana Lukášová violins
Radim Sedmidubskỳ viola
Jonas Krejci cello
Stuy ktel -Eb
String Quartet in F, K.590
5 Movements, Op.5
String Quartet in C minor
INTERVAL
Schubert.
Mozart
before the concert starts,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
For the sake of others in the audience,
please turn off all alarms on watches, calculators etc.
Webern
Bruckner
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THE ŠKAMPA STRING QUARTET
The Škampa Quartet was formed in 1989 at the Academy of Music in
Prague under the guidance of Antonin Kohout and Milan Škampa of the
Smetana Quartet; they have also studied with Piero Farulli of the
Quartetto Italiano and with members of the Amadeus Quartet. In 1990
they won the "Best Quartet" prize at the Premio Vittori Gui Competition
in Florence and in 1992 the Charles Hennen Competition in the Nether-
lands.
The Quartet made its London debut at the Wigmore Hall in February 1994
and was immediately invited back as quartet-in-residence, since when the
group have become regular visitors to this country. They were awarded
the Royal Philharmonic Society's 1995 Award for the best debut concert.
PROGRAMME NOTES
Quartet in F major, K.590
Allegro moderato
Andante
Menuetto: Allegretto
Allegro
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
(1756 1791)
Mozart wrote 23 string quartets proper, and these were composed in two
phases. The first belonged to the early 1770s and consisted of well-
crafted, but mostly light and inconsequential works such as might be
expected of a composer in his mid-teens. The earliest of them, ending
with K.160, are plainly modelled on Italian sources; a further six (quartets
were customarily composed and published in half dozens), composed in
Vienna in August and September 1773, were modelled more closely on
Haydn's recently-composed Quartets Opp.17 and 20.
The second phase came after a gap in Mozart's quartet output of nearly
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m
M
1790
of ve
might k
d
ten years. He was involved with his touring and then with his duties in
Salzburg. In 1781 Mozart was with the retinue of the Prince Archbishop
of Salzburg on a visit to Vienna. Incensed at his position somewhere
between the Archbishop's valets and cooks, and at not being allowed to
make any money, he sought his dismissal, remaining in Vienna as a
freelance. As the novelty everyone was talking of, he was soon too busy
to think of quartets.
That same year, 1781, Haydn published his six Quartets, Op.33, explaining
in a preface how they had been composed "in a new and special manner":
here, essentially, was music for four equal partners, music to be taken
seriously by composer, performers and audience alike.
The radical new departure was not lost on Mozart, who composed his
first example of the new type of quartet at the end of 1782, the G major,
K.387. Over the next couple of years, five others were to follow ending
with the C major, K.465, dated 14 January 1785. These six Quartets were
published in September 1785 with a dedication to Haydn.
The following year, 1786, Mozart wrote an unattached Quartet (K.499) for
the publisher Hoffmeister, after which came a further gap of three years.
In April 1789 Mozart travelled with Prince Lichnowsky to Germany.
Austria had become embroiled in the Russian war against the Turks, the
social and economic repercussions of which were making life difficult for
him. The German tour was principally for money. He visited Dresden,
Leipzig, Potsdam and Berlin, where he played on 26 May for the Prussian
king Friedrich Wilhelm II, an amateur cellist and noted patron of music.
Mozart straightway set about writing a set of six quartets for the king.
It is not certain whether they were formally commissioned or just
Friedrich Wilhelm was a generous
composed in the hope of reward.
patron Mozart's honorarium for the Berlin concert was 100 friedrichs
d'or, more than his annual salary as the Austrian emperor's Kammer-
musicus. Mozart arrived back in Vienna on 4 June 1789, but may even
have begun work on the first "Prussian" Quartet (K.575) en route: at any
rate the manuscript paper he used came from a mill between Dresden and
Prague. The Quartet was completed within the month of June. Then
Mozart had to lay quartets aside to work on Così fan tutte.
In May and June of 1790, Mozart wrote two further quartets (K.589 and
K.590), but here the proposed set of six came to a halt: Mozart's slowly
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worsening financial situation soon obliged him to sell the three existing
quartets to the Viennese publisher Artaria "for a mere song". The cash
was needed for Constanze Mozart's medical treatment. He wrote no more
string quartets. Mozart had always found the string quartet a difficult
medium, even when he was at his most fluent. In 1789 and 1790, though,
something seems to have sapped his self-confidence: his manuscripts are
littered with movements abandoned after a few bars. The present finale
of K.590 was Mozart's second attempt.
With the cello-playing king in mind, Mozart gave unusual prominence to
that instrument in these three late "Prussian" Quartets. But it is
noticeable that the cello has more of the limelight in the D major Quartet
of June 1789 than in the two which followed a year later. In the case of
K.590 the cello certainly shares centre stage with the first violin in the
broad first movement, but thereafter its role is the normal one for a
quartet of this period. The C major slow movement is a not-so-slow
Andante: when Artaria finally got round to publishing the Quartet, this
autograph tempo marking was speeded-up to Allegretto, though it's thought
unlikely Mozart had anything to do with this. The Minuet lies third and
seems to be entirely made up from melodic fragments purloined from the
slow movement. Unusually, both the Minuet and Trio are in F major. The
finale brims over with the contrapuntal invention behind the fugal end to
the Jupiter Symphony, but somehow the effort seems to show.
5 Movements for string quartet, Op.5
1 Heftig bewegt*
Sehr langsam
2
3 Sehr bewegt
4
Sehr langsam
5 In zarter Bewegung*
* initial tempo markings only
Anton [von] Webern
(1883 - 1945)
Webern was born in Vienna, but his upbringing was spread over several
cities, chiefly Klagenfurt: his father Carl was a mining engineer so
respected that he was poached by one government department after
another as supervisor. Young Anton took lessons on both piano and cello,
whilst his academic training polarised around two unlikely extremes: at the
University of Vienna his D. Phil. in musicology (1906) was on the music of
the 15th-century Flemish (?) composer Heinrich Isaac; but at the same
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time his composition lessons (1904 - 08) with Arnold Schoenberg put him
at the forefront of contemporary music.
Schoenberg and his followers (the closest and most important disciples
were Webern and his great friend Alban Berg) are often called the "Second
Viennese School": one is meant to assume that the first comprised
Haydn/Mozart/Beethoven/Schubert, and, no doubt, to make comparisons.
The Second. Viennese School were the origin and first purveyors of serial
or 12-tone music.
Stripped to essentials, the orthodoxy on the School and its position in the
development of music runs as follows. Large- and even small-scale form
in, say, Beethoven depends largely on a sense of key (tonality) to
function: moving away from the home key produces tension; returning to it
a sense of coming to rest. Balancing these two forces permitted the
construction of almost any structure from, to use an architectural analogy,
dog kennel to cathedral. Unfortunately during the 19th and early 20th
century the pull of the home key was gradually whittled away by the use,
for genuinely expressive reasons, of more and more extraneous notes in
both harmony and melody, not to mention wide-ranging and scantily-
prepared modulations and unresolved discords. So attenuated had the
sense of tonality become that by the works of his early maturity,
Schoenberg had come to question whether the concept of key deserved
even lip service. Hence the use of the term atonal, which means "lacking
discernable key centre".
Unfortunately, this meant, of course, that the received principles of
musical structure, with their dependance on key centres, were next to
useless. This led to an implosion of music - whole movements shrunk to a
few minutes at most, except for vocal music, where the text provided a
structural prop.
"The" solution came with Schoenberg's principle of
composition with "12 notes related only to each other", one of a number
of such experiments being made by various composers at about this time.
This serial principle worked in a rather different way to conventional
tonality, but allowed satisfying structures of decent length: it was even
possible to graft on to it old tonality-based forms - something of a
speciality of Schoenberg's. (The first pieces based on serial technique, by
the way, belong to 1920/1.)
This history is reflected in Webern's output and development. The 31
published opuses begin with the Passacaglia, Op.1, where tonality is still
powerful enough to sustain a 15-minute span. The size of pieces
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thereafter rapidly shrinks, reaching its extreme with the 3 Little Pieces
for cello and piano, Op.11 (1914), which total 32 bars in all. Opp.12 - 19
are all vocal, their structure supported by the backbone of the text. By
Op.20 (the String Trio) Webern had already adopted serial technique, and
his imagination was able to expand once more, though his structural
preoccupation was always with the miniature, with the geometry of
crystalline perfection - "his diamonds, his dazzling diamonds, of the mines
of which he had such perfect knowledge", to quote Stravinsky. It was
this radical side of Webern that so excited the post-1945 generation of
composers (including Boulez and Stockhausen) who developed it as the
lingua franca of the mainstream avant-garde (if that is not a contradiction
in terms).
Webern's Fünf Sätze für Streichquartett [= five movements for string
quartet] date from the spring and summer of 1909. Webern's music was
beginning to shrink in size: the movements of Op.5 average about two and
a quarter minutes each; by the next work for string quartet, the 6
Bagatelles, Op.9 (1911-13), the average was down to 45 seconds. The
music is effectively atonal, though it is still possible here and there to
detect some vestigial pull of tonality: there are even fragments of melody.
Listening to this music it is hard to reconcile its astonishingly novel voice
with the young Dr von Webern, an authority on medieval music who was
scraping a living as a conductor of light opera and operetta in mediocre
provincial theatres.
sonata etc.
Webern clearly thought of Op.5 as an integral work: he referred to it in
correspondence as a "string quartet", and the word "Sätze" in the title is
precisely the word used in German for the movements of a symphony,
It is perfectly possible to see the five movements as
corresponding to the overall shape of a more or less traditional quartet.
The first movement, as usual for string quartets, is the most substantial
and intellectually complex: it even has vestiges of sonata form. The
second is the expressive slow movement, whilst the third plainly cor-
responds to a scherzo. Fourth comes another slow movement, extra to
the classical groundplan, but clearly dictated by a desire for symmetry.
The last movement reflects the first: it is much shorter in terms of bars
and material (though its slow pace makes it longer in time), but has the
same diversity of ideas.
1
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(
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)
INTERVAL
Coffee and drinks are available in the foyer. Coffee is 50p a cup: to find
it, go past the bar on to the landing and turn to the left.
If you are interested in becoming a Patron or Benefactor of the BMS, or
have any queries about the Society, please ask one of the committee
members: they should all be wearing badges.
String Quartet in C minor
Allegro moderato
Andante
Scherzo: Presto
Rondo: Schnell
Anton Bruckner
(1824 1896)
If Webern was one of the greatest masters of small-scale forms, Bruckner
was one of the greatest exponents of structures of symphonic proportions.
He was born near Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, the eldest surviving
son of a village schoolmaster-cum-organist.
For the first half of his life Bruckner was suspiciously like a perpetual
student. This was emphatically not because he was a slow learner: the
truth is he had an almost total lack of self-confidence, placing more
reliance on the judgements and opinions of others than on his own
abilities. At the same time he was an indefatigable worker with extra-
ordinary powers of concentration and an appetite for intractable problems.
Bruckner began all this training at the age of four, learning to play hymn
tunes on a reduced-size violin. By the age of ten he was deputising for
his father in church on the organ. When he was 11 he went to stay at a
nearby town with his godfather, a cousin who held a similar schoolmaster--
organist post: this cousin, though, was also a composer (of at least local
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reputation) who gave the boy his first grounding in music theory. The
arrangement did not last: a year later Bruckner's father fell seriously ill,
and the 12-year-old had to return home as deputy on a more permanent
basis.
The following year (1837) the family had to cope with the crisis of the
father's death. Young Bruckner was faced at the age of 13 with the
prospect of stepping into his father's shoes to support the family. It says
much for his mother that she was not prepared to let this happen: she
moved with the rest of the family into the cheapest lodgings she could
find and arranged for Anton to be taken on as chorister at the great
Augustinian monastery of St Florian. Here he stayed until he was 16,
continuing his studies of organ, violin and theory.
After a year's teacher-training in Linz he got a deputy schoolmaster-
organist post in a distant village, but it was a trial to the young man: the
salary was small, his superior did not take kindly to the amount of time
Bruckner spent on musical pursuits, and making matters worse was the
host of minor duties which even included muck-spreading. Even though a
slightly better post was found for him after a year or so, it wasn't until
1845 that he was able to return to his spiritual home of St Florian, where
he took up a vacancy for a first assistant teacher.
Bruckner stayed at St Florian for ten years, taking every opportunity to
improve his own education. Then in July 1855, aged 30, he went to
Vienna to ask Simon Sechter of the Conservatory to take him on as a
private pupil. Sechter was impressed by Bruckner's obvious talent and
agreed immediately, but advised him to try and get away from the stifling
atmosphere of St Florian. By chance, the ideal post fell vacant shortly
afterwards cathedral organist at Linz. Even then, Bruckner almost
missed his opportunity: through a combination of not wanting to offend St
Florian (he had been hauled over the coals at his first attempt to leave)
and his notorious lack of self-confidence, he didn't even bother to apply.
Fortunately, a friend who had more faith in his abilities stood for no
nonsense and effectively dragged him into the organ loft for the audition.
Bruckner won the post easily - he was by now a formidable organist: so
brilliant were his improvisations that the few festival appearances his lack
of self-confidence would allow him to make created sensations in Paris and
London.
Bruckner spent the next 13 years in Linz. His lessons with Sechter
proceeded by correspondence, at this level of study an expedient with
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scarcely any disadvantages. Sechter had the reputation of being a strict
master: he demanded the utmost dedication to exercises in harmony and
counterpoint and was adamant that his pupils do no free composition
whatsoever for the duration of the course. Even so, Sechter met his
match in Bruckner, who would work at these exercises for six/seven hours
a day and once sent his teacher such a large batch of material that
Sechter had to advise him to slow down for the sake of his (Bruckner's)
sanity.
Bruckner finished his course with Sechter in 1861 with a fulsome
testimonial. Characteristically, this wasn't enough for the dogged and
persistent Bruckner, who entered for an external diploma at the Vienna
Conservatory. The climax of his examination had Bruckner at the organ
improvising a fugue on a theme given him by the examiners, one of whom
commented: "He should have examined us! If I knew one tenth of what he
knows, I'd be happy".
Able once more to indulge in free composition, Bruckner turned to yet
another teacher, Otto Kitzler, principal cellist and occasional conductor at
the Linz municipal theatre. Now, instead of Sechter's old masters he was
studying the new - Beethoven (still alive when Bruckner was born,
remember), Weber and beyond. This was the study that unlocked his
creative imagination, turning his grinding preparation from what could
have been a straightjacket to the solidest of foundations. Instead of
ending up as the composer of superbly-crafted, but essentially old-
fashioned and ultimately sterile church music, he was transformed into a
composer of his own time with virtually chink-less technical armour. Only
one experience was needed to turn him into the historical figure we know
now, the modernist and greatest tower of the Austro-German symphonic
tradition in the second half of the 19th century. That came at the end of
1862 when he helped Kitzler prepare a production of Tannhäuser and
encountered the music of Wagner. He was shown just what music was
capable of and never looked back. Within a year he had composed an
apprentice symphony, quickly followed by one he later dismissed as "Die
Nullte" [= the nothingth] and then the first of the nine numbered
symphonies, the C minor of 1865-6.
The bulk of Bruckner's achievement lies in the symphonies and in his
choral music. There is virtually no chamber music, the only mature work
being the F major String Quintet he wrote in 1879 (about the time he
began the Sixth Symphony) and the Intermezzo he composed the same year
as a replacement for its original scherzo. The String Quartet is a rather
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is still
earlier piece, dating from 1862. Bruckner was already 37/38, but
essentially a student work, part of the exercises he did for Kitzler in
preparation for his career as a composer.
The Quartet is in perhaps Bruckner's favourite key, C minor, the key of
three out of the nine symphonies. Bruckner was yet to succumb to the
influence of Wagner, so the music is closer to the quartets of Mendelssohn
and Schubert than to his later symphonies. "Maturity", though, is a
relative concept: if it is difficult to identify the radical Bruckner of the
symphonies in the backward-looking and conservative idiom of the Quartet,
there is no mistaking the hand of a master craftsman, particularly in the
first movement with its searching treatment of material and inventive use
of modulation. The slow movement is a gentle intermezzo with a
Schubertian or Mozartian simplicity and elegance, though there is a more
agitated middle section. The Scherzo is a rather jolly affair, offset by a
Ländler-like Trio. The finale is a short and relatively undistinguished
rondo, which is probably why Bruckner wrote a more substantial replace-
ment later in the year.
If
you would like to explore tonight's music on CD, there are plenty of
recordings of the Mozart with a wide variety of couplings. The Quartetto
Italiano's recording of the complete string quartet music of Webern for
Philips (420 796-2) has long been considered a classic. Only one recording
of the Bruckner is at present available, by the gut-string ensemble
L'Archibudelli for Sony Classical (SK 66 251): it is coupled with the more
famous String Quintet and the replacement movements Bruckner wrote for
both pieces. The Škampa Quartet has recorded the Beethoven F minor
Quartet, Op.95, the Smetana Second Quartet and Dvorak's Waltzes, Op.54,
for Supraphon (SU0162-2).
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford.
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
Tonight's is the last concert in the 75th Season of the British Music
Society of York. Members will shortly be receiving invitations to attend
the Annual General Meeting of the Society. Brochures for our 76th
Season will be sent out during the summer and the Season itself will begin
on Thursday, 10 October 1996 with a concert by the Lindsay String
Quartet. Please do join us then.
In the meantime please do not forget the special concert being presented
in association with the Department of Music at the University in aid of
the lan Theakston Memorial Trust:
§ Saturday, 27 April 1996, 8.00 pm. Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
Sorrell Quartet
Quartet in E flat, K.428
3 Divertimenti
Quartet in E minor, Op.83
Also in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall at 8.00:
§ Wednesday, 1 May 1996
Mozart
Britten
Elgar
Jane Jackson (piano)
Music by 20th-century American composers from Henry Cowell and Aaron
Copland to John Cage and John Adams
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BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY of YORK
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
President
Dr Francis Jackson
Vice-Presidents
Joan Whitworth
Jim Briggs
Rosalind Richards
Chairman: Dick Stanley
Vice-chairman: Amanda Crawley
Hon. Treasurer:
Albert Ainsworth
Hon. Asst. Treasurer: John Petrie
Hon. Secretary:
Nigel Dick
Hon. Publicity Secretary: Stephanie Kershaw
Hon. Programme Secretary: Brian & Rosalind Richards
NFMS Representatives: Dr Richard Crossley & Noel Sexton
Hon. Auditor: Derek Winterbottom
Members of the Committee: Andrew Carter, Lesley & David Mather,
Robert Stevens and Sheila Wright
BENEFACTORS AND PATRONS
Without their
The BMS manages to maintain the high standard of its concerts largely
through the generosity of its Benefactors and Patrons.
gifts to the Society, many of them covenanted, we could not hope to
balance our books.
Our Benefactors(§) and Patrons are as follows:
Mr A. Ainsworth§
Mrs P. J. Armour
Mr R. A. Bellingham
Mr & Mrs J. Briggs&
Mr A. R. Carter
Mrs M. Danby-Smiths
Mrs B. Fox
Mrs F. Andrews§
Dr D. M. Bearparks
Mr & Mrs D. A. C. Blunt
Mr A. Carter
Dr R. J. S. Crossley
Mr N. J. Dicks
Mr C. G. M. Gardner
0
a
8
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Mr A. D. Hitchcock
Dr F. A. Jackson
Mr J. C. Joslin§
Mr R. P. Lorrimang
Mrs A. M. Morcoms
Mr B. Richards§
Mrs I. G. Sargent
Mr & Mrs N. Sexton
Mrs D.C. Summers§
Mr D. A. Sutton
Dr M. J. Turners
Miss L. J. Whitworth
Mr & Mrs A. Wright
If you
would like to become a Benefactor or Patron, or have any queries,
recommendations, criticisms or even praise, please make your feelings
known to one of the committee members: they should all be wearing
identifying badges.
Mr G. Hutchinsons
Mrs E. S. Johnsons
Professor R. Lawtons
Mr P. W. Millers
Mr G. C. Morcoms
Mr L. W. Robinsons
Mr J. B. Schofields
Mr R. A. Stevens
Dr G.A.C. Summers
Mr O. S. Tomlinsons
Mr J. I. Watson
Mr R. Wilkinsons
Mrs H. B. Wright
In addition to the generosity of our Benefactors and Patrons, the activities
of the BMS are supported by the NFMS with funds provided by Yorkshire
and Humberside Arts and City of York Leisure Services. The Society also
gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
AK
Yorkshire & Humberside
ARTS
Registered Charity No.700302
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NFMS
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society
of York. Reproduced by WrightDesign of Easingwold.
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INSTITUTE
BORTHWICK
SMS 3/2/4 (1)
OF HI TORIC L RESEARCH
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B'S
YORK
The Lindsays
Thursday, 10 October 1996
Programme: 80p
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Leeds Finalist Recital (14 February 1997)
As you will probably have seen from our brochure, the next to last concert of this
season, on Friday 14 February 1997, is to be given by one of the six finalists from
the 1996 Leeds International Piano Competition. The final result of the
competition was decided on 21 September, but the wheels of concert management
turn rather more slowly, and at the time of keying this into the computer, no firm
details are available.
The 80p Programme
The Committee regrets having to raise the price of the programme to 80p. We
managed to keep the price down for a number of years, but gradual small
increases in the cost of copying and enormous hikes in the price of paper have
meant that programmes were being sold for less than they cost to produce.
Allowing this drain on the Society's resources was clearly not a responsible thing
to do.
Your Views
The BMS is a society run for the benefit of its members by a dedicated committee
elected from amongst those members. If there is something you think we should
be doing, or should not be doing, don't keep it to yourself: please tell a committee
members. They should all be wearing badges, and, whatever they say, do want to
hear from you.
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Lists from
magement
no firm
per have
produce
le thing
should
WOOO
BAS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
76th Season
Thursday, 10 October 1996
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
THE LINDSAYS
Peter Cropper & Ronald Birks violins
Robin Ireland viola Bernard Gregor-Smith cello
INTERVAL
Haydn String Quartet in C, Op.76 No.3 (Emperor)
Bartók String Quartet No.6
Brahms String Quartet in C minor, Op.51 No.1
OC
For the sake of others in the audience, please turn off all
alarms on watches, calculators etc. before the concert starts,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
BAS
YORK
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THE
LINDSAYS
The Quartet we know as the Lindsays was formed in 1965 from students at the
Royal Academy of Music in London, where they studied under Sidney Griller. In
the autumn of 1967 the Quartet began a period of residency at the University of
Keele, which is where they acquired the name Lindsay, after the University's vice-
chancellor, Lord Lindsay. Three years later, in October 1970, they gave their first
concert for the BMS. Over the next few years Ronald Birks joined them as second
violin and the Quartet began a period of residency at the University of Sheffield
(where their cabaret act was much admired). At the end of the 1970s the Lindsays
became quartet in residence at the University of Manchester, but Sheffield
remained their base and the city where in 1984 they founded the Chamber Music
Festival which revolves around them. The following year there was a second
change of personnel, with Robin Ireland taking over as viola-player.
The Quartet plays on a remarkable set of instruments: Peter Cropper on a
Stradivarius from the Golden Period; Ronald Birks on the Campo Selice
Stradivarius of 1694; Robin Ireland on a Mori Costa viola of about 1810; and
Bernard Gregor-Smith on a Ruggieri cello also of 1694.
5
Yorkshire & Hombrie
ARTS
The Lindsays appcar for us tonight under the Yorkshire and
Humberside Arts Musicians in Residence scheme.
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PROGRAMME NOTES
String Quartet in C major, Op.76 No.3 (Emperor)
Allegro
Poco adagio
Menuetto: Allegro
Trio
Finale: Presto
Joseph Haydn
(1732-1809)
The string quartet - its composers, players and devotees owe a great deal to
Joseph Haydn. He did not actually invent the form, but his efforts alone raised it
from relative obscurity, gave it cogent structure and sent it out into the world as
the powerfully expressive medium we now know. In Marion Scott's pretty words
"Haydn and the string quartet were young together".
It was in the mid 1750s, his early 20s, that Haydn first wrote for the combination
of two violins, viola and cello: he had been invited to a nobleman's country palace
to spend the summer teaching and while there provided "divertimentos" for
entertainment. At the time Haydn was still scratching a precarious living as a
freelance musician in Vienna. It was only in 1759 that he entered service with a
certain Count Morzin, but he was quickly snapped up by the Esterházys, one of
the great houses of the Austrian Empire, with whom he spent nearly all his long
working career.
The Esterházy musical establishment, which Haydn soon came to direct, was a
large one and had little use for quartets: the demand was always for symphonies,
operas, masses, and, bizarrely, trios involving the baryton, a curious stringed
instrument that was a passion of Prince Nikolaus. But Haydn was allowed to
accept commissions from outside, provided he obtained permission first, and as
his fame spread throughout Austria and beyond to Paris, London and elsewhere
requests came flooding in.
Apart from symphonies, Haydn was most often asked for quartets. These were
popular with amateurs, but also had a vogue amongst the nobility. Not everyone
could afford a musical establishment on the opulent scale of the Esterházys, but a
string quartet was a respectable alternative with a burgeoning repertory.
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Haydn: pencil
portrait of 1794
And so Haydn produced quartets by the half dozen
to various commissions. In the 1790s alone he
composed: six (Op.64) to join the similar set he had
already written for a former Eszterháza colleague,
the violinist Johann Tost; six (published in two parts
as Op.71 and Op.74) for Count Apponyi; and six
(Op.76) for Count Erdődy. In 1799 or shortly
before, he was commissioned to write another six by
Prince Lobkowitz, one of Beethoven's long-
suffering patrons. Haydn set to work that year, but
produced only two Quartets, published in 1803 as
his Op.77.
The C major is the grandest, the most majestic of the
six Op.76 Quartets, but this isn't the reason for the
nickname Emperor. That came about, naturally enough, because Haydn cast the
slow movement in the form of variations on his Kaiserhymne [= emperor's hymn]
Britain's God save the king was the first national anthem, and much admired by
other nations. Indeed our tune was used, to their own words, by many other
countries including Russia (until 1833), Germany (until 1922) and the USA (until
1931). What we think of as the German national anthem (Deutschland,
Deutschland über alles) was adopted only in 1922 and borrowed the melody of the
Kaiserhymne which Haydn had written in 1797 for Franz II as an Austrian
national anthem: Austria had dropped the anthem when it lost its empire at the
end of the First World War, re-instated it in 1929, but dropped it again in 1947, in
order to distance itself from Germany. Britain borrowed Haydn's tune, under the
title Austria, for Hymns ancient and modern, setting the words Glorious things of
thee are spoken and Praise the Lord! Ye heavens adore him.
Haydn first wrote the tune as a simple song between October 1796 and January
1797. Later in 1797 he produced a version for voice and orchestra and finally
incorporated it into Op.76 No.3. The Quartet's second movement consists of the
theme, in four-part harmony, followed by a series of four variations, each giving
the tune to a different player. Var.1 is just for the two violins: the second violin
with the tune and the first with semiquaver decoration. In Var.2 the cello has the
tune, while the violins have elegant counterpoint and the viola is forced out of its
depth to provide the bass line. As compensation the viola gets the tune in Var.3:
the other instruments duck in and out to provide a constantly changing three-part
texture, turning to four-part just before the end. Var.4 restores the tune to the first
violin, but Haydn entirely reworks the harmonisation.
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wo parts
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long-
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Of the remaining three movements, the first is symphonic in scope and gesture,
while the Minuet shows that combination of economy of material with abundance
of imagination that is the hallmark of the mature artist. Unexpectedly the finale is
in the minor key until well into the recapitulation: minor key works commonly
have major-key finales, but the reverse of this is seldom encountered.
The Lindsays have recorded this Quartet for ASV: the CD has the CDQS 6147
and includes two other Haydn Quartets, the D major, Op.20 No.4, and F sharp
minor, Op.5 No.4.
String Quartet No.6
Mesto Vivace
Mesto Marcia
Mesto Burletta: Moderato
Mesto
Béla Bartók
(1881 - 1945)
The string quartet was a mainstay of instrumental music in the classical and early
romantic periods, but during the opulent and indulgent second half of the 19th
century it became somewhat side-lined as a genre. It came back with a vengeance
in the 20th century, suited as it was to the leaner, more concentrated output of
some compositional schools, to the more intellectually complex style of certain
composers, and to the mood of austerity that so frequently gripped the world,
usually during the spiritual and economic exhaustion following major wars.
Amongst 20th-century composers for string quartet two names stand out as
cornerstones in the repertory: Bartók and Shostakovich. As his career progressed,
Shostakovich turned to string quartets more frequently, and their content became
seemingly more and more personal; while for Bartók the six string quartets
remain perhaps his most perfect constructs.
Bartók wrote the last of his six quartets in the late summer and autumn of 1939.
It was the last work he wrote in Europe. The following year he fled with his
family to the USA, where he died five years later. The Quartet was dedicated to
the group that gave its first performance (New York, 20 January 1941), the
Kolisch Quartet - for whom Schoenberg, Berg and Webern had all written music.
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As originally planned, the Sixth was to
have been the only one of his quartets
with anything like a conventional
plan. The original design had four
self-contained movements: Vivace;
March; Burletta; and a fast finale
preceded by a 45-bar slow
introduction. The work was sketched
in this form, and Bartók began work
on a fair copy. But when he got to the
second movement he had a new idea, a
new way of binding the work together.
He took the main idea from the
introduction to the final movement and
used it, marked "Mesto" [= sadly], to
introduce the other three movements
as well: the viola has it as a solo to begin the first; the cello (accompanied by the
other instruments) at the start of the March; and the first violin before the
Burletta.
Bartók and his second wife, Ditta
Pásztorv: photo from the early 1940s
Otherwise the first three movements remain much as sketched. However, when it
came to the finale, Bartók dropped the main fast section he had envisaged, music
in his characteristic folk-dance, of which he had already sketched some 90 bars.
Instead he extended the 45-bar introduction to provide a complete 86-bar slow
finale.
Much has been made of the connections between Bartók's last quartet and other
valedictory works crowned with an elegiac finale - Tchaikovsky's Pathétique
Symphony and Mahler's Ninth. And there is something to be said for it: the
Tchaikovsky also contains a march and the third movement of the Mahler is a
Rondo-Burleske.
The Lindsays' recordings of the complete Bartók String Quartets are available on
an ASV three-disc set with the number CDDCS 301.
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51
on
INTERVAL
Coffee and drinks are available in the foyer. Coffee is 80p a cup: to find us, just
go past the bar, out on to the landing, and turn to the left.
String Quartet in C minor, Op.51 No.1
Allegro
Romanze: Poco adagio
Allegretto molto moderato e comodo
Allegro
Johannes Brahms
(1833-1897)
It is a commonplace of musicology that Brahms was so daunted by the
achievement of Beethoven that it was not until his 40s, after about 20 years work,
that he allowed his First Symphony before the public. His veneration for that
great predecessor is demonstrated by a typical anecdote. Brahms, as his girth
shows, was not averse to the good things in
life and was, in later years, pampered by
members of his circle. One evening he was
being wined and dined by an admirer who
wanted to impress the master by serving the
finest wine he had. He gave it to Brahms to
taste, introducing it with the toe-curlingly
sycophantic "This is the Brahms of my
cellar". Brahms took a sip, made something
Brahms didn't always sport that beard
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of a face and opined, "I think we'd better have the Beethoven."
Brahms was as diffident when it came to the string quartet, another area where
Beethoven had set his indelible stamp. He was confident enough when it came to
piano music and even chamber music with piano, but although he worked on,
according to his own admission, some 20 string quartet projects in the 1850s and
60s, the closest he got to publication were the two string sextets (1862 and 1866).
The two String Quartets published in November 1873 as his Op.51 were
completed earlier that year after several years of work. Brahms spent the summer
of 1873 at Tutzing on the Bavarian lake known as the Starnbergersee, SW of
Munich, and while there also composed what was for a long time his most popular
work, the St Anthony Variations.
Brahms dedicated Op.51 to T. Billroth. When Brahms gave a work a dedication
at all, it was generally to a friend or a colleague. The colleagues were mostly
professional musicians with their own place in a musical dictionary, while the
friends' claims on history are often only their connection with Brahms. Not so
Herr Professor Doktor Theodor Billroth. Billroth was a distinguished surgeon and
a pioneer in surgery of the stomach: he was the first person successfully to remove
the lower part of the stomach, an operation which still bears his name and is still
one of the standard treatments for peptic ulcers and certain types of stomach
tumour. He was also a
considerable musician,
which
must
have
endeared him to Brahms
almost as much as his
sense of humour:
according to Richard
(Doctor in the House)
Gordon's racy
and
anecdotal The alarming
history of medicine,
Billroth once pointed out
the drawbacks of statistics
with the lofty (and
politically incorrect) "Statistics are like women, mirrors of purest virtue and truth;
or like whores, to use as one pleases."
The genial Professor Billroth,
painted at work about 1880
Dr Billroth's two Quartets are very different, the C minor reminiscent of the
searching manner of Beethoven's middle-period quartets, and the A minor
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6.
50
move
sil
ch
inclining more to Schumannesque grace. The first movement of the C minor
begins with a theme that is almost a textbook example of how to construct a theme
for the purposes of development. It is made up of simple, but highly characteristic
ideas: first the dotted-rhythm arpeggio, then the falling 7th. The possibilities for
development and reconstruction that this theme presents are so endless that they
prove almost an embarrassment to the composer.
Part of the dotted-rhythm arpeggio returns to for the basis of the main idea of the
Romanze, the most Beethovenian of the movements.
The Allegretto molto moderato e comodo is one of those medium-paced
movements which Brahms introduced in place of the minuet/scherzo and
elsewhere sometimes called "Intermezzo". It is a melancholy piece in F minor,
dominated by a falling figure with repeated notes which is heard at the outset on
the first violin. There is a faster central section (Un poco più animato) in F major
which corresponds to a trio.
The Finale returns to the overall key of C minor, though the notes of the first
theme's opening flourish make it sound more like the F minor of the third
movement. This flourish is again based on the opening theme of the first
movement. Indeed, the finale brings back most of the Quartet's main motifs,
including the third movement's falling repeated-note figure. The recapitulation
takes the music into C major, as if the movement were going to end that way
(quite common in minor-key works), but C minor returns and remains unrelenting
to the final bar.
Incidentally the Lindsays played the companion quartet, Op.51 No.2 in A minor,
at their first concert for us - on 22 October 1970 (so long ago they had a different
viola player and second violinist, and we met in the Tempest Anderson Hall).
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concerts in the 76th Season of the British Music Society of York,
presented in association with the Department of Music at the University, are as
follows. They take place in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, beginning at 8 pm.
Friday, 8 November 1996
Alexander Baillie (cello)
J.S. Bach
Colin Matthews
Hindemith
Henri Dutilleux
Britten
Thursday, 12 December 1996
Haydn
Ravel
Beethoven
Suite No.6 in D
Palinode
Sonata
Trois Strophes
Suite No.3
Mozart
Planel
Beethoven
Nossek String Quartet
Thursday, 9 January 1997
Bush
Jolivet
Quartet in F major, Op.77 No.2
Quartet
Quartet in Eb major (Harp)
Triptych (oboe, bassoon and piano)
Divertimento in Bb, K.240
Andante and Scherzo
Trio in Bb, Op.11
Trio
Sonatine
Rakhmaninov Vocalise
Poulenc Trio
Friday, 14 February 1997
Finalist of the Leeds International Piano Competition
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rk.
as
1
Friday, 14 March 1997
London Winds
Quartet No. 1
Jeux d'enfants
17 Variations
Rossini
Bizet
Damase
Françaix Quartet
Mozart Adagio in Bb, K.411
Arnold
3 Sea Shanties, Op.4
Also in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall starting at 8.00
Wednesday, 16 October 1996
Stephen Varcoe (baritone)
Peter Seymour (fortepiano)
A programme of Schubert Lieder, to include Die schöne Müllerin
And don't forget, this coming Saturday
York Barbican Centre, 12 October 1996 at 7.30 p.m.
City of York Guildhall Orchestra
Simon Wright (conductor)
Erich Gruenberg (violin)
Blackford Concert Overture Marinus
Beethoven Violin Concerto
Rakhmaninov Symphony No.2 in E minor
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BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
President Dr Francis Jackson
Vice-Presidents
Chairman
Vice-Chairman
Hon. Treasurer
Hon. Asst. Treasurer
Hon. Secretary
Hon. Publicity Secretary
Hon. Programme Secretary
NFMS Representative
Hon Auditor
Members of the Committee
Joan Whitworth, Jim Briggs
Rosalind Richards
Dick Stanley
Robert Stevens
Albert Ainsworth
John Pctric
Nigel Dick
Stephanie Kershaw
Brian Richards (outgoing)
Amanda Crawley (incoming)
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Sylvia Carter, Lesley & David Mather,
Marc Schatzberger and Sheila Wright
BENEFACTORS AND PATRONS
The BMS manages to maintain the high standard of its concerts largely through
the generosity of its Benefactors and Patrons. Without their gifts to the Society,
many of them covenanted, we could not hope to balance our books.
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Through
Society
Our Benefactors (§) and Patrons are as follows:
Mr A. Ainsworth §
Dr D.M. Bearpark §
Mr & Mrs J. Briggs §
Mrs M. Danby-Smith §
Mrs B. Fox §
Mr G. Hutchison §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mrs A.M. Morcom §
Mr L. W. Robinson §
Mr R.A. Stevens §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Mr J.I. Watson
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Mr A.R. Carter §
Mr N.J. Dick §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Dr F.A. Jackson
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mrs M.S. Tomlinson §
Miss L.J. Whitworth §
Mrs S. Wright §
Mrs H.B. Wright §
If you would like to become a Benefactor or Patron, please get in touch with our
Hon. Treasurer, either at the ticket desk before each concert, or at 8, Petersway,
York, YO3 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be addressed
to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO2 1JH.
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Mr P.W. Miller §
Mr B. Richards §
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
Dr & Mrs G.M. Turner §
Mr R. Wilkinson §
In addition to the generosity of our Benefactors and Patrons, the activities of the
BMS are supported by the NFMS with
funds provided by Yorkshire and
Humberside Arts. The Society also
gratefully acknowledges the assistance of
the Royal Bank of Scotland.
AK
Yorkshire & Humberside
ARTS
Registered Charity No.700302
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NEMS
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by WrightDesign of Easingwold.
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BORTHWICK
SMS 3/2/4(2)
*
INSTITUTE
OF
HISTORICAL
32
PESEARCH
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BMS
YORK
Alexander Baillie
Friday, 8 November 1996
Programme: 80p
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Leeds Finalist Recital (14 February 1997)
As you will probably have seen from our brochure, the next to last concert of this
season, on Friday 14 February 1997, is to be given by one of the six finalists from
the 1996 Leeds International Piano Competition. The final result of the
competition was decided on 21 September, but the wheels of concert management
turn rather more slowly, and at the time of keying this into the computer, no firm
details are available.
The Internet
Those of you who are interested in computers and multimedia may be interested to
learn that the note on Dutilleux's Trois Strophes is the first BMS note where the
information is largely derived from the Internet, in particular a website the French
embassy in Canada created to cover Dutilleux's visit to that country
(http://www.ambafrance.org/GALERIE/MUSIQUE/dutil eng.html) and a
page devoted to Rostropovich which includes a section devoted to the 12 tributes
to Paul Sacher (http://tahoma.cwu.edu:2000/-michelj/Libraries/references/
rostropovich.html).
Christopher Fox Oboe Quintet
Further news of the splendid Oboe Quintet the BMS commissioned from Dr
Christopher Fox to celebrate our 75th anniversary last season. The Quintet is in
the pipeline for performance at the next Spitalfields Festival (in the El area of
London) and it is to form part of a double CD of oboe music played by
Christopher Redman to be issued early next year.
Your Views
The BMS is a society run for the benefit of its members by a dedicated committee
elected from amongst those members. If there is something you think we should
be doing, or should not be doing, don't keep it to yourself: please tell a committee
members. They should all be wearing badges, and, whatever they say, do want to
hear from you.
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ment
d to
a
tes
es
Dr
In
KE ZAN
BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
76th Season
Friday, 8 November 1996
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
ALEXANDER BAILLIE
Bach
Colin Matthews
Hindemith
Henri Dutilleux
Britten
(cello)
Cello Suite No.6 in D, BWV 1012
Palinode
Sonata for cello, Op.25 No.3
INTERVAL
Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher
Cello Suite No.3, Op.87
For the sake of others in the audience, please turn off all
alarms on watches, calculators etc. before the concert starts,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
BS
YORK
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ALEXANDER BAILLIE
Alexander Baillie is internationally regarded as one of the finest cellists of his
generation. He was directly inspired to take up the cello by the late Jacqueline du
Pré, beginning to play the instrument comparatively late age of 12. He went on to
study at the Royal College of Music in
London and in Vienna with Andre
Navarra. Mr Baillie is Professor of
cello at the Bremen Hochschule für
Musik and a visiting Professor at the
Royal College of Music.
Mr Baillie is a strong advocate of
contemporary music and has given the
premieres of a number of works,
including Colin Matthews' Cello
Concerto, Takemitsu's Orion and
Pleiades and Henze's Sieben
Liebeslieder. He also gave the first
modern performance of Stanford's
Cello Concerto, a work "lost" since
1880.
Of the works on tonight's programme, Mr Baillie has recorded only the Britten
Cello Suite, available on an Etcetera 2-CD set (KTC 2006) of the three Cello
Suites and Cello Sonata (in which he is partnered by Ian Brown). His recording
of the Colin Matthews Cello Concerto is available on the Unicorn CD with the
number UKCD 2058.
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And
ess
vende
WORS
Call
Seter
Tier
Suite for cello No.6 in D, BWV 1012
Prelude
Allemande
Courante
rabande
PROGRAMME NOTES
Gavotte I & II
Gigue
Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685 - 1750)
Much of Bach's instrumental music was composed, or had its origins, during the
period he spent as Kapellmeister (effectively director of music) in Cöthen, at the
court of Prince Leopold. Bach had left his previous position, at Weimar, under
something of a cloud. There were in fact two ducal households at Weimar, and
the musicians were employed by both of them unfortunately so, since the two
dukes were at loggerheads. Bach was in fact only the court organist at Weimar
and, when it seemed likely that he would be passed over for the recently vacated
Kapellmeister position, decided it was time to move. Leopold of Cöthen was
brother-in-law to one of the Weimar dukes, and Bach was confirmed as Cöthen
Kapellmeister in August 1717. Getting his release from Weimar proved
somewhat trickier: he was thrown into prison on 6 November and spent an
uncomfortable four weeks there until his dishonourable discharge from Weimar
on 2 December.
Cöthen, where he arrived four days later, was altogether different. Prince Leopold
in Bach's own words "loved and understood music": he had studied in Rome and
could sing and play the violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord. He had a first-
rate musical establishment, many of the musicians having been recruited when the
Berlin court orchestra was disbanded in 1713. More to the point, the court chapel
was Calvinist (as Leopold's father had been), which meant no elaborate
religiousmusic was required. And so Bach had excellent instrumentalists to write
for and no distractions.
The quality and scope of the Cöthen musical establishment are plainly reflected in
the music of the Brandenburg Concertos, whose sumptuous, not to say exotic,
instrumentation and often virtuoso writing were tailor made for the Cöthen
orchestra: certainly they were well beyond the resources of the Margrave of
Brandenburg's band.
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What put an end to such an ideal time for Bach? A woman, of course. In
December 1721 Leopold married his cousin Friderica, Princess of Anhalt-
Bernburg. She had no interest in culture of any kind, and so, shortly, neither did
Leopold. Bach saw the writing on the wall and eventually applied for the post of
Kantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig in December 1722. He was appointed in
April 1723 and took up his post the following month. He remained at Leipzig
until his death. Ironically, Princess Friderica died in April 1723, too late for Bach
to change his mind.
Amongst greatest chamber music Bach wrote at en are the six Sonatas
and Partitas for unaccompanied violin (BWV 1011 1006) and six Suites for
unaccompanied cello (BWV 1007 - 1012). The Cello Suites survive only in a
copy made by Bach's second wife during his time at Leipzig.
Music for a single melody instrument is notoriously difficult to compose, since the
one line has to suggest both harmony and melody in order for the result to make
perfect sense. Members of the viol and violin families, however, do at least have
the advantage that chords are possible, and so most solo writing of this kind
employs them. It was a type of music that had been composed in Italy for at least
a couple of centuries and there was already a strong tradition in North Germany.
Bach's contributions, however, are without question the greatest achievements in
the repertory.
The Cello Suites were almost certainly composed for the cellist Christian
Bernhard Linike, who joined the staff at Cöthen in 1716 and remained there until
his death around the new year of 1751 (he was buried on 3 January). All six
Suites have the same line-up of movements, except that the movement pair
preceding the final Gigue are Minuets in Suites 1 & 2, Bourrées in 3 & 4 and
Gavottes in 5 & 6.
The Sixth Suite, generally regarded as the finest of the set, poses an exceptional
technical demand on the performer. It was originally written for a five-string
cello, the extra string being tuned to the E a fifth above the normal highest string.
Bach takes advantage of this higher string to write some unusually high music,
and some of the chords relying on this E string are outstandingly awkward on a
conventionally-strung instrument.
"BWV", incidentally, stands for Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis [= Bach-work-
catalogue], the catalogue of the composer's music assembled by Wolfgang
Schmieder. When the catalogue appeared, everyone wanted to give Bach's music
S. numbers, to correspond to the K. numbers in Mozart, but the modest Schmieder
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R
3840
positively forbade this, lumbering musicology with the cumbersome BWV. Since
so little of Bach's output can be dated with any exactness, Schmieder's catalogue
is not arranged chronologically, but by type: thus cantatas occupy up to 223, organ
music 525 771, keyboard music 772 - 990, chamber music 1001 - 1040 and
orchestral music 1041 - 1071.
Palinode
Colin Matthews
(b. 1946)
Colin Matthews was born, like his brother David (also a composer), in London.
He studied at Nottingham University, and his composition teachers have included
Arnold Whittall and Nicholas Maw. During the 1970s he worked for the ailing
Benjamin Britten as well as teaching at Sussex University. He has written a study
of the music of Mahler and was one of those who collaborated with Deryck Cooke
on the performing version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony.
Colin Matthews wrote his Palinode for solo cello in February and March of 1992
for the cellist Pamela Hind O'Malley, who commissioned it with the help of the
Eastern Arts Board and gave its first performance in Cambridge on 29 July 1992
as part of that year's Cambridge Arts Festival.
The composer explains the work in this Programme Note, printed in the score
(Faber Music, 1993):
A Palinode is, in poetry, a recantation, or more simply, second
thoughts. The term applies twice over to this work, since in the first
place it reflects the fact that, having set out to write a series of short
studies for solo cello, I became distracted by a study in slow tempo, and
this became - contrary to my original intention the basis of the whole
piece. But it also relates to the contrast between this work and my
orchestral piece Broken Symmetry, completed a week or so before I
began work on Palinode, and whose 200 pages of hectic activity last
only just over twice the length of the four pages of this score. Palinode
consists, in effect, of a sequence of variations on the opening melody,
rising gradually to a climax which quite quickly dies away.
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My thanks to Faber Music, and in particular to Linda Hindmarsh. for help in
preparing this notc.
Sonata for cello, Op.25 No.3
Lebhaft, sehr markiert
Mäßig schnell, gemächlich
Langsam
Lebhafte Viertel
Mäßig schnell
Paul Hindemith
(1895 - 1963)
Hindemith was the major German composer of his generation and a gifted player:
of the many instruments he could play, he was an accomplished performer on the
violin, viola, clarinet and piano. When he was only 19 he took over as the second
violinist of a professional string quartet and was quickly promoted to first violin,
becoming leader of the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra two months short of his 20th
birthday. From 1919 he concentrated on the viola and viola d'amore - he was, for
instance, the soloist at the first performance of Walton's Viola Concerto in
October 1929. From 1921 to 1929 he was the viola player of the Amar Quartet,
which was originally formed to perform his own Second String Quartet (the
quartet supposed to be giving the premiere found it too difficult) and quickly came
to the fore as exponents of contemporary music. It is no surprise, then, that
stringed instruments figure so large in his output.
In chamber music circles, Hindemith is generally known as the composer who
wrote a sonata for virtually every instrument under the sun with piano
accompaniment - not just the obvious ones, such as flute and clarinet, but
intractable candidates such as trumpet, double bass and bass tuba. That series of
sonatas began with the E major Violin Sonata of 1935, but there had been plenty
of chamber music before that, particularly between 1917 and 1925, the year when
Hindemith turned to orchestral music in a big way.
The Sonata for unaccompanied cello belongs to the heart of this chamber music
period, to July 1922. It is the third of four Sonatas making up Hindemith's Op.25
- the others are: No.1 for unaccompanied viola; No.2 for viola d'amore and piano;
and No.4 for viola and piano. (Incidentally, Hindemith gave up using opus
numbers with Op.50 in 1930.) The first performance of Op.25 No.3 was given
the following year in Freiburg by the Amar Quartet's cellist, Maurits Frank.
>
3
Or
Or
Sin
Or
fre
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2
m
The Sonata has five movements: the first ("lively, very marked") is vigorous; the
second ("moderately quick, leisurely") has the character of an old-fashioned
dance; the third ("slow") is impassioned; the fourth ("lively crotchets") is a
scherzo-like picce with bars of different lengths; while the finale ("moderately
quick") returns to the bombastic mood of the first.
INTERVAL
Coffee and drinks are available in the foyer. Coffee is 80p a cup: to find us, just
go past the bar, out on to the landing, and turn to the left.
Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher
Henri Dutilleux
(b.1916)
In the 20th century we are used to organisations commissioning works from
composers: we ourselves commissioned an Oboe Quintet from Christopher Fox to
celebrate our 75th anniversary last season. But there have also been individuals
who have commissioned works far and wide: for example the Princesse Edmond
de Polignac in Paris during the 1920s and Mrs Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge in
Washington before and after World War 2. There have also been, how shall I put
it?, self-financing musicians, especially conductors starting their careers by hiring
or financing an orchestra. When Thomas Beecham first wielded the baton the
orchestra had been paid for by his father, from the Beecham pharmaceutical firm.
Similarly the double bass player Koussevitzky used his wife's money to finance an
orchestra in Moscow up to the Revolution, then in Paris in the early 1920s and
from 1924 in Boston.
The Swiss conductor Paul Sacher had a similar history. Having studied
musicology at the University of Basle, he founded the Basle Chamber Orchestra in
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1926 and the research institute Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in 1933. In a world
awash with performances of music from Mozart to Debussy, Sacher concentrated
on the periods outside, pre-classical and contemporary music. Having married the
heiress to the patentee of Librium and Vallium, he could afford to commission
works from many composers, and did so generously, attracting works from,
amongst others, Bartók, Britten, Henze. Hindemith, Honegger, R. Strauss,
Stravinsky and Tippett.
In 1976 Sacher celebrated his 70th birthday and the 50th anniversary of the Basle
Chamber Orchestra. The cellist Mstislav Rostropovich had the idea of celebrating
the occasion by commissioning 12 composers connected with Sacher to provide
short celebratory works for unaccompanied cello. These he then performed at a
concert in Zurich on 2 May 1976.
One of the composers he asked was the Frenchman Henri Dutilleux, having
recently had a success with the cello concerto composed for him with the title Tout
un monde lointain ... Dutilleux is one of the foremost French composers of his
generation, his lack of international status stemming from his avoidance of
fashionable styles. One of the most frequently quoted comments on him comes
from the critic Jean Roy:
In our age of violence and disruption it is Henri Dutilleux's difficult mission to be a
civilised artist and, without any ostentatious message, to defend a certain elevated
and refined conception of beauty.
For the Zurich concert Dutilleux wrote Rostropovich a short piece entitled
Hommage à Paul Sacher. Then in 1982 he added two more movements to
produce his Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher.
Rostropovich asked his 12 composers to base their pieces on the music letters of
the name SACHER. A. C and E are self-evident; those amongst you familiar with
German note-names will know that in their system B means B flat and what we
call B they call H. When playing note/letter games of this kind, the letter S is
represented by the note E flat, a sort of pun on the German name for that note -
Es. [Hence the Shostakovich motto DSCH comes out as D Eb C B.] R was more
of a challenge, solved by interpreting it as Re, the French (and, amongst others.
Italian) for the note D. Thus the SACHER motto on which Dutilleux's piece is
based consists of the notes Eb A C BED.
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da
S
bea
led
with
VC
is
e.
X
is
Suite for cello No.3, Op.87
Introduzione: Lento -
Marcia: Allegro -
Canto: Con moto -
Barcarolla: Lento -
Dialogo: Allegretto -
Fuga: Andante espressivo -
Recitativo: Fantastico -
Moto perpetuo: Presto -
Passacaglia: Lento solenne
Benjamin Britten
(1913 - 1976)
No cellist can have inspired more music to have been written by a greater variety
of composers than Mstislav Rostropovich (the barely pronouncable forename
derives from the Russian verb mstit' - to avenge: friends just call him "Slava"). It
started in the late 1940s when he galvanised the ailing Prokof'yev into composing
a string of late cello works. From then on Rostropovich seems to have charmed,
cajoled or plain bullied just about every composer he came across into writing a
concerto or something else for him.
Rostropovich and Britten at Aldeburgh (mid 1960s)
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The most fruitful relationship was his friendship with Benjamin Britten. They
met in 1960, when Rostropovich introduced London to Shostakovich's new (First)
Cello Concerto. Through Rostropovich, Britten was later to meet both
Shostakovich and the pianist Svyatoslav Richter and to begin artistic
collaborations and friendships that were to enrich all taking part. When he met
Rostropovich, Britten had composed no intrumental music for 10 years, but the
Russian's playing inspired him to write a series of cello works: the Sonata for
cello and piano (1961), Symphony for cello and orchestra (1963) and three Suites
for unaccompanied cello (1964, 1967 and 1971). He also rote the Pushkin song
cycle Poet's Echo (1965) for Mrs Rostropovich, the soprano Galina
Vishnevskaya, to sing accompanied by her husband at the piano.
The Third Cello Suite was composed just after Britten finished his television
opera Owen Wingrave. The composer described the circumstances in a note
printed in the score:
I wrote this Suite in the early spring of 1971 and took it as a present to Slava
Rostropovich when Peter Pears and I visited Moscow and Leningrad in April of that
year. The occasion was a week of British music, and our programme with the
London Symphony Orchestra was made memorable by the fact that both Richter and
Rostropovich joined us - surely a unique gesture of Anglo-Russian friendship.
As a tribute to a great Russian musician and patriot I based this suite on Russian
themes: the first three tunes were taken from Tchaikovsky's volumes of folk-song
arrangements, the fourth, the Kontakion [= hymn for the departed], from the English
Hymnal. When I played the Suite through to Dmitri Shostakovich during our visit to
Moscow, he remarked that he had been brought up on a different version of the
Kontakion. I consulted my friend Bishop Pimen of Saratov and Volgograd, who
confirmed that my version was the one he had always known and regularly used. In
the score I print both versions, for players to choose whichever they prefer,
Rostropovich gave the first performance of the Suite in Aldeburgh, though not at
festival time, on 21 December 1974. As with the First Suite, the Third consists of
a large number of shortish movements played without a break.
Programmc notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Suc Bedford
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met
a for
song
Sion
mote
the
and
an
ng
ish
to
he
h
FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concerts in the 76th Season of the British Music Society of York,
presented in association with the Department of Music at the University, are as
follows. They take place in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, beginning at 8 pm.
Thursday, 12 December 1996
Haydn
Ravel
Beethoven
Thursday, 9 January 1997
Mozart
Planel
Beethoven
Nossek String Quartet
Triptych (oboe, bassoon and piano)
Bush
Jolivet
Quartet in F major, Op.77 No.2
Quartet
Quartet in Eb major (Harp)
Rakhmaninov
Divertimento in Bb, K.240
Andante and Scherzo
Trio in Bb, Op.11
Trio
Sonatine
Vocalise
Poulenc Trio
Also in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall starting at 8.00
Wednesday, Thursday & Friday, 13 - 15 November
Lampe The Dragon of Wantley
As their practical project the students of the Music Department mount a
production of John Frederick Lampe's 1737 burlesque, the most successful
English comic opera of the 18th century apart from The Beggar's Opera.
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O
BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
President
Dr Francis Jackson
Vice-Presidents Joan Whitworth, Jim Briggs
Rosalind Richards
Chairman
Vice-Chairman
Hon. Treasurer
Hon. Asst. Treasurer
Hon. Secretary
Hon. Publicity Secretary
Hon. Programme Secretary
NFMS Representative
Hon Auditor
Members of the Committee
Dick Stanley
Robert Stevens
Albert Ainsworth
John Petric
Nigel Dick
Stephanie Kershaw
Brian Richards (outgoing)
Amanda Crawley (incoming)
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Sylvia Carter, Lesley & David Mather,
Marc Schatzberger and Sheila Wright
BENEFACTORS AND PATRONS
The BMS manages to maintain the high standard of its concerts largely through
the generosity of its Benefactors and Patrons. Without their gifts to the Society,
many of them covenanted, we could not hope to balance our books.
to
R
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Our Benefactors (§) and Patrons are as follows:
Mr A. Ainsworth §
Dr D.M. Bearpark §
Mr & Mrs J. Briggs §
Mrs M. Danby-Smith §
Mrs B. Fox §
Mr G. Hutchison §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr J.C. Miles
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mrs M.S. Tomlinson §
Miss L.J. Whitworth §
Mrs S. Wright §
Mrs F. Andrews &
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Mr A.R. Carter §
Mr N.J. Dick §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Dr F.A. Jackson
Prof. R. Lawton S
Mr P.W. Miller §
Mr B. Richards §
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
Dr & Mrs G.M. Turner § Mr J.I. Watson
Mr R. Wilkinson §
Mrs H.B. Wright §
If you would like to become a Benefactor or Patron, please get in touch with our
Hon. Treasurer, either at the ticket desk before each concert, or at 8, Petersway,
York, YO3 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be addressed
to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO2 1JH.
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mrs A.M. Morcom S
Mr L. W. Robinson §
Mr R.A. Stevens §
Mr D.A. Sutton
In addition to the generosity of our Benefactors and Patrons, the activities of the
BMS are supported by the NFMS with
funds provided by Yorkshire and
Humberside Arts. The Society also
gratefully acknowledges the assistance of
the Royal Bank of Scotland.
*K
Yorkshire & Humberside
ARTS
Registered Charity No.700302
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NEMS
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by Wright Design of Easingwold.
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BORTHWICK INSTITUTE
$ 3/2/4 (3)
HISTORICAL RESEARCH
SMS
OF
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BS
YORK
Nossek String Quartet
Thursday, 12 December 1996
Programme: 80p
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Leeds Finalist Recital (14 February 1997)
There's good news and bad news. First the bad news. Those of you who were
present at the finals of the Leeds Competition, or saw them on television, will
remember that, as it turned out, the six finalists all came from the corners of the
earth. None of those we have approached could manage 14 February, or any other
date available to us. It is a great disappointment to all of us, but the risk is
inseparable from circumstances such as these.
There is good news, however. Our incoming Programme Secretary has managed
to book the winner of the competition. Ilya Itin, for our next season: unless his
planned UK tour falls through, he will open the 77th season of the British Music
Society of York with a recital on 9 October 1997.
Meanwhile we have been fortunate to enlist for the February concert the piano duo
of Benjamin Firth and Peter Hill who memorably played for us back in March
1989: their programme will feature Stravinsky's electrifying Concerto for two solo
pianos, Messiaen's powerful Visions de l'amen and an early work by Ravel.
Your Views
The BMS is a society run for the benefit of its members by a dedicated committee
elected from amongst those members. If there is something you think we should
be doing, or should not be doing, don't keep it to yourself: please tell a committee
members. They should all be wearing badges, and, whatever they say, do want to
hear from you.
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BAS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
76th Season
Thursday, 12 December 1996
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
NOSSEK STRING QUARTET
Jane Nossek & Kate Evans violins
Heather Wallington viola
Jennifer Langridge cello
Haydn String Quartet in F, Op77 No.2
Ravel String Quartet
INTERVAL
Beethoven
BAS
YORK
String Quartet in Eb major, Op.74 (Harp)
For the sake of others in the audience, please turn off all
alarms on watches, calculators etc. before the concert starts,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
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NOSSEK STRING QUARTET
The Nossek String Quartet was formed in 1988 by four fellow students at the
Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. The Quartet has had regular
coaching from Dr. Christopher Rowland, as well as masterclasses with the
Vermeer Quartet, the Franz Schubert Quartet of Vienna and Alexander Baillie.
While at College they won three major quartet prizes and were prizewinners in
the 1991 intercollegiate Beethoven Prize. Over the last six years they have played
throughout Britain, toured the Channel Islands and appeared in France and Italy.
They played for the BMS in January 1995, giving a memorable performance of
Janáček's First String Quartet (Kreutzer Sonata), and were immediately booked to
return for tonight's concert. They have also made a considerable impression at
Aldeburgh, where they have been invited to give five concerts in the Winter
Lunchtime series.
S
1
"
S
E
n
T
la
0
in
au
h
TO
A
pa
CO
St
A
1
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PROGRAMME NOTES
String Quartet in F major, Op.77 No.2
Allegro moderato
Minuet: Presto
Andante
Finale: Vivace assai
Joseph Haydn
(1732-1809)
The string quartet - its composers, players and devotees - owe a great deal to
Joseph Haydn. He did not actually invent the form, but his efforts alone raised it
from relative obscurity, gave it cogent structure and sent it out into the world as
the powerfully expressive medium we now know. In Marion Scott's pretty words
"Haydn and the string quartet were young together".
It was in the mid 1750s, his early 20s, that Haydn first wrote for the combination
of two violins, viola and cello: he had been invited to a nobleman's country palace
to spend the summer teaching and while there provided "divertimentos" for
entertainment. At the time Haydn was still scratching a precarious living as a
freelance musician in Vienna. It was only in 1759 that he entered aristocratic
service with a certain Count Morzin - but he was quickly snapped up by the
Esterhazys, one of the great houses of the Austrian Empire, with whom he spent
nearly all his long working career.
The Esterhazy musical establishment, which Haydn soon came to direct, was a
large one and had little use for quartets: the demand was always for symphonies,
operas, masses, and, bizarrely, trios involving the baryton, a curious stringed
instrument that was a passion of Prince Nikolaus. But Haydn was allowed to
accept commissions from outside, provided he obtained permission first, and as
his fame spread throughout Austria and beyond to Paris, London and elsewhere
requests came flooding in.
Apart from symphonies, Haydn was most often asked for quartets. These were
popular with amateurs, but also had a vogue amongst the nobility: not everyone
could afford a musical establishment on the opulent scale of the Esterhazys, but a
string quartet was a respectable alternative with a burgeoning repertory.
And so Haydn produced quartets by the half dozen to various commissions. In the
1790s alone he composed: six (Op.64) to join the similar set he had already
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written for a former Eszterháza colleague, the violinist Johann Tost; six
(published in two parts as Op.71 and Op.74) for Count Apponyi; and six (Op.76)
for Count Erdődy. In 1799 or shortly before, he was commissioned to write
another six by Prince Lobkowitz, one of Beethoven's long-suffering patrons.
Haydn set to work that year, but produced only two Quartets, published in 1803 as
his Op.77.
Why only two quartets were composed is a mystery, for which there are two main
theories. The first suggests that Haydn was merely feeling his age. He was after
all in his mid-60s and had written a great deal of music: he had just completed
two highly successful, but exhausting, trips to England and was shepherding his
remaining resources for overseeing the first performance of The Creation and
composing its successor, The Seasons.
The second theory has to do with Beethoven, who had first appeared publicly in
Vienna In 1795. There was never any overt rivalry between them, though
comparisons were inevitably made, and Beethoven seems, to begin with, to have
kept clear of areas like the string quartet which were Haydn strongholds - this
explains the extraordinary number of string trios in his early output. By 1799,
however, Lobkowitz had persuaded Beethoven to produce six quartets (published
as his Op. 18), and it may well be that Haydn no longer felt equal to the challenge.
Only once again did Haydn attempt a string quartet, in 1803, but he could get no
further than two movements, the slow movement and minuet of what was
evidently intended as a quartet in D minor. It was published as it stood with a
quotation from one of Haydn's partsongs, setting the words "Gone is all my
strength, old and frail am I".
Haydn need not have feared the challenge of Beethoven. His Op.77 Quartets
display a lifetime's mastery and invention far beyond those of his younger
colleague, which are frankly not the best of his early music. Later, of course, the
outcome would have been different.
Even at the age of 67 Haydn was still experimenting with musical structures - in
particular here with the key structure. Instead of having his various movements in
closely-related keys, he uses more distant ones, with their keynotes a third apart -
the so-called mediant relationship more often associated with Schubert. In a four-
movement quartet in F major we would expect Haydn to put the slow movement
and the trio of the scherzo/minuet in Bb major or C major; in Op.77 No.2 the slow
movement is in D major and the trio section in D flat major. At one point in the
opening movement Haydn is trying so hard to fool the ear with shifting harmony
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that he felt compelled to write "l'istesso tuono" [= the same sound] over notes
that, despite appearances to the contrary, hadn't changed.
The "Minuct" lics second, its common position in carly Haydn, but rare this late.
I use inverted commas since this is much more a scherzo than a minuct: it's not
just the fast speed that disqualifics it, but also the way in which the crotchet-pair
cross rhythms interfere with the basic metre. The third movement is in
variation form, full of transparent textures, while the lively finale brims over with
Haydn's childlike delight in rhythmic jokes.
String Quartet in F major
Allegro moderato, très doux
Assez vif, très rythmé
Très lent
Vif et agité
Maurice Ravel
(1875 - 1937)
Ravel wrote his String Quartet in 1902 and 1903, making it one of his earliest
works to have an assured place in the repertory. It dates from his problematical
time as a composition student at the Paris Conservatoire. Ravel had entered the
Conservatoire in 1889 and studied piano and harmony, graduating
unspectacularly in 1895. Two years later he re-entered, attending Faure's
composition classes and also studying counterpoint and orchestration.
Unfortunately, Ravel's aspirations as a composer simply did not fit in with the
Conservatoire's rigid and (needless to say) conservative requirements, so he was
not allowed to re-enrol after 1900: he was, however, permitted to continue
attending Fauré's classes, in the capacity of auditeur, and could still enter for the
Prix de Rome.
Thereby hangs another tale. The Prix de Rome was the top prize for composition
at the Conservatoire, allowing the winner three years' residence at the Villa dei
Medici in Rome, soaking up Italian artistic tradition alongside similar laureates in
literature, painting, architecture etc. Most of the great French composers, from
five times, never
Berlioz onwards, had won the prize, but Ravel, despite enterin
succeeded. Contestants, after getting past the qualifying round, had to produce a
cantata to a set text. On his first attempt in 1900, Ravel failed to get past the
qualifying round. In 1901, 1902 and 1903 he produced cantatas to the prescribed
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texts, but failed to impress the jury. In 1904 he neglected to put in his entry,
while in 1905, on the brink of the age limit, he entered once again only to be
knocked out at the preliminary stage. By now he was a nationally known
composer with a fast growing reputation, and his Prix de Rome failure became a
public scandal - as such things will in France. It did his reputation no harm
whatever, though it failed to get him to Rome. It is strongly suspected that what
ultimately cost him a prize was his inability to compose an academic fugue,
virtually a crime in reactionary Conservatoire circles.
His time in Fauré's class was hardly wasted, however, as is attested in the
dedication of the Quartet "à mon cher maître Gabriel Fauré" = to my dear
master, Gabriel Fauré]. The work would scarcely have pleased the Conservatoire
authorities, but Fauré himself was a much more sympathetic figure, happy to help
talented pupils find and develop their own individual voices.
Another potent influence on Ravel was Debussy, a composer a dozen years older
and a dozen years ahead in compositional experience. More to the point Debussy
had composed his only String Quartet some 10 years carlier, providing Ravel with
a perhaps more congenial model than much earlier works from the Austro-
German tradition.
The influence of Debussy on Ravel can easily be over-stressed, but not denied,
especially in these carlier years. Both quartets are cyclic in their structure, that is
the various movements are made to form an integral whole the sharing or
exchanging of material. The idea is at least as old as Beethoven and Schubert, but
was a feature of Liszt and his school and came to Paris through the works of its
textbook exponent, the Belgian composer César Franck.
One of the favourite devices of cyclic form is to open a work with an arresting
idea which is subsequently transformed to provide material for other movements.
This is precisely what happens with both the Debussy and Ravel quartets: indeed,
so similar are their opening gestures that one critic at the first performance
(March 1904) accused Ravel of plagiarism. In a way, though, the Ravel marks a
significant advance over the Debussy. It shows a much more perceptive
understanding and manipulation of the string quartet texture, underlining Ravel's
great sensitivity for instrumental colour whether writing with full orchestral
palette or the comparative monochrome of the piano.
The second movement is a scherzo in A minor with the opening section played
pizzicato - again like the Debussy. If you find the music annoyingly familiar
when you haven't, to your knowledge, ever heard the Ravel String Quartet, you
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)
)
)
may recognise it from Sir Peter Hall's television adaptation of Mary Wesley's The
Camomile Lawn, whose music was largely based on this one movement.
The slow movement, lying third, is in the distant key of Gb major, its atmospheric
mood enhanced by the instruments' being muted. The finale, by contrast, is
vigorous to the point of aggressiveness, its driving rhythms contrasting
markedly with more lyrical passages in 2.
INTERVAL
Coffee and drinks are available in the foyer. Coffee is 80p a cup: to find us, just
go past the bar, out on to the landing, and turn to the left.
Quartet in Eb major, Op.74 (Harp)
Poco Adagio - Allegro
Adagio ma non troppo
Presto -
Allegretto con Variazioni
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
Beethoven didn't write quite so many quartets as Haydn, and their wide variety of
keys and convenient banding into early-, middle- and late-period groups suffice
for identification. Nor have players tended to use nicknames for them, with one
significant exception, the Eb major Quartet, Op.74. It is known as the Harp
Quartet, for the very obvious reason of all the plucking that goes on in the first
movement.
Beethoven wrote the Quartet in the summer and autumn of 1809, three years after
the three Razumovsky Quartets and a year before the F minor Quartet, Op.95. It is
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one of four capital works dating from 1808-1810 in Eb major, a key which
habitually drew from Beethoven some of his most magisterial music. The other
works are the Piano Trio. Op.70 No.2, the Fifth Piano Concerto (Emperor) and
the Piano Sonata. Op.81a (Das Lebewohl). Lest you should think I am making
too much of a mere coincidence, remember that Beethoven was to write only onc
other work of equivalent stature in Eb major, the first of the late quartcts, Op. 127,
completed in 1825.
The basic pattern for a four-movement symphony, quartet etc., as Beethoven
inherited it, ran as follows: a fast movement in sonata form, whose propensity for
development and manipulation of its melodic material made it the intellectual
pole of the work; a slow or slowish movement, the lyrical core of the work; a
minuet, a backwards glance to the dance movements of the baroque suite; and a
light-hearted finale, usually in rondo form, a structure largely designed to keep
the tunes coming round.
Beethoven brought his own strengths to this plan. He was one of the most
brilliant developers and manipulators of melodic material, and his first
movements grew enormously in size and importance. He was also one of the first
masters of the profound, and very slow, slow movement: he could range easily
from serene to passionate which often made his Adagios and Largos the emotional
centre of a work. He also had a frequently gruff sense of humour and, following
an idea of Haydn's, usually replaced the sedate minuet with the much faster
scherzo, literally a "joke".
These developments caused him serious structural problems. First, the main
weight of the piece was thrown forward on to the first two movements; second,
there was a slight identity crisis between a light-hearted scherzo and a light-
hearted finale. Part of the enduring appeal of Beethoven's middle- and late-
period music resides in the wealth of solutions he found to these basic problems -
from experiments with fewer, amalgamated movements (the sonatas) or more
numerous, redefined movements (the late quartets) to the rebalancing he achieves
in a work like the Op.74 Quartet.
Here he saves his greatest emotional intensity for the powerful scherzo movement
in the clearly related, but unexpected key of C minor. The first movement, while
abounding in invention and development, and not short of its own necessary
tensions, is modest in dimensions and relaxed in its unfolding of melodic
material. The slow movement, in preparation for what is to come, valucs lyricism
and calm over emotional voltage. When the storm of the scherzo has played itself
out, we come to the calmer waters of the Allegretto finale. In order to
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counterbalance the intellectual thrust of sonata-form first movements, Beethoven
often extended the finale by using variation form (as here) or even, later on,
fugue. Variation-form finales were nothing new - Mozart had used them and
there is indeed a Mozartean simplicity about. these variations. Until, at least, the
end, which looks forward to the world of the Bb Quartet, Op. 130.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concerts in the 76th Season of the British Music Society of York,
presented in association with the Department of Music at the University, are as
follows. They take place in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, beginning at 8 pm.
MF
Thursday, 9 January 1997
Triptych (oboe, bassoon and piano)
Mozart Divertimento in Bb, K.240
Andante and Scherzo
Planel
Beethoven
Bush
Jolivet
Rakhmaninov
Trio in Bb, Op.11
Trio
Sonatine
Vocalise
Poulenc Trio
Friday, 14 February 1997
Benjamin Frith & Peter Hill
(piano duo)
Ravel Sites auriculaires
Stravinsky Concerto for 2 solo pianos
Messiaen
Visions de l'Amen
Friday, 14 March 1997
London Winds
Music by Rossini, Bizet, Damase, Françaix, Mozart, Arnold
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B'S
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
President Dr Francis Jackson
Vice-Presidents
Chairman
Vice-Chairman
Hon. Treasurer
Hon. Asst. Treasurer
Hon. Secretary
Hon. Publicity Secretary
Hon. Programme Secretary
NFMS Representative
Hon Auditor
Members of the Committee
Joan Whitworth, Jim Briggs
Rosalind Richards
Dick Stanley
Robert Stevens
Albert Ainsworth
John Petrie
Nigel Dick
Stephanie Kershaw
Brian Richards (outgoing)
Amanda Crawley (incoming)
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Sylvia Carter, Lesley & David Mather,
Marc Schatzberger and Sheila Wright
BENEFACTORS AND PATRONS
The BMS manages to maintain the high standard of its concerts largely through
the generosity of its Benefactors and Patrons. Without their gifts to the Society,
many of them covenanted, we could not hope to balance our books.
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Our Benefactors ($) and Patrons are as follows:
Mr A. Ainsworth S
Dr D.M. Bearpark S
Mr & Mrs J. Briggs S
Mrs M. Danby-Smith S
Mrs B. Fox $
Mr G. Hutchison §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr J.C. Miles
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mrs M.S. Tomlinson §
Miss L.J. Whitworth §
Mrs S. Wright §
Mrs F. Andiews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Mr A.R. Carter S
Mr N.J. Dick §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Dr F. A. Jackson
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mr P.W. Miller §
Mr B. Richards §
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mrs A.M. Morcom §
Mr L. W. Robinson §
Mr R.A. Stevens §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Dr Mrs G.M. Turner § Mr J.I. Watson
Mr R. Wilkinson § Mrs H.B. Wright §
If you would like to become a Bencfactor or Patron, please get in touch with our
Hon. Treasurer, either at the ticket desk before each concert, or at 8, Petersway,
York, YO3 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be addressed
to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO2 1JH.
In addition to the generosity of our Bencfactors and Patrons, the activities of the
BMS are supported by the NFMS with
funds provided by Yorkshire and
AK
Yorkshire & Humberside
ARTS
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
Humberside Arts. The Society also NEMS
gratefully acknowledges the assistance of
the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Registered Charity No.700302
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by Wright Design of Easingwold.
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食
BORTHWICK INSTITUTE
5MS 3/2/4(4)
HISTORIC
OF