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BS
YORK
The Brodsky
String Quartet
Thursday, 8 January 1998
Programme: 80p
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Our December Concerts
At the Annual General Meeting last June the Committee was asked to look again
at the policy of holding one of the society's concerts in December. Our December
concerts tend to be the most sparsely attended: that time of year is so busy,
culturally and socially, that few of us can get to everything we would like to - even
without the distraction of late-night Thursday shopping. At the same time, we
have to fit in with our hosts at the University, and, if we were to drop our
December concert, the most obvious candidate for a sixth date would be in the
first days of the university summer term, usually in the latter part of April.
Our soundings have suggested that the majority of the Society's membership are
against a move from December to April, and the Committee has therefore decided
not to make any change to the layout of our seasons at this juncture
Internet
The BMS has a small but discernible presence on the Internet. If you haven't
found it already, the URL is http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/psev/bms.htm
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
member. They should all be wearing badges, and, however it may appear, they do
want to hear from you.
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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D
BS!
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
77th Season
Thursday, 8 January 1998
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
THE BRODSKY
STRING QUARTET
Michael Thomas violin
Ian Belton violin
Paul Cassidy viola
Jacqueline Thomas cello
Beethoven Quartet in G, Op.18 No.2
Shostakovich Quartet No.8 in C minor, Op.110
INTERVAL
Brahms Quartet in A minor, Op.51 No.2
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.
B'S!
YORK
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BRODSKY STRING QUARTET
Though individually still only in their mid-30s, the Brodsky Quartet are
celebrating their 25th season together. This blend of youth and experience,
coupled with their unique versatility has assured them a place at the very forefront
of the international chamber-music scene. Formed in 1972 and named after Adolf
Brodsky, the Russian violinist and pioneering pedagogue of Manchester, where
the quartet studied, they were subsequently invited to become the first ever quartet
in residence at Cambridge University, a post they held for four years. They have
since held visiting fellowships at several other important establishments, most
recently at Trinity College in London. The Brodsky are regular guests of the
BMS: they last appeared here in January 1993 when they played us
Shostakovich's Fourth Quartet.
Their extensive discography ranges from quartets of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven
and Schubert, through the romantics such as Borodin, Tchaikovsky and Elgar and
their highly acclaimed box set of the complete Shostakovich cycle to
contemporary works commissioned for the quartet.
PROGRAMME NOTES
Quartet in G major, Op.18 No.2
Allegro
Adagio cantabile - Allegro - Tempo I
Scherzo: Allegro
Allegro molto quasi presto
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
In 1794 Beethoven left his native Bonn and settled in the capital of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire, Vienna, one of the world's greatest centres of music. Here he
set about making his reputation as pianist and composer, producing, as well as
variations on popular operatic hits, a series of sonatas and trios, even piano
concertos.
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Significantly, though, he did not at first attempt a symphony; nor, despite a
generous commission, did he venture into the fashionable realm of the string
quartet. Instead he composed for the rare and difficult medium of the string trio.
The theory goes that Beethoven shied away from putting himself before the public
in two fields dominated by Haydn's mastery. The reticence may have been
personal as well as professional: Beethoven had originally come to Vienna in part
to study with Haydn.
At any rate, it was not until the end of the decade, when Haydn, in his later 60s,
was in virtual retirement, that Beethoven seriously turned to the quartet and
symphony. He worked on a set of six quartets, the customary number for a
published set, writing them ostensibly between 1798 and 1800, though apparently
drawing on earlier ideas, some of them possibly dating from the Bonn years.
The Quartets were published as Opus 18 in 1801, with a dedication to one of
Beethoven's aristocratic patrons, Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz. Lobkowitz
was two years younger than Beethoven, though as far as the composer knew he
was a few days older. (Beethoven's father, presenting as a second Mozart, had
given the year of birth as 1772, a confusion which stayed with the composer for
many years.) Lobkowitz was an accomplished violinist and so enthusiastic a
patron of music and drama that he ran through a considerable fortune in a matter
of 20 years. Lobkowitz and Beethoven were intimates during the early Vienna
years, and a measure of their friendship may be judged from Beethoven's
dedicating to him half a dozen works, including Eroica Symphony.
All the Op. 18 Quartets are influenced by Haydn, but only No.2 shows this in style
and manner as well as form. It is the most consistently witty of the set: even the
sedate slow movement has a surprise Allegro section in the middle, making
humorous use of the Adagio's closing phrase. The Scherzo is light-hearted to the
point of flippancy, while the finale brims over with Haydnesque high spirits.
Quartet No.8 in C minor, Op.110
Largo -
Allegro molto -
Allegretto -
Largo -
Largo
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich
(1905 - 1975)
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Shostakovich wrote 15 each of symphonies and string quartets. But we must not
be tempted by this coincidence to assume that they emerged side by side. Far
from it: by 1955, over half way through his composing career, Shostakovich had
written ten of his symphonies, but only five quartets.
What was it drew Shostakovich away from the public stage of the symphony
towards the more personal world of the quartet? It would be glib to suggest the
cause was official mauling in 1936 and 1948, the terror of the later Stalin years
and his increasing introspection; and yet this would not be untrue. Another
stimulus was Shostakovich's close personal and artistic relationship with the
members of the celebrated Beethoven Quartet, for whom all but Nos.1 and 15
were written.
The Eighth Quartet was composed in 1960, hot on the heels of the Seventh and
between those two great historical-canvas symphonies, No.11 (composed in 1957
and depicting the events of the troubled year of 1905) and No.12 (composed in
1961 and depicting the revolutionary events of 1917). The summer of 1960
Shostakovich spent in Dresden, writing the music for the film Five Days, Five
Nights, a USSR-East German co-production dealing with the rescuing by
members of the Red Army of art treasures under threat from the Dresden bombing
raids. While at Dresden Shostakovich visited the remains of nearby concentration
camps and was moved by the experience to compose (in a matter of three days)
the Eighth Quartet, which he dedicated "to the memory of the Victims of Fascism
and War".
On closer inspection, however, it is plain that by this expression Shostakovich
really meant himself. All five movements are based on, or quote, his motto theme
- D, E flat, C, B - derived (through the same German system that turns the name
BACH Into the notes B flat, A, C, B natural) from the German spelling of his
name Dmitrij SCHostakowitsch. As if this didn't make his autobiographical
intent plain enough, each of the first four movements contains a prominent
quotation from a Shostakovich piece. The opening Largo quotes the opening bars
of his First Symphony, the work that brought almost overnight fame to the young
composer.
In the wild second movement, the very Jewish-sounding theme first played by the
violins over wide-spaced arpeggios on the lower strings comes from the Second
Piano Trio. Shostakovich wrote this in memory of his great friend Sollertinsky
who died (of starvation) in the War, but in the context of the Quartet, the theme
may also stand for Shostakovich's hatred of all forms of anti-Semitism, endemic
in Russia from early tsarist times.
(
0
1
1
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I
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The third movement is a sardonic waltz, which quotes the opening theme of the
First Cello Concerto: it has to change from three-four to four-four to do so. This
quotation was probably chosen to represent "current" Shostakovich, since the
Concerto, composed in the summer of 1959, was his most recent major work.
The intense, slow fourth movement has its quotation towards the end, high up on
the cello. It comes from a particularly poignant scene of Shostakovich's The lady
Macbeth of the Mtsensk district. This opera dated from the first half of the 1930s
and effectively signalled Shostakovich's arrival at full artistic maturity. It was the
first great opera to come from the Soviet Union and a runaway success there and
abroad until Stalin saw it and began the official attacks on the composer.
Shostakovich's career was never the same.
The Quartet's five movements run into each other, or are separated by no more
than a dramatic pause, but they are clearly differentiated in mood.
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 A minor, Op.51 No.2
Allegro non troppo
Andante moderato
Johannes Brahms
(1833-1897)
Quasi minuetto, moderato alternating with Allegretto vivace
Finale: Allegro non assai
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
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great predecessor is demonstrated by 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 of a face and
opined, "I think we'd better have the Beethoven."
Brahms was just 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.
As far as the notes are concerned, however, the A minor Quartet is more
intimately associated with the great Austro-Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim.
Brahms had met Joachim when he was still a protégé of the Schumanns, and each
occupied an important place in the musical career of the other: even though their
friendship cooled during the mid-1880s (when Joachim was divorcing his wife,
Brahms took her side), Joachim remained a steadfast champion of Brahms' music
and was rewarded with the Double Concerto as a reconciliation gift. Since
Joachim was an active performer of chamber music it was inevitable that he would
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ginh
9 an
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chivvy his friend into composing quartets: his letters are full of exhortations and
reproaches over broken promises.
What particularly links the A minor Quartet to Joachim is the use of the musical
motto F-A-E. These three notes spell the initials of Joachim's whimsical motto
frei aber einsam [free, but solitary]. Back in 1853 when Brahms was staying with
the Schumanns in Dusseldorf, Joachim came to give a concert there. Schumann
had the eccentric idea of greeting him with a violin sonata based on the notes F-
A-E: the first movement was composed by a young pupil of Schumann's, the
Intermezzo and Finale by Schumann himself and the Scherzo by the young
Brahms. Joachim was given the Sonata to play through and was invited to guess
the composer responsible for each movement which he did without much
difficulty. What he thought of the work as a whole is not known, but can be
deduced from the fact that he sat on the manuscript, allowing only Brahms'
movement to be published and that not until 1906. Joachim was very serious
about music.
The F in the F-A-E means that Brahms begins his first movement away from the
home chord- an ambiguity he exploits to the full. The whole movement can be
seen as one big contrast between two types of rhythm, strong and fluid - a device
he re-used to spectacular effect in the Fourth Symphony.
All four movements of the Quartet have A as their key centre, and Brahms
compensates for this by having the slow movement in the major key. A major is
the key of some of Brahms' sunniest music the Second Violin Sonata and
Seceond Piano Quartet spring to mind - and this gentle and elegant movement is
no exception.
In the third movement, measured 3/4 music in A minor is constantly interrupted
by more scherzo-like 2/4 material in the major. Brahms acknowledges the
unusualness of this structure by his typically wry heading Quasi Minuetto.
In the Finale Brahms exploits a powerful rhythmic idea. The music is in 3/4, but
the opening theme, typically, is stressed as though it were in 3/2. So far, so
Brahms, you might think. But here he complicates matters by using not four- but
three-bar phrases, propelling the music forward with great force.
Programme notes by David Mather
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concerts in the 77th 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, 13 February 1998
Schumann
Bartók
Bruch
Mozart
Contrasts Trio
Märchenerzählungen, Op.132
Contrasts
Short Pieces for trio, Op.83
Trio in Eb, K.498 (Kegelstatt)
Thursday, 14 March 1998
Beethoven
Ravel
Chopin
Ashley Wass (piano)
Sonata No.31 in Ab, Op.110
Miroirs
4 Ballades
Also in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall starting at 8.00
Wednesday, 21 January 1998
Emma Kirkby (soprano)
Peter Seymour (harpsichord & organ)
University Chamber Choir
Music by Purcell and his contemporaries
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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
Robert Stevens
Sylvia Carter
Albert Ainsworth
John Petrie
Nigel Dick
Sheila Wright
Amanda Crawley
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Lesley & David Mather, Marc
Schatzberger and Dick Stanley
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 §
Dr D.M. Bearpark §
Mr J. Briggs §
Mr N.J. Dick §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr J.C. Miles
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Dr F.A. Jackson
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mr P.W. Miller §
Mr B. Richards
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mr & Mrs L.W. Robinson §
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Mr J.I. Watson
Mrs H.B. Wright §
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mrs M.S. Tomlinson §
Miss L.J. Whitworth §
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.
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt
Mrs M. Danby-Smith §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mrs A.M. Morcom §
Mrs R. Richards §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
Dr & Mrs G.M. Turner §
Mr R. Wilkinson §
The BMS is affiliated to the National Federation of Music
Societies which represents and supports amateur vocal,
NEMS instrumental and promoting societies throughout the United
Kingdom.
The Society also gratefully acknowledges the
assistance of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Registered Charity No.700302
DORTHWICK INSTITUTE
BMS 3/2/6(1)
OF
HISTORICAL
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by WrightDesign of Easingwold.
RESEARCH
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BMS
YORK
Contrasts Trio
Friday, 13 February 1998
Programme: 80p
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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For your diaries
Music by BMS stalwart Andrew Carter is to be performed in the nave of York
Minster at 8.00pm on Saturday 21 March. The Chapter House Choir and
Chanticleer Singers (director Jane Sturmheit) are presenting his Benedicite for
chorus, children's choir and orchestra and Horizons for mezzo-soprano, chorus
and orchestra. Andrew will himself conduct and tells me that the choice of his
daughter Elinor as mezzo-soprano soloist was nothing to do with him - the choir
insisted.
KF
Internet
NOTICE BOARD
The BMS has a small but discernible presence on the Internet. If you haven't
found it already, the URL is http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/psev/bms.htm
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
member. They should all be wearing badges, and, however it may appear, they do
want to hear from you.
AT
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BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
77th Season
Friday, 13 February 1998
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
CONTRASTS TRIO
Fiona Cross clarinet
Louise Williams violin/viola
Joanna Gruenberg piano
Schumann Märchenerzählungen, Op.132
Bartók Contrasts
INTERVAL
Bruch
8 Short Pieces, Op.83
Mozart Trio in Eb, K.498 (Kegelstatt)
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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CONTRASTS TRIO
The clarinettist Fiona Cross made her Festival Hall debut with the LPO under
Leonard Slatkin, playing the Mozart Concerto to great acclaim. She has also
performed with the LSO and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta. She is one of the
BBC's solo artists and has made festival and recital appearances throughout the
UK and Europe. She has worked with the Alberni and Coull Quartets, and with
the Vanburgh, with whom she has broadcast for Radio 3 and recorded for
Hyperion. Miss Cross is committed to the performance of new music and has
commissioned pieces by Diana Burrell, Gary Carpenter, Darrell Davison and
Adrian Williams, some of which she has recorded on CD.
Louise Williams studied the violin with Manoug Parikian and Ivan Galamian
before becoming a founder-member of the Endellion Quartet. She left after five
years to study organic farming and spend time on an ashram in India. She
returned to music in 1986 as violist of the Chilingirian, making many recordings
with them before leaving to start a family. She now freelances as a violinist and
violist, making guest appearances with quartets such as the Chilingirian,
Endellion, Lindsay (with whom she has recorded the Mozart string quintets) and
Takacs, as well as larger groups, including the Nash and Raphael Ensembles
The British pianist Joanna Gruenberg was born in Stockholm and began to play
the piano at the age of five, studying with Fanny Waterman, Louis Kentner,
Gordon Green, James Gibb and Peter Frankl. She made her Festival Hall debut at
the age of 19, playing with the RPO. She is also an active player of chamber
music, and has appeared with several ensembles, including the Eder and Britten
Quartets, as well undertaking a number of recital tours with her father, the
violinist Erich Gruenberg.
The Contrasts Trio is playing for us tonight as part of the NFMS touring scheme.
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Märchenerzählungen, Op.132
1
2
3
4
PROGRAMME NOTES
Lebhaft, nicht zu schnell
Lebhaft und sehr markiert
Ruhiges Tempo, mit zartem Ausdruck
Lebhaft, sehr markiert
This
Robert Schumann
(1810-1856)
Those who read my note on the Brahms A minor Quartet, played by the Brodsky
at our last concert, may recall the story of the violinist Joseph Joachim and his
FAE motto. Joachim affected the lives of many composers and musicians: he
inspired a late creative spell in Schumann and was an early influence on Brahms,
to name but two. Schumann had been enormously impressed by Joachim's
playing of the Beethoven Violin Concerto at the Lower Rhine Festival in May
1853, and his compositions of that even for him - unusually productive summer
included two works specifically written for the 22-year-old violinist, the Fantasie
Op.131 for violin and orchestra (2 - 7 September) and Violin Concerto (21
September - 3 October). While he was still working on the Concerto, Schumann
was visited by the 20-year-old Brahms, the "young eagle" who stayed with the
Schumanns at Düsseldorf until 3 November.
On 27 October 1853 Joachim returned to Düsseldorf to give the first performance
of the Fantasie at Schumann's first subscription concert. Schumann, Brahms and
a pupil of Schumann's called Dietrich had the quaint idea of jointly composing a
violin sonata in Joachim's honour, based on the notes F-A-E, the initial letters of
Joachim's whimsical motto frei aber einsam [-free but solitary]. The sonata was
put together in something of a rush in the days before Joachim's arrival. Dietrich
composed the first movement, Schumann the Intermezzo and Finale, and Brahms
the Scherzo, which lay third. They presented the Sonata to Joachim the day after
the concert, made him play it at sight with Schumann's wife Clara (one of the
century's most distinguished pianists and a composer in her own right) and then
guess who was responsible for what - no very hard task for someone of Joachim's
musical abilities.
was exactly the period of the Märchenerzählungen, dedicated
"freundschaftlichst" [-in a most friendly fashion] to Dietrich, and written between
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9 and 11 October 1853, side by side with an article extolling Brahms which was
published later that month in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. It was Schumann's
last creative burst. His mind was already deteriorating, and the restless driving
force that had powered his creativity gradually became side-tracked into purely
mechanical processes - writing entirely unnecessary piano accompaniments to
such unaccompanied string works as the violin sonatas/ partitas and cello suites of
Bach and the Paganini Caprices.
By February 1854 Schumann was asking to be admitted to a mental institution,
only to be persuaded out of it: but the next day he was left unattended for a
moment, threw himself into the Rhine and was shortly afterwards taken into a
private asylum near Bonn. He never re-emerged. Clara was allowed to see him at
first, but her visits agitated him so much she was asked not to come, though she
was there when he died nearly two and a half years later. Brahms was allowed
access: when he visited on Schumann's birthday in 1856 he was distressed to find
him writing out lists of towns and countries in alphabetical order.
Much is made of the uneven quality of Schumann's late music. When, after his
death, a collected edition was being prepared, Clara, Joachim and Brahms actively
suppressed a number of what they considered substandard works, most notably the
1853 Violin Concerto. It is true that an element of grandiloquent bombast enters
the late music, but it only ever seems to affect his larger scores: the miniatures,
such as the Märchenerzählungen, escape its clutches.
The word "Märchenerzählungen", is made up of two elements. Märchen is the
word for a fairytale, while Erzählungen is the plural of Erzählung, which means
"narrative". Though it takes the form of a set of four pieces, Schumann's
composition could just as easily have been called a trio, since the pieces conform
to a first movement/scherzo/slow movement/finale pattern.
The opening piece, marked "Lively, not too fast", is in B flat major and contrasts
arching melodic lines with a skittish staccato accompaniment. Then comes the
forceful G minor scherzo ("Lively and very marked"), which has a more subdued,
contrasting central section in E flat major. The gently flowing third movement
never strays far from its G major home and lives up to its marking "Calm tempo,
with tender expression". The finale ("Lively, very marked") returns to the first
piece's B flat major: its flourishes and dynamic gestures contrast with the slower
middle section in G flat major.
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Contrasts
Verbunkos: Moderato, ben ritmato
Pihenő: Lento
Sebes: Allegro vivace
[principal tempo markings only]
Béla Bartók
(1881-1945)
By the 1930s Bartók, then in his 50s, was a considerable figure on the
international music scene, as pianist, composer and conductor. Nearly all his
significant works of that period were the results of commissions: the Fifth Quartet
(1934) for Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the Music for strings, percussion and
celeste (1937) and the Divertimento (1939) for Paul Sacher, the Sonata for two
pianos and percussion (1937) for the Basle group of the International Society for
Contemporary Music and the (Second) Violin Concerto (1937-8) for the violinist
Joseph Székely.
At the same time the political situation in Europe was making life difficult for
him, as it was for many. Bartók spoke out against fascism early, protesting in
1931 when Toscanini came under attack from the Italian fascists. He gave the
first performance of the Second Piano Concerto in Germany in January 1933, but
with Hitler coming to power at almost exactly the same time Bartók never
appeared in Germany again. At considerable personal risk, since his music was
published by the Vienna-based Universal Edition and his royalties collected
through the Austrian Performing Rights Society. When Germany absorbed
Austria by the Anschluß the Universal Edition found its championship of the
avant-garde in particular Schoenberg, Berg and Webern - a liability: its
progressive directors were removed and the firm virtually ceased its publishing
activities. Bartók had by this time signed a new publishing contract with Boosey
& Hawkes in London, who dealt with his works from 1937, and joined the
London branch of the Performing Rights Society. But with his homeland
threatened, his music banned in half of Europe and under attack in the pro-Nazi
press elsewhere and he himself too frail to have any part to play in the war he
looked for escape. The Sixth Quartet (1939) was his last work composed in
Europe. After his mother's death that December he started making enquiries
about other places he might settle: he quickly decided on the USA and made the
long and difficult journey there from Budapest via Switzerland and Lisbon in
October 1940.
Contrasts, for clarinet, violin and piano, belongs to this period. Bartók wrote it
in Budapest in the summer of 1938 to a commission by the American clarinettist
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Benny Goodman. Goodman, odds-on favourite for the best jazz clarinettist of all
time and a pioneer of Swing, had recently made a significant breakthrough, with
his famous band appearing in its first films. As if this weren't enough, he chose
this time to appear as a performer of "classical" music, the first jazz musician to
do this successfully. He cut his first classical disc (Mozart's Clarinet Quintet)
with the Budapest Quartet in 1938, making his first recital appearance with them
that November in New York Town Hall. As you can see, by this time Contrasts
had already been commissioned and composed. Goodman went on to commission
other works, notably concertos from Copland and Hindemith (both 1947).
Goodman's commission was for a two-movement work that would fit on to two
sides of a 78rpm record. Bartók planned to compose a two-movement rhapsody,
such as those he had written in the 1920s, but as he worked on his ideas he found
that they needed rather more extensive treatment. At any rate, he strayed over the
length that would comfortably fit on two sides. When it was clear Goodman didn't
mind, Bartók added a third movement to come between the other two.. The first
performance, still in the two-movement form, was given on 9 January 1939 in
New York by Goodman with the violinist Joseph Szigeti and the pianist Endre
Petri. The first performance of the complete work was given in New York in
April 1940, this time with Bartók himself at the piano: the following month they
recorded the work for CBS.
It took Bartók some time to find the right title for the piece. At the first
performance it was called simply Two Dances. When the third movement was
added this became Three Dances and Bartók toyed with the subtitle "suite". But
by the time of the recording he had settled on Contrasts. As a title it is descriptive
and functional. The clarinet, violin and piano belong to entirely different
instrumental families: they make their sounds in entirely different ways and
produce entirely different types of sound which are suited to distinct types of
music. Contrasts exploits these differences to the full.
The first movement is titled Verbunkos, the name of a recruiting dance dating
from the Imperial wars of the 18th century. Groups of about a dozen hussars
would dance to encourage recruiting, while music was more or less improvised by
musicians, predominantly gipsies. A characteristic of the Verbunkos was the
alternation of a slow section (lassú) with wilder, quick music (friss), a pattern
familiar from, for example, Liszt's Hungarian rhapsodies. It is followed by
Pihenő [=relaxation], a blend of oriental-inspired music and typical Bartókian
night music, and finally Sebes, a fast dance.
1
7
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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.
8 Pieces for clarinet, viola and piano, Op.83
Andante (A minor)
Allegro con moto (B minor)
Andante con moto (C sharp minor)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Allegro agitato (D minor)
Andante (F minor)
Andante con moto (G minor)
Allegro vivace ma non troppo (B major)
Moderato (E flat minor)
Max Bruch
(1838 - 1920)
Max Bruch never quite fulfilled his early promise. He was already composing
orchestral music by the age of 11, and at 14 won (with a string quartet) the
Frankfurt Mozart Foundation Prize, which enabled him to study with Ferdinand
Hiller and Reinecke. He held a series of teaching and conducting posts, including
a spell as director of the Liverpool Philharmonic between the departure of Julius
Benedict in 1880 and the arrival of Charles Hallé in 1883, before finally settling
at the Berlin Academy, where he was professor of the masterclass in composition
until his retirement in 1910.
In the great divide in 19th-century German music, between the progressive New
Music camp of Liszt and Wagner and the traditional school epitomised by
Brahms, Bruch gravitated towards the latter, the folksong-like character of his
melodic invention paralleling that of his slightly older contemporary, Brahms.
Bruch, however, lacked forward-looking structural experimentation that allowed
Schoenberg effectively to claim Brahms as a precursor in his 1950 study Brahms
the Progressive. Bruch is perhaps best remembered for his enduringly popular
First Violin Concerto and his Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra.
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The eight Pieces for clarinet, viola and piano appeared in Berlin in 1910, the year
Bruch finally retired. The instrumental line up was almost certainly designed to
complement the Mozart Kegelstatt Trio. It often happens when a composer
produces a popular work for a novel or unusual combination that later composers
will compose for the same combination, either out of curiosity, out of one-
upmanship, or merely to provide repertoire that can be programmed with it.
Schubert's Trout Quintet started out that way, being commissioned for the same
combination as an existing score by Hummel. Several composers have risen to the
challenge of Brahms' Horn Trio (horn, violin and piano), notably Ligeti, and
others, less notably, to that of Debussy's Sonata for flute, viola and harp.
The fifth and sixth of Bruch's pieces are called Rumanian Melody and Night-
Song.
Trio for clarinet, viola and piano
in Eb, K.498 (Kegelstatt)
Andante
Menuetto
Rondeaux: Allegretto
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
(1756-1791)
The composing and preparations for the first performance (1 May 1786) of The
Marriage of Figaro occupied Mozart for almost all the preceding winter and
spring. The Opera earned him 450 gulden, but even this was not enough to
compensate for the time and energy the work consumed, nor to alleviate his
financial position. So after finishing with it he turned to the market where he
could generate cash most quickly, chamber music, producing by the end of the
year his E flat Piano Quartet, two piano trios, the F major Sonata for piano duet
(finest of the four he composed), the Hoffmeister String Quartet, a handful of solo
piano pieces and this Trio for clarinet, viola and piano. Of course, he didn't
neglect the orchestra entirely and managed to squeeze in another concerto for his
horn-playing friend Ignaz Leutgeb and a piano concerto and symphony for
himself, perhaps in connection with his planned trip to Prague to oversee the
production there of Figaro.
Clarinet, viola and piano is an unusual combination particularly so as the
clarinet and viola share much the same register. In fact, when Artaria published
the Trio in 1788 it was for piano, violin and viola, with the clarinet given as an
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ar
to
er
S
t
le
e
0
S
e
2
t
10
t
S
1
e
2
1
alternative to the violin. A more common line-up is clarinet, cello and piano,
used to great effect by Beethoven and Brahms (amongst others); and it has to be
said that other composers who have tried Mozart's combination have never quite
equalled his success. The reason Mozart picked on this combination is that he
wrote the Trio to be played by his pupil and friend Baroness Franziska von
Jacquin at the piano, Anton Stadler on clarinet and himself on his favourite viola.
Mozart's friendship with the baroness and her brother Baron Gottfried was
particularly close at this time: they were intimate enough for him to adopt
childlike prattle in his letters (though of course he had no need to write to them
until his visit to Prague) and to dream up silly names for them - Franziska was
"Signora Diniminimi".
Not only does Mozart take a risk in using instruments of similar register, he does
much the same with the speeds of the three movements: none is especially slow or
fast. Yet each has such an utterly distinct character that an adagio or presto could
scarcely provide greater contrast. The first movement, dominated by the opening
corkscrew figure, is characterised by a relaxed, long-breathed 6/8 rhythm. The Bb
major Minuet is purposeful without being hurried and admirably set off by the
more questing Trio section in G minor. The finale is again relaxed over all, but
its rondo form gives scope for contrasting sections, from the concerto-like display
from Signora Diniminimi to the agitated interruption Mozart gives himself on the
viola in the central portion of the movement.
The Trio has acquired the nickname "Kegelstatt", being the place where skittles
is/are played. The story goes that Mozart was fond of the game and actually
composed this Trio while playing it. There is no documentary evidence for this,
and the story invites scepticism on many points, not least the fact that the game
must have been unusually prolonged. But who knows what grain of truth might
have been preserved in the legend? Musicians love the name, and no scholarly
frowns are going to intimidate them out of using it.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The final concert in the 77th Season of the British Music Society of York,
presented in association with the Department of Music at the University, takes
place as usual in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, beginning at 8 pm.
Thursday, 14 March 1998
Beethoven
Ravel
Chopin
Ashley Wass (piano)
Sonata No.31 in Ab, Op.110
Miroirs
4 Ballades
But please don't forget the Andrew Carter concert in York Minster on 21 March.
(For details, see inside front cover.)
Also in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall starting at 8.00
Wednesday, 18 February 1998
Roy Howat (piano)
Music by Debussy (Images, L'isle joyeuse and selected preludes) and Ravel
(Valses nobles et sentimentales)
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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
Robert Stevens
Sylvia Carter
Albert Ainsworth
John Petrie
Nigel Dick
Sheila Wright
Amanda Crawley
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Lesley & David Mather, Marc
Schatzberger and Dick Stanley
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 §
Dr D.M. Bearpark §
Mr J. Briggs §
Mr N.J. Dick §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr J.C. Miles
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Dr F.A. Jackson
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mr P.W. Miller §
Mr B. Richards §
§
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mrs M.S. Tomlinson §
Miss L.J. Whitworth §
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mr & Mrs L.W. Robinson
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Mr J.I. Watson
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.
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NEMS
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt
Mrs M. Danby-Smith §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mrs A.M. Morcom §
Mrs R. Richards §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
Dr & Mrs G.M. Turner §
Mr R. Wilkinson §
The BMS is affiliated to the National Federation of Music
Societies which represents and supports amateur vocal,
instrumental and promoting societies throughout the United
Kingdom. The Society also 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 WrightDesign of Easingwold.
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INSTITUTE
BORTHWICK
SMS 3/2/6(2)
OF HI
HISTORICAL
*
RESEARCH
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BS
YORK
Vanbrugh & Danel
String Quartets
Thursday, 8 October 1998
Programme: £1.00
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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Joan Whitworth
It was with great sadness that the BMS learned of the death at the end of June of
one of its Vice Presidents, Joan Whitworth. Joan was for many, many years a
pillar of the Society, and we know how unhappy she was not to be taking a fuller
part in more recent seasons. Our sympathies go to her family and friends.
Your Views
NOTICE BOARD
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
member. They should all be wearing badges, and, however it may appear, they do
want to hear from you.
KIF Internet
The BMS has a small but discernible presence on the Internet. If you haven't
found it already, the URL is http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/psev/bms.htm
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JO
BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
78th Season
Thursday, 8 October 1998
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
VANBRUGH QUARTET*
QUATUOR DANEL**
*Beethoven Quartet in E flat, Op.74 (Harp)
**Shostakovich Quartet in B flat, Op.92
INTERVAL
Mendelssohn Octet in E flat, Op.20
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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THE VANBRUGH QUARTET
Gregory Ellis & Keith Pascoe violins
Simon Aspell viola, Christopher Marwood cello
The Vanbrugh Quartet is entering its second decade firmly established as one of
Europe's most successful quartets. Since winning the Portsmouth (now London)
International String Quartet Competition in 1988, they have built up a thriving
career, annually presenting around a hundred concerts, together with radio and
TV broadcasts. The Quartet is based in Cork, on Ireland's south coast, where they
are the resident quartet of both RTE, the national broadcasting service, and Uni-
versity College, Cork.
QUATUOR DANEL
Marc Danel & Gilles Millet violins
Tony Nys viola, Guy Danel cello
The Quatuor Danel is based in Brussels, where it was founded in 1991. It has
won many prizes, including first prize at the 1993 International Shostakovich
String Quartet Competition in St Petersburg. They have made something of a
speciality of the Shostakovich quartets, studying them with Fyodor Drushinin of
the Beethoven Quartet, the group for which Shostakovich wrote all but the first of
his 15 quartets. The Quartet also champions modern music, and was entrusted
with the French premiere of the last quartet of Iannis Xenakis.
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PROGRAMME NOTES
Quartet in Eb major, Op.74 (Harp)
Poco Adagio - Allegro
Adagio ma non troppo
Presto -
Allegretto con Variazioni
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
played by the Vanbrugh Quartet
Beethoven wrote the E flat Quartet, Op.74, 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 one of four capital works dating from 1808-1810 in Eb ma-
jor, 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 one other work of equivalent stature in Eb major, the first of the late
quartets, Op.127, completed in 1825.
The basic pattern for a four-movement symphony, quartet etc., as Beethoven in-
herited 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 min-
uet, 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 bril-
liant 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 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,
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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 ten-
sions, is modest in dimensions and relaxed in its unfolding of melodic material.
The slow movement, in preparation for what is to come, values 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 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 Mo-
zartean simplicity about these variations. Until, at least, the end, which looks
forward to the world of the Bb Quartet, Op. 130.
The Eb major Quartet, Op.74, is the only Beethoven quartet with an active nick-
name: it is known as the Harp Quartet, for the very obvious reason of all the
plucking that goes on in the first movement.
String Quartet No.5 in B flat major, Op.92
Allegro non troppo -
Andante -
Moderato - Allegretto
Shostakovich
(1906 - 1975)
played by the Quatuor Danel
1948 and its aftermath was the darkest Period in the history of Soviet music. Sta-
lin, who had all but systematically purged the best, the most capable and the most
popular in every field of human endeavour, turned his unwelcome attention to
music. The trigger was the opera The Great Friendship, by the largely incompe-
tent composer Vano Muradeli: significantly, this was the first opera on a modern
Soviet theme any Soviet composer had dared write for 10 years.
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Poor Muradeli, who came like Stalin himself from the Soviet republic of Georgia,
had wanted to write a work sucking up to the "great leader and teacher". The idea
of a singing Stalin on the opera stage was fraught with overtones of lèse majesté,
and so Muradeli did the next best thing: the opera is about Stalin's great friend
(hence the title) and fellow Georgian revolutionary, Grigory Ordzhonikidze. Un-
fortunately for Muradeli, Ordzhonikidze's death in 1937 had secretly been or-
dered by Stalin.
It was clearly time that composers were put in order. Stalin used for the job one
of his most trusted henchmen, AndreiyZhdanov. Zhdanov was not
nice person:
capable, resolute and ruthless, he had been in charge of Leningrad during the 900-
day siege, and used much the same iron qualities in his onslaught on the literary
establishment in 1946.
In January 1948 a three-day "conference" was held in the hall of Moscow Conser-
vatory. Zhdanov opened the attack on the Muradeli opera, but the discussion
rapidly spread to cover the whole of contemporary Soviet music. All the most
prominent composers were named and attacked in turn, then forced into humili-
ating confessions of their faults.
Dmitry Dmitriyevich Shostakovich had been through it all before, in 1936, when
his opera The lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district was pilloried, it is thought by
Stalin personally, in an article in Pravda. But his prominent position in Soviet
music and his world fame made him a special target in 1948. His life was made
very difficult. He lost his only regular source of income, the composition classes
he held at the Conservatory - ostensibly because his paper qualifications were not
compatible with his rank of professor! Moreover, he could sell compositions only
to the state, and the state only bought such works as conformed to its now pro-
scriptive values.
And so a dichotomy grew in Shostakovich's output. On the one side he composed
works that fulfilled a social or a party need: this was a time, for instance, rich in
scores for films (six in the years 1948-52) and it also saw such dutiful composi-
tions as the oratorio Song of the Forests (Stalin's half-baked 1948 scheme to
change the climate of Central Asia by planting new forests was eventually aban-
doned in 1953), the cantata The sun shines over our motherland and the 10 Cho-
ruses on revolutionary texts - as well as the fine set of 24 Preludes and Fugues for
piano, demonstrably merely a pedagogical work and hence beneath ideological
scrutiny.
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On the other side, Shostakovich wrote for his bottom drawer works which stood
little chance of immediate performance or publication. The list began with the
First Violin Concerto, still in progress as the Zhdanov conference took place, the
song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry (not a work to produce in a country where
anti-Semitism was effectively institutionalised) and the Fourth and Fifth Quartets.
Stalin officially died on 5 March 1953 (ironically, the same day as Prokof' yev).
Shostakovich's reaction was the powerful Tenth Symphony, his anti-eulogy of
Stalin, followed by the release of the suppressed works of 1948-52. The Fourth
Quartet had been composed in the summer of 1949, alongside the Song of the
Forests: the Quartet could almost be said to be that work's mirror-image, provid-
ing a focus for Shostakovich's dark thoughts and allowing the Oratorio to exude
facile optimism.
The Fifth Quartet, composed in the autumn of 1952, returned to the mood of the
Fourth. It is a substantial work on a symphonic scale, its three movements played
without a break. The division between them is easy to follow, however: the in-
struments put mutes on for the Andante and take them off for the finale.
The opening bars of the Quartet immediately set the scene for the first move-
ment's battleground of tension between light-heartedness (violins and cello) and
irony/pessimism (viola). The development section is given to climactic utterance
and an aggressive stance which find their antithesis in the plaintive, introverted
slow movement. After a short, nostalgic Moderato introduction, the viola
launches into a dance-like Allegretto finale. But the playfulness is always short-
lived: aggressive and sinister forces re-emerge, before the work finally sinks back,
exhausted.
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.
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()
)
)
0
Octet in E flat major, Op.20
Allegro moderato ma con fuoco
Andante
Scherzo: Allegro leggierissimo
Presto
Felix Mendelssohn
(1809-1849)
Felix Mendelssohn, like Mozart, has become a byword in the musical world as a
youthful prodigy. In some ways Mendelssohn's achievement was the more re-
markable, since two of his early works not only remain central to the repertoire,
but were never surpassed by their creator: they are the String Octet, Op.20, com-
posed at the age of 16, and the Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, written
when he was 17.
I don't want for a moment to detract from Mendelssohn's spectacular achievement
in these works, but I think it important we put the phenomenon in perspective.
Mendelssohn came from a very wealthy, very cultured family. His grandfather
was Moses Mendelssohn, a philosopher who had played a central role in the En-
lightenment; while his father was an important figure in banking circles. The
great and good from all walks of life were no strangers to the family home. With
the family being so prosperous, young Felix and his siblings were taught at home
by tutors. Being German, as well as children of the Enlightenment, the family
took education very seriously; being middle class and Jewish, as well as children
of the Enlightenment, they took culture equally seriously. At one point, Felix's
lessons started at five o'clock in the morning, but he evidently thrived on being
stretched. Music was quickly discovered to be his major talent, but he was gifted
in other areas: his drawings are remarkably accomplished and in his mid teens he
was able to present one of his tutors with his own translation from the Latin of an
entire play by Terence.
Felix's most important music teacher was Carl Zelter, a rather conservative figure
who had the distinction of acting as music advisor to the poet and dramatist Go-
ethe, to whom Mendelssohn was introduced at an early age and whom he im-
pressed enormously. Zelter was also an enthusiast for the music of JS Bach, then
mostly unknown, and it was largely Zelter's enthusiasm that fired Mendelssohn,
barely 20, to mount the famous performance of the St Matthew Passion in 1829,
the centenary of its premiere, thereby ushering in the Bach revival. The enthusi-
asm for Bach is significant, since the studies with Zelter at this tender age account
in large part for Mendelssohn's fluency with counterpoint.
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The extended Mendelssohn family was a large one and most members played one
musical instrument or another. They had gatherings, usually on Sundays, at
which music was played. Mendelssohn had the chance not only to get to know
music from the inside, but also to compose pieces and get them played. And there
is nothing teaches composition faster or more productively than having one's
compositions played by competent musicians. Chamber music was the staple of
these occasions, naturally, and Mendelssohn wrote string quartets and quintets
and piano quartets for them, but more adventurous fare was attempted: Men-
delssohn wrote his early string symphonies for the family, and by the time of the
Octet had even composed five operas destined for domestic performance. They
seem not to have been afraid of anything. These were the years during which
Beethoven was writing the problematic late quartets, and little acts of homage (I
shy away from the word plagiarism) in Mendelssohn's earliest string quartets
show that these late quartets of Beethoven must have been played in the family's
palatial Berlin home before the printer's ink was quite dry on the parts.
Mendelssohn wrote the Octet in 1825 as a birthday present for a friend, the vio-
linist Eduard Rietz. Rietz was only seven years older than Mendelssohn, but
taught him to play the violin, led the orchestra at the famous performance of the
Matthew Passion, and founded the Berlin Philharmonic Society (an amateur or-
chestra not connected with the present orchestra of the same name) before dying
of tuberculosis at the age of 29. The first performance was given privately in the
Mendelssohn home in October 1825: the first public performance doesn't seem to
have been given until January 1836 when it was played at the Leipzig Gewand-
haus with the composer in the thick of things on second viola.
So, what makes the Octet such a great work that musicians shower it with super-
latives? Not the age of the composer: curiosity value cannot keep a piece long in
the repertory. Nor is it just the musical ideas Mendelssohn comes up with: they're
good, but no better than can be found in hundreds of far more obscure pieces. In
the end the answer comes down to two qualities: fluency and inventiveness. An
octet is an awkward ensemble to write for, keeping everyone occupied without
overloading the texture: there hasn't exactly been a rush to emulate Men-
delssohn's example, and those brave composers who have accepted the challenge
have achieved nothing like Mendelssohn's success. More remarkable still is the
fluency of the piece, the way that Mendelssohn manages to cram the work with
inventive detail without it ever sounding forced or unnatural. He just makes it all
sound so easy. The result is a degree of unaffected simplicity and spontaneity he
tried many times throughout his career to recapture, but managed only rarely.
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S
1
e
7.
me
1.
1
An
ut
The first movement is the most symphonic in scale and ambitions: Mendelssohn
himself acknowledged this by writing over the manuscript: "This Octet must be
played by all the instruments in the style of a piece for symphony orchestra [im
Style eines symphonischen Orchesterwerkes]. Pianos and fortes must be strictly
observed and more strongly emphasised than usual in pieces of this kind."
The slow movement is in C minor, and its rather pastoral opening gives little
warning of the poignancy or high emotional voltage to come. The featherlight
Scherzo in G minor is perhaps the most admired movement in the Octet. Men-
delssohn told his sister it was inspired by the final lines from the Walpurgis Night
Dream section of Goethe's Faust:
Wolkenzug und Nebelflor
Erhellen sich von oben.
Luft im Laub und Wind im Rohr -
Und alles ist zerstoben
[= cloud chain and mist veil brighten from above. Breeze in the leaves,
wind in the reeds and all is scattered]
Mendelssohn marks it to be played "sempre pp e staccato", and even so the deli-
cacy he achieves in the writing is astonishing. He managed to pull off the same
thing the following year in the magical shimmering opening to the Midsummer
Night's Dream Overture. Thereafter, throughout his life, he tried several times to
repeat this gossamer lightness, but never succeeded so well as in these two early
works.
The Finale returns to an energetic E flat major. It begins with a fugato opening,
starting at the bottom with the second cello and moving up to the first violin -
Mendelssohn showing off his studies with Zelter. But he has the impatience of
youth: only the cellos and violas get the full four-bar fugato idea: the violins crash
in on each other at ever shorter intervals. Thereafter the music switches to and
from contrapuntal writing with a deftness and sense of fun not heard since the
later quartets of Haydn.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concerts in the 78th 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, 6 November 1998
Ravel
Musorgsky
Boris Berezovsky
(piano)
Elgar
Sonatine
Gaspard de la nuit
La valse
Friday, 11 December 1998
Night on Bare Mountain
Pictures at an exhibition
Natsuko Yoshimoto & Jeremy Young
(violin & piano)
Beethoven Violin Sonata in A, Op.12 No.2
Takemitsu From far beyond Chrysanthemums
Schubert Rondo brillant in B minor, D.895
Kreisler
Recitative and Scherzo
Tambourin chinois
Violin Sonata in E minor, Op.82
J.C. Bach
Britten
Thursday, 7 January 1999
Ovid Ensemble
Quintet in D
Phantasy Quartet (1932)
Beethoven
Variations on Là ci darem, WoO 28
Loeffler
Rhapsody L'étang
Schumann Piano Quartet in E flat, Op.47
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Friday, 5 February 1999
Mozart
Schubert
Brahms
William Baines
Rawsthorne
Chopin
Thursday, 11 March 1999
Stenhammer
Grieg
Sibelius
Sarah Beth Briggs
(piano)
Rondo in D, K.485
Sonata in A minor, K.310
Sonata in A, D.664
Intermezzo, Op.118 No.2
Rhapsody, Op.119 No.4
The Chimes
Yggdrasil String Quartet
Bagatelles
Fantasy in F minor/A flat, Op.49
Schubert
Delius
Quartet No.5 in C, Op.29 (Serenade)
Also in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall starting at 8.00
Paul Patterson
Franck
Quartet in G minor, Op.27
Quartet in D minor, Op.56 (Voces intimae)
Wednesday, 14 October 1998
Tasmin Little & Piers Lane
(violin & piano)
Sonatina in G minor, D.408
Sonata in B, Op. posth.
Luslawice Variations for violin solo
Sonata in A major
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B'S
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
President Dr Francis Jackson
Vice-Presidents 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
Robert Stevens
Sylvia Carter
Albert Ainsworth
John Petrie
Nigel Dick
Sheila Wright
Amanda Crawley
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Sue Bedford, John Dawick, Peter Marsden,
Brian Mattinson, Marc Schatzberger and
Dick Stanley
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:
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt
Mr J. Curry S
Mr A. Ainsworth §
Dr D.M. Bearpark §
Mr J. Briggs §
Mr N.J. Dick §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mr P.W. Miller §
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Dr F.A. Jackson
Mr N. Lange §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mr & Mrs B. Mattinson § Mr J.C. Miles
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Canon & Mrs J.S. Pearson
Mr & Mrs L.W. Robinson §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Dr & Mrs G.M.A. Turner §
Mr R. Wilkinson §
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NEMS
Mrs H.B. Wright §
Mrs G. Morcom §
Mr B. Richards §
Mr & Mrs D. Rowlands
Mr R.D.C. Stevens §
Mr D.A. Sutton
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.
Mr J.I. Watson
Mrs S. Wright
Registered Charity No.700302
The BMS is affiliated to the National Federation of Music
Societies which represents and supports amateur vocal,
instrumental and promoting societies throughout the United
Kingdom. The Society also gratefully acknowledges the
assistance of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by Wright Design of Easingwold.
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INSTITUTE
BORTHWICK
BMS 3/2/6(3)
OF HI TORIC L FESTACCH
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BAS
YORK
Boris Berezovsky
(piano)
Friday, 6 November 1998
Programme: £1.00
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Tonight's programme book
I would like to apologise for the inordinate length of what follows, but tonight's
programme is an unusual one: five works all with complex and interesting
histories, one of them made up of ten separate descriptive pieces, take a lot of
talking about.
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
member. They should all be wearing badges, and, however it may appear, they do
want to hear from you.
Internet
The BMS has a small but discernible presence on the Internet. If you haven't
found it already, the URL is http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/psev/bms.htm
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BAS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
78th Season
Friday, 6 November 1998
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
BORIS BEREZOVSKY
(piano)
Ravel Sonatine
Gaspard de la nuit
La valse
INTERVAL
Musorgsky Night on Bare Mountain
Pictures from an exhibition
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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Boris Berezovsky was born in Moscow in 1969 and studied at the Moscow Con-
servatory with Eliso Virsaladze and privately with Alexander Satz. He made his
London début in 1988, with an acclaimed recital at the Wigmore Hall, and two
years later won the Gold Medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in
Moscow. A year later he made his first tour of the USA.
BORIS BEREZOVSKY
Mr Berezovsky has made many recordings for the Teldec label, which include
most, if not all, of the works in this evening's programme.
Sonatine pour piano
PROGRAMME NOTES
Modéré
Mouv' de Menuet
Animé
Maurice Ravel
(1875 - 1937)
Ravel's time as a composition student at the Paris Conservatoire was not uncom-
plicated. He had originally entered the Conservatoire in 1889 and studied piano
and harmony, graduating unspectacularly in 1895. Two years later he re-entered,
attending Fauré's composition classes and also studying counterpoint and orches-
tration. Unfortunately, Ravel's leanings 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 sit in on
Fauré's classes, as an 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
Berlioz onwards, had won the prize, but Ravel, despite entering five times, never
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
texts, but failed to impress the jury. In 1904 he neglected to put in his entry,
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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 com-
poser with a fast growing reputation, and his Prix de Rome failure became a pub-
lic scandal - as such things will in France. It did his reputation no harm what-
ever, 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, un-
forgivable in reactionary Conservatoire circles.
These were productive years for Ravel. In 1901 he had composed the piano piece
Jeu d'eau, one of his earl successes, while 1903 had seen the completion of the
String Quartet and the composition of the orchestral song cycle Shéhérazade. It
also saw a competition run by an Anglo-French magazine, the Weekly Critical
Review, for a one-movement piano sonatina. Ravel's friend, M.D. Calvocoressi,
soon to become one of the century's great writers on music, suggested he enter the
competition. Ravel doesn't seem to have had much luck with competitions: he
duly entered, his was the only entry and yet he still failed to win. Not because he
was technically a dozen or so bars over the 75-bar limit, but because the magazine
went bankrupt. (Even I won't stoop to saying that a magazine folded.)
Ravel put the movement he had composed to one side while he wrote the five pi-
ano pieces making up the set known as Miroirs. Then in 1905, the same year as
the ever-popular Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string
quartet, he returned to the competition entry and added a minuet and toccata-like
finale to produce the three-movement Sonatine. It was published the same year
with a dedication to Ida and Cipa [Cyprien] Godebski. The Godebskis had been
friends of Ravel's father, and with them he found something like a second home.
It was his particular delight to spend time with the children, telling them stories
and drawing pictures of animals: it was for them he wrote the piano duet cycle Ma
mère l'oye [= mother goose] (1908-10).
Sonatine, or Sonatina, is simply the diminutive of sonata. In the 19th century the
word was used a great deal for teaching pieces put together like sonatas, though
much more modest both in size and technical demands; but the 20th century has
been more ambivalent about its use of the term - Boulez' Sonatina for flute and
piano, for instance, is ferociously difficult and not particularly short. In Ravel's
case the title seems well suited: there is a simplicity of utterance about it that is
quite captivating. Like Schumann's Kinderszenen [-scenes of childhood] it is not
so much music for children, as music for adults inhabiting however briefly a
child-like world. A theme Ravel was to return to throughout his career.
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The first movement is the one composed for the 1903 competition. A perfectly
poised, perfectly constructed sonata form movement in miniature, there is not a
superfluous note in the whole piece. The slow movement is in the style of a min-
uet: for all the modernism of his harmonic style, Ravel had an "antique" side to
his nature which seemed for some reason to find its expression in minuet form
more often than any other. There is no real trio section as such, just a 14-bar
buffer separating two appearances of the main minuet movement, but this deli-
cately echoes the main theme of the first movement. The finale is a quick piece
opening in the style of a toccata; the main theme from the first movement puts in
yet another appearance, disguised as the melancholy second subject.
Gaspard de la nuit
1 Ondine: Lent
2 Le gibet: Très lent
3 Scarbo: Modéré - Vif
Ravel
The full published title is Gaspard de la nuit/3 Poèmes pour piano/d'après
Aloysius Bertrand [-Gaspard of the night, 3 poems for piano after Aloysius Ber-
trand]. Ravel wrote the set between May and Spetember 1908, immediately before
the original duet version of Ma mère l'oye. The two works could not be more
dissimilar: the duet inhabiting the child-like fairytale realm of Tom Thumb,
Beauty and the Beast, and so on; the other peering into a lurid, nightmare world.
Ricardo Viñes, that redoubtable pianist, was, so to speak, doubly responsible for
Ravel composing Gaspard. Viñes was one of those maddening people who find
playing the piano easy: both in music and culture generally he was inquisitive and
enormously well-read, and he just loved a challenge. He and Ravel were friends
from their teenage years. They were students together in the preparatory class of
the Paris Conservatoire, and their families lived next door: Mme Ravel, who was
Basque, enjoyed long conversations in Spanish with Mme Viñes. Together the
two boys explored the world of music, particularly piano music from Russia, then
little known outside the country. This was presumably how they came across Mily
Balakirev's formidably taxing oriental fantasy Islamey, the sort of piano piece you
or I would give up after half a dozen bars (even before it gets beyond single notes),
but which would have been an irresistible challenge to the young Viñes.
In 1908 the Mercure de France reprinted a series of prose poems by Louis Jacques
Napoléon Bertrand (1807 - 1841), who went by the name of Aloysius Bertrand.
The conceit of the series, as set out in the preface, is that the author once chal-
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lenged a stranger to tell him the laws of literary aesthetic. The stranger responded
by handing over the manuscript of the prose poems in question: he went by the
name of Gaspard, but it transpired he was the devil himself. It was all a good
enough pretext for Bertrand to wallow in the then fashionable Gothic horror - this
was the time when Edgar Allan Poe was writing some of his most chilling tales.
Ravel's attention was drawn to the reprint by Vifies himself. Part of Ravel was
fascinated by the supernatural (hence L'enfant et les sortilèges), and he set to
work on a musical depiction of three of Bertrand's prose poems. The result is his
most difficult piano piece, which gave even Viñes something to think about at the
first performance at the Salle Erard in Paris in January 1909. Unfortunately it
was their last "collaboration". Viñes disagreed with Ravel over the interpretation:
he even said that, played as marked by Ravel, Le gibet wouid bore an audience.
Ravel never really forgave him: it was the last of his premieres entrusted to Viñes,
and the three pieces of the piece are pointedly dedicated to three other pianists.
Ravel even went to the length of making a piano roll recording of Le gibet to
show how it should be done.
The first of the pieces is Ondine, the only one not to embody a nightmare vision.
Ondine is a water nymph whose speciality is luring sailors to their deaths. The
reason she got into Bertrand's collection is that she is supposed to have tried her
wiles on Gaspard himself, only to be rebuffed; at which she vanished leaving only
drops behind. Here is a translation of the prose poem as quoted in Ravel's score:
"Listen! Listen! It's me. It's Ondine who brushes with drops of water the
diamond-shaped panes of your window, lit up by the gloomy beams of the
moon; and see here, dressed in a watered-silk gown, the lady of the manor
looks out from her balcony at the lovely starry night and the beauty of the
sleeping lake.
"Each wave is a water-sprite who swims in the current, each current is a
path which winds towards my palace, and my palace is a mobile building,
at the bottom of the lake, in the triangle of fire, earth and air.
"Listen! Listen! My father beats the croaking water with a branch of
green alder, and my sisters caress with their foamy arms the green islets of
plants, water-lilies and sword-lilies, or make fun of the decayed bearded
willows that fish in the water."
In her murmured song, she begged me to put her ring on my finger, to be
the husband of an Ondine, and to visit her in her palace, to be king of the
lakes.
And when I replied that I loved a mortal woman, she was angry and sulky,
she cried a little and with a burst of laughter disappeared in a shower of
drops that trickled in pale streams down my blue window-panes.
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I don't know of any piano piece that so exactly captures water in all its moods:
shimmering, trickling, flowing, surging, cascading and dripping. And above it
all, Ondine's clear, melancholy siren call.
The second piece, Le gibet [= the gibbet], is particularly chilling. It is a picture of
the body of a hanged man still up on the gibbet. Throughout the piece the note B
flat constantly sounds, as though we want to turn away from this ghastly sight, but
our mind's ear is caught, mesmerised. The pattern of the repeated notes - short,
long, short, long, long - cunningly manages to suggest both the tolling of the bell
and the swaying of the corpse in the wind. Here is the poem:
Ah! Is what I hear the night wind howling, or the hanged man that sighs
on the gibbet?
Is that some cricket that squeaks crouching in the moss, and the barren
ivy that for pity stifles the wood?
Is that some fly that sounds its hunting horn round those ears deaf to the
death knell?
Is that some dung-beetle that gathers in its uneven flight a bloody hair
from the bald skull?
Or is it perhaps some spider that weaves a silken half-ell for a tie around
that strangled neck?
It's the bell that tolls from the walls of a town below the horizon, and the
corpse of a hanged man reddened by the rays of the setting sun.
The final piece of the set is Scarbo. Scarbo is a still more demonic character, the
devil's own henchman, and Ravel has written mercurial, diabolic music to match.
It is the most virtuosic piece of the three, and the one in which Ravel deliberately
set out to outdo Islamey, both in technical difficulty and pianistic show. It is brim
full of pianistic and colouristic innovations. The music is, it has to be said, a good
deal better than the poem:
Oh! How often I've heard and seen Scarbo, when the moon of midnight
shines in the heavens like a silver crown on an azure banner sown with
golden bees!
How often I've heard his laughter droning from the shadow of my bou-
doir, and his fingernails squeaking on my silken bedclothes!
How often I've seen him fall down on the floor, pirouetting on one foot
and rolling round the room like a spindle fallen from a witch's spinning
wheel!
I'd think he'd disappeared, then suddenly the dwarf would be magnified
between the moon and me like the great bell of a Gothic cathedral, a
golden bell swinging from his pointed cap!
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But soon his body would turn blue, transparent as candlewax, his face
would grow pale as the wax of a snuffed candle - and suddenly he would
be gone.
Again, Ravel's snuffing of the candle at the end is masterly.
La valse: poème chorégraphique
A few years later the nightmare became real. When the First World War broke
out Ravel was 39. Like Debussy, he tried desperately to enlist, but both men were
rejected: Debussy because he was already ill with the disease that would claim
him four years later; Ravel because, diminutive and thin, he was below the mini-
mum weight requirement. He tried again, but failed by a matter of 2 kilos [less
than 5lbs]: how the letters of the period crackle with indignation over the 2 kilos!
Ravel
Eventually, by pulling some strings, he managed to get into the armed forced -
not, as he'd hoped, into the air service, but into, of all things, the heavy artillery:
the diminutive Ravel was one of those who kept the French guns supplied with
shells during the Verdun offensive. Given the condition in the trenches and his
stature and constitution, it is not surprising Ravel fell ill. His convalescence was
made more difficult by the loss of his adored mother in January 1917. He re-
turned to military service later that year and managed to find the strength to com-
plete the six piano pieces making up the set Le tombeau de Couperin, begun at the
outset of the War and now each dedicated to the memory of a friend lost in it.
The War ended, leaving Ravel as exhausted as his country. It was Dyagilev who
got him back to serious composing in 1919 with a commission for the 1920 season
of the Ballet russe. For this Ravel returned to an idea he'd had as far back as
1906, for a sort of apotheosis of the 19th-century Viennese waltz, which he
planned to call Wien - as Vienna is known in German. As he wrote to a friend at
the time "You know my intense feelings for these marvellous rhythms; I find a
deeper expression of the enjoyment of life in the dance than in [César] Franck
puritanism." In fact nothing came of it at the time, though he did produce what
could be seen as the apotheosis of the earlier Schubertian waltz in the pungent
harmonies of his Valse nobles et sentimentales (1911) for piano.
Wien stayed at the back of his mind, and it was still under active consideration at
the outbreak of war in 1914. Marguerite Long, who knew Ravel at the time and
to whom he entrusted the first performance of Le tombeau de Couperin in 1918,
actually claims the work was "well advanced" in 1914. Whatever the truth of
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this, Ravel completed the work over the winter of 1919/20, producing versions for
solo piano and for two pianos. He then set about writing the orchestral score,
which was ready by March 1920. The work is dedicated to Ciba Godebsky's sister
Misia, then on her third marriage to the Spanish painter José-Maria Sert, who was
working for the Ballet russe. In April Ravel played through the two-piano version
of the completed work in the Sert house: the audience included Dyagilev, Mass-
ine, Poulenc and Stravinsky. According to Poulenc's memoirs, Dyagilev got very
restive during the performance, and at the end said to the composer, "Ravel, it's a
masterpiece... but it's not a ballet... it's the portrait of a ballet ... the painting of a
ballet." Ravel picked up his score and left: the encounter ended all collaboration
between the two men.
The score was performed as a concert piece by the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris
that December under the published title La valse, poème chorégraphique. It was
not produced as a ballet until Ida Rubinstein's company mounted it at the Paris
Opéra in May 1929.
In an autobiographical sketch, Ravel said he conceived La valse as:
a sort of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz which I saw combined with an
impression of a fantastic whirling motion leading to death. The scene is
set in an imperial palace around 1855.
which is echoed by the note printed in the score:
Dancing couples can be glimpsed momentarily through swirling clouds.
As they clear little by little, a huge ballroom may be seen, filled with a
whirling crowd. The scene gradually becomes clearer. At the fortissimo,
the chandeliers suddenly shed their light.
An imperial court around 1855.
The groundplan of La valse is a sequence of Viennese waltzes in simple harmonic
style. But the bass line becomes infected by chromaticism, the harmony is poi-
soned from within and the whole structure collapses. It is easy to see in this a
poignant comment on the imperial splendours thrown away in a futile war: it must
have been an uncomfortable experience for the first audiences to look back in this
way, which helps account for the work's mixed reception.
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.
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Cr
as
On
a
CO
S
>
D
A facsimile of the autograph of Musorgsky's Pictures from an exhibition, and
some of the drawings which inspired it, will be on display at the ticket desk dur-
ing the interval and after the concert.
Night on Bare Mountain
(arranged for piano by Chernov)
Modyest Petrovich Musorgsky
Musorgsky (in Russian the first syllable is stressed and sounds more like
"mousse" than the "muz" it's usually given) was a member of the so-called mo-
guchaya kuchka, the "mighty handful" - a translation that seems to carry with it
overtones of an unruly child in an American TV sitcom of the 1950s or 60s. Ini-
tially the powerhouse and magnet of the group was Mily Balakirev, who gathered
round him Borodin, Kyui, Musorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, whom he bullied,
cajoled, challenged or inspired in all their early endeavours. And always sup-
porting from on high, the figure of Vladimir Stasov, one of the great polymaths of
the age, a learned man chiefly active as a commentator on art and music, but an
enthusiast on any aspect of the Russian nature or nation: it was Stasov who came
up with the phrase moguchaya kuchka which stuck to them.
A whiff of "amateur" always seem to hang about the group. They weren't conser-
vatory-trained, certainly: well, conservatories hardly existed in Russia when they
were the appropriate age. And they were only part-time composers: Borodin and
Kyui pursued important and significant careers, while Balakirev and Musorgsky
had day jobs. Rimsky was a rather different case. He was an officer cadet in the
navy and actually went to sea as a midshipman, but resigned his commission to
devote his life to music. In his mid 20s he was offered a professorship at the re-
cently-opened St Petersburg Conservatory: he was so conscious of his technical
and academic deficiences that he hesitated a long time before accepting; he then
underwent such a prolonged and profound course of study that he went from being
only a couple of chapters ahead of his students to one of the country's foremost
musical authorities. (I know this talk of Rimsky must seem like a digression, but
it has relevance later on, promise.)
With Musorgsky this lack of academic training in music worked to considerable
advantage. He was a renowned improviser at the piano and, untrammelled by
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rules and precedents, his music has a vitality and originality that was not truly
appreciated until the 20th century (which we'll all soon have to practise calling
"last century"). There was a down side, though. Most of his output was "work in
progress", chaotically written down, if at all. Hardly anything was finalised for
publication: music intended for one abortive project would be cannibalised for
another; and he would think nothing of working on every scene of an opera si-
multaneously, which is why so many of them were never completed or left in such
a mess. Night on Bare Mountain, though, has a more complicated history than
almost any work of his, bar the opera Boris Godunov.
The full title on the only surviving complete form of the work is Ivanova noch' na
Lysoi gorye, which means "St John's night [= eve] on Bare Mountain. Lysaya
gora, which means "bare [in the sense of treeless] mountain" is a real place, not
far from Kiev in the Ukraine. There, on the eve of midsummer's day [ie the feast
of St John the Baptist], tradition has it that witches gather to hold a sabbath.
Most English translations of the title use the expression "a bare mountain", add-
ing the indefinite article, but there is no article, definite or indefinite, in Russian:
the only way to tell whether this is a proper name is by the capitalisation, and sure
enough Musorgsky capitalises as you would expect of a proper noun.
The complete original form of the work just mentioned is an orchestral score
which bears the full quoted title and the completion date St John's Eve 1867. We
know from surviving correspondence, however, that Musorgsky had been involved
in similar projects before. In 1858/9 he and some friends roughed out a synopsis
for an opera based on Gogol's short story St John's Eve. Then in 1860 Musorg-
sky wrote to Balakirev that he was hard at work on music for the witches' sabbath
scene (set on Bare Mountain) for the play The Witch by an old cadet school friend.
No music has survived from either project, so it is not possible to say what, if
anything, found its way into the 1867 score.
In 1872 Borodin, Kyui, Musorgsky and Rimsky were jointly commissioned to
produce an opera-ballet Mlada. Part of Act Three included the appearance of the
evil spirit Chernobog, and we know from letters that Musorgsky adapted his St
John's Night music to supply it. But the collaboration came to nothing, though
Rimsky went on to produce a Mlada entirely on his own.
In his last years, 1877-80, Musorgsky worked simultaneously on two operatic
projects he did not live to complete, the historical drama Khovanshchina and the
comedy after Gogol' The fair at Sorochintsy. In the latter he introduced a scene
where a young man falls asleep and has a vision of a macabre scene of devil wor-
ship and so on. It was one last outing for Musorgsky's St John's Night music, cut
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and mangled to fit. For once the music has survived, but only in the form of a
draft for soloists, and chorus with the orchestral music set out in piano duet short
score. How far this differs from the corresponding scene Musorgsky wrote for
Mlada it is impossible to tell.
After all this, you're probably thinking that at least we're on solid ground with
the complete score dated 1867. I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, but
even that is not quite what it seems to be. When Musorgsky had finished his
score in 1867 he wrote to his great friend Rimsky telling him about it and includ-
ing several music examples. The descriptions and the music examples the let-
ter don't tally with the surviving score. There was no possible reason for Musorg-
sky to be hoodwinking Rimsky, so the only sane inference is that the surviving
score is a subsequent revision in which Musorgsky omitted some sections and
changed others; and then attached the original composition date - not an unknown
occurrence with him.
When Musorgsky died in 1881 (he drank himself to death, as you can see in the
great portrait by Il'ya Repin, for which the composer had to be propped up in his
sickbed) Rimsky became in effect his musical executor. Very little of Musorg-
sky's music had been published in his lifetime, and Rimsky now prepared what he
could for publication. Unfortunately, remembering his own technical deficiencies
in music, he "corrected" out many of his friend's boldest strokes.
Rimsky didn't get round to St John's Night on Bare Mountain until 1886. It's
plain from his autobiography that he didn't know of the complete orchestral score
of "1867", which, incidentally, was not published until 1968. He had three
sources: what he called Musorgsky's original version, a piece for piano and or-
chestra composed under the influence of Liszt's Totentanz; the music as canni-
balised for Mlada; and the Sorochintsy Fair version. Of these only the last is
known today. The "piano and orchestra" version is a tantalising concept: it is
tempting to think it might be the original 1867 version, of which the surviving
score is a later revision for orchestra alone, but it would be more likely to be an-
other of Rimsky's memory lapses (the autobiography dates from 20 years after the
event). The piece Rimsky produced, still to this day the version most often heard,
is really a Rimsky composition based on Musorgsky materials, chiefly culled from
the cobbled-up Sorochintsy Fair sketch. And it was with the Rimsky version that
the piece lost its Ivanova to become just any old night on any old bare mountain -
spent in the company of witches bent a having a high old time.
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Musorgsky
To music history Stasov is best remembered as the mentor and apologist of the
moguchaya kuchka, but he was chiefly a writer on art, and it is not surprising that
artists should figure amongst his protégés. What he saw in Viktor Aleksan-
drovich Gartman [or Hartmann: the man himself was definitely Russian, but the
name was originally German. Russian has no soft h and must choose, when
transliterating names, between a sound like an 80-a-day man clearing his throat
and a g - hence "Gitler"], though, no-one has ever been sure. Possibly the same
characteristics that endeared him to Musorgsky: his fervent belief in a national
style of art, his flamboyant designs and his antipathy towards anything approach-
ing the "academic" in anything he did.
Pictures from an exhibition
Gartman was born in 1834 and studied architecture. He seems to have been re-
spected as an architect, and for one of his renovations was granted the title Aca-
demician. Musorgsky was introduced to Gartman by Stasov about 1870 and the
two became fast friends. When Gartman died in the summer of 1873 it was Mu-
sorgsky who wrote the obituary for the Sankt-Peterburgskiye Vedemosti, Stasov
himself being in Vienna.
In memory of his protégé, Stasov organised, with the help of the St Petersburg
Society of Architects, an exhibition of all Gartman's work he could lay his hands
on. The exhibition was held at the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg and was
open to the public in February and March 1874. There was a lavish catalogue
containing a biography. Part of the purpose of the exhibition was to sell the
pieces in it, so the whole collection was dispersed after the exhibition.
Musorgsky decided to commemorate his friend in music by producing a piano
evocation of various exhibits. His plan was to capture four of the pictures in
pieces which would be linked and separated by music he called Promenade, repre-
senting the pensive viewer walking round from picture to picture. The original
title for the whole work was Gartman. It didn't quite work out this way: the set
expanded from four to ten pieces, though mercifully the Promenade didn't crop
up between all of them; and the title was changed to Kartinki s vystavki. Musorg-
sky worked quickly for once, and the autograph is dated 4 July [old style: 22 June]
1874. He even intended to publish the work: the autograph has, in blue pencil
diagonally across the bottom right hand corner, "for printing Musorgsky 7
August [old style: 26 July] 1874". But he didn't actually do anything about publi-
cation (it is unthinkable he couldn't find a publisher to take such a fine work on),
so it wasn't until after his death that Rimsky published the work for him. For
once Rimsky did not interfere too much: it was a piano work after all and Rimsky
WE
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was a bit out of his depth there - as his Piano Concerto amply demonstrates. He
did "tame" a few of Musorgsky's wilder harmonies and changed the dynamic of
Bydło: Musorgsky originally had the piece start loud and get gradually quieter at
the end, to represent the cart disappearing in the distance; Rimsky extended the
idea and had the piece start softly and get gradually louder, so the whole sounded
like the cart approaching, passing and receding.
A few words about Musorgsky's title. He deliberately chose the word kartinki, the
diminutive of the usual words for pictures/paintings (kartiny): in Russian kartinki
is used for things like illustrations, emphasising that much of the exhibition was
not of what we would think of as "pictures", but of designs and sketches for all
manner of things.
Here is a synpopsis of the work. The titles, taken from the autograph, are in a
bewildering variety of languages.
Promenade [French] Musorgsky's depiction of the viewer wandering round the
1874 exhibition. He pays homage to his late friend's ideals in the forthright Rus-
sian character of the music, underlined by the nel modo russico [= in Russian
style] added to the tempo marking.
1. Gnomus [medieval Latin for "gnome"] Gartman's original has not survived,
but we know from the catalogue and a letter from Stasov to a friend that this was a
design for a Christmas tree ornament, a nutcracker in the shape of an ugly dwarf:
one apparently put the nut in the dwarf's mouth and operated the mechanism by
squeezing together the bandy legs.
Promenade a 12-bar reprise
2. Il vecchio castello [Italian for "the old castle"] The Gartman original is not
known. The exhibition catalogue mentions two drawings of medieval castles done
in France. Stasov, in his programme note to Musorgsky's piece mentions a min-
strel: the catalogue makes no mention of any human content, and it is possible
that Stasov was fitting his reminiscence to Musorgsky's musical depiction.
Promenade an eight-bar reprise
3. Tuilleries (Dispute d'enfants après jeux) [French for "Tuileries (quarrel of
children after their games)] The Gartman original is not known. The exhibition
catalogue refers to "Garden at the Tuileries, crayons"; Stasov speaks of nurse-
maids and children. The Tuileries gardens are on the site of a former palace near
the Louvre in Paris: both Rimsky and Stasov repeat Musorgsky's misspelling of
the name.
4. Bydło [Polish for a "neat", that is a domestic, bovine animal, mostly an ox]
Unlike many subsequent editions, Musorgsky's autograph has a clear slash
through the 1 of the title, since the word is pronounced "bid-woe"; it wasn't his
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original title for it, though, but the original has been scratched out with a razor.
According to Stasov, Gartman's drawing was of a Polish wagon drawn by two
oxen, but no such drawing has been traced or can be identified from the catalogue.
Promenade a 10-bar reprise
5. Balyet nyevylupivshikhsya ptentsov [Russian for "ballet of the unhatched
chicks"] Musorgsky's title is in Russian and in pencil, which suggests it is almost
certainly a later addition. At last a piece for which the Gartman original has sur-
vived: it takes the form of a water-colour design he did for costumes for the ballet
Tril'bi or The demon of the heath (choreography by Petipa, music by Gerber) pro-
duced in 1871. The costumes were for canary chicks, with arms and legs pro-
truding from a huge white shell (not easy to dance in, I should imagine) with bird
face mask and yellow stockings.
6. "Samuel" Goldenberg und "Schmuyle" Musorgsky here combines in a tiny
dramatic scene two Gartman drawings of Jews of contrasting fortunes: one a rich
Jew in a fur hat, done in pencil, sepia and lacquer; the other a poor old man sat by
his bundle, done in pencil and watercolour. The two drawings were apparently
done by Gartman in Sandomierz in Poland and both have survived. The self-
importance of the one, and the whining and shivering of the other are brilliantly
encapsulated by the composer.
Promenade the longest reprise so far, and the closest in spirit to the work's
opening.
7. Limoges. "Le marché". (La grande nouvelle) [French for "Limoges. The
Market. (Great news)"] In the autograph Musorgsky has two tries at a pro-
gramme for this bustling market scene, both take the form of overhcard gossip
(about an escaped cow, and someone's porcelain dentures) and both have been
crossed out by the composer. Gartman lived for some time in Limoges and drew
the cathedral and several portraits of people from there, but there is no mention in
the catalogue of a crowd scene such as Musorgsky is obviously depicting.
8. Catacombae (Sepulcrum Romanum) [Latin for "catacombs (Roman sepul-
chre)"] The water colour on which this piece is based has survived. It is a very
misty, vague scene in the Paris catacombs. In the centre, dimly discernable are
the hatted outlines of two figures, Gartman himself and his friend and fellow ar-
chitect Vasily Kenel'. On the right stands a guide in a blue coat holding aloft a
lantern, while further to the right is a mound of skulls. Musorgsky's piece is in
two parts: the first is a series of dramatic held chords (some altered by Rimsky):
the second features the Promenade music in a particularly eerie guise.
9. Izbushka na kur'ikh nozhkakh (Baba-Yaga) [Russian for "hut on hen's legs
(Baba-Yaga)"] Musorgsky's piece is in ternary form, the ferocious opening music
enclosing a slower, more mysterious central section. The Gartman original has
survived. It is a detailed pencil sketch (entitled "sketch, 14th-century style" -
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Gartman seems to have had a peculiar perspective on the history of art) of a clock
meant to be executed in bronze and coloured enamel. The design imitates carved
wood: the general shape and format would suggest to western Europeans a cuckoo
clock, except there is no cuckoo and the clock is raised above its pedestal on hen's
legs. Musorgsky's hair-raising piece has little to do with Gartman's rather chi-chi
original: he traces the hen's legs motive back to its folkloric origins - to the hut on
hen's legs and the ogress Baba-Yaga. She turns up in many Russian folk tales:
she lived in the forest, travelling about in a mortar, propelled by pestle, and con-
suming young children.
10. Bogatyrskiye vorota (v stol'nom gorodye vo Kiyevye) ssian for
"Bogatyrs' gate (in the capital city Kiev)"] Kiev is the capital of the Ukraine,
then part of Russia. It was in fact known as the "mother of Russian cities", being
the first Russian home of the orthodox faith after Prince Vladimir accepted Chris-
tianity in 988. In the 19th century it was something of a symbol of Russia's
greatness and in 1869 a contest was announced for the design of a new gate for
the city. Gartman produced a grotesquely over-elaborate plan, based on national
themes, in this case the shapes of a warrior's helmet and a peasant woman's hat.
Fortunately the contest came to nothing before Gartman's design even stood a
chance of being built. Musorgsky prefers to dwell on the majesty of the project,
with lots of ringing bells (the design incorporates a bell tower) and a triumphant
reprise of the Promenade theme. The "bogatyr" of the title is a traditional Russian
warrior/hero type, on a par with our "knights of old".
It is rather appropriate that this work should end a programme devoted to Ravel
and Musorgsky, since Ravel's 1922 orchestration, commissioned by Kusevitsky, is
probably better known than the original piano version.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
In the mid 1970s the Russians produced a spectacularly executed facsimile of Mu-
sorgsky's autograph of Pictures, together with colour reproductions of the sur-
viving Gartman drawings. Provided I remember, I will have it with me tonight.
If you are interested it will be on display at the ticket desk during the interval and
after the concert.
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concerts in the 78th 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, 11 December 1998
Natsuko Yoshimoto & Jeremy Young
(violin & piano)
Beethoven Violin Sonata in A, Op.12 No.2
Takemitsu From far beyond Chrysanthemums
Schubert Rondo brillant in B minor, D.895
Kreisler Recitative and Scherzo
Tambourin chinois
Violin Sonata in E minor, Op.82
Elgar
Thursday, 7 January 1999
Ovid Ensemble
Music by JC Bach, Beethoven, Britten, Loeffler and Schumann
Friday, 5 February 1999
Sarah Beth Briggs (piano)
Music by Brahms, Chopin, Mozart, Rawsthorne, Schubert and William Baines
Thursday, 11 March 1999
Yggdrasil String Quartet
Includes quartets by Stenhammar, Grieg and Sibelius
Also in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall starting at 8.00
Wednesday, 18 November 1998
Barry Douglas (piano)
Programme includes impromptus by Schubert and sonatas by Schumann and Liszt
BE
th
m
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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
Jim Briggs, Rosalind Richards
Robert Stevens
Sylvia Carter
Albert Ainsworth
John Petrie
Nigel Dick
Sheila Wright
Amanda Crawley
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Sue Bedford, John Dawick, Peter Marsden,
Brian Mattinson, Marc Schatzberger and
Dick Stanley
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 §
Dr D.M. Bearpark §
Mr J. Briggs §
Mr N.J. Dick §
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Dr F.A. Jackson
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mr P.W. Miller §
Canon & Mrs J.S. Pearson
Mr & Mrs L.W. Robinson §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Dr & Mrs G.M.A. Turner §
Mr R. Wilkinson §
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NEMS
Mr N. Lange §
Mr & Mrs B. Mattinson § Mr J.C. Miles
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mrs G. Morcom §
Mr B. Richards §
Mr & Mrs D. Rowlands
Mr R.D.C. Stevens §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Mr J.I. Watson
Mrs S. Wright
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
Mrs H.B. Wright §
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt
Mr J. Curry §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Prof. R. Lawton §
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.
Registered Charity No.700302
SEAS
The BMS is affiliated to the National Federation of Music
Societies which represents and supports amateur vocal,
instrumental and promoting societies throughout the United
Kingdom. The Society also gratefully acknowledges the
assistance of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
BURTHWICK INSTITUTE
SMS 3/2/6 (4)
OF HI
TOPICAL
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by WrightDesign of Easingwold.
*
RESEARCH
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D'S
YORK
Natsuko Yoshimoto
& Jeremy Young
(violin & piano)
Friday, 11 December 1998
Programme: £1.00
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
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
member. They should all be wearing badges, and, however it may appear, they do
want to hear from
you.
Internet
The BMS has a small but discernible presence on the Internet. If you haven't
found it already, the URL is http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/psev/bms.htm
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J
B'S
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
78th Season
Friday, 11 December 1998
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
NATSUKO YOSHIMOTO (violin)
JEREMY YOUNG (piano)
Beethoven Violin Sonata in A, Op.12 No.2
Toru Takemitsu From far beyond Chrysanthemums and
Schubert
Kreisler
November Fog
Rondo in B minor, D.895
INTERVAL
Recitative and Scherzo
Tambourin Chinois
Elgar Violin Sonata in E minor, Op.82
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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NATSUKO YOSHIMOTO
& JEREMY YOUNG
Natsuko Yoshimoto was born in Tokyo in 1976 and started playing the violin at
the age of four. In 1987 she won a scholarship to the Yehudi Menuhin School,
studying with Mauricio Fuks, Carmel Kaine, Wen Zhou Li and Lord Menuhin.
Whilst at school she won prizes in the Wieniawski, Tchaikovsky and Yehudi
Menuhin Violin Competitions. After a year at the renowned Curtis Institute of
Music in Philadelphia, Natsuko joined the Royal Northern College of Music in
1995 to study with Wen Zhou Li on the B. Mus. Course. She has recently won an
Ensemble Kanazawa Concerto Award in Japan.
Jeremy Young was born in London in 1971. He began studying the piano at the
age of nine with Dr Frank May at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and
within three years had won a scholarship to study at the Purcell School of Music,
where he remained until 1989. After school Jeremy received scholarships to study
with Christopher Elton and Frank Wibaut at the Royal Academy and as a post-
graduate with Vladimir Ovchinikov at the Royal Northern College of Music. He
also spent three consecutive summers working with Menahem Pressler of the
Beaux Arts Trio at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada.
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PROGRAMME NOTES
Violin Sonata in A major, Op.12 No.2
Allegro vivace
Andante più tosto Allegretto
Allegro piacevole
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
Poor old Salieri! How his reputation has suffered from the supposed rivalry with
Mozart and the frankly monstrous suggestion that he poisoned him. In fact the
evidence shows that they respected each other. But the potent archetype of an
established artist of great talent encountering and being surpassed by a newcomer
of genius proved so tempting that it was treated by, amongst others, Pushkin in
one of his little psychological verse dramas, Mozart and Salieri (1831 - made into
an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov in 1897) and in our own time Peter Shaffer in his
1979 play (later film) Amadeus. Between them they did almost as good a hatchet
job on the great and good Salieri as Shakespeare did on Richard III.
The evidence is that Salieri was a conscientious man who had himself been the
protégé of the composer Gluck and went out of his way to teach and otherwise be
helpful to many composers and musicians. And so when Beethoven turned up in
Vienna from Bonn late in 1792, around the time of his 22nd birthday, Salieri was
one of the figures he soon turned to for help. Those of us brought up on post-
Second-World-War maps of Europe get a totally misleading view of the relative
importance of Bonn and Vienna: Bonn the capital of the huge, dominant West
Germany, Vienna the capital of tiny Austria. In Beethoven's day it was just the
reverse. Vienna was an imperial city, hub of an empire that stretched from Swit-
zerland to the Russian border, while Bonn was merely the seat of the Electors of
Cologne, one of the many tiny princedoms and duchies that wouldn't be unified
into a single Germany for nearly a hundred years. It was scarcely a surprise that a
young man with such promise and such confidence in his talent should make his
way to the cultural centre of the German-speaking world - Vienna.
Once there Beethoven sought out four teachers from whom he could pick up what
he still needed to learn. He was a difficult pupil, by all accounts, self-willed and
touchy. Too much so for the genial Haydn, but he did gain a good technical
grounding from Albrechtsberger. Under Salieri he studied composition, with em-
phasis on the setting of Italian words - useful for anyone with ambitions in the
direction of the operatic stage: the lessons were never on an entirely formal basis,
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and part of the attraction must have been Salieri's well-known willingness to
share his knowledge with those possessing more talent than money, but the les-
sons clearly meant a lot to Beethoven, since they continued in some form right
through till 1802, when Beethoven was on the verge of composing the Eroica.
It is a measure of Beethoven's esteem and gratitude that he dedicated to Salieri
three Violin Sonatas composed in 1797/8 and published in Vienna 200 years ago,
give or take a month, as Op. 12. They weren't his first duo sonatas: a couple of
years earlier he'd broken new ground with the composition of a pair of Cello So-
natas, Op.5.
As the history books never tire of telling us, duo sonatas began very much as so-
natas for harpsichord or fortepiano with a more or less dispensable part for other
instrument. By the time of Mozart's violin sonatas, though, this was no longer
the case. There was a change also in ambition: Mozart's violin sonatas began as
pieces for domestic consumption, but by his late Viennese period were equally at
home on the public stage. Beethoven's sonatas inhabit the same double world,
ranging from the at time bordering on the symphonic Kreutzer Sonata to the do-
mestic intimacy of the A minor Sonata, Op.23. In Op.12, the most public is the
third Sonata, in E flat major, an almost concerto-like display piece, whilst the
most relaxed, chamber-music piece is No.2 in A major.
The first movement overflows with the sort of light-heartedness Beethoven gener-
ally reserved for his finales: its fairly skips and bubbles along, and even its darker
moments seem to be there only to highlight the fun. The finale's predominant
mood is genial and relaxed, but this is just Beethoven's backdrop for a series of
querky gestures and what amounts to musical puns using fragments of melody.
Between these two movements is a complete contrast, an Andante whose main
idea is as cold as anything Beethoven ever wrote, a mood only enhanced by its
disturbingly stark and bare presentation. Only the slight warmth of the F major
central section can pierce the chill.
From far beyond Chrysanthemums
and November fog
Toru Takemitsu
(1930 - 1996)
Of all Japanese composers, Toru Takemitsu is easily the best known outside his
own country. He was largely self-taught - no great surprise when you consider
that his teenage years, that time of greatest learning, were spent in a Japan first
fanatically militarising, then ferociously at war and finally in the chaos of post-
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nuclear defeat. Of course, no-one is ever entirely self-taught, and Takemitsu did
have some lessons in the late 1940s from Yasuji Kiyose, but otherwise he learnt
most from the study of other people's music, from contact with like minds and
from his own experiences and mistakes. As often in such cases the result is a
powerful musical personality untrammelled by tradition, prepared to experiment
and fail, and apt to surprise the hearer.
With all composers of that hemisphere there always arises the question of how far
their music represents a synthesis of western and indigenous styles. In a way this
was almost an irrelevance with Takemitsu. Both musical worlds were in his pal-
ette, so to speak, but he used elements from one or the other only as his musical
vision demanded: nowhere did he set out to make a fusion of the two. Take-
mitsu's strongest point was always colour - the extraordinary delicacy of his aural
imagination - and it was this plus his unusual, oriental attitude to form and struc-
ture that attracted attention to his music outside Japan, beginning in the late 50s
and early 60s when he was "discovered" by Stravinsky, then John Cage. Real
international recognition, however, came in the late 1960s with his November
Steps, commissioned to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the New York Phil-
harmonic Orchestra.
From far beyond Chrysanthemums and November fog was composed in 1983 as a
test piece for violinists entering the Second International Music Competition of
Japan. International competitions often include a round where every competitor
has to play the same piece - it makes comparison so much easier. Often these are
commissioned specially from a major national composer, partially out of national
pride and partially so the piece will be equally unfamiliar to all entrants: for the
very first Leeds International Piano Competition in 1963, for instance, Marion
Harewood persuaded Benjamin Britten to write his Night Piece (Notturno). So
Takemitsu's piece was first heard in public played by a succession of violinists on
4 and 5 December 1983.
Takemitsu's note in the score reads:
The title was taken, with the poet's permission, from a stanza of a poem
entitled In the Shadows by the Japanese poet, Makoto Ooka. The structure
of the work is plain and simple, a rough perspective drawing dominated by
six notes [Bb C E F# G Ab] and with the remaining six notes [D Eb F AB
C#] used as "shadows."
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Rondo in B minor, D.895
Franz Schubert
(1797-1828)
1825 had been a productive year for Schubert: not only had he composed a great
deal, but an increasing number of his pieces were being published. By contrast,
1826 started off fairly slack: he complained of being idle in a letter to a friend. In
June he wrote what was to prove his last string quartet, the G major, D.887, and
the following month he wrote two of his more famous songs (famous in England,
at least, since they are settings of Shakespeare) Hark, hark the lark and Who is
Sylvia? Then in October he composed two substantial instrumental works, the G
major Piano Sonata, D.894, and this Rondo in B minor for violin and piano,
D.895.
The Rondo was written for a young Czech violinist called Josef Slavík. Slavík
trained in Prague, but left at the age of 20 for the imperial capital, Vienna. He
was one of those artists fascinated by the virtuoso possibilities of the violin, his
vocation being only reinforced by his meeting in 1828 with Paganini, who was
using Vienna as the springboard for his international career after long years of
obscurity in Italy. Slavík briefly (Oct 1828 - Mar 1829) tried his luck in Paris, but
the competition proved too great and he returned to Vienna, in time to meet an-
other young artist from Eastern Europe intent on making a career as a com-
poser/performer, Chopin. The two got on extremely well: Slavík was probably
Chopin's closest musical friend during his time in Vienna. They even contem-
plated jointly composing variations for violin and piano on a theme of Beethoven,
though nothing seems to have come of it. Here's Chopin writing home from Vi-
enna to his parents in May 1831:
Slavík is one of the few local artists whom I enjoy and with whom I get on.
He played like another Paganini, but a rejuvenated Paganini, sometimes
surpassing the first one. I wouldn't have believed it, if I hadn't heard him
often; I am only sorry, oh, so sorry, that Tytus didn't meet him. He strikes
his hearers dumb, he makes people weep; more, he makes tigers weep...
Slavík organised himself a concert tour in 1833: the first concert in Vienna in
April was a great success, so despite falling ill he set out for Budapest where he
died suddenly.
Schubert wrote two pieces for Slavík: the B minor Rondo in October 1826 and the
C major Fantasy, D.934, in December 1827. Both are designed to demonstrate
Slavík's abilities. It has to be said that Schubert is at his best as a melodist and at
his least convincing when writing virtuoso music: the Rondo certainly has more
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1
about it than the rather vapid Fantasy, though neither has gained anything like the
popularity of the three Sonatas [Sonatinas] of 1816 and the A major Duo of
August 1817. That said, the Rondo was the second of only three chamber works
by Schubert published in his lifetime: it was issued by Artaria of Vienna in the
spring of 1827 as the Rondeau brillant pour pianoforte et violon, Op. 70.
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.
Recitative and Scherzo
Tambourin Chinois
Fritz Kreisler
(1875 - 1962)
Fritz Kreisler was one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century: few violinists
then or since have escaped some influence. His father, a doctor, was an amateur
violinist, and Fritz began on the instrument unusually early. He graduated from
the Vienna Conservatory with the gold medal at the age of 10. His postgraduate
studies took him to the Paris Conservatoire (he also studied composition with De-
libes), where he was one of five violinists to pass out that year with the premier
prix: as the others were in their early 20s and he was still 12, their feelings can be
imagined. After this Kreisler had no further teaching on the violin. Actually, he
was nearly lost to music altogether: he studied for a couple of years to follow his
father's footsteps into medicine, and then joined the army. But in 1896, still a
teenager, he decided to make music his career. He was turned down as a violinist
by one of the Viennese orchestras (allegedly for poor sight-reading) only to appear
with the same orchestra as soloist a year later. After which his career was effec-
tively unstoppable.
Kreisler had a gift as a composer. He wrote a string quartet and a couple of oper-
ettas, but it is for his violin music he is best remembered the cadenzas to the
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Beethoven and Brahms concertos and a number of short pieces. These were col-
lected in three series: Master Works, transcriptions (some freer than others) for
violin and piano of works by classical composers; Classical Manuscripts, a series
of pieces by, at the time, barely known classical composers, arranged and edited
by Kreisler, who admitted in 1935 they were in fact pastiches composed by him-
self in approximately the style of the named composer; and Original Composi-
tions, pieces for which Kreisler accepted full responsibility.
Both Recitative and Scherzo and Tambourin chinois come from the Original
Compositions, where they are respectively No.4 and No.3. The Recitative and
Scherzo is the only one of the 13 pieces for violin alone, rather than violin and
piano. Tambourin Chinois, originally published in 1910, is a virtuoso piece
marked "Allegro molto, quasi Presto". The tambourin of the title is not the per-
cussion instrument beloved of the "happy-clappy" school of church music, but an
18th-century French character piece allegedly derived from a Provençal dance
with pipe, tabor and drone accompaniment: Rameau wrote a celebrated example
for harpsichord, which Kreisler certainly knew, as he arranged it for violin and
piano in the Master Works series.
Violin Sonata in E minor, Op.82
Allegro
Romance: Andante
Allegro, non troppo
Edward Elgar
(1857-1934)
The Violin Sonata was the first product of Elgar's legendary "Indian Summer"
between the close of the First World War and the death of his wife in 1920. El-
gar's career had hit its natural peak around the year 1910. He had come to
prominence relatively late: he was already in his 40s when the 1899 premiere of
the Enigma Variations laid the foundation of his reputation. It was followed by
Gerontius (1900), the Introduction and Allegro for strings (1905), First Symphony
(1907/8), Violin Concerto (1910, composed for Kreisler), Second Symphony
(1911) and the symphonic study Falstaff (1913).
Then came a period when he produced nothing of significance: a fear of rejection
after a sea change in musical tastes around 1912/3 conspired with the outbreak of
war to send him off mining an inconsequential seam of nostalgia and fantasy for
several years. It wasn't until the tide of the war was beginning to change, in
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1918, that Elgar as it were snapped out of it. That March he was in hospital in
London for an operation on his tonsils. On the 22nd he was discharged to his
town house in Hampstead where he wrote down a theme that was haunting him,
an idea that was soon to become the main theme of the first movement of the
Cello Concerto. Three days later he began a new work, a string quartet, but be-
fore long this in turn was interrupted by what was to become the Violin Sonata.
By now Elgar and his wife had retreated, as they did whenever they could, to their
country cottage, Brinkwells in Fittleworth, Sussex. Here Elgar started to concen-
trate on the Sonata, particularly after a piano was delivered in mid August. By
the end of the month, Elgar invited his friend the violinist (leader of the LSO)
W.H. Reed down to try over what there was of the Sonata. Reed was back at
Brinkwells on 18 September, by which time Elgar had completed the Sonata and
begun a piano quintet.
By the time the Sonata was despatched to the publisher Novello on 1 October
1918 Elgar was working on both the Quartet and Quintet side by side. The
Quartet was the first to be finished, in mid December, and the Quintet followed in
February 1919. The three works were given their first public performances to-
gether at the Aeolian Hall in London on 21 May 1919: the Sonata was played by
Billy Reed, with another of Elgar's friends, the conductor Landon Ronald
(incidentally, also a close friend of Kreisler and his preferred conductor on con-
certo recordings). With this concert out of the way, Elgar returned to the theme
he'd noted down a year earlier, which had now taken flesh as the Cello Concerto
completed by the beginning of August. The following year Elgar's wife died: it
seemed to be the final straw, and he produced nothing of consequence thereafter.
Indeed, he seems at times to have gone out of his way to avoid music, and the only
major achievement of his final 14 years was the magnificent series of archival
recordings of his own music coaxed out of him by Fred Gaisberg of the Gramo-
phone Company.
The premiere in May 1919 was not, of course, the first hearing of the Sonata: El-
gar and Reed had played it privately in his Hampstead house in October 1918, and
it got another airing, this time with Anthony Bernard at the piano, at a meeting of
our own parent body, the newly-formed British Music Society, just over a week
before the official premiere.
Elgar himself played the violin: indeed in his earlier, lean years part of his living
came from playing and teaching the instrument. Music for the violin, and strings
in general, figures prominently in his output - the two concertos, the Serenade and
the Introduction and Allegro for strings: his first published work was the 1878
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Romance for violin and piano, Op. 1, while his Op.8 and Op.9 were a string quar-
tet and a violin sonata, both composed in 1887 and both destroyed.
Like all the works of the 1918/9 "Indian Summer", the E minor Violin Sonata is
backward looking in style, but with a freedom only age and experience can give.
The first movement is almost Brahmsian in structure and outlook - though less so
in sound. When Elgar sent a close friend some manuscript paper containing the
main ideas of the Romance (not to mention a theme that later went into the
Quintet and a few scores from games of cribbage with Lady Elgar), his accompa-
nying letter described it as "a fantastic curious movem with a very expressive
middle section: a melody for the Violin - they say it's as good as or better than
anything I have done in the expressive way." The E major finale, with its har-
mony moving over static pedal points, seem to hark back to Elgar's parallel career
during the lean early years, as organist.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concerts in the 78th 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. 7 January 1999
Supported by the NFMS
from funds provided by
Yorkshire & Humberside Arts
York
Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Leslie Bresnen
Leader: Claire Jowett
Elgar -
Mozart -
Sibelius-
Three Bavarian Dances
Sinfonia Concertante in Eb K297b
Symphony No. 2 in D
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York
Sunday 13th December 1998 at 8.00 pm
Soloists
Jane Beadle (Oboe)
Martin Beeston (Clarinet)
Jane Lomax (Bassoon)
Christina Thompson-Jones
(Horn)
OF PUBLIC FOCHTIES
NFMS
Tickets (unreserved) £6.50
£5 (concessions) £3 (children under 12)
from Ticket World, Patrick Pool, York,
or members of the orchestra or at the door.
The YSO is a Registered Charity N° 515145
MIP
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concerts in the 78th 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.
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concerts in the 78th 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, 7 January 1999
J.C. Bach
Britten
Beethoven
Loeffler
Schumann
Mozart
Schubert
Brahms
Friday, 5 February 1999
William Baines
Rawsthorne
Chopin
Ovid Ensemble
Quintet in D
Phantasy Quartet (1932)
Variations on Là ci darem, WoO 28
Rhapsody L'étang
Piano Quartet in E flat, Op.47
Stenhammer
Grieg
Sibelius
Sarah Beth Briggs
(piano)
Rondo in D, K.485
Sonata in A minor, K.310
Sonata in A, D.664
Intermezzo, Op.118 No.2
Rhapsody, Op.119 No.4
The Chimes
Bagatelles
Fantasy in F minor/A flat, Op.49
Thursday, 11 March 1999
Yggdrasil String Quartet
Quartet No.5 in C, Op.29 (Serenade)
Quartet in G minor, Op.27
Quartet in D minor, Op.56 (Voces intimae)
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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
Jim Briggs, Rosalind Richards
Robert Stevens
Sylvia Carter
Albert Ainsworth
John Petrie
Nigel Dick
Sheila Wright
Amanda Crawley
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Sue Bedford, John Dawick, Peter Marsden,
Brian Mattinson, Marc Schatzberger and
Dick Stanley
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 §
Dr D.M. Bearpark §
Mr J. Briggs §
Mr N.J. Dick §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mr P.W. Miller §
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Dr F.A. Jackson
Canon & Mrs J.S. Pearson
Mr & Mrs L.W. Robinson §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs I. Stanley S
Dr G.A.C. Summers S
Dr & Mrs G.M.A. Turner §
Mr R. Wilkinson §
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NEMS
Mr N. Lange §
Mr & Mrs B. Mattinson § Mr J.C. Miles
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mrs G. Morcom §
Mr B. Richards §
Mr & Mrs D. Rowlands
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mr M. Schatzberger
Mr R.D.C. Stevens §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Mrs H.B. Wright §
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt §
Mr J. Curry S
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Prof. R. Lawton §
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.
Mr J.I. Watson
Mrs S. Wright
Registered Charity No.700302
The BMS is affiliated to the National Federation of Music
Societies which represents and supports amateur vocal,
instrumental and promoting societies throughout the United
Kingdom. The Society also gratefully acknowledges the
assistance of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by WrightDesign of Easingwold.
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INSTITUTE
DURTHWICK
SMS 3/2/6 (5)
OF HI TOPIC L FESEARCH