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BS
YORK
Ovid Ensemble
Thursday, 7 January 1999
Programme: £1.00
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Advertising our Concerts
The bigger the audience we can attract to BMS concerts, the more money there
will be for the concerts budget, which means we would be able to afford artists we
can at present only dream of attracting. You can help. You must know of places
where our posters could be seen by potential new audience. Posters for our next
concert are available in the foyer: help yourself and help the Society.
Your Views
The BMS is a society run for the benefit of its members by a dedicated committee
clected 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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JOL
BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
78th Season
Thursday, 7 January 1999
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
OVID ENSEMBLE
Alun Darbyshire oboe Mia Cooper violin
David Adams violin/viola
Alice Neary cello Jeremy Young piano
J.C. Bach
Britten
Beethoven
Quintet in D, Op.22 No.1
Temporal Variations
Variations on Là ci darem, WoO 28
INTERVAL
Loeffler L'étang: rhapsody
Schumann
Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op.47
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.
JOC
B'S
YORK
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OVID ENSEMBLE
The Ovid Ensemble was formed in 1995 by drawing together outstanding
musicians from all over the country. The versatile combination of instruments
allows the group to explore a wide range of interesting and exciting repertoire.
In 1996 Ovid won a place on the Countess of Munster Recital Scheme, enabling
them to undertake many performances throughout the UK. They also participate
in Yehudi Menuhin's Live Music Now!
giving them the opportunity to
perform in a great variety of venues to audiences who would not normally have
access to live classical music.
They were ensemble in residence at the 1997 Ryedale Festival, where they gave
the world premiere of a specially composed composition by Kate Romano. Ovid
prides itself on its innovative programmes, performing rarely heard works and
new commissions alongside well-known masterpieces.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) was a Roman poet. Sixth-form Latin scholars are
quite likely to be confronted by his Metamorphoses, poetic retellings of myths
involving transformations of some kind, but almost certain to be steered well clear
of his Ars amatoria [= the art of love-making]. Britten's Metamorphoses for oboe
solo were inspired by Ovid, which may account for the poet's name being applied
to an oboe-centric group.
PROGRAMME NOTES
Quintet in D major, Op.22 No.1
Allegro
Andantino
Allegro assai
Johann Christian Bach
(1735-1782)
Johann Christian had perhaps the most colourful career in the whole Bach clan.
The extended Bach family was a huge one - it had been a major supplier of
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musicians for generations and Johann Sebastian did all he could to make it
larger. In his early 20s he married a slightly older cousin who presented him with
seven children. She died in her late 30s, and Bach married the 20-year-old Anna
Magdalena Wilcken, who bore him a further 13 children, initially at the rate of
one a year. Several of the sons turned out, unsurprisingly, to be musicians, and
two can claim to have influenced the course of musical history. Sebastian's hopes
were naturally placed in his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, for whose
instruction many great works were composed; but "Friede" was not the man his
father was, and the weight of all that expectation might have contributed to his
drink problem, though he did produce some well-crafted (how could it have been
otherwise?) and attractive music.
-
Carl Philipp Emanuel had no such problems. He was intended for the law, so,
unpressured, he throve on music. Eventually he became court harpsichordist to
the flute-playing king Frederick the Great of Prussia in Berlin. Emanuel did more
than anyone to develop sonata form into the dominant structural force in
instrumental music and was the embodiment of two mid-18th-century aesthetic
movements aimed at making music more directly emotional - Empfindsamkeit and
Sturm und Drang. Haydn later claimed to have learned virtually all he knew from
playing through Emanuel's keyboard sonatas.
Johann Christian was Sebastian's 18th child, his 11th and last son, more than 20
years younger than his half-brother Emanuel. When Sebastian died in 1750,
Christian was still only 14 and was sent to live and study with Emanuel, but four
years later headed south to Italy to study. While there he did two things that
might well have set his father spinning in his grave - he was received into the
Roman Catholic faith and he composed operas (a form Sebastian considered
"frivolous"). In 1762 Christian accepted an offer to come to London to compose
opera, and it was in London that he lived for most of his remaining 20 years. He
soon became music master to the German-born Queen Charlotte, wife of George
III, and this seems to have cemented his position, making him greatly in demand
in fashionable circles. The concerts he put on with another German composer
resident in London, Carl Friedrich Abel, were the most prestigious staged in the
capital. He moved in the highest social and artistic circles there are two
marvellous portraits of him by his friend Gainsborough.
Christian's genius was to fuse the technical skill acquired from his father and
half-brother with the grateful, melodious style he found in Italian opera - at the
risk of sounding dangerously like a motoring correspondent, a triumph of German
engineering and Italian design. His music was much admired and not a little
imitated by others. It is easy to mistake music by the boy Mozart for J.C. Bach
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and vice versa. Mozart met Christian in London when, at the age of eight, he was
brought to be exhibited to the English. He seems to have fallen under the older
man's spell, and even went to the length of transcribing three of his piano sonatas
as piano concertos.
The D major Quintet is one of a pair published posthumously in Berlin in 1785 as
Bach's Op.22. It is scored for flute, oboe, violin, cello and keyboard, and it is
unusual for a chamber work of this time in that the keyboard player is treated as
an equal partner. In most works, for instance Bach's own six Quintets, Op.11, the
yboard merely accompanies, playing what is known as a continuo part - a bass
line fitted out with coded instructions of which chords to play. In this Quintet,
though, the keyboard has an equal stake: when accompanying it acts like a
traditional continuo, but when its turn for the solo comes (usually it's the last and
most elaborate) its music is fully written out, just like in a concerto.
The work is a perfect example of Christian's art an attractive, tuneful sonata-
form Allegro, a G major slow movement with a central section in the minor where
cello and keyboard share the limelight, and a brisk finale whose pacy 6/8 is a
more relaxed development of the gigues his father wrote. No wonder the young
Mozart was keen to emulate this style.
Temporal Variations
Theme: Andante rubato
Var.I
Oration
Var. II
March
Var. III
Exercises
Var.IV
Commination
Var. V
Var. VI
Var. VII
Var. VIII Resolution
Chorale
Waltz
Polka
Benjamin Britten
(1913 - 1976)
The Temporal Variations form one of Britten's most important chamber works of
the pre-War years, and yet the piece went missing for decades and didn't even
make it into the worklist of the Britten entry in The New Grove.
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The piece was commissioned by Adolph Hallis, a pianist born in South Africa in
1896 who trained in England and was based here until the outbreak of the Second
World War when he returned to his native land. During the interwar years Hallis
was one of the few pianists in Britain specialising in contemporary music, and
many works were written for him. He also ran the Adolph Hallis Chamber Music
Concerts which ran from 1936 to 1939 and were notable for their adventurous
programmes.
In March 1936, only a couple of months after recording the soundtrack of the
celebrated film documentary Night Mail, Britten went with Hallis to the BBC for
an audition, having offered a programme of two-piano music. Britten plainly
impressed his older colleague who invited him to write a work for oboe and piano
to appear in one of his Chamber Music Concerts.
The result was the Temporal Variations, which Hallis premiered with the oboist
Nathalie Caine in the Wigmore Hall on 15 December 1936. Since Britten did not
apparently complete the music until 12 December (he was moving with his sister
Beth into a new flat in Finchley Road and working on incidental music to Louis
Macniece's translation of Agamemnon and his friend Auden and Isherwood's new
play The Ascent of F6) it can hardly have been a meticulously rehearsed
performance. Which may account for the fact that the composer put it away and
forgot about it.
It wasn't until after his that it was unearthed in his papers. It was published
and re-performed in 1980, since when it has won many admirers. The work takes
the form of a theme and eight variations. These make use of contrasting tempos
and metres - hence the "temporal" of the title. Each variation has its own title.
That of the fourth variation, Commination, perhaps needs some explanation: in
The Book of Common Prayer, between The Churching of Woman and The Psalms
of David you will find:
A Commination, or denouncing of God's anger and judgments against
sinners, with certain prayers, to be used on the first day of Lent, and at
other times ...
the idea being that this general cursing of unrepentant sinners be tagged on to the
end of morning prayers until such time "(which is much to be wished)" that the
"discipline" be restored of putting "such persons as stood convicted of notorious
sin ... to open penance" as punishment and an example to others.
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Variations on Là ci darem, WoO 28
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
Beethoven was renowned as a piano improviser: it was how he originally made
his reputation, and he was said to be able to make his hearers weep. There are
two main types of improvisation: free improvisation, where you follow, as it were,
your musical nose, making it up as you go along; and improvisation on a pre-
existing tune - usually one your audience will be familiar with, such as a standard
or a current hit - which generally involves retaining the original's chord scheme
as a skeleton but taking greater or lesser liberties with the melodic line. Both
approaches are familiar in jazz, where improvisation is still alive and not
infrequently kicking.
Beethoven lived long before any form of recording, so we will never know for sure
what his improvisations were like: descriptions all have much more to say about
their effect than their content. But it is generally thought that the closest we get to
his free improvisatory style is to be found in the piano pieces bearing the title
"fantasy" and in the cadenzas to the piano concertos. When it comes to his
improvisations on other people's themes, the position is more problematic. He
wrote a substantial number of sets of piano variations on popular operatic hits
during his early Viennese years (the mid to late 1790s), but these were polished
works meant for publication. On the other hand it would be a surprise if at least
some of ways he treats his material in these works hadn't already been thought of
and tried out in the course of improvisation. And it was precisely this inventive
manipulation of musical material that made Beethoven the first great master of
the development section.
While the piano variations are mostly on operatic hits of the day, when Beethoven
wrote variations for more than one instrument he showed a marked preference for
arias by Mozart. The Variations WoO 28 were composed in 1796 or early 1797:
sketches for it are mixed in with some for the C minor Piano Sonata Op.10 No.1.
We know of one performance, most likely the first one in public, at a concert for
the benefit of widows and orphans at the National Court Theatre on 23 December
1797.
The Variations were originally scored for two oboes and cor anglais, an unusual
combination which Beethoven had already used in his Trio Op.87, composed in
1794. (The opus number 87 is an aberration, in reality belonging to a work
composed or published around 1812/3. I've just deleted a detailed but plainly
irrelevant account of how the Trio acquired it.) Beethoven had heard a trio for
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not
Sure
bout
cast
of
tive
ven
797.
Wal
for
ber
ed in
ainly
for
)
this combination by a "Herr Wendt" (almost certainly the Bohemian oboist
Johann Went, on the payroll of the National Court Theatre in Vienna) played by
the Teimer brothers at a Tonkünstler-Gesellschaft concert on 23 December 1793
and was either inspired or persuaded to try his own hand. The resulting Trio
seems to have been quite a success, to judge from the various arrangements of it
that appeared over the following years, so it is little wonder Beethoven was
tempted to the combination again, for the WoO 28 Variations.
The Variations take as their theme the aria Là ci darem la mano from Mozart's
Don Giovanni, a popular theme for variations - both Chopin and Liszt had a go.
Beethoven even toyed with the idea of a set for cello and piano, but only a
fragment of sketch survives. There are eight variations in all, the sixth of them in
the minor.
If you are puzzled by WoO, don't be. When Kinsky and Halm produced the now
standard catalogue of Beethoven's music they rightly judged that the existing opus
numbers, for all their faults, were too widespread and ingrained for people to
abandon them altogether. So they simply listed all the works with opus number,
in opus number order, and then followed this with a second list, a grouping by
category of music which, for one reason or another, lacked an opus number. The
works on this list were given numbers with the prefix Woo Werke ohne
Opuszahl [= works without opus number]. WoO 25-35 is the section devoted to
chamber music without piano.
-
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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L'étang: rhapsody for oboe, viola and piano
Charles Loeffler
(1861-1935)
Charles Loeffler was an American composer and violinist with a cosmopolitan
European upbringing. His parents were German, but he was born in France, in
Alsace. Not long afterwards the family moved to just outside Kiev in the Ukraine,
where Loeffler had his first violin lessons, and his study of the instrument
survived moves to Debreczen in Hungary, Switzerland and Berlin, where he
studied with Joachim. Loeffler became disenchanted with German culture - his
father was imprisoned for articles criticising the government causing the son later
to threaten to kill anyone who called him German or Prussian - and went to study
in Paris with Joseph Massart. In 1881 he moved to the USA and the next year
became assistant concertmaster of the newly-formed Boston Symphony Orchestra;
he stayed there until 1903, when he retired to devote himself to teaching and
composition. In 1910 he moved to Medford, Massachusetts, where he lived out
his remaining 25 years in some degree of aristocratic splendour, composing,
farming and breeding thoroughbreds.
Loeffler was an avid reader and a great connoisseur of literature, painting (his
portrait was done by his close friend John Singer Sargent) and food. He was not
particularly prolific as a composer, and frequently revised and reworked his
compositions. In 1901, while still working in the Boston Symphony, he composed
two rhapsodies for oboe, viola and piano, L'étang [= the pool] and La cornemuse
[= the bagpipe], dedicating them to two colleagues from the orchestra's woodwind
section. The Rhapsodies are reworkings of songs Loeffler had written three years
earlier to words by Maurice Rollinat. Here is a translation of the rather gloom-
laden poem L'étang, which Loeffler quotes as a preface:
Full of very old, blind fish, under a lowering sky rumbling with
thunder, the pool reveals the splashing horror of its gloom between
rushes centuries old.
Over there goblins illumine one more black, sinister, unbearable
marsh; but in this lonely place all that gives the pool away is the
croaking of consumptive frogs.
At this very moment the moon peeps through, seems to peer at itself so
fantastically, as it were, to look at its spectral face,
its flat nose, strange undulating teeth, a death's head lit from within
about to gaze at itself in a clouded mirror.
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Time
study
posing
was not
ked his
posed
nemuse
Though of necessity not a cheerful piece, Loeffler's Rhapsody manages to avoid
the unremitting oppressiveness of the poem and occasionally achieves a lightness
not unlike Debussy.
Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op.47
Sostenuto assai - Allegro ma non troppo
Scherzo: Molto vivace
Andante cantabile
Finale: Vivace
Robert Schumann
(1810-1856)
Schumann originally studied law at Leipzig University, but was attracted more by
philosophy and music. He had great natural facility at the piano and in 1830
began lessons with the celebrated teacher Friedrich Wieck. He made swift
progress, and it seemed as though the virtuoso's glittering career, on which he
had set his heart, was in his
grasp.
But in 1832 he permanently damaged his right hand by practice using a
contraption of his own devising designed to improve independence of the fingers.
All the energy he had so far put into practising, he now transferred to
composition. Predictably, his early works were for the piano: the first
published opuses are piano works and they straddle the 1830s.
When Schumann first arrived in Leipzig, Wieck's daughter Clara was still a girl,
and Schumann looked elsewhere for romantic attachments. But as Clara grew up,
he fell in love with her, and the couple planned to marry. Wieck refused his
consent, but, with the help of the courts, they were married on 12 September
1840, the day before Clara's 21st birthday.
The prospect of marriage to the woman he loved brought a change in Schumann's
compositional output: the year 1840 was devoted almost exclusively to song,
including some of the greatest works in the Lieder repertory the Eichendorff
Liederkreis, Op.39, and the song cycles Frauenliebe und -leben and Dichterliebe.
In 1841 it was the turn of orchestral music the First Symphony and the
Phantasie that was to become the first movement of the Piano Concerto.
In 1842 Schumann threw himself into chamber music, composing in that year
alone the three String Quartets, Op.41, the Piano Quintet, Op.44, and this Piano
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Quartet. These two piano works are both in the key of E flat and are frequently
coupled together and compared. The Quintet is the more popular work, though
not with string players, who too often find themselves tied to doubling music
already in the piano part. In this respect the Quartet is the more accomplished
work and much closer to the ideal of chamber music.
The main idea of the opening Allegro is foreshadowed in the movement's slow
introduction. Both could easily be mistaken for Beethoven, but the bulk of the
movement is unmistakably Schumann. The Scherzo that follows is fleet-footed,
staccato and subdued in tone and dynamic, much in the style of his friend
Mendelssohn; but it is a typical Schumann double scherzo, with two trio sections,
the second combining characteristic rhythmic displacement with further
development of the scherzo matcrial.
The slow movement is a lyrical Schumann intermezzo, a reminder, perhaps, that
the composer had spent the year before last composing nothing but songs.
Towards the end, Schumann directs the cellist to tune the bottom C string down a
tone, so it can play the bottom B flat, over which the other instruments play
around with a shifting chord containing the seeds of the opening theme of the
following movement. The Finale begins with a flourish in fugato style,
appropriately enough for a movement abounding in contrapuntal trickery of the
wittiest kind.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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end
ODS
a
the
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, 5 February 1999
Mozart
Schubert
Brahms
William Baines
Rawsthorne
Chopin
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
Stenhammar
Grieg
Sibelius
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 min Op.27
Quartet in D minor, Op.56 (Voces intimae)
Also in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall starting at 8.00
Wednesday, 20 January 1999
Capricorn
Programme includes Bartók's Contrasts, Mozart's Quintet for piano and wind
and Brahms G minor Piano Quartet
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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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rough
ciety
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
Mr N. Lange §
Canon & Mrs J.S. Pearson
Mr & Mrs L.W. Robinson §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs I. Stanley §
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
Dr & Mrs G.M.A. Turner §
Mr R. Wilkinson §
Mr & Mrs B. Mattinson § Mr J.C. Miles
Mr G.C. Morcom §
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NEMS
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 §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mrs G. Morcom §
Mr B. Richards S
Registered Charity No.700302
Mr & Mrs D. Rowlands
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Mrs D.C. Summers §
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
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
BURTHWICK
*(BMS 3/2/7(1)
OF HI
TORICAL
er
RESEARCH
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BMS
YORK
Sarah Beth Briggs
(piano)
Friday, 5 February 1999
Programme: £1.00
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Our March Concert
Following the severe storm damage to the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, the
University of York have now relocated all the concerts which were to have taken
place there during the spring term. Accordingly the final concert of our season,
the Yggdrasil Quartet on Thursday 11 March, will again take place in Heslington
Church: those inadequately upholstered are advised to bring cushions.
Advertising our Concerts
The bigger the audience we can attract to BMS concerts, the more money there
will be for the concerts budget, which means we would be able to afford artists we
can at present only dream of attracting. You can help. You must know of places
where our posters could be seen by potential new audience. Posters for our next
concert are available in the foyer: help yourself and help the Society.
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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taken
500
aces
next
Hee
would
tee
do
BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
78th Season
Friday, 5 February 1999
University Central Hall
SARAH BETH BRIGGS
(piano)
Mozart
Schubert
Brahms
William Baines
Rawsthorne
Chopin
Rondo in D, K.485
Sonata in A minor, K.310
Sonata in A, D.664
INTERVAL
Intermezzo, Op.118 No.2
Rhapsody, Op.119 No.4
The Chimes
Bagatelles
Fantasy, Op.49
For the sake of others in the audience, please turn off all
alarms on watches, calculators etc. before the concert starts,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
BAS
YORK
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SARAH BETH BRIGGS
Sarah Beth Briggs was born in 1972 and began playing the piano at the age of
four. She won third prize in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition in
1984, the youngest finalist they had ever had. In 1987 she won first prize in the
YTV Young Musicians awards, and in the following year she was joint winner of
the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg.
Ms Briggs was a long-standing pupil of Denis Matthews and has also studied with
the Swiss pianist and teacher Edith Fischer as well as with John Lill, Peter Dono-
hoe and Radu Lupu.
As something of a local celebrity Ms Briggs is well-known to BMS audiences: she
last played for us seven seasons ago, in January 1992. It is a pleasure and a fasci-
nation to be able to invite her back and witness her development as an artist. We
would like to thank Ms Briggs for agreeing to programme a work by William
Baines to help us celebrate the centenary of perhaps our most illustrious founding
father.
PROGRAMME NOTES
Rondo in D major, K.485
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
(1756-1791)
As the year 1786 began, Mozart was at probably the peak of his fame: a calendar
had just been published adorned with silhouettes of Viennese notables, amongst
whom Mozart now figured. He was also at his busiest. He was hard at work on
the opera The Marriage of Figaro and had to break off to provide the music for
the one-act comedy Der Schauspieldirektor, a satire on the problems besetting a
theatrical producer, which the Emperor Joseph II wanted to mount in a double bill
with Salieri's First the music, then the words in the Orangery at Schönbrunn Pal-
ace to entertain the governors-general of the Austrian Netherlands. That score
was completed on 3 February, only four days before the Orangery performance,
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of
4
T
but the double bill was such a success it was repeated three times at the Kärtnertor
Theatre at the end of the month.
Mozart put the finishing touches to the score of Figaro, which he had been work-
ing on since October 1785, on 29 April 1786, only two days before the first per-
formance. Remember, too, that Mozart wasn't just the composer: he also com-
bined the roles of conductor and repetiteur and spent much of April in rehearsal.
If this pressure wasn't enough, Mozart also composed three piano concertos over
this period the E flat (No.22, K.482), A major (No.23, K.488) and C minor
(No.24, K.491), dated, respectively, 16 December 1785, 2 March and 24 March
1786.
In the white heat of all this creativity came the little D major Rondo, K.485. The
autograph is dated 10 January, and an inscription suggests Mozart originally
composed it for a lady pianist, probably a pupil: the dedication has been erased,
but enough of it is legible to show it was written for a Mademoiselle "Charlotte de
Wü...". The Rondo is dominated by its opening theme, which Mozart had used a
few months earlier as a throwaway subsidiary theme in the rondo finale of his G
minor Piano Quintet, K.478. Even then the theme was not original: J.C. Bach
had used one very much like it in a D major Quintet - not the one the Ovid played
at our last concert, but one of the Op.11 set.
Piano Sonata in A minor, K.310
Allegro maestoso
Andate cantabile con espressione
Presto
Mozart
Back in 1777 the Mozarts, father and son, were still in the service of the Arch-
bishop of Salzburg. Leopold was reasonably contented, but Wolfgang was
champing at the bit. He was stuck in a post nowhere near commensurate with his
gifts, or indeed his reputation: he was 21 and saw no early prospect of advance-
ment in Salzburg. The only possibility was to find himself another court position
somewhere: a free-lance career was neither secure nor reputable enough yet to be
a viable option. And so Leopold petitioned the Archbishop for leave of absence
for both of them to travel: Leopold plainly mistrusted his son's penchant for fri-
volity and suspected him of fecklessness. The request was too much for the Arch-
bishop (Europe was still much exercised by the rights and wrongs of the American
revolution of the year before, and this was no time to appear "uppity") who re-
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sponded by dismissing them both. It was a tricky moment, but Leopold managed
to eat enough humble pie to get himself reinstated. Wolfgang, however, did set
out, and, since he plainly wasn't to be trusted on his own, mother came too. They
set out for Paris at dawn on Tuesday 23 September 1777.
Leopold's fears weren't entirely groundless. Mozart and his mother travelled via
Munich and Augsburg, in both of which he gave concerts, to Mannheim, where
they arrived on 30 October. And there they stayed for several months, to Leo-
pold's increasing frustration. Mozart was having a good time: there were many
excellent musicians in Mannheim, which possessed possibly the largest and most
famous orchestra in the world at the time; there was a scatty girl cousin who loved
fun almost as much as Mozart himself, and he was desperately in love with the
young singer Aloisia Weber, with whose parents Mozart and his mother were
lodging. Mozart wrote much music and gave concerts in Mannheim, but there
was no suitable opening for him at the court, and he finally gave into his father's
pleas and left for Paris on 14 March 1778, arriving nine days later.
Again Mozart wrote music, gave concerts, took on pupils. But once more he con-
spicuously failed to find a suitable post. Part of the problem, as a spy reported
back to Leopold, was that Mozart was simply not pushy enough: he relied on his
talent alone and as far as the powers that be were concerned his voice was
drowned out by the clamouring of mediocrity. Worse still, Mozart's mother died,
aged 57, on 3 July. Mozart stuck it out in Paris until the end of September, when
he made his way back home via Strasbourg, Mannheim and Munich: he arrived in
Salzburg on 15 January 1779, and two days later petitioned the Archbishop to
give him the post of court organist, the previous incumbent having died less than
four weeks earlier. He was appointed on 25 February, and his new salary was
three times what he had been getting before he went to Paris.
The A minor Sonata, K.310, was composed during Mozart's time in Paris. It was
the last of three Sonatas Mozart wrote on this trip (the other two were composed
in Mannheim in October/November 1777) to supplement his existing repertoire of
six sonatas, all of them composed in Munich back in 1775. The A minor Sonata
stands out in Mozart's output. It is one of only two piano sonatas in a minor key
and one of the very few works he wrote in A minor - he seemed to prefer G minor
and D minor for such charged, emotional music. It is tempting to read in such an
overt display of feelings Mozart's reaction to the death of his mother, but there is
no evidence to connect them, and the leap forward in expressivity could also be
the result of acquaintance with music by others - notably one Hüllmandel, whose
recently-published sonatas Mozart had just come across and warmly recom-
mended to his father in a letter of 3 July 1778 from Paris.
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The first movement with its insistent rhythm and occasionally crunchy harmonies
is of a symphonic drama Mozart had rarely if ever achieved up to this point. The
F major slow movement begins peacefully enough, but gocs on to a tortured mid-
dle section that would have been unthinkable without the context of the first
movement. The predominant mood of the finale is one of restlessness bordering
on anxiety. Even the episode in the major key cannot dispel the shadows, and the
music slips unresisting back into the minor where it stays until the very end - not
something Mozart did very often.
[Oh, and if you're wondering what happened about Aloisia Weber, she rejected
him and married someone else: Mozart ended up (August 1782) with her younger
sister Constanze, who would have been just 16 when Mozart and his mother
lodged with them in Mannheim.]
Piano Sonata in A major, D.664
Allegro moderato
Andante
Allegro
Franz Schubert
(1797-1828)
Schubert wrote piano sonatas throughout his composing career, from his late teens
until only a couple of months before his death. Piano sonatas were, of course, a
highly marketable product, which explains Schubert's efforts, but he plainly found
the form difficult: against 11 complete works there are 12 which are incomplete,
ranging from fragments of a few dozen bars to torsos of several complete move-
ments (plus two sonatas we know of from documentary evidence but which are
now lost). Of all this output he managed to get only three published during his
lifetime.
The A major Sonata D.664 was for many years thought to belong, with two of
those published sonatas, to 1825, but more recent scholarship has identified it
with a sonata which documentary evidence has Schubert writing for a pupil called
Josephine von Koller during the summer of 1819, which Schubert spent with the
singer Johann Michael Vogl in Steyr, Upper Austria. It was during this same visit
that Schubert was commissioned by a local musician to compose the work we
know as the Trout Quintet, D.667, also in A major.
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Possibly because of its recipient, the A major Sonata is a genial work on a some-
what less ambitious scale than many of Schubert's sonatas, and perhaps for this
very reason it has remained a favourite since its publication. It first appeared in
print only a year after Schubert's death, as Op.120: interestingly, it preceded pub-
lication of the great sonatas from Schubert's final months by a good ten years.
D.664 takes full advantage of A major's ability to sound "sunny": the first move-
ment, for instance, keeps up this feeling of good humour despite a stormy outburst
of octaves in the development. The D major Andante is dominated by its opening
rhythmic figure and spends much of its course dealing with the implications of the
"wrong note" with which it starts. The finale is a typically Schubertian juxtaposi-
tion of the carefree and the portentous.
INTERVAL
Coffee and drinks are available in the foyer.
Intermezzo in A, Op.118 No.2
Rhapsody in E flat, Op.119 No.4
Johannes Brahms
(1833-1897)
Brahms was a formidable pianist, as anyone who has confronted his 51 technical
exercises must acknowledge. And the piano figures large in his output - in con-
certos and chamber music and accompanying singers. Curiously, though, he
didn't write solo piano music all through his career: it seems to have come in
three bursts, the last two of them particularly short. The bulk of his solo music
(two thirds by volume) belongs to the years 1852-63, young man's music, the
work of a composer who harboured visions of himself as a keyboard lion. But by
the time he moved to Vienna in the early 1860s and took on various posts there,
he evidently no longer felt the need: in any case he seems to have developed a
repugnance for giving solo recitals. He then wrote nothing (arrangements ex-
cepted) for solo piano for 15 years, until the 8 Piano Pieces, Op.76 (which Artur
Pizarro played for us five seasons ago), and 2 Rhapsodies, Op.79. Why he should
1
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()
)
))
)
have taken up solo piano music again in this fashion in 1878/9 is not known for
sure, though his interest may have been rekindled by work on the B flat Piano
Concerto. Then came another gap of 13 years, until in 1892, in a sudden burst, he
produced 20 new pieces spread over the opus numbers 116 to 119. They were his
last solo piano pieces.
With only three exceptions each of these late pieces bears one of two titles: capric-
cio for the fast ones and intermezzo for the slow. Intermezzo is a strange name
for a free-standing piece. Originally it designated music, usually of lesser signifi-
cance, joining (or perhaps separating) more important stuff, for instance orches-
tral music written to cover a scene change in an opera: Schumann, who did more
than anyone to launch Brahms' career, used the title for the slow movement of his
Piano Concerto, a beautiful movement, but straightforward and meant as a period
of repose between the tensions of the first movement and hi-jinx of the finale.
Brahms had used the term similarly in his early music. But for a free-standing
piece it begs the question: just what is it separating? Perhaps it was just Brahms'
peculiar sense of humour, a way of playing down the importance of the pieces:
and it's no more illogical than a free-standing prelude. Whatever the reason, 14
of these late pieces bear the title, and the A major Op.118 No.2 is one of the love-
liest, containing some of Brahms' most serene and direct music. Why Brahms
should have plumped for "Rhapsody" for Op.119 No.4, the last of these late
pieces, rather than "capriccio" is also a mystery, unless it is a reflection of the
piece's passion, an echo of the full-blooded Rhapsodies of Op.79. It begins ro-
bustly and resolutely in E flat major, very much in the manner of the early
Brahms, but ends in the minor key in a gesture of passionate defiance, in a way
that has tempted many to the conclusion that it was a deliberate farewell to solo
piano music.
The Chimes
William Baines
(1899-1922)
Like all types of historian, musicologists occasionally like to relax and play a
game of "What if?". If Mozart had lived to the same age as Haydn he could have
attended, even participated in, performances of the late Beethoven Quartets, the
Mendelssohn Octet, even the Symphonie fantastique. Similarly Schubert could
have used his newly-acquired bus pass to make the short trip to Munich for the
premieres of Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger, while Gershwin could
have given Jesus Christ Superstar a miss and gone partying.
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These three figures, though, all died in their 30s with maturity comfortably
gained. The speculation grows more intense and the possibilities temptingly lim-
itless when the artist in question dies a decade earlier than this, when the pointers
to maturity have begun to appear, but with no guarantee as to where they will
lead, if anywhere.
Such a figure is William Baines, born a few weeks short of 100 years ago. Baines
was largely self-taught, which means that what he learned he learned from music
other people's compositions and his own experimentation - rather than teachers
and textbooks. And since the music in question included some of the most ad-
vanced works of the time, not to mention the fact that much of his experimenta-
tion took place in that fecund ground of a piano in a silent cinema, the results
were striking. Unfortunately Baines' health was poor. He was called up in 1918,
just in time to fall victim to the flu epidemic and spend 15 of his 17 weeks mili-
tary service in a hospital bed. He never really recovered and died of consumption
in November 1922.
Apart from the centenary, there's another reason for us to feature a work by
Baines this season - he was one of our founders. He was born in Horbury, now a
suburb in the conurbation of Leeds transfixed by the M1, but then a village to the
west and south of Wakefield. The family moved to York, and it was there that
Baines did most of his composing and got involved with the BMS.
The original British Music Society was founded in 1918 as a national society
dedicated to raising musical standards in this country and, one suspects, purging
it once and for all of the taint of Land ohne Musik [= land without music], by en-
couraging and supporting creation, performance, education, dissemination and
information. Such aims need a more hands-on approach than a London-based
executive could manage, however, and the intention always was that the Society
would work at ground level through various local centres. The founder was actu-
ally a Huddersfield man, and Leeds was one of the earliest centres to be estab-
lished. Before long musicians and music lovers in York began to see the advan-
tages of belonging. A meeting was held on Wednesday 9 February 1921 where
the aims of the Society were explained by a member from Leeds and a provisional
committee set up to oversee the establishment of a York Centre. Baines was pres-
ent at the meeting and paid his subscription on the spot, automatically becoming a
member of the provisional committee. The inaugural meeting took place on
Thursday 17 March 1921 in the Guildhall. There was a lecture by the Society's
founder and Hon. Director followed by a home-produced musical programme, the
highlight of which was Baines playing some of his own piano music: as the York-
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ers
ad-
on
by
wa
the
that
ciety
en-
and
ased
ciety
actu-
stab
here
ional
ing a
e on
mety's
shire Herald put it the next day "He was loudly encored, the audience being im-
pressed alike by his talented compositions and brilliant executive ability."
The York Centre frequently gave concerts by the members themselves, a useful
way of getting the income it needed to finance its educational work, and Baines
was always a willing participant. But not, of course, for long: he died when he
was only 23 and the York Centre barely 20 months. The national British Music
Society eventually became a victim of the Depression and finally gave up the
ghost in 1933. The York Centre wavered briefly, but decided its purpose was too
important to countenance disbanding without a struggle: it resolved to soldier on
as the "British Music Society of York", and as you can see flourishes to this day.
Thanks to the hard work and high-mindedness of people such as William Baines.
Chimes was composed in York in August 1917 and was published in 1921 as the
first of Four Sketches.
Bagatelles
1
2
3
4
Allegro -
Allegretto
Presto non assai
Lento
Alan Rawsthorne
(1905-1971)
I sometimes feel that Rawsthorne hasn't anything like the reputation his music
deserves. It's partly that he somehow acquired a quite unfounded reputation for
gritty and difficult music and partly that he was suspected of being a camp-
follower of the serialists. It is true that he flirted with serialism, but it was never
an affair of passion: he stayed long enough to learn all he needed about it and
about himself and then broke it off - long before he was tempted into an unsuit-
able and doomed marriage. He deserves to be better remembered, if only for the
piano concertos - medal-winning works in a field where Britain has a long history
of also-rans.
Rawsthorne studied the piano himself: he was a pupil of Frank Merrick at the
Royal Manchester College of Music (as it was then) and also studied abroad, with
Egon Petri. The Bagatelles date from July 1938 and are amongst Rawthorne's
earliest published music. He dedicated the set to Gordon Green, a fellow student
under Merrick at the RMCM and so close a friend that he had acted as
Rawsthorne's best man in 1934. It was Gordon Green, later to have a world
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reputation as a teacher, who gave the first performance, in an Oslo Radio broad-
cast of August 1938.
Despite their deprecatory title, the Bagatelles form a carefully-constructed, inti-
mately-linked set. Like many of Rawsthorne's pieces they come to an end in C.
Rawsthorne, who was, shall we say, no stranger to the bottle, was once asked
about this curious stylistic trait and joked that the note C was the easiest to find on
the piano in a state of intoxication.
The first two Bagatelles are played without a break. The third is a fleeting
scherzo while the fourth is a slow piece beginning like a two-part invention.
Fantasy, Op.49
Frédéric Chopin
(1810-1849)
Possibly the happiest time of Chopin's adult life was the main stretch of his rela-
tionship with the novelist Aurore Dudevant, who wrote under the pseudonym
George Sand. They had met through Liszt in the autumn of 1836, but Chopin was
initially far from taken with her. But he changed his opinion in 1837 and by the
summer of 1838 they had become lovers. They remained "an item" until 1847
when Chopin was drawn into squabbles between Sand and her grown-up children,
picked the "wrong" side and was given his marching orders. But between 1838
and 1844 Chopin was happy, living with Sand partly in Paris and partly at her
country estate of Nohant, near the city of Chateauroux, which is as close to the
exact centre of France as one can get without surveying equipment.
The Fantasy Op.49 belongs to the middle of this period, to the summer of 1841.
By this stage in his career Chopin was composing only in the summers, which
were spent at Nohant. Back in Paris, during the winter, there were just too many
distractions for Chopin to work as he preferred to. Which accounts for the steep
decline in his productivity over his last decade.
Chopin was a renowned improviser, and this was how he liked to work when
composing, trying out ideas at the piano, constantly experimenting. There are
those who insist that "proper composers" should be able to compose in their
heads, but with Chopin composing at the keyboard brought distinct advantages: it
allowed him to experiment with structures suggested by his imagination and veri-
fied by his ear rather than dictated by textbook and calculation; and it resulted in
some of the most effective writing for the instrument ever committed to paper.
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1
e
th
20
re
it
T
in
The Fantasy ("Fantaisie" as it was called on publication in the same year of 1841)
is generally regarded as one of the finest works of Chopin's last decade. It is usu-
ally referred to as the Fantasy in F minor, but this is a gross simplification by
those who haven't looked beyond the first page. This is one of those Chopin
pieces, like the Second Scherzo, with two key centres. The Fantasy begins in F
minor and finishes in A flat major: almost all the work's drama is brought about
by the conflict between the necessity to prepare for the latter and the rearguard
action fought by the former. The music makes its first foray into A flat within the
first dozen bars, while F minor is still making its mark on the next to last page.
Chopin called the work "Fantasy" for the want of a better stylistic or structural
tag, but the music plainly unfolds against the background of a march: Chopin
marks it "Tempo di marcia" and at the work's most harmonically stable points the
march style becomes explicit. There is, however, a moment of great contrast, a
central Lento sostenuto, some two dozen bars of triple-time B major providing
some necessary calm amidst the storm.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The final concert in the 78th Season of the British Music Society of York,
presented in association with the Department of Music at the University, is the
following. Because of the damage to the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, it will now
take place in Heslington Church, beginning at 8 pm.
Thursday, 11 March 1999
Yggdrasil String Quartet
Stenhammar
Grieg
Sibelius
Quartet No.5 in C, Op.29 (Serenade)
Quartet in G minor, Op.27
Quartet in D minor, Op.56 (Voces intimae)
Also please note the following University concerts, both starting at 8.00
Wednesday, 10 February 1999 - Heslington Church
University Chamber Orchestra
guest conductor Alan Hacker
Music by Rossini, Matthew Roddie, Nielsen (Clarinet Concerto) and Brahms
Wednesday, 17 February 1999 - Central Hall
Nikolai Demidenko (piano)
An all-Beethoven programme, including the Diabelli Variations
ma
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D
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 §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Dr F.A. Jackson
Mr N. Lange §
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mr & Mrs L.W. Robinson
Mrs M.P. Rowntree §
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Dr & Mrs G.M.A. Turner §
Mr R. Wilkinson §
Mrs H.B. Wright §
Mr & Mrs B. Mattinson § Mr J.C. Miles
Mrs G. Morcom §
§
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs I. Stanley §
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
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 §
Registered Charity No.700302
Canon & Mrs J.S. Pearson
Mr & Mrs D. Rowlands
Mr M. Schatzberger
Mr R.D.C. Stevens §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Mr J.I. Watson
Mrs S. 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, YO30 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be
addressed to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO23 1JH.
2
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NEMS
NATIONAL FEDERATION 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.
DORTHWICK INSTITUTE
SMS 3/2/7 (2)
RESEARCH
*
OF HI
TORICAL
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by WrightDesign of Easingwold.
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BAS
YORK
Yggdrasil Quartet
Thursday, 11 March 1999
Programme: £1.00
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
The severe storm damage to the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall has provided the
Department of Music at the University with a host of complicated problems. The
Committee of the BMS of York would like to put on record its gratitude and
appreciation for all the Department has done for us over this difficult time. Their
speed, efficiency and attention to detail have been quite awesome, and we owe
them a debt of thanks. We would also like extend our thanks to the Reverend
Canon Geoffrey Hunter and all at Heslington Church for allowing us to use their
splendidly appropriate building for our January and March concerts.
The news
on the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, as this programme book goes to press, is that
it is hoped to have the hall back in use later this month.
Advertising our Concerts
The bigger the audience we can attract to BMS concerts, the more money there
will be for the concerts budget, which means we would be able to afford artists we
can at present only dream of attracting. You can help. You must know of places
where our posters could be seen by potential new audience. Posters for our next
concert are available in the foyer: help yourself and help the Society.
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.
The late George Summers
The Committee was grateful, and touched, to receive a donation from the
collection taken at the funeral of one of our stalwart members, George Summers.
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BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
78th Season
Thursday, 11 March 1999
Heslington Church
YGGDRASIL STRING QUARTET
Henrik Peterson & Per Öman violins
Robert Westlund viola
Per Nyström cello
Stenhammar Quartet No.5 in C,Op.29 (Serenade)
Sibelius Quartet in D minor, Op.56 (Voces intimae)
INTERVAL
Grieg Quartet in G minor, Op.27
BAS
YORK
For the sake of others in the audience, please turn off all
alarms on watches, calculators etc. before the concert starts,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
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YGGDRASIL QUARTET
The Yggdrasil Quartet was formed in 1990 by four Swedish musicians, all of
them from the Stockholm Royal Academy of Music. The Quartet then studied
with the composer Gyorgy Kurtag and with Norbert Brainin, leader of the
Amadeus Quartet. They gained an international reputation after winning prizes
in the London International String Quartet Competition and the Melbourne Inter-
national Chamber Music Competition.
In 1995 the Quartet embarked on a four-year project, a unique partnership be-
tween the City and University of Aberdeen and the Scottish Arts Council, in
which the group lived and performed in Aberdeen for several months each year.
They have made several recordings of Scandinavian works and have recently em-
barked on a complete Shostakovich cycle. 1999 sees their debut tour of Australia.
The Quartet is committed to playing Nordic repertory hence tonight's all-
Scandinavian programme - but their virtuosity has inspired many contemporary
composers to write for them, including Nigel Osborne and Sir Peter Maxwell
Davies.
The members of the Quartet all play on instruments provided by the Järnåker
Foundation of Stockholm, under an instrument-loan scheme designed to help mu-
sicians who are Swedish or have an important career there. The violins are by
dalla Costa and Grancino, the viola by J. Fendt and the cello by Stoss. The loan is
apparently made on condition the group stays together.
As for the rather fearsome-looking name Yggdrasil, it comes from Scandinavian
mythology. It is the tree of life, knowledge, time and space, an evergreen ash
whose roots and branches encompass heaven, earth and hell. In the tree live an
eagle, a squirrel and a quartet of stags.
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PROGRAMME NOTES
String Quartet No.5 in C, Op.29 (Serenade)
Allegro molto con spiritu
Ballata: Allegro scherzando
Scherzo: Allegro vivace
Finale: Allegro molto
Wilhelm Stenhammar
(1871-1927)
Life can't have been too easy for Swedish string quartets before the advent of
railways and motorised transport. Touring inland venues was difficult, expensive
and, for many months, plain impossible. There were few opportunities for musi-
cal "day jobs" - hardly any orchestras or conservatories and only a limited supply
of private pupils. Small wonder that many players well into the 20th century -
moonlighted in the "orchestras" of fashionable restaurants, or that, given this mi-
lieu, their playing became careless and they laid the foundation of a drink prob-
lem.
One of the earliest established string quartets in Sweden was the group lead by
Tor Aulin (1866-1914). This was formed in 1886 and gave its first concert early
the next year, but didn't adopt the name Aulin Quartet for some months. It was at
the beginning of 1894 that the composer Wilhelm Stenhammar appeared as a pi-
anist with the Quartet, and from that day for almost a dozen years he was effec-
tively a fifth member of the group.
Wilhelm Stenhammar was perhaps the most important figure of his generation in
Swedish music. He was the son of a composer, but this contributed little to his
musical education as the boy had only just turned four when his father died. The
tradition was there, however, and Stenhammar began composing in his childhood.
He studied piano, organ and theory in Stockholm and after graduation continued
his musical education in Berlin, but he had little formal training in composition,
in which he could be regarded as largely self-taught.
Stenhammar's professional career was as a conductor and pianist. He conducted
the Philharmonic Society in Stockholm from 1897 to 1900, then, after some years
as a free-lance, some of which (1906-7) he spent in Italy, he became conductor of
the Göteborg [it seems more sensible to call the city by its Swedish name than the
German "Gothenburg"] Symphony Orchestra, remaining there for 15 seasons
(1907-23). He returned to Stockholm to take charge of the Opera Orchestra, but
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was soon forced to resign through ill-health. He also frequently toured the coun-
try as a pianist, doing much to raise the musical consciousness, standards and
taste of Sweden.
Stenhammar's association with the Aulin Quartet was an important one for
Swedish music. It allowed the group enormous scope in programming: their con-
certs typically included two string quartets and another piece, which could be
anything from a violin sonata up to a full piano quintet. And he composed for
them: they premiered his First Quartet in January 1895, the Second in November
1896, an F minor Quartet, later withdrawn, in February 1898 and the published
Third Quartet in April 1903.
By this stage, however, the Aulin Quartet had lost some of its drawing power: the
public's head had been turned by the electrifying performances of the visiting
Brussels Quartet. The Aulin Quartet went into a kind of abeyance: Stenhammar
went to Italy, taking with him the start of a new A minor string quartet. When he
returned it was to his new post at Göteborg. Two years later, in 1909, the asso-
ciation was revived: he persuaded Aulin to relieve him of some of his conducting
workload and two other members of the Quartet to join the ranks of the orchestra.
At bout this time he returned to the A minor Quartet which he finished in time for
it to be premiered in 1910.
But this was effectively the end of the Aulin Quartet - at least under that name.
Aulin himself developed paralysis of the left arm and hand, caused by over-
stretching his short fourth (as string players call the little) finger, and in 1912
went down with a kidney disorder which finally claimed him two years later. The
remainder of the Quartet, however, soldiered on. The second violinist took over
as leader, and a new violinist was drafted in: the resulting group gave its first con-
cert in 1913, as the Göteborg Quartet. (Interestingly, the Göteborg Quartet, its
changing members always drawn from Göteborg Orchestra, continued like the
philosophers axe until the early 1960s, though some incarnations did prefer to go
under the current leader's namc.)
Stenhammar completed the Fifth String Quartet, his last, at the end of July 1910,
six months after the first performance of the Fourth. It was again composed for
the Aulin Quartet, but the problems with the group meant they couldn't take it on.
It wasn't until 26 January 1916 that the Göteborg Quartet, containing three mem-
bers of the Aulin, gave the premiere. The work's attractive balance of fluently-
mastered classical quartet writing and traditional Swedish turns of phrase made it
immediately popular, and it was soon transcribed for string orchestra by no less a
person than Carl Nielsen.
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Another reason for the work's popularity is the Ballata second movement, a set of
variations on a Swedish nursery rhyme about a knight called Finn Komfusenfej
and a creature that seems to have wandered straight out of Widecombe Fair. Finn
wants to get married, but he has first to ask his intended's parents, her brother
and her four sisters before he can ask the poor girl herself. Stenhammar makes
each character the subject of a variation. Finally they all climb on to an im-
mensely long horse and gallop off, until they get to the 12-mile forest, at which
point the horse gives in and poor old Finn has to take its place. Stenhammar
heard the song from his grandfather, but the version he remembered had Finn
dying at the end - hence the melancholy coda to the movement.
String Quartet in D minor, Op.56 (Voces intimae)
Andante - Allegro molto moderato Vivace
Adagio di molto
Allegretto (ma pesante)
Allegro
Jean Sibelius
(1865-1957)
Sibelius is unquestionably the greatest composer Finland has ever produced, and
one of the finest symphonists of all time. He was the son of an army surgeon, and
the family, like many in the country, was Swedish-speaking, but he was and re-
mained a committed Finn, as is clearly shown by works such as the nationalistic
Finlandia and the host of instrumental and vocal pieces based on the Finnish na-
tional epic, the Kalevala.
Sibelius received a classical education and went to university in Helsinki to study
law, but his obvious talents were for composition and the violin, and he soon
abandoned university for conservatory. He also studied in Berlin and, more
valuably, Vienna.
Chamber music was played in Sibelius' family circle, and, at the Helsinki Conser-
vatory, he was a member of the student quartet, so it is no surprise that his early
pieces were largely chamber works. They include several string quartets, one of
which, in B flat major, he dignified with the opus number 4.
And yet, the field where Sibelius' real mastery lay was in the unfolding of time
and in the evolution of musical material. This works best on the larger canvas of
the orchestra, and so it was in symphonies and tone-poems that he discovered his
natural element. Indeed, after the first orchestral pieces appeared, the only sig-
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nificant chamber work (in other words, excluding the late salon pieces for violin
and piano) is the D minor String Quartet of 1908-9.
During the first decade of the 20th century, Sibelius made several trips to this
country: he seems to have had some affection for it possibly due to the lavish
hospitality of Granville Bantock. During his second visit to London, in 1908,
Sibelius suffered increasingly from pains in the throat, which he feared was throat
cancer. On his return to Finland, in May 1908, he underwent two operations,
during which a malignant tumour was successfully removed. The fear and anxi-
ety he experienced are clearly mirrored in the two large-scale works dating from
this time the String Quartet and the compelling Fourth Symphony (1910-11).
The Quartet was begun in December 1908, almost as soon as Sibelius was prop-
erly recovered. He took it with him on his third trip to England that winter, and
completed it in London in March 1909. It remained his only mature string quar-
tet, though there were rumours that he was working on two others at the time of
the Fourth Symphony.
Like all the symphonies, Sibelius' D minor Quartet exhibits a powerful sense of
growth in its musical material, and masterly control of the lapse of time. Few
composers had managed to make so little material go so far, with every move both
unpredictable yet inevitable, since the late quartets of Beethoven.
The first movement, prefaced by a short Andante dialogue between first violin and
cello, is a taut sonata form with many modal inflections to its melodic lines. The
scherzo that follows draws almost all its material from the first movement, though
the transformation is so clever that only a direct quotation in the closing bars
makes it obvious.
Shortly after its opening, the third movement breaks off for three distant, ethereal
chords of E minor, marked ppp. These were marked "Voces Intimae" in a score
sent to a friend, and presumably are the origin of the work's subtitle "Intimate
Voices" - which the classically-educated Sibelius gave in Latin.
The relatively open fourth movement again draws most of its material from earlier
movements, principally the first and third; while the finale, according to Robert
Layton:
strikes the epic note of the tone-poems, and in fact moves with a sense of momentum
that almost reminds one of Lemminkainen's Return. It is an exciting and exhilarating
movement.
B
1
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e
3
e
C
1
>
INTERVAL
Coffee (80p a cup) is available in the "foyer", back through the door you came in
and to the right.
String Quartet in G minor, Op.27
Un poco Andante - Allegro molto ed agitato
Romanze: Andantino
Intermezzo: Allegro molto marcato
Finale: Lento - Presto al Saltarello
[principal tempo markings only]
Edvard Grieg
(1843-1907)
Like all the arts, music is constantly renewing itself, coming up with new styles,
new -isms, some, it has to be said, more "new", more interesting, more durable
than others. One of the more prominent -isms in much of the second half of the
19th century was nationalism, where composers reacted against the cosmopolitan
anonymity of an academic style by colouring it with melodic, harmonic and/or
rhythmic patterns derived from the folk music of their native countries. This
wasn't just a musical phenomenon, of course: nationalism was to the fore in
nearly every manifestation of cultured life. It was an age of sprawling, suffocating
empires, when, for engulfed peoples, any symbol of national identity was precious.
Many composers from Eastern Europe, for instance, brought to their compositions
the taste of a homeland swallowed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. One of the
textbook examples of nationalism in music is the voice of Norway, Edvard Grieg.
Norwegian artists had more reason than many to make this voyage of national
discovery. Since the middle ages, Norway had been an appendage of Denmark,
until 1814 when it was ceded to Sweden. Though it gained some measure of self-
government in 1837 and again in 1884, it wasn't until 1905 that the country once
more became an independent kingdom. For someone brought up, as Grieg was,
amongst the 19th-century middle class, culture and even the language itself was
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more Danish than Norwegian. But there were an increasing number of national-
ists looking for cultural validation through the language and folk traditions of the
Norwegian peasants.
It was not until the 1860s that Grieg seriously came across the folk music of Nor-
way, through collections like those of Ludvig Mathias Lindeman and the enthusi-
asm of the violinist Ole Bull. A still greater spur was his friendship with the mu-
sical white hope of the nationalist movement, Rikard Nordraak. The two young
men were fired with the cause of forging a national Norwegian style, a responsi-
bility that fell heavily on Grieg's shoulders when Nordraak died in 1866, aged
only 23.
From Norwegian folk music Grieg took many turns of melodic phrase (one of
which is almost a Grieg fingerprint - a three-note falling phrase dropping one
note then two) and of harmony, plus rhythms associated with such national dances
as the Halling and the Springdans. Grieg was also very forward-looking in the
way he used harmony, clearly influencing composers such as Debussy (whose own
G minor String Quartet is demonstrably modelled in part on Grieg's) and Ravel.
Grieg was at his best in smaller forms, in particular songs and piano pieces. Most
of his large-scale works are products of his early years and, with the exception of
his ever-popular Piano Concerto, they are amongst his least successful works.
Grieg himself was conscious of the fact: as you can imagine, he was put under
enormous pressure to produce another piano concerto, but, as he wrote to a disap-
pointed publisher, "Pegasus won't budge."
The exception to all this is his String Quartet, a work of his full maturity which
has many claims to being Grieg's finest large-scale composition. He wrote it in
1877/8, not long after the music which Ibsen had asked him to write for a produc-
tion of a newly-revised version of his weird play Peer Gynt. Six months after that
opening, Grieg was in Bayreuth to cover the first complete Ring cycle for a Ber-
gen paper. He was coming to perhaps the happicst and most productive period of
his life.
In June 1877 he rented a place house the Hardanger district, and he was so in-
spired by the place that he stayed not only to the end of summer, but over the
winter and right through to the autumn of 1878. It was in this idyllic setting and
happy mood that he wrote the String Quartet. He wrote about it to a Danish
friend:
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ne
ces
WI
Ost
S
Her
ch
in
at
r.
of
1
I have recently finished a string quartet which I still haven't heard. It is in G minor
and is not intended to bring trivialities to market. It strives towards breadth, soaring
flight and above all resonance for the instruments for which it is written. I needed to
do this as a study. Now I shall tackle another piece of chamber music; I think in that
way I shall find myself again. You can have no idea what trouble I had with the
forms, but this was because I was stagnating, and this in turn was in part on account
of a number of occasional works (Peer Gynt, Sigurd Jorsalfar and other horrors) and
in part on account of too much popularity. I have thought of saying "Farewell, shad-
ows" to all this - if it can be done.
The work is dominated by a motto theme stated right at the outset. Its melodic
shape incorporates the Grieg fingerprint already mentioned, but the form he uses
is a clear quotation from Sillemaend [= minstrels], the first of the Op.25 Songs to
texts by Ibsen. This motto theme act as the source of: the second subject of the
sonata-form first movement; the start of the stormy Allegro agitato that keeps
disturbing the calm of the B flat major Romanze which acts as the Quartet's slow
movement; (unmistakably) the theme of the scherzo - here travelling under the
name Intermezzo; and the slow introduction and major-key central section of the
wild, tarantella-like finale. Listen, too, for the obvious use of the Halling dance
style in the Intermezzo's contrasting "trio" section.
[Incidentally, if you've ever thought the name Grieg didn't look terribly Scandi-
navian, give yourself at least ten points. The composer's great-grandfather was a
Scot, with the surname spelled Greig, and the two intervening generations of the
paternal line - the composer's father and grandfather - both acted as British con-
sul in Bergen.]
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
Tonight's concert is the last in the 78th Season of the British Music Society of
York. All our concerts are presented in association with the University Depart-
ment of Music and take place in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, weather permit-
ting!
Our 79th season will begin in October. At present the programme is highly prob-
able, rather than definitive, but it looks like our first concert will be given on
Thursday 14 October 1999 by the flautist Elena Durán with the Almira Quartet.
A brochure containing full details of the 79th season will be sent out in the later
part of the summer. If you are a member, or have received mailings from us be-
fore, you will be hearing from us then. If you suspect you are not on our mailing
list, or have moved, do let a committee member know this evening, or write to our
secretary, Nigel Dick, whose address you will find at the end of this book.
Meanwhile, though, there is the Society's Annual General Meeting, which will
take place in late spring. The business part of this meeting will be followed, as
usual, by a short musical entertainment and food, to both of which members are
invited to bring guests. All current members will be receiving official notification
nearer the time.
Also in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall starting at 8.00
Wednesday, 12 May 1999
I Fagiolini
A celebration of the works of Monteverdi by this exciting early music group
Wednesday, 19 May 1999
Paul Nicholson (harpsichord & fortepiano)
Works by Byrd, J.S. & J.C. Bach, Muffat and Mozart
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pant
ermit
prob
t
NO OUT
das
are
ation
BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
President
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
Dr Francis Jackson
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 §
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Dr F.A. Jackson
Mr N. Lange §
Mr & Mrs B. Mattinson § Mr J.C. Miles
Mrs G. Morcom §
Mr G.C. Morcom §
§
Mr & Mrs L.W. Robinson
Mrs M.P. Rowntree §
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs I. Stanley S
Dr & Mrs G.M.A. Turner §
Mr R. Wilkinson §
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 §
Canon & Mrs J.S. Pearson
Registered Charity No.700302
Mr & Mrs D. Rowlands
Mr M. Schatzberger
Mr R.D.C. Stevens §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Mr J.I. Watson
Mrs S. 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, YO30 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be
addressed to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO23 1JH.
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NEMS
NATIONAL FEDERATION 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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Son
Our
sic
he
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JORTHWICK
SMS S/2/7 (5)
K
INSTITUTE
OF
TORICAL
RESEARCH
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03.
B'S!
YORK
Elena Durán
Almira String Quartet
Thursday, 14 October 1999
Programme: £1.00
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Advertising our Concerts
The bigger the audience we can attract to BMS concerts, the more money there will
be for the concerts budget, which means we would be able to afford artists we can
at present only dream of inviting. You can help. You must know of places where
our posters could be seen by potential new audience. Posters for our next concert
are available in the foyer: help yourself and help the Society.
Forthcoming Concerts
One of the ways we are increasing our publicity effort is by reciprocal advertising
with other concert promoters: when they have a concert coming up shortly we tell
our audience about it and they reciprocate. You will find details of these concerts
towards the end of this book.
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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2
1
s
#
be
#
B'S!
YORK
POL
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
79th Season
Thursday, 14 October 1999
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
Elena Durán (flute)
The Almira String Quartet
Simon Chalk & Ian Davidson violins
David Aspin viola Joseph Spooner cello
Haydn String Quartet in D, Op.76 No.5
Mozart Flute Quartet in D, K.285
INTERVAL
Moncayo Amatzinac
Janáček
String Quartet No.1 (Kreutzer Sonata)
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.
BMS!
YORK
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ELENA DURÁN
ALMIRA STRING QUARTET
Elena Durán is a tri-national: she was born in California, has lived in England for
over 20 years and has recently been granted Mexican citizenship. She studied the
flute initially in California, then, after two years as Lecturer in Flute at Stanford
University, came to study in Europe with Jean-Pierre Rampal, Aurèle Nicolet and
James Galway.
In recital Elena has a wide repertory and has appeared with many distinguished
colleagues, most frequently the pianist Józef Olechowski. She has appeared regu-
larly on television and radio in many countries: she has had her own popular radio
programme in Mexico, La flauta musica, and has recently presented a very success-
ful series of programmes on Classic FM under the title Music of the Americas.
Elena plays Brannen-Cooper flutes made specially for her by Brannen Borthers of
Boston, with a newly-devised scale by the renowned flute maker A.K. Cooper.
The Almira String Quartet was formed in 1991 and quickly established itself as
one of the country's most versatile young ensembles. Its extensive repertory ranges
from pre-classical to a number of specially-commissioned works and includes many
of the most popular pieces for the medium.
The Quartet's busy recital calendar is complemented by a programme of educa-
tional projects, which includes workshops, lectures and demonstrations in schools,
colleges, universities and community venues. It has an association with the School
of Composition and Creative Studies within the Birmingham Conservatoire.
The Almira Quartet is a young, vivacious ensemble whose work is characterised by
dedication, professionalism and good humour.
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PROGRAMME NOTES
String Quartet in D major, Op.76 No.5
Allegretto
Largo. Cantabile e mesto
Menuetto: Allegro
Finale: Presto
Joseph Haydn.
(1732-1809)
The string quartet - its composers, players and devotees - owe a great deal to Jo-
seph Haydn. He did not actually invent the form, but his efforts alone raised it
from relative obscurity, gave it cogent structure and sent it out into the world as the
powerfully expressive medium we now know. In Marion Scott's pretty words
"Haydn and the string quartet were young together".
It was in the mid 1750s, his early 20s, that Haydn first wrote for the combination of
two violins, viola and cello: he had been invited to a nobleman's country palace to
spend the summer teaching and while there provided "divertimentos" for enter-
tainment. At the time Haydn was still scratching a precarious living as a freelance
musician in Vienna. It was only in 1759 that he entered service with a certain
Count Morzin, but he was quickly snapped up by the Esterházys, one of the great
houses of the Austrian Empire, with whom he spent nearly all his long working
career.
The Esterházy musical establishment, which Haydn soon came to direct, was a
large one and had little use for quartets: the demand was always for symphonies,
operas, masses, and, bizarrely, trios involving the baryton, a curious stringed in-
strument that was a passion of Prince Nikolaus. But Haydn was allowed to accept
commissions from outside, provided he obtained permission first, and as his fame
spread throughout Austria and beyond to Paris, London and elsewhere requests
came flooding in.
Apart from symphonies, Haydn was most often asked for quartets. These were
popular with amateurs, but also had a vogue amongst the nobility. Not everyone
could afford a musical establishment on the opulent scale of the Esterházys, but a
string quartet was a respectable alternative with a burgeoning repertory.
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And so Haydn produced quartets by the half dozen to various commissions. In the
1790s alone he composed: six (Op.64) to join the similar set he had already written
for a former Eszterháza colleague, the violinist Johann Tost; six (published in two
parts as Op.71 and Op.74) for Count Apponyi; and six (Op.76) for Count Erdődy.
In 1799 or shortly before, he was commissioned to write another six by Prince
Lobkowitz, one of Beethoven's long-suffering patrons. Haydn set to work that
year, but produced only two Quartets, published in 1803 as his Op.77.
The fifth of the Op.76 set is in D major. Amongst quartet players it is sometimes
referred to as "the quartet with the Largo", or simply the "Largo". It's easy to see
why. Musicians by and large are happier with names and nicknames than catalogue
numbers, and, of the many notable features of this Quartet, the first that would
naturally spring to any player's mind is the glorious Largo slow movement. Not the
only Largo in the Haydn quartets, but pre-eminent amongst them. To begin with, it
is almost as long as the rest of the quartet put together and quite simply one of the
greatest, most profound and beautiful slow movements Haydn ever composed. And
it is unlikely any player would forget the key - F sharp major, which any (almost
any!) Grade 5 candidate will tell you has six sharps. As a key, many composers
have used it for its quality of radiance, even ecstasy, but Haydn has a different task
for it, as the tempo marking's Mesto [= sadly] testifies.
The first movement is unusual, too, its structure hovering tantalisingly between
sonata, variation and rondo forms. Its main idea has the dotted rhythm of a sicili-
ano, and, like a classical variation set, the movement closes with a faster coda, per-
haps a buffer between the main body of the movement, with its slowish Allegretto
speed, and the slow movement proper which follows.
The return to D major of the Minuet after the serenity of the Largo could have been
a disturbing experience, but Haydn turns it into the gentlest of bumps by not quite
cutting the cord: he starts the main opening theme with (allowing for the difference
in keys) the same four notes. The trio section slips into a D minor dominated by
the low grumbling of the cello.
If by this time you've been wondering what has happened to Haydn's legendary
high spirits, you are about to find out. The Presto Finale immediately grabs the
attention by opening exactly the way you'd expect it to end, before launching into
what seems one of the silliest, most inconsequential themes Haydn ever wrote; but
Haydn by this stage in his long career could do things with a silly, inconsequential
theme you just wouldn't credit.
Yo
bl
WI
pl
CC
t
m
W
S
1
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Quartet for flute and strings in D, K.285
Allegro
Adagio -
Rondeau
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
(1756-1791)
You have to be a bit careful with quotations. As in "Shakespeare said, 'Blah, blah,
blah". Well, no, he didn't. Quite apart from the rather sad joke that Blah, blah,
blah is a song by George and Ira Gershwin, we have very little of what Shakespeare
wrote. As himself. What we have are words and sentiments he put, with seductive
plausibility, into the mouths of villains, killers, parasites and other lowlife; country
comicals and clowns, both funny and unfunny; dotards, lovesick swains and other
twerps; in sum, all manner of folk both desirable and undesirable. Shakespeare the
man may have agreed with some of the things he gave any of these to say; but
which is anybody's guess.
And even if we had his clear word, could we take it at face value? Think of the
letters you write to friends. I wouldn't dream of suggesting they included anything
that was untrue. But how often have you exaggerated for the sake of dramatic ef-
fect; or embellished a promising incident into an anecdote you could dine out on; or
said something merely for effect - either ironically, or to tease the person you're
writing to; or over-praised something in the first flush of enthusiasm; or turned and
railed at something or someone out of disappointment or frustration. Our letters
would make duller reading without.
Which is why I don't think we should take at face value Mozart's comment in a
letter to his father of 14 February 1778 that he couldn't bear the flute and had no
skill at writing for it.
It came about like this. In the summer of 1777 Mozart was beside himself with
frustration in the employment of the Archbishop of Salzburg. He knew his musical
worth very well, as did many others: just over two years before he'd had three
months' leave to go to Munich to supervise the performance of an opera they'd
commissioned. Yet here he was, stuck in Salzburg in a lowly post, a conspicuous
and inexcusable waste of his potential, with no immediate prospect of advance-
ment. There was nothing for it, something would have to be found for him. Which
meant, in effect, a position at another court. The only way to bring this about was
to travel, displaying his abilities and nosing around for a suitable opening.
So in the summer of 1777 Mozart petitioned the Archbishop to be released from his
contract to seek his fortune elsewhere "in the hope of being able to serve you later
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on with greater success". By the standards of the time the application was thinly-
veiled insolence, and the Archbishop responded angrily: his minute read "... in the
name of the Gospel, father and son have my permission to seek their fortune else-
where". As Leopold Mozart was second in command of the Archbishop's musical
establishment, his dismissal would have been a catastrophe for the family, but it
does not seem to have come to that.
Wolfgang, though, couldn't be trusted to go off on his own. To take charge of ei-
ther the entire funds of the trip or his own person (he was 21, in his father's eyes
entirely reckless and likely to be inveigled into a disastrous marriage). And so when
he out on his trip on 23 September it was under the supervision of his mother. It
was the last his parents would see of each other: Maria Anna Mozart was to die in
Paris, the trip's ultimate goal, on 3 July 1778.
They travelled via Munich and Augsburg, where Leopold had been born and they
had many relations, to Mannheim, where to Leopold's increasing frustration they
holed up for almost five months. Mannheim had many attractions: the finest or-
chestra in Europe meant it was filled with musicians of the finest quality. Mozart
relished their company, playing with them, composing for them. One of these
friends was Johann Baptist Wendling, flautist of the orchestra. It was through
Wendling that Mozart received a commission from a certain "Dutchman". As he
wrote back to his father on 10 December 1777:
The other day I went to lunch at Wendling's as usual. "Our Indian", he said, meaning a
Dutchman, a gentleman of means and a lover of all the sciences, who is a great friend and
admirer of mine, "our Indian is really a first-rate fellow. He is willing to give you 200 gul-
den if you will compose for him three short, simple concertos and a couple of quartets for
the flute.
The mysterious Indian Dutchman was a German by birth, Ferdinand de Jean who
was a surgeon with the Dutch East India Company - hence "Dutchman" and "In-
dian". 200 gulden, to give you some idea, was ten times Leopold's monthly salary
in Salzburg. The letters Leopold, Maria Anna and Wolfgang exchanged over these
weeks are crammed with financial details - mostly Leopold's horror at how much
they were getting through, and their justifications. Throughout all the discussions,
as a counterpoint to the mounting anxiety over the travellers' position, looms the
figure of 200 gulden coming from the "Dutchman".
Mozart began well. He produced the G major Flute Concerto, K.313, and the D
major Flute Quartet, which rank amongst the best works of what was perhaps his
earliest great vintage. But then things didn't seem to go so well. It is almost as
though he lost interest in the commission. He produced a second flute concerto
(K.314) by the simple expedient of transcribing an oboe concerto (now lost) written
of I
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r
)
a few months earlier; he tried another flute quartet, but abandoned it after a couple
of movements.
It was inevitable De Jean wouldn't hand over the whole fee, and Mozart was then
faced with breaking the news to his father, which he did in a letter of 14 February
1778:
Mr De Jean is also leaving for Paris tomorrow and, because I have only finished two concer-
tos and three quartets for him, has sent me 96 gulden (that is 4 gulden too little, evidently
supposing that this was the half of 200); but he must pay me in full, for that was my agree-
ment with the Wendlings, and I can send him the other pieces later. It is not surprising that
I have not been able to finish them, for I never have a single quiet hour here. I can only
compose at night, so that I can't get up early as well; besides, one is not always in the mood
for working. I could, to be sure, scribble off things the whole day long, but a composition
of this kind goes out into the world, and naturally I do not want to have cause to be ashamed
of my name on the title-page.
Poor Leopold! You don't have to imagine his reaction, you can read it for yourself:
his letter of 23 February 1778 has survived. There is, by the way, no trace of this
third quartet: either it is lost, or Wolfgang was exaggerating to improve his case.
The D major Quartet was composed in the December of 1777, being completed on
Christmas Day. Mozart had never written a flute quartet before, but he was hardly
breaking new ground: the work is laid out exactly like a string quartet, but with the
first violin replaced by a flute. Mozart had an ear for what music would suit the
instrument, as for instance the long-breathed high notes in the first movement. The
B minor slow movement is a gem, one long operatic aria for the flute with pizzicato
accompaniment for the strings: the distinguished Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein
(Albert's cousin) called it "perhaps the most beautiful accompanied solo ever writ-
ten for the flute". Mozart doesn't bring the movement to a close in B minor: in-
stead he steers the music towards the D major of the genial Rondo, which follows
after a bar's pregnant pause.
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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Amatzinac
José Pablo Moncayo García
(1912-1958)
Moncayo was a Mexican composer, a pupil and protégé of Carlos Chavez. He rose
through the ranks of the Mexico Symphony Orchestra, from pianist (1932) to artis-
tic director (1946-7), before becoming conductor of the National Symphony Or-
chestra (1949-52). He is best remembered for his exotic and colourful orchestral
Huapango and his opera La mulata de Córdoba, a reworking of a Mexican legend.
Miss Durán has told us she will introduce Amatzinac at the concert.
String Quartet No.1 (The Kreutzer Sonata)
Adagio
Con moto
Con moto
Con moto
Leoš Janáček
(1854-1928)
[initial tempo markings only]
Leoš Janáček was one of music's late developers, the exact opposite of prodigies
like Mozart and Mendelssohn. His early music belongs to the world of Dvořák and
Smetana; he did not find his mature, startlingly individual voice until the turn of the
century, when he was already 47, and his finest music is concentrated in the last ten
years of his life, an Indian summer virtually without parallel in musical history.
(While many other composers had remarkable Indian summers, none contained so
great a proportion of its composer's greatest works, save perhaps César Franck's.)
There were three main reasons for this late flowering: the formation of the Czecho-
slovak state in 1918; the successful staging of Janáček's opera Jenůfa in Prague;
and the composer's passionate but apparently unconsummated love for a young
married woman called Kamila (these Camillas get around!) Stösslová, whom he
met in 1917 and to whom he wrote over 600 letters.
The state of Czechoslovakia was created in 1918 when the map of Europe was re-
drawn in the aftermath of the Great War. The crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire
was dismantled, and the industrialised North and North East made into a new state.
Its three main constituents were: Bohemia in the West, with its chief city of Prague;
Moravia in the middle with its chief city of Brno; and Slovakia in the East, its chief
city being Bratislava. Janáček was Moravian, and an eastern-looking nationalist,
which explains his excitement at the new independent state and also his leanings
towards Russian and Slavonic literature.
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es
the
en
J.
50
f
re
2₁.
His First String Quartet was composed between 30 October and 7 November 1923
in Brno. It was dedicated to the Bohemian Quartet, whose leader was the violinist
and composer Josef Suk (1874-1935): they gave the work its first performance in
Prague on 14 October 1924- 75 years ago to the day. The Bohemian Quartet's
performance, however, was somewhat idiosyncratic, even to the extent of changes
to the musical text, which were in fact incorporated into the original edition of the
piece. Janáček, though, went on refining the Quartet, making many changes during
a series of rehearsals with the Moravian Quartet in the autumn of 1924: only in the
1970s was the score shorn of its Suk revisions and amended as Janáček wished.
The Quartet is known as the Kreutzer Sonata, but it is only indirectly connected
with the Beethoven Violin Sonata. Janáček was in fact inspired by Lev Tolstoy's
novella of that name: the autograph title page bears the words Z podnetu L.N. Tol-
steho "Kreutzerovy sonáty" [= inspired by L.N. Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata]. Tol-
stoy wrote his novella in 1891, over 20 years after completing Bouнa u мup and 14
years after Анна Каренина.
The book makes bleak reading. It takes the form of an Ancient Mariner-style con-
fession, made by one Pozdnyshchev to the author on a long railway journey. The
first two thirds of the book is an impassioned, searing, jaundiced and, ultimately,
depressing analysis of all that was rotten with conventional marriage among the late
nineteenth-century Russian middle class - the hypocrisy, double standards, lying,
self-deceptions, romantic myths, delusions, misery and hatred.
The remaining third of the book accelerates towards inevitable tragedy. Pozdny-
shchev's wife Lisa, having borne a clutch of children, begins to practise the latest
fashionable form of birth control. She regains her beauty and her figure, and begins
to spend more time playing the piano. Pozdnyshchev's jealousy is aroused, even
before the appearance of Trukhachevsky, a friend of his youth who studied the vio-
lin in Paris. (For simplicity I'm going to replace these jaw-breaking names with
"the husband" and "the violinist".) The violinist begins to visit to play music with
the wife, their efforts culminating in a musical soirée at which they perform Bee-
thoven's notoriously difficult Kreutzer Sonata.
Their association is meant to cease with this final performance, but the husband,
away on business, is alarmed to find from one of his wife's letters that the violinist
has been calling again. The husband returns early and sees the violinist's overcoat
in the hall. He arms himself with a knife and bursts in on them as they are (inno-
cently) discussing music. The violinist escapes, but in an insane jealous rage the
husband stabs his wife fatally.
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As his operatic output shows, Janáček has enormous sympathy for woman as the
victim of male aggression, and so he was naturally drawn to Tolstoy's novella.
Indeed, he had worked on a piano trio inspired by it in 1908/9. The trio went
through two versions that we know of, but is now lost, presumed destroyed. From a
letter of 1924 we know that "The Quartet derives from some of the ideas in the
earlier work", but how much will probably never be established.
The Quartet is in four movements, none of which keeps a single tempo for more
than a few bars, though each mostly alternates two speeds. No one movement,
then, has a consistent character, though the second and third are the closest the
Quartet comes to a scherzo and slow movement. Janáček does include a quote
from the Beethoven, though it is not easy to spot, given the change in character: at
the opening of the third movement he quotes the second subject of Beethoven's
first movement, disguising it by perversely altering the very first note.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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a quote
FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concert in the 79th 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.
Friday, 26 November 1999
Richard Jenkinson & Benjamin Frith
(cello & piano)
Suite for cello No.4 in E flat, BWV 1010
Cello Sonata No.4 in C, Op.102 No.1
Suite Italien
Bach
Beethoven
Stravinsky
Brahms
Cello Sonata No.1 in E minor, Op.38
Sponsored by the family of Dr George Summers in his memory
More dates for your diaries:
Wednesday, 20 October 1999
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, 8 pm
Bernard Roberts (piano)
Programme devoted to the three last piano sonatas of Beethoven - the E major
(Op.109), A flat major (Op.110) and C minor (op.111)
Saturday, 23 October 1999
St Peter's Church, Norton, Malton, 8 pm
Chanticleer Singers
Kirkbymoorside Orchestra
Fauré's Requiem and Haydn's Nelson Mass
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Wednesday, 27 October 1999
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, 8 pm
Florian Kitt & Rita Medjimohvec
(cello & piano)
Cello sonatas by Debussy, Kodály and Richard Strauss, plus a new work by Erich
Urbanner
Wednesday, 10 November 1999
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, 8 pm
Maya Homburger & Barry Guy
(baroque violin & double bass)
Baroque masterpieces by Biber and Bach, plus new compositions and
improvisations.
Saturday, 13 November 1999
The Chapter House of York Minster, 8 pm
Chapter House Choir
A Succession of Seasons - a musical journey through the year with twentieth-
century British and French composers including Britten, Carter, Debussy,
Matthias, Poulenc, Rawsthorne and Vaughan Williams
Saturday, 13 November 1999
St Olave's Church, Marygate, York, 8 pm
York Cantores
Choral music by Kodály and Janáček, including Kodály's Missa Brevis and
Janáček's setting of the Lord's Prayer
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Erich
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
Sylvia Carter
Dr John Dawick
Albert Ainsworth
John Petrie
Nigel Dick
Marc Schatzberger
Amanda Crawley
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Sue Bedford, Peter Marsden, David Mather,
Brian Mattinson and Dr Mary Turner
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 §
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mr J.C. Miles
Canon & Mrs J.S. Pearson
Mr & Mrs D. Rowlands
Mr M. Schatzberger
Mr R.D.C. Stevens §
Dr & Mrs G.M.A. Turner § Mr J.I. Watson
Mrs H.B. Wright §
Mrs S. Wright
RITISA
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Mr T.M. Holmes §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mr & Mrs L.W. Robinson §
Mrs M.P. Rowntree §
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Mrs D.C. Summers §
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt §
Mr J. Curry §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Dr F.A. Jackson
Mr N. Lange §
Mr & Mrs B. Mattinson §
Mrs G. Morcom §
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, YO30 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be addressed
to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO23 1JH.
Registered Charity No.700302
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs I. Stanley §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Mr R. Wilkinson §
The BMS is affiliated to the National Federation of Music Societies
which and amateur vocal, instrumental and
NFMS promoting societies throughout the United Kingdom. The Society
also gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Royal Bank of
Scotland.
INSTITUTE
BORTHWICK
*(BMS 3/2/7 (4)
OF HI TORICAL RESEARCH
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by WrightDesign of Easingwold.
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BAS
YORK
Richard Jenkinson
& Benjamin Frith
(cello & piano)
Friday, 26 November 1999
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 Concert
Dr George Summers, who died during our last season, was one of the more stalwart
members of the British Music Society of York. His family have generously
sponsored tonight's concert in his memory, for which I am sure we would all like to
express our appreciation and thanks. Appropriately, the programme is taken from
repertory close to the heart of all true lovers of chamber music.
* Advertising our Concerts
The bigger the audience we can attract to BMS concerts, the more money there will
be for the concerts budget, which means we would be able to afford artists we can
at present only dream of inviting. You can help. You must know of places where
our posters could be seen by potential new audience. Posters for our next concert
are available in the foyer: help yourself and help the Society.
Forthcoming Concerts
One of the ways we are increasing our publicity effort is by reciprocal advertising
with other concert promoters: when they have a concert coming up shortly we tell
our audience about it and they reciprocate. You will find details of these concerts
towards the end of this book.
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.
B
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4
20
re
21
S
S
BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
79th Season
Friday, 26 November 1999
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
Richard Jenkinson (cello)
Benjamin Frith (piano)
Tonight's concert is sponsored
by the family of Dr George Summers
in his memory
Bach
Cello Suite No.4 in E flat, BWV 1010
Beethoven Cello Sonata No.4 in C, Op.102 No.1
INTERVAL
Stravinsky
Suite italienne
Brahms Cello Sonata No.1 in E minor, Op.38
For the sake of others in the audience, please turn off all
mobile phones and alarms on watches, calculators etc.,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
BS
YORK
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Richard Jenkinson was born in 1971 and started to play the cello at the age of
five. He studied with Florence Hooton, William Pleeth and then at the Guildhall
School, where his teachers included Raphael Wallfisch for the cello and Alan Ha-
zeldine for conducting. In July 1994 he won the Guildhall's Gold Medal and went
on to win a top prize in the Vittorio Gui Competition in Italy. In January 1998 he
was appointed principal cellist in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra un-
der Sir Simon Rattle.
TONIGHT'S ARTISTS
Benjamin Frith was born in South Yorkshire in 1957 and from the age of ten stud-
ied with the redoubtable Fanny Waterman. He attracted particular attention at the
age of 14 when he won the National Concerto Competition. This was followed by
a Mozart Memorial Prize, the award for Young Concert Artists promoted by the
NFMS and joint top prize at the Busoni Piano Competition in Italy. In 1989 he
won the Gold Medal at the Artur Rubinstein Piano Masters Competition in Israel.
He is no stranger to BMS audiences, having appeared in February 1997 playing
Debussy, Stravinsky and Messiaen with Peter Hill.
Prélude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Suite for cello No.4 in E flat, BWV 1010
Bourrée I & II
Gigue
PROGRAMME NOTES
Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685-1750)
Much of Bach's instrumental music was composed, or had its origins, during the
period he spent as Kapellmeister (effectively director of music) in Cöthen, at the
court of Prince Leopold. Bach had left his previous position, at Weimar, under
something of a cloud. There were in fact two ducal households at Weimar, and the
musicians were employed by both of them - unfortunately so, since the two dukes
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were at loggerheads. Bach was in fact only the court organist at Weimar and, when
it seemed likely that he would be passed over for the recently vacated Kapellmeis-
ter position, decided it was time to move. Leopold of Cöthen was brother-in-law to
one of the Weimar dukes, and Bach was confirmed as Cöthen Kapellmeister in Au-
gust 1717. Getting his release from Weimar proved somewhat trickier: he was
thrown into prison on 6 November and spent an uncomfortable four weeks there
until his dishonourable discharge from Weimar on 2 December.
Cöthen, where he arrived four days later, was altogether different. Prince Leopold
in Bach's own words "loved and understood music": he had studied in Rome and
could sing and play the violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord. He had a first-rate
musical establishment, many of the musicians having been recruited when the Ber-
lin court orchestra was disbanded in 1713. More to the point, the court chapel was
Calvinist (as Leopold's father had been), which meant no elaborate religious music
was required. And so Bach had excellent instrumentalists to write for and no dis-
tractions.
The quality and scope of the Cöthen musical establishment are plainly reflected in
the music of the Brandenburg Concertos, whose sumptuous, not to say exotic, in-
strumentation and often virtuoso writing were tailor made for the Cöthen orchestra:
certainly they were well beyond the resources of the Margrave of Brandenburg's
band.
What put an end to such an ideal time for Bach? A woman, of course. In Decem-
ber 1721 Leopold married his cousin Friderica, Princess of Anhalt-Bernburg. She
had no interest in culture of any kind, and so, shortly, neither did Leopold. Bach
saw the writing on the wall and eventually applied for the post of Kantor at the
Thomaskirche in Leipzig in December 1722. He was appointed in April 1723 and
took up his post the following month. He remained at Leipzig until his death.
Ironically, Princess Friderica died in April 1723, too late for Bach to change his
mind.
Amongst the greatest chamber music Bach wrote at Cöthen are the six Sonatas and
Partitas for unaccompanied violin (BWV 1011 - 1006) and six Suites for unaccom-
panied cello (BWV 1007 - 1012). The Cello Suites survive only in a copy made by
Bach's second wife during his time at Leipzig.
Music for a single melody instrument is notoriously difficult to compose, since the
one line has to suggest both harmony and melody in order for the result to make
perfect sense. Members of the viol and violin families, however, do at least have
the advantage that chords are possible, and so most solo writing of this kind em-
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ploys them. It was a type of music that had been composed in Italy for at least a
couple of centuries and there was already a strong tradition in North Germany.
Bach's contributions, however, are without question the greatest achievements in
the repertory.
The Cello Suites were almost certainly composed for the cellist Christian Bernhard
Linike, who joined the staff at Cöthen in 1716 and remained there until his death
around the new year of 1751 (he was buried on 3 January). All six Suites have the
same line-up of movements, except that the movement pair preceding the final
Gigue are Minuets in Suites 1 & 2, Bourrées in 3 4 an Gavottes in 5 & 6.
In the preludes of the six suites Bach likes to take one little shape or piece of fig-
uration and give it a thorough, even exhausting work out. In the E flat Suite he
maybe takes this to the extreme, the figure being so specific and its use so literal
and persistent as to set the performer a real interpretative challenge. It's followed
by those staples of the Baroque suite form: Allemande (by tradition sedate and se-
rious), Courante (more flowing and in triple time) and Sarabande (slow and
stately). At this point Bach introduces a pair of bourrées: as usual, Bourrée I is re-
peated after Bourrée II, but unusually Bourrée II is in the same key as its fellow and
shorter almost to the point of unbalance. The Suite saves its liveliest movement till
last, the customary restless and energetic Gigue.
Cello Sonata No.4 in C, Op.102 No.1
Andante - Allegro vivace
Adagio - Tempo d'Andante - Allegro vivace
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
I remember on my first guided tour of Vienna the courier pointing out a plaque
bearing the information that Beethoven had stayed in the building: but she straight-
way warned us not to get too excited by this, since he is known to have lived at no
fewer than 60 addresses across the city.
In the summer of 1815 he was staying in the house of Countess Erdődy. Like many
musical aristocrats, the Countess had her own musical establishment, which in-
cluded the famous cellist Joseph Lincke (1783-1837). Lincke had previously been
on the staff of Count Razumovsky, playing in the string quartet led by Ignaz
Schuppanzigh, which had performed under the watchful eye of the composer the
Quartets that bear the Count's name. The two players were later to reform their en-
T
V
S
0
6
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38
13
semble to play Beethoven's late quartets. This gives some measure of Lincke's ex-
perience in playing Beethoven's music and of the trust the composer had in him.
While staying at Countess Erdődy's Beethoven was working on the first of his se-
ries of late piano sonatas, the A major, Op.101, together with several lesser, or less
well-known, works. The two sketchbooks covering these pieces also contain
sketches for two works which, tantalisingly, remained unfinished - a piano concerto
in D major and a piano trio in F minor.
It was perhaps inevitable that the presence of Lincke in the same house would
prompt Beethoven to write something for him, and the result was the pair of Cello
Sonatas, Op. 102, composed in the summer of 1815 and published two years later
with a dedication to the Countess.
Both sonatas are unusually experimental. The second, in D major, is the more regu-
lar in its construction, but the C major is one of the most radical structures to which
Beethoven gave the name Sonata. The closest he'd come to it was the companion
piece to the Moonlight Sonata, the E flat Sonata Op.27 No.1, whose form was so
unusual when he felt compelled to give it the title Sonata quasi una fantasia.
The C major Sonata begins with an Andante introduction, somewhat after the fash-
ion of the E flat Trio, Op.70 No.2. This gives on to a sonata-form Allegro vivace.
What's so unusual about that? Nothing, except that the Allegro vivace is in A mi-
nor. I can't think of another example in any sonata where Beethoven does this:
starts his first movement with an introduction in the home key of the sonata as a
whole, but then puts the main body of the movement in a different key. If you can
think of one, please do tell me. The A minor Allegro vivace is powerful, electric
stuff, full of abrupt contrasts and wild gestures - some so extraordinary it can easily
sound like the performers have made a mistake.
The second movement is in three linked sections. First comes the slowest, an Ada-
gio, which again is in the nature of an introduction: Beethoven had used such slow
introductions in all three earlier cello sonatas to take the place of proper slow
movements, which were difficult because the pianos of the time couldn't sustain
nearly as well as the cello. By 1815 they could, just (Op.102 No.2 has the only
complete slow movement in the five sonatas), but here Beethoven didn't need one.
After the Adagio comes a brief return of the Andante music from the first move-
ment, and this gives on to the main body of the finale, another Allegro vivace, full
of Beethoven at his most bumptious and country comical. It's packed with eccen-
tricities and jokes, at which you are allowed to laugh - special dispensation from
the BMS Committee.
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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.
Suite italienne for cello and piano
Introductione
Serenata
Aria
Tarantella
Minuetto e Finale
Igor' Fyodorovich Stravinsky
(1882-1971)
When Sarah Beth Briggs played a piece to mark the anniversary of William Baines,
a founder of the York Centre of the BMS who died at the age of 23, we talked of
the game of What if? that musicologists sometime play: would Baines have fulfilled
his evident promise or fizzled out as a composer?
A similar figure is Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, born near Naples in 1710. In his
20s he suddenly came to prominence, with several operas being successfully pro-
duced before he succumbed at the age of 26 to the tuberculosis which, apparently,
was only one of the illnesses to fight over him during his short life. Thereafter
something rather strange happened: he began to enjoy success and fame out of all
proportion with that he had enjoyed, achieved or, to some extent, earned, during his
lifetime. His Stabat Mater, for instance, was printed more often than any other
work during the entire 18th century. It didn't take unscrupulous publishers long to
catch on: they were soon issuing the works of much more modest talents under his
name, and with Pergolesi dead and no effective copyright law there was nothing to
stop them. In some cases confusion over what is genuine Pergolesi has continued
to this day.
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1
1
}
1
Fast forward nearly 200 years to Stravinsky, Dyagilev and the Russian Ballet. The
half dozen years before the First World War, which had seen the appearance of
Firebird, Petrushka and The rite of spring, was the foundation of Stravinsky's ca-
reer and reputation, and the collaboration was a jewel in the crown of the Russian
Ballet. The War put a stop to it. Stravinsky had drifted off, arousing Dyagilev's
jealousy with the success of his masterpiece of music theatre, The Soldier's Tale,
the very antithesis of the lavish, expensive productions favoured by Dyagilev.
But now with peace Dyagilev wanted Stravinsky back in the fold, or at any rate on
his side, and needed a project to lure him. The project he had in mind was Pul-
cinella, a ballet based round characters from the Commedia dell' Arte. He had
Massine lined up for the choreography and Picasso to design sets and costumes.
The only snag was that Dyagilev didn't want Stravinsky actually to compose music:
the Russian Ballet had recently enjoyed considerable success with the ballet The
good-humoured Ladies to a score arranged and orchestrated by Tommasini from
the music of Scarlatti, and Dyagilev now wanted Stravinsky to do something simi-
lar with music by Pergolesi. Dyagilev, with some justification, was worried Stra-
vinsky might consider the suggestion an insult, but in the event Stravinsky just
thought the idea mad. Until, that is, he saw the music and fell in love with it. By
20 April 1920 the score was complete, and since the music had been sent to
Massine number by number the first performance could be given by the Russian
Ballet at the Paris Opéra under four weeks later.
Dyagilev had wanted a score for a typically lavish orchestra, but Stravinsky didn't,
insisting that a small ensemble better suited the style of the music and his concep-
tion of it. And history has proved him right. The ballet was a great success and it
wasn't long before a concert suite was issued, for the same modest orchestra.
This was around the time when Stravinsky was starting to become active as a con-
cert artist. His alert business brain quickly realised that in the time it took to re-
hearse a single orchestral concert he could have made four or five appearances
playing the piano. Stravinsky was never a concert pianist, but he was perfectly ca-
pable of playing nearly all his piano music, and he knew he would be in demand to
perform his own works. So he began to build up a repertory of solo and chamber
works, both original and arrangements. It occurred to him quickly that Pulcinella,
with its relatively light textures, mordantly witty music and unashamedly melodic
style would be likely to provide a popular suite and he had soon arranged a se-
quence of movements for violin and piano to play with the violinist Paul Ko-
chansky, giving it the title Suite italienne. In the early 1930s he made for (and
with) Gregor Pyatigorsky another version of the Suite italienne, with a slightly dif-
ferent sequence of movements, this time for cello and piano. Shortly afterwards he
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returned to the work again, providing a second violin and piano version, again with
a slightly different sequence of extracts, this time as part of a positive flurry of such
arrangements for his concerts with Samuel Dushkin.
Incidentally, about half the music Stravinsky chose for Pulcinella turned out not to
be by Pergolesi after all. But when you hear what Stravinsky did to it, I doubt you
could notice the difference between real and fake.
Cello Sonata No.1 in E minor, Op.38
Allegro non troppo
Allegretto quasi Menuetto
Allegro
Johannes Brahms
(1833-1897)
Brahms had a particular love of lower sonorities: The Second Serenade for orches-
tra does without violins altogether, and he wrote his two cello-rich string sextets be-
fore producing a string quartet he was prepared to see in print. So it is fitting that
the first of his seven duo sonatas should be for cello and piano.
The chronology of the Sonata is a little hard to establish, since Brahms could often
be secretive or downright misleading about work in progress. It seems, however,
that it was composed between 1862 and 1865, alongside several other works: the
Piano Quintet (Op.34), Paganini Variations (Op.35), Second String Sextet (Op.36),
Waltzes for piano duet (Op.39) and Horn Trio (Op.40) - even the First Symphony
(Op.68) which was not to see the light of day for another dozen years. This was the
period when Brahms was making the move from his native Hamburg to Vienna,
where he found the atmosphere freer, with more chances to make his mark as a mu-
sician. It was, after all, the capital of the German-speaking musical world.
The Cello Sonata is dedicated to a Dr. Josef Gänsbacher, a keen cellist. Once, when
he was playing the work through with Brahms, he found himself drowned out:
Brahms was a forthright player, and despite the elegiac and almost reticent tone of
much of the Sonata, there are nevertheless passages of blood-and-thunder, espe-
cially in the finale. At one such Gänsbacher complained, "I can't hear myself", to
which Brahms naturally and characteristically replied "Aren't you lucky?"
The Sonata has three movements. There were originally four, with an Adagio
placed second, but Brahms evidently felt the balance and contrast of the work as a
whole was better without it. The first movement contains some of Brahms' simplest
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E
and most eloquent writing. The A minor Minuet, with its hesitant mood, frames a
melancholy, slightly mysterious Trio in F sharp minor.
The powerful finale begins as a fugue and keeps returning to fugato style, dropping
it for the contrasting episodes. The main subject seems to have been consciously
modelled on Contrapunctus XIII from Bach's Art of Fugue, though Brahms may
also have had in mind Beethoven's last cello sonata (Op.102 No.2, the pair of the
one played earlier) where the last movement is a fully-worked-out fugue.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concert in the 79th 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.
Friday, 17 December 1999
The Marais Ensemble
Mozart Piano & Wind Quintet in E flat, K.452
Trio Pathétique
Glinka
Poulenc
Trio for oboe, bassoon & piano
Beethoven
Piano & Wind Quintet in E flat, Op.16
More dates for your diaries:
Saturday, 27 November 1999
Sunday, 28 November 1999, 3 pm
Hull City Hall
Hull Philharmonic Orchestra
A rare chance to hear Mahler's Symphony No.8, the "Symphony of a thousand"
Saturday, 4 December 1999
Central Hall, York University, 8 pm
York Symphony Orchestra
Brahms Tragic Overture, Bruch's First Violin Concerto (soloist Gent Koço) and
Dvořák's New World Symphony
Que
AC
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Tusen
Kappland
* Wednesday, 8 December 1999
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, 8 pm
Lindsay String Quartet
Quartets by Berg (Op.3), Maconchy (No.12) and Beethoven (C# minor, Op.131)
Friday/Saturday, 10/11 December 1999
St Mary's Priory Church, Old Malton, 7.30 pm
Chanticleer Singers
A concert of traditional carols and Christmas music
Saturday, 11 December 1999
The Chapter House, 8 pm
Micklegate Singers
Poulenc's La figure humaine and Strauss' 16-part Der Abend, with seasonal
offerings by Villette, Pärt and Poulenc
Saturday, 18 December 1999
York Minster, 7 pm
York Musical Society & Boyce Chamber Orchestra
Handel's Messiah with soloists Angharad Gruffydd Jones, Louise Mott, Andrew
Murgatroyd and Brindley Sherratt
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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
Sylvia Carter
Dr John Dawick
Albert Ainsworth
John Petrie
Nigel Dick
Marc Schatzberger
Amanda Crawley
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Sue Bedford, Peter Marsden, David Mather,
Brian Mattinson and Dr Mary Turner
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.
Our
Mr.
Dr.
Mr
Mr
Mr
Mrs
Pro
Mr
Ca
Mr
Mr
Mr
Dr
to
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he
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 §
Mr T.M. Holmes §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mrs
Prof.
Mr J
Cano
Mr &
Mr M
Mr R
Dr &
Mrs
If yo
Hon.
York
to the
NATION
OF MU
Regis
Yorkshire Arts
York
Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Leslie Bresnen
Leader: Claire Jowett
Soloist: Gent Koço (Violin)
Brahms
Bruch -
Dvorak -
Tragic Overture
Violin Concerto
No.1 in G minor
Symphony No.9
in E minor
From the New World'
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt §
Mr J. Curry §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Dr F.A. Jackson
Tickets (unreserved) £7.50
£5.50 (concessions) £3 (children under 12)
from Ticket World, Patrick Pool, York,
or members of the orchestra or at the door.
Supported by the NFMS
from funds provided by
Yorkshire Arts
Saturday 4th December 1999
at 8.00 pm
Central Hall, University of York
The YSO is a Registered Charity N 515145
MIP
OF MUSIC
FMS
n §
our
way,
ssed
eties
and
iety
k of
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me
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 §
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Prof. R Lawton 8
Mr J
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Mr T.M. Holmes §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr R.P. Lorriman &
Cand
Mr &
Mr N
Mr F
Dr &
Mrs
If yo
Hon
Yor
to th
NATI
OF
00
Reg
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt §
Mr J. Curry §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Dr F.A. Jackson
Mr N. Lange §
Mr & Mrs B. Mattinson §
our
way,
essed
ieties
and
ciety
nk of
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1,
many
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 §
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mr J.C. Miles
Canon & Mrs J.S. Pearson
Mr & Mrs D. Rowlands
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing
Mr T.M. Holmes §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mr & Mrs L.W. Robinson §
Mrs M.P. Rowntree §
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mr M. Schatzberger
Mr R.D.C. Stevens §
Dr & Mrs G.M.A. Turner § Mr J.I. Watson
Mrs H.B. Wright §
Mrs S. Wright
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt §
Mr J. Curry §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Dr F.A. Jackson
Mr N. Lange §
Mr & Mrs B. Mattinson §
Mrs G. Morcom §
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, YO30 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be addressed
to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO23 1JH.
Registered Charity No.700302
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs I. Stanley §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Mr R. Wilkinson §
The BMS is affiliated to the National Federation of Music Societies
which represents and supports amateur vocal, instrumental and
NFMS 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.
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*
INSTITUTE
JURTHWICK
BMS 3/2/1(5)
OF
TORICAL
RESEARCH
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B'S
YORK
0
The Marais Ensemble
Friday, 17 December 1999
Programme: £1.00
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
*Advertising
our Concerts
The bigger the audience we can attract to BMS concerts, the more money there will
be for the concerts budget, which means we would be able to afford artists we can
at present only dream of inviting. You can help. You must know of places where
our posters could be seen by potential new audience. Posters for our next concert
are available in the foyer: help yourself and help the Society.
Forthcoming Concerts
One of the ways we are increasing our publicity effort is by reciprocal advertising
with other concert promoters: when they have a concert coming up shortly we tell
our audience about it and they reciprocate. You will find details of these concerts
towards the end of this book.
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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we tel
Conces
hould be
immitte
BAS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
79th Season
Friday, 17 December 1999
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
Marais Ensemble
Ruth Scott oboe, Lynsey Marsh clarinet
Sarah Burnett bassoon, Francis Markus horn
Martin Cousin piano
Mozart Piano & Wind Quintet in E flat, K.452
Glinka Trio pathétique
INTERVAL
Poulenc Trio for oboe, bassoon & piano
Beethoven Piano & Wind Quintet in E flat, Op.16
For the sake of others in the audience, please turn off all
mobile phones and alarms on watches, calculators etc.,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
D
BAS
YORK
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THE MARAIS ENSEMBLE
The Marais Ensemble was formed in 1995 by young musicians who had met as
students at Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music, and played together in the
European Union Youth Orchestra. It was quickly recognised as a new and exciting
chamber group. As principals in London orchestras and busy freelance musicians,
the members of the Ensemble bring together a wealth of varied experience in their
chamber music and education projects.
The Ensemble is a flexible group drawing on repertory for any combination of
flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano. As a complete sextet they have
worked with an actor to perform Dirty Beasts by Martin Butler and Roald Dahl.
The name Marais presumably honours the French composer Marin Marais (1656-
1752), rather more famous as a composer for bass viol.
PROGRAMME NOTES
Quintet for piano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon
and horn in E flat, K.452
Largo - Allegro moderato
Larghetto
Allegretto
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
(1756-1791)
In 1781 Mozart engineered his own dismissal from the employment of the
Archbishop of Salzburg, and settled in Vienna. There he hoped to land some pres-
tigious court appointment, but, as vividly described in the play and film Amadeus,
nothing came of this. Still, it was a busy time for him: in August 1782 he married
and was constantly writing and performing.
In February 1784 Mozart began keeping a catalogue of his compositions - even he
was having some difficulty keeping up with his creativity. The first six entries give
some idea of the hectic pace of his life:
It w
But
der
com
SUT
Com
me
Th
bur
of
an
an
The
Wi
tic
8
CO
ins
QS
Wi
en
0
the
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Dal
Mozart
-1791)
Ered
Love
9th February a Piano Concerto
15th March
22nd March
30th March
12th April
21st April
a Piano Concerto
a Piano Concerto
a Piano Quintet
a Piano Concerto
a Piano Sonata with violin
[the E flat, K.449]
[the B flat, K.450]
[the D major, K.451]
[K.452]
[the G major, K.453]
[the B flat Violin Sonata, K.454]
It was a rich seam of creativity he had found, and he was mining it for all his worth.
But he needed to keep the pace up, since his March series of subscription concerts
demanded a steady flow of new material. At the same time he organised a benefit
concert for himself at the Imperial Court Theatre. He was clearly determined to
give good value for money, since the concert was to include two symphonies (pre-
sumably the Linz and the Haffner) and the first performances of two new piano
concertos (K.450 and K.451) and of the Piano and Wind Quintet, K.452, not to
mention three famous singers bringing along an aria each and Mozart himself con-
tributing an improvisation.
This concert was planned for 21 March, but at the last minute Mozart had to post-
pone because he found it clashed with an opera performance at the palace of Prince
Liechtenstein: not only would Mozart have lost the best members of his orchestra,
but also the nobility from his audience, which would have represented rather more
of a disaster. The rescheduled concert took place on 1 April, by which time the Pi-
ano Quintet was the only work on the programme still receiving its first perform-
ance.
The Quintet is the first known work of its kind, combining piano and a quartet of
wind instruments - oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon. It may well be that the combina-
tion was suggested by passages in the piano concertos where wind instruments, sin-
gly and in groups, were given prominence. The technical problems of this quintet
combination are complex indeed. There is no real blend of sound between the wind
instruments one of the reasons why, in wind music, they are more customarily
used in pairs. Mozart gets round the problem by using them in various permutations
with the piano and by weaving the parts in and out of each other, where the differ-
ence in tone colour is a positive advantage.
On 10 April, just over a week after the first performance, Mozart wrote to his fa-
ther:
I have done myself great credit with my three subscription concerts, and the concert
I gave in the [Imperial] theatre was most successful. I composed two grand concer-
tos and then a quintet, which called forth the very greatest applause: I myself con-
sider it to be the best work I have ever composed. It is written for one oboe, one
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clarinet, one horn, one bassoon [note Mozart's emphasis on one] and the pianoforte.
How I wish you could have heard it! And how beautifully it was performed! Well,
to tell the truth I was really worn out in the end after playing so much - and it is
greatly to my credit that my listeners never got tired.
Perhaps the greatest compliment paid the Quintet came a dozen years later when
Beethoven used it as the model for his own Piano and Wind Quintet.
The imposing slow introduction gives on to a moderately-paced first movement in
which flashes of brilliant piano writing serves to remind us that the Quintet's clos-
est siblings were piano concertos. The slow movement is a Larghetto in B flat, with
the piano emerging only briefly from the role of accompanist. The final Rondo,
with its high-spirited main theme, includes a Cadenza in tempo - yet another re-
minder of Mozart's principal preoccupation at this time.
Trio pathétique
Allegro moderato -
Scherzo: Vivacissimo -
Largo - Maestoso risoluto -
Allegro con spirito
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka
(1804-1857)
Glinka's name rarely turns up unattended by his bill matter "Father of Russian mu-
sic." On the whole he seems an unlikely figure to have fulfilled such a role. He
came from the landed gentry class - his family were landowners in the far west of
the country, near Smolensk. He was given the sort of education that befitted this
status - tutors at home, followed by a fashionable school in St Petersburg in his mid
teens. So far so good. But almost everything else was against him taking the role
cast for him by history. He had virtually no musical education. True, he could put
on his CV that he had had piano lessons from the court pianist, the famous Irish
composer John Field: but three lessons are never going to turn anyone into a pian-
ist, and none of his subsequent attempts at acquiring serious professional training
seems to have amounted to much more. On top of this he was a world class hypo-
chonriac, suffering throughout his life from imaginary and very occasionally real
illnesses: it hadn't helped that his paternal grandmother had kept him a virtual pris-
oner in her stuffy, overheated room until he was six. In addition he had no great
strength of character, making him something of a dilettante more inclined to idle his
time away than to work. And, worse, he had the means to do so.
COL
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lite
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pa
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Hind
How did such an unlikely figure come to be hero-worshipped by the nationalist
composers of the second half of the 19th century? Quite simply because he had the
imagination to show the world how to write European art music in a way that was
recognisably Russian in idiom. There had been Russian composers before, but all
were pale imitators of the (mostly) Italian composers and musicians imported dur-
ing the 18th century so that St Petersburg could hold up its head amongst the cul-
tural capitals of Europe. Just as his friend Pushkin had shocked his contemporaries
with the limitless power of a language they thought it almost barbaric to utter in po-
lite society, so Glinka in his great operas A life for the tsar (1834-6) and Ruslan
and Lyudmila (1837-42) gripped his fellow-countrymen with music that could not
have come from any other part of Europe. Not long afterwards he wrote his orches-
tral Kamarinskaya which taught Russian composers of the second half of the cen-
tury how to dress Russian music in stylish orchestral clothes, resulting in master-
pieces from Tchaikovsky to Rimsky-Korsakov and beyond.
The Trio pathétique belongs to the period immediately before A life for the tsar. In
May 1830 Glinka went south, travelling via Germany to Italy with a tenor from the
Imperial Chapel. His base in Italy was Milan. He took a few lessons here and
there, but seems to have spent most of his time socialising, mostly flirting with la-
dies. Several of whom he tried to impress with chamber music or piano pieces of
his own composition. By and large the pieces are of negligible value, but one
stands head and shoulders above the rest, the Trio pathétique, composed in 1832
apparently at Tramezzino, by Lake Como. Significantly, unlike all the other pieces
of the time, it wasn't published in Milan.
Here is no mystery about the impetus behind the composition: one of Glinka's flir-
tations had evidently turned sour on him. He wrote a motto on the music: "Je n'ai
connu l'amour que par les peines qu'il cause" [= I have known love only by the
pain it causes]. Which he amplified in his memoirs:
But all the time I was wrestling somewhat with sufferings and wrote the Trio for pi-
ano, clarinet and bassoon. My friends, artists at La Scala opera house, accompanied
me, Tassistro on clarinet and Cantú on bassoon. At the end of the finale the latter
I had lost
said in amazement, "But this is despair." And I really was in despair.
my appetite, slept badly and had fallen into the most cruel despair, which I ex-
pressed in this Trio.
"Poor thing," one is tempted to add. The word "pathétique" hasn't gone quite the
same way as our own "pathetic". It means rather informed by or showing emotions.
Beethoven had used it for his Piano Sonata, Op.13, and Tchaikovsky was to borrow
it for what turned out to be his final symphony.
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The Trio wasn't published in Glinka's lifetime: it was one of the pieces his sister
allowed the publisher Yurgenson to issue posthumously, in 1878. From the surviv-
ing contract between them we know that she was able to supply only the piano part:
the parts for the two wind instruments were described as "not located." Yur-
genson's edition, however, bore the legend "revised and corrected by Maximiian
Heidrich of Dresden": the editor of the collected edition of Glinka's works pointed
out that it was Yurgenson's custom to use editors actually living in Russia and in-
ferred from this case being an exception that it was Heidrich who was the source of
the two wind parts.
The Trio is in four movements, which are played without a break. Glinka's uncon-
ventional approach also shows in his unusual choice of instruments, setting clarinet
and bassoon against piano
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.
Trio for oboe, bassoon and piano
Presto: Lent - Presto - Le double plus lent - Presto
Andante: Andante con moto -
Rondo: Très vif
Francis Poulenc
(1899-1963)
Poulenc was, like Glinka, one of those rare creatures, an artist born with a silver
spoon in his mouth. His father was the founder of the Rhone-Poulenc chemicals
conglomerate, and young Francis never wanted for anything. He was a jolly, gre-
garious man with a wide circle of close friends who clearly meant a good deal to
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E )
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him his posthumously-published memoirs are entitled Moi et mes amis [= me and
my friends].
His music is a battleground of conflicting sides to his nature: he was a brilliant
melodist among French composers perhaps second only to Fauré; he idolised Mo-
zart and loved music of the classical and baroque periods; at the same time his en-
thusiasms ranged from the aggressively modern scores of Stravinsky and Pro-
kof'yev to the sentimental kitsch of café music. If this weren't enough, the secular,
worldly Poulenc was locked in conflict with religious impulses. The abiding glory
and fascination of Poulenc's music is the way it switches from one style to the
other, now sliding effortlessly, now startlingly juxtaposed.
Outside music for the stage, Poulenc is principally known for his piano music and
incomparable songs. But there are several chamber works, mostly featuring wind
instruments, their sharp, pungent sound admirably suiting his brittle, pointed style;
indeed, the late sonatas for flute, clarinet and oboe are all cornerstones of those in-
struments' repertories.
As well as these sonatas, Poulenc wrote the Sextet for piano and wind quintet
(1932) and this Trio for oboe, bassoon and piano, composed between February and
April 1926. Even these weren't the beginning of Poulenc's chamber music for
wind instruments: they were preceded by three less well-known sonatas for two
clarinets (1918), for clarinet and bassoon (1922) and for horn, trumpet and trom-
bone (also 1922).
The 1920s were very much a time when wind instruments were "rediscovered".
They'd never really gone away from orchestral music, but had been kept at bay
from chamber music (other than outdoor, serenade-type music) by the predomi-
nance of strings. But their biting attack and highly characteristic tone colourings
admirably suited much of the astringent music written after the First World War:
one only has to think of Stravinsky's Symphonies of wind instruments (1920), Oc-
tet for wind instruments (1922-3) and Concerto for piano with an orchestra of wind
instruments (1923-4), and to remember just how seminal an influence Stravinsky
was on composers like Poulenc.
The acknowledged influence on this Trio is not Stravinsky, however, but Manuel
de Falla, to whom the work is dedicated. Poulenc had met the Spanish composer in
1918, and the two were close throughout the 1920s. Poulenc later recalled "I
dedicated that little Trio to Falla to show him as best I could my loving admira-
tion."
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The Trio has two movements. The first has a slow introduction giving on to a witty
Presto, for much of which A major and minor battle it out for possession. The lyri-
cal slow movement is based in Bb, but shifts towards the end to lead straight into
the Db major of the hectic Rondo. As good a way as any to celebrate Poulenc's
centenary year and our last concert of the 1900s.
Quintet for piano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon
and horn in E flat, Op.16
Grave - Allegro, ma non troppo
Andante cantabile
Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
Beethoven belonged to the third generation of his family to have been musicians in
the service of the Electors of Cologne at their court in Bonn: his grandfather (an-
other Ludwig) had migrated there from Mechelen in Belgium. Young Ludwig was
taken on the musical establishment in a minor capacity, but the seemingly unstop-
pable growth of his talent soon drew attention. It was eventually decided that the
court would pay for him to go to Vienna to study under Haydn.
Beethoven arrived in Vienna in November 1792, a few weeks short of his 22nd
birthday. He began his lessons in December and they continued until January
1794. But Haydn turned out to be a far from perfect teacher, so Beethoven also had
lessons from other, rather stricter mentors, including the dry-as-dust Albrechtsber-
ger and Antonio Salieri, who, while no great genius, emphatically does not deserve
to be remembered solely as the villain in the Mozart story. All these teachers im-
mediately saw Beethoven's great musical talent, but found him truculent and un-
couth. Hardly surprising if you've spent your childhood with your loutish,
drunken, syphilitic father trying to beat you into becoming a second Mozart.
Around the time these lessons stopped, the money from Bonn dried up, but Beetho-
ven was far from lacking support. One of the things that made Vienna the musical
centre at this time was that music amounted to a craze amongst the aristocracy: they
were not only enthusiastic, but knowledgeable, so music flourished as rarely before.
Beethoven quickly found admirers, not least Prince Lichnowsky. From the 1838
reminiscences of Franz Gerhard Wegeler (1765 - 1848), a close friend of the teen-
age Beethoven:
Carl, Prince Lichnowsky was a great benefactor, indeed friend, of Beethoven.
The Prince even took Beethoven into his house as a guest, where he remained for at
least a few years. I found him there toward the end of 1794 and he was still there
semi-
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cert
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Som
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en
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when I left in the middle of 1796. However, Beethoven almost always kept lodgings
in the country at the same time.
The Prince was a great lover and connoisseur of music. He played the piano, and
by studying Beethoven's works and playing them more or less well, he tried to
prove to Beethoven that he did not need to change anything in his style of composi-
tion, even though the difficulties of his works were often pointed out to him. There
were performances at the Prince's house every Friday morning. Besides our friend,
four salaried musicians ... took part.
Beethoven was in demand everywhere as a pianist, both at public concerts and the
semi-public affairs put on by the more musical members of the aristocracy in their
town palaces. The emotional effect of his playing, both his improvisation and his
ready-composed music, caused many a flutter: he would literally reduce an audi-
ence to tears, then turn round and laugh at them for being tricked by a bit of non-
sense.
In February 1796 Beethoven went off to Prague with Prince Lichnowsky and was
received there almost as warmly as Mozart had been seven years earlier. He also
visited Berlin and the court of the cello-playing Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm
II. At the end of the same year he visited Bratislava, then known as Pressburg. It
was sometime around then that he composed the Quintet for piano, oboe, clarinet,
horn and bassoon: we can't be absolutely precise, since the autograph is lost, but
we have at any rate a terminus ante quem, Beethoven having performed it at a con-
cert organised by the violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh on 6 April 1797.
No one seriously doubts that the Beethoven Quintet is modelled on the Mozart
work. Since the Mozart had not yet been published, Beethoven must either have
heard it or known of it from manuscript sources. At this period in his career Bee-
thoven was showing a great interest in wind instruments: 14 out of his 18 chamber
works involving wind instruments belong to the ten years starting 1792. It was un-
derstandable that he should try his hand at the same combination that Mozart had
written for so successfully: it is not beyond the realms of possibility that one of his
wind-playing friends possessed the music of the Mozart, had played it with him and
suggested he write a similar piece. The mid 1790s - the time of the B flat Piano
Concerto - was the period when Beethoven's style came closest to Mozart's, but
the differences are suggestive. Mozart's is the more obviously finished and pol-
ished piece, the Beethoven the work of someone who is already growing a little im-
patient with a pretty façade and looking to the time when he can cut loose and show
some real emotion.
Like the Mozart the Beethoven is in three movements, the genial first being pref-
aced by a slow, fanfare-like introduction. The slow movement is a Mozartean An-
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dante in B flat rather than one of the profound adagios that were already becoming
a Beethoven hallmark. The Rondo is witty with the light spirits of a dashing young
composer who is still the darling of the public, before encroaching deafness was to
sour this vein in his writing into the coarse, sardonic humour of a grumpy, middle-
aged German.
Ferdinand Ries recalled a performance of the Quintet at prince Lobkowitz's in De-
cember 1804. It was organised in honour of the visit of the celebrated oboist Frie-
drich Ramm from Stuttgart:
In the last Allegro there are several pauses before the theme returns. At one of these
Beethoven suddenly began improvising on the Rondo theme: he kept himself and
the audience entertained for some considerable time but not the other players.
They were far from pleased and Ramm himself positively angry. It was really very
funny to watch them, expecting to come in again at any moment, putting their in-
struments to their mouths only to have to put them down again. Finally, Beethoven
had had enough and dropped back into the Rondo. The whole company was trans-
ported with delight.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
The
Ar
and
Bri
Ar
H
M
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78
FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concert in the 79th 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, 13 January 2000 - if you've sobered up in time
Catherine Bott (soprano)
Leslie Pearson (piano)
My mother bids me bind my hair
200 years of song
A recital of works for voice and piano, beginning with English Canzonets by Haydn
and featuring songs and arias by Sir Henry Rowley Bishop, Prince Albert, Gurney,
Britten and Richard Rodney Bennett, with piano solos by Mendelssohn and Ireland
And don't forget tomorrow:
Saturday, 18 December 1999
York Minster, 7 pm
York Musical Society & Boyce Chamber Orchestra
Handel's Messiah with soloists Angharad Gruffydd Jones, Louise Mott, Andrew
Murgatroyd and Brindley Sherratt
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BS
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
Sylvia Carter
Dr John Dawick
Albert Ainsworth
John Petrie
Nigel Dick
Marc Schatzberger
Amanda Crawley
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Sue Bedford, Peter Marsden, David Mather,
Brian Mattinson and Dr Mary Turner
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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the
any
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 §
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mr J.C. Miles
Canon & Mrs J.S. Pearson
Mr & Mrs D. Rowlands
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Mr T.M. Holmes §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mr & Mrs L.W. Robinson §
Mrs M.P. Rowntree §
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mr M. Schatzberger
Mr R.D.C. Stevens §
Dr & Mrs G.M.A. Turner § Mr J.I. Watson
Mrs H.B. Wright §
Mrs S. Wright
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt §
Mr J. Curry §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Dr F.A. Jackson
Mr N. Lange §
Mr & Mrs B. Mattinson §
Mrs G. Morcom §
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, YO30 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be addressed
to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO23 1JH.
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs I. Stanley §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Mr R. Wilkinson §
The BMS is affiliated to the National Federation of Music Societies
which represents and supports amateur vocal, instrumental and
NFMS 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 the Trophy & Print Shop, Commercial St, Norton, Malton.
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INSTITUTE
BORTHWICK
*(BMS 3/2/7(6)
OF MI TOPIC L PE
PESEARCH