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St Mary’s Church, CratfieldSunday 17 July 2016

HEATH QUARTETOliver Heath, Cerys Jones violins

Gary Pomeroy violaChristopher Murray cello

Concerts at CratfieldBlyth Valley Chamber Music

Mr T.E.Allen, Peter Baker & Kate Hutchon, Sir Jeremy &Lady Blackham, Rachel Booth & Clare Webb, Philip Britton &Tom Southern, Mr & Mrs Roger Cooper, Prof.MJ & Dr CHG Daunton, Paul Fincham, Judith Foord, Shirley Fry, Tony Gelsthorpe & Gill Bracey, Carole & Simon Haskel,David Heckels, Andrew Johnston, Julia Josephs, Susan Kodicek &Judith Harrad, David & Deirdre Mintz, Dr & Mrs Ivan Moseley,John & Gloria Nottage, Judith Payne, Donald & Jean Peacock,Anthony & Sarah Platt, Ruth Plowden, Garth & Lucy Pollard, Jill Sawdon, Lesley & Barry Shooter, Derek & Rosemary Simon,John Sims, Paul & Caroline Stanley, Christine & Jack Stephenson,Alan Swerdlow & Jeremy Greenwood, Charles Taylor &Tony Collinge, Michael Taylor & Mike Nott, Mr & Mrs S.Whitney-Long.

Philip Britton (Chairman); Clare Webb (Treasurer); Alan McLean and Peter Baker (Concert Organisers – to the end of 2017); Gill Bracey, David Mintz, Kathrin Peters, Richard Quarrell, Christine Stephenson, Jack Stephenson andMichael Taylor.

Box office: Pauline Grahamtelephone 01728 603 077email boxoffice@concertsatcratfield.org.uk

Presented by Blyth Valley Chamber Music registered charity 1019300www.concertsatcratfield.org.uk

patrons

box office &mailing list

concerts atcratfield

on Sundays at 3.00pm

31 July: Quartetto RossiHaydn, Beethoven

14 August: André Trio piano trioMendelssohn, Fauré, Beethoven

28 August: Charles Owen pianoBach, Chopin, Liszt, Ravel

11 September: Callino Quartet, Anna Dennis soprano &Alasdair Beatson piano

Webern, Schoenberg, Brahms

futureconcertsTickets for other concerts inthe 2016 season can bebought or reserved fromPauline at the Box Officetable, during the interval orat the end of the concerttoday.

trustees 2016

This second concert of our 2016 season offers works by threeundisputed masters of the string quartet: Mozart and Beethovenfrom the classical era (ie post-Baroque and pre-Romantic, sobetween 1750 and 1830); and Bartók from between the twentiethcentury’s two world wars.

Mozart and Beethoven belong firmly in an Austro-Germantradition of string quartet writing. This has Haydn as its greatpioneer (known socially to both later composers and – for a briefand unsatisfactory time – Beethoven’s teacher). It also hasSchubert overlapping with both Haydn's old age and Beethoven’smaturity (see the chart on page 6). This tradition leads onwardsto Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms and Reger.

By contrast, Bartók’s quartets do not belong clearly to anytradition, owing little to the past in their language and structure.Instead they reflect (but indirectly, as if through a distortingprism) the idioms and rhythms of folk music, collected on fieldtrips (some with Kodály) through central Europe and to Turkeyand north Africa. Bartók also paved the way for furtherexperiments, at the very edge of contemporary quartet-writing,by his fellow-Hungarians Ligeti (1923-2006) and Kurtág(b1926). And Shostakovich seems to have been influenced by themulti-movement ‘arch’ structure of Bartók’s quartets 4 and 5.Paul Griffiths calls Bartók’s string quartets ‘music for virtuosos,having no place in the domestic environment where the quartethad grown’.

The Heath Quartet first played for us in 2010, while stillsupported by the Young Concert Artists Trust; since then, theyhave had two residencies at Snape and won the RoyalPhilharmonic Society Young Artists award. Unusually for a stringquartet, in 2014 they played in the Albert Hall in the bbc Proms,with the Tallis Scholars at a late night Prom celebrating JohnTavener (1944-2013).

More recently, the quartet released a pair of debut cds of all fiveTippett quartets on Wigmore Hall Live (‘Well worth exploring’,said Fiona Maddocks in The Observer, giving four stars); andhave now also recorded all the Bartók quartets (not yet released).They come to Cratfield after performing quartet works by Brittenand Tippett in the 2016 Aldeburgh Festival; and after generouslyplaying last night at a reception for the Members and Patrons ofBlyth Valley Chamber Music at Parham House Barn, at the kindinvitation of John and Genevieve Christie.

For more details, see their own website at www.heathquartet.com

If hearing any of the works in today’s concert makes you want tohave your own recording, here are some personalrecommendations:

Mozart, String quartet K458: the extensive back-catalogue ofViennese string quartets from the Quatuor Mosaïques on Astréeis at present available only for download, except for a 10-cdHaydn box, so for k458 a good modern-instrument alternativeis the Jerusalem Quartet on full price Harmonia Mundi, the discalso including the early three-movement k157 in c and the laterk589 in b flat.

Bartók, String quartet no3: there are many excellent recordingsof the Bartók quartets (in advance of the Heath’s own), but atwo-disc set of all six from the Belcea Quartet on WarnerClassics can be strongly recommended, though download only atpresent. An alternative is the Emerson Quartet at super-bargainprice on dg ; this was Record of the Year in the GramophoneAwards 1989.

Beethoven, String quartet op130: there are manyrecommendable sets of recordings of Beethoven quartets, ofwhich recent frontrunners include the Takács at full price onDecca and the Belcea (recorded in live performances at Snape) atmedium price on Zig-Zag Territoires. The Takács include op130in their ‘late quartets’ three-cd box; the Belcea mix quartetsfrom all periods in both four-disc volumes, with op130 in vol2.

In our experience, two companies offer a good range of stock,keen prices and efficient service for buying classical cds onlinein the uk : www.mdt.co.uk and

www.prestoclassical.co.uk

The fastest delivery to Suffolk may come from Prelude Recordsin Norwich, www.preluderecords.co.uk, who are equally helpfulon the phone: 01603 620 170.

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today’sconcert

today’sperformers

music on cdtoday’s performers andworks

This is the fourth of the six quartets (k387 to k465) whichMozart dedicated as a group to Haydn, though Mozart chose topublish k458 third in the set, after the d minor k421. The six areusually supposed to have been inspired by the friendship whichdeveloped between the two composers after Mozart joinedHaydn in Vienna in 1781, Mozart wishing to pay Haydn amusical compliment; but more specifically by Mozart’sappreciation and deep study of the older composer’s op 33 set ofquartets (‘Russian’). These were published in 1782, the year inwhich Mozart married Constanze Weber, Haydn enigmaticallydescribing them as written ‘in a completely new and special way’.There are however those who suggest that Mozart’s six ‘Haydn’quartets are in fact closer in style and structure to Haydn’spreceding op 20 set, which Mozart certainly also knew: for thechronology, see the chart on page 6.

This quartet was completed on 9 November 1784 (Haydn himselfplayed first violin in an early performance) and fits within a yearwhose new compositions also included – astonishingly – theQuintet for piano and wind k452, six new piano concertos (nos14-19) and the stormy Piano sonata in c minor k457. Mozart’sdedication to Haydn calls the quartets ‘my six children … thefruit of a long and laborious toil’. So he found emulating Haydn’sinventiveness difficult – though commentators think these sixworks as distinguished as their probable model, even if lessobviously playful and witty (and also longer).

The b flat, the most relaxed and sunny of the set, acquired its ‘Hunt’nickname – not sanctioned by Mozart or his publisher – from the‘outdoor’ atmosphere and 6/8 time signature of the first movement,whose relatively straightforward opening fanfares could be playedon the natural horn. This movement, the longest of the four, includesshowy passage-work for the first violin, a longer-than-usual repriseof the opening subject and an expansive fifty-bar coda.

After a minuet and trio, both relying heavily on dotted rhythms,the adagio opens in the ‘Masonic’ key of e flat in a seeminglyhesitant mood, then mutating with Schubertian intensity into cminor and beyond. The finale, where a rondo might have beenexpected for so lighthearted a movement, in fact uses sonataform, but has three main themes rather than the usual two andlasts longer than most quartet finales of the period. Some of theseunexpected features are equally typical of the advanced andsophisticated gestures of Haydn’s own quartets. Surprisingly,k458 seems never to have been played at Cratfield before.36

they make best sense seen as a group. All five were first performedby the Schuppanzigh Quartet, also good friends to Schubert, whowas writing his last great works in the same period, survivingBeethoven by only eighteen months. The op130 quartet was lastplayed at Cratfield in 1995 by the Fitzwilliam Quartet, with theGroße Fuge as its final movement.

wolfgangamadeusmozart1756 -1791

String quartet in B flatK 458 (‘The Hunt’)(1784)

Allegro vivace assai

Menuetto and trio: moderato

Adagio

Allegro assai

About 32 minutes

in case of emergencyUse the door marked exit which is nearest to you and moveinto the churchyard, away from the church. If the churchneeds to be evacuated, one of the Trustees will make anannouncement and individual stewards close to where youare sitting will then assist you towards the appropriate exit.

Programme text © 2016Philip Britton and BlythValley Chamber Music

1740 1760 1780 1800 1820

f j haydn 1732 - 1809

l v beethoven 1770 - 1827

w a mozart 1756 - 1791

f schubert 1797 - 1828

The solid section of a composer’s datelineindicates the period during which he wascomposing string quartets

A B

D E

C

key datesA Haydn, op20 (1772) B Haydn, op33 (1781) C Mozart, k458 (1784)D Beethoven as Haydn’s pupil (1792- 94) E Beethoven, op130 (1825-26)

the classical string quartetin vienna

Amongst Bartók’s six string quartets, this is the most compressedand perhaps the most innovative in structure. He composed it tenyears after the previous quartet; it follows the ballet music forThe Miraculous Mandarin (1918, but not performed until 1926),his two Violin sonatas and the Piano concerto no1, with hissecond Piano concerto to follow in 1930.

Although the work’s short movements alternate between slowand fast, like a Hungarian rhapsody, each includes within it manychanges of tempo and metre and makes full use of every stringtechnique available. There are passages requiring one or moreinstruments to be muted, extended trills, sliding from one note toanother or jagged playing with the heel of the bow (‘martellato’).

The whole work is played without a break, the third movementrevisiting the material of the first (‘recapitolazione’). This thentransitions into a dizzying coda-finale which re-uses materialfrom the second movement, starting eerily with the playersplaying ‘sul ponticello’ (close to the bridge of their instruments).Rob Cowan describes Bartók’s compositional technique as‘taking tiny thematic cells and developing them into a teemingnest of musical activity’.

The quartet is dedicated to the Musical Society Fund ofPhiladelphia, the oldest continuing music organisation in the usa.It won joint first prize in the Fund’s chamber music competition,alongside a work by Alfredo Casella (1883-1947), at the timechief conductor of the Boston Pops. It was published in 1929, theyear of its first performance.

interval

Refreshments are offered by a team from the parish, in aid ofchurch funds

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Commentators all agree that Beethoven’s late quartets containsome of the most innovative and personal music that he everwrote – perhaps that any composer has ever written. However,the prosaic origin of the first three of this final group of fivequartets was a commission from Russia: in late 1822 PrinceNikolas Galitzin (1794-1866) offered to pay whatever fee thecomposer thought appropriate (50 ducats, apparently) for up tothree new quartets. Beethoven accepted the offer, and the money,eagerly. But he was too busy with the Symphony no9 and theMissa solemnis, whose first complete performance Galitzinhelped organise in St Petersburg, to start work seriously until1824.

The opus numbers of the late quartets do not match theircomposition order: op127 came first in 1825; the next newquartet was op132 later the same year – delayed by a seriousabdominal illness, from which the composer’s recovery led to thetitle of its central movement. Op130 was the final work forGalitzin, first performed in March 1826 at the Musikverein inVienna.

This quartet shares the multi-movement structure of most of thelate quartets, with a brief presto (interrupted midway by a strangeseries of downward swoops and staccato chords) after thesubstantial first movement. However, it is alone among the lategroup in not having a serene large-scale set of variations at itscore; perhaps Beethoven thought this would not be compatiblewith a large-scale fugue as the work’s finale. Instead, the andantesuggests a light mood, continued by the 3/4 ‘German dance’ of thenext movement (originally intended to be the fourth movement ofop132), while the fifth movement ‘Cavatina’ (apparentlymeaning a simple and melodious song) carries the greatestemotional charge in the whole work.

Critics at the time thought the original granite-hewn fugal finalean incomprehensible and disproportionate mistake: what MishaDonat calls ‘surely the gruffest and most uncompromising piecehe ever wrote … almost in defiance of the medium in which it isscored’. The composer in the end came to agree, replacing theGroße Fuge with the more traditional allegro finale played today– the last piece of music he ever composed. The fugue was thenpublished separately as op 133, dedicated to Archduke Rudolph.

The energy released by these three commissioned works then ledhim to compose the remaining two quartets, op131 and 135:quartets were the only substantial new works of his last years and

ludwig vanbeethoven1770 -1827

String quartet in B flat op130 (1825-1826)

Adagio ma non troppo –allegro

Presto

Andante con moto, ma non troppo

Alla danza tedesca: allegro assai

Cavatina: adagio molto espressivo

Finale: allegro

About 38 minutes

béla bartók1881-1945

String quartet no3 in C sharp minor Sz 85(1927)

Prima parte: moderato –

Seconda parte: allegro –

Ricapitolazione della prima parte: moderato –

Coda: allegro molto

About 15 minutes