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SCHULHOFF Five Pieces for String Quartet Alla Valse Viennese: Allegro Alla Serenata: Allegretto con moto Alla Czeca: Molto allegro Alla Tango Milonga: Andante Alla Tarantella: Prestissimo con fuoco

JANÁČEK String Quartet No. 1, “Kreutzer Sonata” Adagio; Con moto Con moto Con moto; Vivo; Andante; Tempo I Con moto; Adagio; Maestoso

I N T E R M I S S I O N

BEETHOVEN String Quartet No. 7 in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1 Allegro Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando Adagio molto e mesto Thème russe: Allegro

This concert is underwritten, in part, by The H&R Block Foundation

The International Chamber Music Series is underwritten, in part, by The William T. Kemper Foundation

Ying QuartetThe Folly Theater8 pm Saturday, January 16

t h e w i l l i a m t. k e m p e r i n t e r n at i o n a l c h a m b e r m u s i c s e r i e s

Robin Scott violinJanet Ying violinPhillip Ying violaDavid Ying cello

Additional support is also provided by:

2015-16: The 40th Season 69

This evening’s program opens with an all-Czech first half. Both works were written in 1923, but the two composers were at vastly different stages of their respective careers. Not yet 30, Erwin Schulhoff was still exploring multiple stylistic avenues in search of his own compositional voice. Leoš Janáček was 40 years Schulhoff’s senior. By the 1920s, he was the most famous musician in the Czech-speaking provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and his operas were gaining international attention. He was also enjoying a magnificent Indian summer that yielded some of his most beloved compositions. Janáček had already had a significant impact on Schulhoff before they met in 1923. By juxtaposing Schulhoff’s Five Pieces for String Quartet with Janáček’s String Quartet No. 1, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” the Ying Quartet zeroes in on this cross-pollination. After intermission, we hear the first of Beethoven’s Rasumovsky quartets. Composed during Beethoven’s so-called ‘heroic decade,’ this impressive quartet shows him to be a fully mature master. Its chronological placement at the heart of Beethoven’s middle period provides balance to this program, as do its roots in the Viennese classical tradition.

Five Pieces for String Quartet Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942)

Czech-born Erwin Schulhoff was a student of Dvořák, Max Reger, and Claude Debussy. Despite the fact that his name and music are unfamiliar to many of us, his music was widely performed throughout Europe in the 1920s and ’30s. As a student in Leipzig and Cologne, he earned prizes in both piano and composition. When World War I erupted in 1914, Schulhoff was conscripted into the Austrian army and served for four years. The experience disillusioned him, shifting his political sympathies to socialism (he later joined the Communist Party). Whereas his early compositions had adopted a post-romantic idiom, he now embraced atonality, an Expressionist aesthetic, and the Second Viennese School.

Two months after the Armistice that ended the war, Schulhoff moved to Dresden to live with his sister. Over the next four years in Germany, he encountered Dadaism and jazz, both of which would influence his later music. (He had several years of success as a jazz performer.) Schulhoff allied himself with a number of avant-garde movements, including Dadaism and quarter-tone music. He was one of the first to address the challenges of music "between" the pitches of the Western piano, as developed by his contemporary Aloïs Hába.

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"L.H.O.O.Q" by Marcel Duchamp, 1919 Duchamp was an artist associated with Dadaism

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Erwin Schulhoff

Returning to Prague in 1923, Schulhoff became fascinated by the music and philosophy of his countryman Leoš Janáček, who was by then a distinguished professor at the Prague Conservatory. Schulhoff’s study of Janáček’s music awakened an interest in Slavonic folk song and neoclassicism. The work we hear on tonight’s program, his 1923 Fünf Stücke (“Five Pieces”) is essentially a neo-Baroque dance suite for quartet. As the movement titles indicate, each of these miniatures adopts a different musical style. Schulhoff was no mere mimic, however, and the nationalities and dances of each movement are filtered through his personal compositional lens. The work was introduced in Salzburg at the International Society for New Music on 8 August, 1924. Its success encouraged Schulhoff to write his First Quartet that autumn.

In the original 1929 edition of Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, Erich Steinhard wrote of Schulhoff: “The distinguishing qualities of his style are humour, audacity, transparency, brilliance and grace.” Steinhard also noted, rather bizarrely, that “English dancing and English cheerfulness also appeal to (Schulhoff).” More than eight decades later, the assessment of his music has altered, not only because of the passage of time, but also because of the increased interest in Jewish composers who perished in the Holocaust. Josef Bek’s article in The New Grove II (2001) is expanded significantly over the 1980 edition. Bek identifies a stylistic shift in Schulhoff’s music beginning in the mid-1920s to a ‘synthesis of avant-garde aggression and the continuing European mainstream tradition.’ Czech music, in particular, made its strong presence felt in his original compositions. These "Five Pieces" are strongly flavored with the rhythms and inflections of Czech speech and dance, despite the more international sweep implied by the titles of waltz, tango, and tarantella. In that respect, they show a strong kinship to the music of Janáček, whose work Schulhoff had studied in depth. When the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939, Schulhoff was unable to continue working. He failed in his attempts to leave for the West or to emigrate to the Soviet Union. In June 1941, he was arrested and deported to the German concentration camp in Wülzburg, Bavaria. He died there in August 1942.

String Quartet No. 1, "The Kreutzer Sonata" (1923) Leoš Janáček (1854-1928)

Most of us are familiar with the "Kreutzer" Sonata, Beethoven's ninth sonata for violin and piano, Op. 47. Fewer are acquainted with Leo Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata (1889). The tale is one of deception, jealousy, suspected adultery, and an innocent woman wrongly accused and tragically murdered. In the literary original, the abusive spouse relates the tale to the author during a train trip. His wife was a pianist, the suspected lover a violinist with whom she played Beethoven's "Kreutzer" sonata at a private performance for friends. The music elicited powerful feelings in the husband that later mushroomed into uncontrollable rage and jealousy. Tolstoy wrote his story after having heard this Beethoven sonata performed.

Janáček was a late bloomer. He encountered little success for his music during his youth and middle age. The most bitter disappointment for him was the failure of his operas to gain an audience outside his native Moravia (now the eastern half of the Czech Republic). In 1915, however, when he was 61, the Prague opera produced Janáček's Jenůfa, with great success. His other music garnered more attention almost immediately, and he launched into an efflorescence of musical productivity that remains one of the most remarkable outpourings in the 20th century. His two string quartets were part of that rich harvest. There was a second reason for his rediscovered creative energy: Janáček was inspired by passionate love for a younger woman. While his obsession with Kamila Stösslová is believed to have been unrequited, she was undoubtedly the catalyst for most of his late music. Certainly she provided the romantic model for the string quartet's unnamed heroine. Janáček was a keen admirer of Russian literature. Tolstoy's tale is one of several Russian works that the Czech composer took as his point of departure for musical compositions. As early as 1908, Janáček considered setting Tolstoy's story as a piano trio. Only fragments of that piece have survived, and we will never know how closely the two works are entwined. We do know that 15 years later, he reworked some of its ideas into this first quartet. While the quartet certainly demonstrates Janáček's essentially dramatic approach to all music, it is not an exact rendering of Tolstoy's story, but more an evocation of feelings and ideas present in the literary model. Certainly it has elements of sonata form in the outer movements and Janáček clearly had a command of the conventional chamber idiom. He imprinted this quartet with his intensely personal style via both musical and programmatic means. Ultimately, it is his keen dramatic sense that causes the music to seethe with implications of seduction, passion, and rage. Throughout the quartet, Janáček interrupts muted, yearning phrases with nervous and agitated responses. The contrast between the two methods of delivery gives the effect of rapidly changing moods and different characters expressing a spectrum of emotions. A canonic duet between violin and cello at the beginning of the third movement provides one of the more readily

2015-16: The 40th Season 71

In the original 1929 edition of Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, Erich Steinhard wrote of Schulhoff: “The distinguishing qualities of his style are humour, audacity, transparency, brilliance and grace.” Steinhard also noted, rather bizarrely, that “English dancing and English cheerfulness also appeal to (Schulhoff).” More than eight decades later, the assessment of his music has altered, not only because of the passage of time, but also because of the increased interest in Jewish composers who perished in the Holocaust. Josef Bek’s article in The New Grove II (2001) is expanded significantly over the 1980 edition. Bek identifies a stylistic shift in Schulhoff’s music beginning in the mid-1920s to a ‘synthesis of avant-garde aggression and the continuing European mainstream tradition.’ Czech music, in particular, made its strong presence felt in his original compositions. These "Five Pieces" are strongly flavored with the rhythms and inflections of Czech speech and dance, despite the more international sweep implied by the titles of waltz, tango, and tarantella. In that respect, they show a strong kinship to the music of Janáček, whose work Schulhoff had studied in depth. When the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939, Schulhoff was unable to continue working. He failed in his attempts to leave for the West or to emigrate to the Soviet Union. In June 1941, he was arrested and deported to the German concentration camp in Wülzburg, Bavaria. He died there in August 1942.

String Quartet No. 1, "The Kreutzer Sonata" (1923) Leoš Janáček (1854-1928)

Most of us are familiar with the "Kreutzer" Sonata, Beethoven's ninth sonata for violin and piano, Op. 47. Fewer are acquainted with Leo Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata (1889). The tale is one of deception, jealousy, suspected adultery, and an innocent woman wrongly accused and tragically murdered. In the literary original, the abusive spouse relates the tale to the author during a train trip. His wife was a pianist, the suspected lover a violinist with whom she played Beethoven's "Kreutzer" sonata at a private performance for friends. The music elicited powerful feelings in the husband that later mushroomed into uncontrollable rage and jealousy. Tolstoy wrote his story after having heard this Beethoven sonata performed.

Janáček was a late bloomer. He encountered little success for his music during his youth and middle age. The most bitter disappointment for him was the failure of his operas to gain an audience outside his native Moravia (now the eastern half of the Czech Republic). In 1915, however, when he was 61, the Prague opera produced Janáček's Jenůfa, with great success. His other music garnered more attention almost immediately, and he launched into an efflorescence of musical productivity that remains one of the most remarkable outpourings in the 20th century. His two string quartets were part of that rich harvest. There was a second reason for his rediscovered creative energy: Janáček was inspired by passionate love for a younger woman. While his obsession with Kamila Stösslová is believed to have been unrequited, she was undoubtedly the catalyst for most of his late music. Certainly she provided the romantic model for the string quartet's unnamed heroine. Janáček was a keen admirer of Russian literature. Tolstoy's tale is one of several Russian works that the Czech composer took as his point of departure for musical compositions. As early as 1908, Janáček considered setting Tolstoy's story as a piano trio. Only fragments of that piece have survived, and we will never know how closely the two works are entwined. We do know that 15 years later, he reworked some of its ideas into this first quartet. While the quartet certainly demonstrates Janáček's essentially dramatic approach to all music, it is not an exact rendering of Tolstoy's story, but more an evocation of feelings and ideas present in the literary model. Certainly it has elements of sonata form in the outer movements and Janáček clearly had a command of the conventional chamber idiom. He imprinted this quartet with his intensely personal style via both musical and programmatic means. Ultimately, it is his keen dramatic sense that causes the music to seethe with implications of seduction, passion, and rage. Throughout the quartet, Janáček interrupts muted, yearning phrases with nervous and agitated responses. The contrast between the two methods of delivery gives the effect of rapidly changing moods and different characters expressing a spectrum of emotions. A canonic duet between violin and cello at the beginning of the third movement provides one of the more readily

recognizable references to Beethoven's violin sonata. Perhaps the greatest irony of this powerful piece is that Tolstoy regarded music as a leading encourager of adultery, whereas Janáček wanted to protest what he regarded as the unfortunate tyranny of men over women. In Janáček's thoughtful hands, the thrust of sympathy shifted decisively, even though the tragic climax could not be averted.

String Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Beethoven had a lifelong interest in the string quartet. He worked on his first quartets, the six of his Op. 18, between 1798 and 1800; they were published in Vienna in 1801. After a hiatus of a few years, he returned to quartet writing in 1804. Though he composed works in a variety of genres, including other chamber combinations such as his violin/piano sonatas, the cello/piano sonatas and the piano trios, the intervening time was spent focusing on piano pieces (including a dozen solo sonatas and two concertos) and major orchestral works.

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Leoš Janáček

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We know relatively little about his commission from Count Andreas Kirillovich Rasumovsky, except that Rasumovsky apparently requested Beethoven to incorporate some Russian folk tunes into the quartets. Rasumovsky was married to a sister-in-law of Prince Lichnowsky, another important patron of Beethoven. The Russian Count was a violinist himself, and maintained a household with much music. The Schuppanzigh Quartet, which performed the premieres of most of Beethoven's string quartets, was the resident quartet in Rasumovsky’s domestic establishment for a time.

A comparison of the three Op. 59 quartets to their predecessors, the six of Op. 18, shows astonishing growth. On the most basic level, the new quartets are conceived on a vastly larger scale. Their themes are broader and more extended. A sense of spaciousness permeates each of them. All three show a preponderance of sonata-form movements (see p. 126 for Sonata Allegro Form diagram); remarkably, the first of the three is cast with all four of its movements in sonata form. In Op. 59, Beethoven broke away from the reliance on the worthy models of Haydn and Mozart that had characterized the Op. 18 quartets. In some respects it seems as if he launched into the new century forging into uncharted territory, with the tools of his trade he had carried forward from the 18th century. Certainly he sought and established with these quartets new terrain he could claim as his own. Although the sketchbooks indicate that Beethoven started work on these quartets in 1804, they were not completed for two years. The autograph to the first is dated May 1806. Both the performers and the listeners struggled with the new works at their first performances; they were received poorly and with little understanding. How frustrating it must have been for Beethoven to have even the musicians mystified by his work! The F Major Quartet, the first of the three, is the longest and in many ways the most satisfying of the set. The scale of its opening movement is huge. The first theme announces the texture, the scope, the expansiveness of the work. Shared by the cello and the first violin, this theme has a horizontal dimension of a whopping 19 measures; its vertical measure is a soaring four octaves. Large gestures are the order of the day in this quartet. Beethoven allows for no double bar and repeat of the exposition, proceeding directly to his development, a first in quartet writing.

The scherzo, called Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando, is placed second – not unheard of, but breaking with tradition to some extent. This is one of the movements that so mystified Beethoven's contemporaries, who called it "freakish." They heard unrelated key signatures, isolated rhythmic fragments, and concluded that it was music from a madman. In fact its rhythmic unity is a powerful binding force, and the composer succeeds in meshing humor and drama most effectively. Beethoven's third movement is a dramatic, deeply felt adagio, whose dark coloring is heightened by the direction "mesto" ('sad, mournful') in its title. The spacious, symphonic aura which pervades this quartet is quite apparent here, lending great poignancy and emotional depth to this adagio. The movement ends with a cadenza-like passage played by the first violin, which moves the quartet without pause into the finale. As in the first movement, Beethoven gives the initial statement of the melody – the "thème russe" – to the cello. He builds a lively and lighthearted finale, superbly crafted if not particularly Russian. The scale is still enormous and the ending dramatic. With this quartet, Beethoven bade farewell forever to the proper, stylized forms of the 18th century.

Program Notes by Laurie Shulman ©2015Found a word or phrase that you are unfamiliar with? Check out our extensive Glossary beginning on page 118 to discover the meaning.

Painting of Beethoven by Carl Jäger

p r o g r a m n o t e s

2015-16: The 40th Season 73

A comparison of the three Op. 59 quartets to their predecessors, the six of Op. 18, shows astonishing growth. On the most basic level, the new quartets are conceived on a vastly larger scale. Their themes are broader and more extended. A sense of spaciousness permeates each of them. All three show a preponderance of sonata-form movements (see p. 126 for Sonata Allegro Form diagram); remarkably, the first of the three is cast with all four of its movements in sonata form. In Op. 59, Beethoven broke away from the reliance on the worthy models of Haydn and Mozart that had characterized the Op. 18 quartets. In some respects it seems as if he launched into the new century forging into uncharted territory, with the tools of his trade he had carried forward from the 18th century. Certainly he sought and established with these quartets new terrain he could claim as his own. Although the sketchbooks indicate that Beethoven started work on these quartets in 1804, they were not completed for two years. The autograph to the first is dated May 1806. Both the performers and the listeners struggled with the new works at their first performances; they were received poorly and with little understanding. How frustrating it must have been for Beethoven to have even the musicians mystified by his work! The F Major Quartet, the first of the three, is the longest and in many ways the most satisfying of the set. The scale of its opening movement is huge. The first theme announces the texture, the scope, the expansiveness of the work. Shared by the cello and the first violin, this theme has a horizontal dimension of a whopping 19 measures; its vertical measure is a soaring four octaves. Large gestures are the order of the day in this quartet. Beethoven allows for no double bar and repeat of the exposition, proceeding directly to his development, a first in quartet writing.

The scherzo, called Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando, is placed second – not unheard of, but breaking with tradition to some extent. This is one of the movements that so mystified Beethoven's contemporaries, who called it "freakish." They heard unrelated key signatures, isolated rhythmic fragments, and concluded that it was music from a madman. In fact its rhythmic unity is a powerful binding force, and the composer succeeds in meshing humor and drama most effectively. Beethoven's third movement is a dramatic, deeply felt adagio, whose dark coloring is heightened by the direction "mesto" ('sad, mournful') in its title. The spacious, symphonic aura which pervades this quartet is quite apparent here, lending great poignancy and emotional depth to this adagio. The movement ends with a cadenza-like passage played by the first violin, which moves the quartet without pause into the finale. As in the first movement, Beethoven gives the initial statement of the melody – the "thème russe" – to the cello. He builds a lively and lighthearted finale, superbly crafted if not particularly Russian. The scale is still enormous and the ending dramatic. With this quartet, Beethoven bade farewell forever to the proper, stylized forms of the 18th century.

Program Notes by Laurie Shulman ©2015Found a word or phrase that you are unfamiliar with? Check out our extensive Glossary beginning on page 118 to discover the meaning.

b i o g r a p h y

Now in its second decade as a quartet, the Ying Quartet has established itself as an ensemble of the highest musical

qualifications in its tours across the United States and abroad. In addition to appearing in conventional concert situations, the Quartet is also known for its diverse and unusual performance projects. For several years they presented a series called "No Boundaries" at Symphony Space in New York City that sought to re-imagine the concert experience. Collaborations with actors, dancers, electronics, a host of non-classical musicians, a magician and even a Chinese noodle chef gave new and thoughtful context to a wide variety of both traditional and contemporary string quartet music. As quartet-in-residence at the Eastman School of Music, the Ying Quartet maintains full time faculty positions in the String and Chamber Music Departments. From 2001-2008, they were also the Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University. They first came to professional prominence in the early 1990s during their years as resident quartet of Jesup, Iowa, a farm town of 2000 people. Playing before audiences of six to six hundred in homes, schools, churches, and banks, the Quartet had its first opportunities to enable music and creative endeavor to become an integral part of community life. The Quartet’s ongoing LifeMusic commissioning project was created in response to their commitment to expanding the rich string quartet repertoire. Supported by the Institute for American Music, the Quartet commissions both established and emerging composers to create music that reflects contemporary American life. The Ying Quartet's 2007 Telarc release of the three Tchaikovsky Quartets and the Souvenir de Florence (with James Dunham and Paul Katz) was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Chamber Music Performance category. In addition, their collaboration with the Turtle Island Quartet, "Four + 4," explored the common ground between the classic string quartet tradition and jazz and other American vernacular styles, and won a Grammy Award in 2005. Their most recent release with the Billy Childs Chamber Jazz Ensemble, “Autumn in Moving Pictures” (ArtistShare) was nominated for a Grammy in 2010.

For more information visit www.ying4.com

Ying Quartet appears courtesy of Melvin Kaplan, Inc.

Ying Quartet