CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Quatuor Mosaïques

Zankel Hall
Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 7:30 PM

“quartet playing does not come any more eloquent or richly imagined than this”—Daily Telegraph (London)

A period-instrument ensemble praised for its historically precise performances of Classical works, Quatuor Mosaïques features members of the prestigious Concentus Musicus Wien. This program features groundbreaking works by three of the most accomplished Classical composers, each of whom utilized an intense harmonic and rhythmic language that eventually propelled the string quartet genre into the Romantic era.

Quatuor Mosaïques
·· Erich Höbarth, Violin
·· Andrea Bischof, Violin
·· Anita Mitterer, Viola
·· Christophe Coin, Cello

SCHUBERT "Quartettsatz" in C Minor, D. 703
MOZART String Quartet in C Major, K. 465, "Dissonance"

BEETHOVEN String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132

Program Notes:

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828) Quartettsatz in C Minor, D. 703
Schubert’s youthful appetite for chamber music—he was barely 13 years old when he wrote his first string quartet—was nourished by the happy circumstance of having a family quartet under his own roof. His brother Ferdinand fondly recalled the “uncommon pleasure” of playing first violin to young Franz’s viola, while their brother Ignaz and their father rounded out the ensemble—there was no question about who was in charge:“Whenever a mistake was made, were it never to small, [Franz] would look the guilty one in the face, either seriously or sometimes with a smile; if Papa, who played the cello, was in the wrong, he would say nothing at first, but if the mistake was repeated, he would say quite shyly and smilingly: ‘Sir, there must be a mistake somewhere!,’ and our good father would gladly be taught by him.”

The comparatively modest demands made by the dozen or so string quartets that Schubert wrote in his teenage years presumably strained neither his father’s instrumental technique nor domestic harmony. But when the composer returned to the quartet medium in December 1820, after a hiatus of some four years, his musical language had evolved far beyond the capacities of the average amateur musician. Indeed, Schubert himself seems to have been somewhat overwhelmed by his newfound range and intensity of expression. After completing the first movement of his C-minor quartet and drafting some 40 bars of a slow movement in A-flat major, he either set the score aside temporarily or abandoned it altogether. The Quartettsatz (Quartet Movement) remained a tantalizing torso, unpublished for more than four decades after the composer’s death.

Even today, the untamed dramatic power of Schubert’s music is profoundly unsettling. Like Beethoven, he felt driven to push vigorously against the envelope of the classical style that had defined his earlier quartets. The Quartettsatz observes the conventional classical proprieties with its two complementary themes in dark, dim C minor and burnished A-flat major, and the pleasing symmetry of its mirror-like halves; but the shifting chromaticism of the middle development section eliminates a clear sense of an audible home key and tonal balance. The music also rhythmically simmers with a repressed, pulsating energy that periodically explodes but never quite reaches a full boil.

The compression of this orphaned Allegro assai is unusual for Schubert and may offer a clue as to why he left the quartet unfinished. The ending is as enigmatic as it is electrifying: The taut, swelling tremolos of the recapitulated opening theme are abruptly cut short, leaving the listener hanging. The three monumental quartets of Schubert’s brief maturity lie just around the corner.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) String Quartet in C Major, K. 465, “Dissonance”
The C-major quartet is the last of the six “Haydn Quartets” that Mozart presented to his revered mentor with a conventionally fulsome dedication: “Your good opinion encourages me to offer these to you and leads me to hope that you will not consider them wholly unworthy of your favor.” Haydn had expressed his good opinion after attending a private performance of the quartets in Vienna in February 1785, when he famously remarked to Mozart’s father that “your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.”

Haydn’s unreserved approbation reportedly did not extend to the harmonically unorthodox prelude that gives the C-major quartet its nickname of “dissonance.” Although the harmonic tension sounds mild enough to modern ears—indeed, Mozart’s searching, amorphous harmonies are scarcely more daring than those that Haydn himself used to depict primordial chaos in his oratorio The Creation—the opening Adagio was sufficiently abrasive to audiences in the late 18th century to provoke one critic to attack the passage as “barbarous.” Others went so far as to recompose the first few bars of the quartet, in an earnest attempt to correct Mozart’s “mistakes.”

As Haydn’s biographer Hermann Abert observed, “An age that saw in Mozart only an out-and-out optimist simply did not know where to begin with this adagio. But the Mozart with whom we are dealing here was anything but an optimist … The idea that finds expression here is not merely that of a storm that blows over and cleans the air. Rather, it is the basic mood of the work as a whole, the image of a mind weighed down by gloomy forebodings and attempting to come to terms with the emotional pressure that it feels.”

Many listeners would agree that an undercurrent of foreboding flows beneath much of the quartet’s sunny surface. This angst can be felt in the ambiguous and frequently elusive tonality, in the restless thematic material, and in the wide, angular melodic leaps that characterize the last two movements. Against all this must be counted the serene equanimity of the first-movement Allegro; the relaxed, aria-like lyricism of the Andante cantabile; and the irrepressible playfulness of the final Allegro molto. Mozart’s genius was capacious; as arresting as they may be, the first 22 bars of the C-major quartet are far from the whole story.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132
In the spring of 1825, shortly after the premiere of his Op. 127 String Quartet in E-flat Major, Beethoven was hindered by a severe intestinal ailment. Although a strict dietary regimen soon improved his health, the very real possibility of his mortality profoundly impacted all aspects of his life. No sooner was the composer on the road to recovery than he applied himself to writing what he called a “sacred song of thanksgiving from a convalescent to the divinity.” This deeply felt slow movement is the focal point of the A-minor string quartet, a work of majestic proportions and startling contrasts that points the way toward the radically innovative musical language of Beethoven’s last three quartets.

The Schuppanzigh Quartet gave the first performance of Op. 132 in September 1825, at a tavern in Bonn appropriately named the “Wild Man.” English conductor Sir George Smart, one of Beethoven’s foremost champions, was in the audience, and journaled that the A-minor quartet “is three-quarters of an hour long … It is most chromatic, and there is a slow movement entitled ‘Praise for the recovery of an invalid.’ Beethoven intended to allude to himself, I suppose, for he was very ill during the early part of this year. He directed the performers, and took off his coat, the room being warm and crowded. A staccato passage not being expressed to the satisfaction of his eye, for alas, he could not hear, he seized Holz’s violin and played the passage a quarter of a tone too flat.”

Beethoven’s deafness had forced—or perhaps freed—him to compose with his inner ear; this quality of Innigkeit (“inwardness”) gives the slow movement of the A-minor quartet its exceptional emotional intensity. The Molto adagio consists of three statements of a broad hymn-like melody in the archaic-sounding Lydian mode (the key of F major with B-naturals instead of B-flats); each statement is more elaborate than the last in rhythm, harmony, and voice leading. Interspersed with these spiritual meditations are passages of a more rhapsodic, almost febrile character. “Feeling new strength” (as Beethoven marked in the score), the invalid’s pulse quickens, the music now surging forward, now pulling back, until it finally comes to rest on a peaceful F-major chord.

A pair of sharply contrasting fast movements in A major frame the Molto adagio movement: The first is a playful Allegro, notable for evoking of a droning hurdy-gurdy in its midsection; the second is a jaunty little march that leads to an incongruously dramatic “recitative” declaimed by the first violin. The quartet’s two outer movements, both firmly anchored in A minor, mirror the soul searching of the Molto adagio. A somberly mysterious prelude, dominated by the interval of a rising and falling half-step, sets the stage for the opening Allegro, a densely argued and somewhat elliptical movement, by turns lighthearted and grimly fatalistic in mood. The final Allegro appassionato is an agitated rondo in triple time. Beethoven had once considered using this principal theme in the heroic finale of his Ninth Symphony. Here, too, the struggle between light and darkness culminates in a life-affirming major-key ending.


© 2009 The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Quatuor Mosaïques
·· Erich Höbarth, Violin
·· Andrea Bischof, Violin
·· Anita Mitterer, Viola
·· Christophe Coin, Cello
Quatuor Mosaïques is the most prominent period-instrument quartet performing today. The ensemble has garnered praise for its atypical decision to use gut-stringed instruments that, in combination with its celebrated musicianship, has cultivated the group’s unprecedented sound. The quartet has toured extensively, has won numerous prizes, and has established a substantial discography. Formed in 1985, the group includes Austrian Erich Höbarth, violin, who is also Konzertmeister and soloist for the Concentus Musicus Wien; Austrian Andrea Bischof, violin, who is Konzertmeisterin and soloist of both the Austrian Bach Soloists and Concentus Musicus; Austrian Anita Mitterer, viola, also a member of Concentus Musicus and Director of the Baroque Ensemble of Salzburg; and French cellist Christophe Coin, who appears regularly as a guest with l’Orchestre des Champs-Elysees, Concentus Musicus, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

The quartet has performed in Europe, the US, Australia, and Japan, and is a regular guest at prestigious European festivals, including Edinburgh, Salzburg, Luzern, Bremen, Bath, Styriarte Graz, Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, and Oslo, among others. The quartet performs regularly in Vienna, London’s Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall. It has performed with many international artists, including pianists András Schiff and Patrick Cohen, clarinetists Wolfgang Meyer and Sabine Meyer and cellists Miklós Perényi and Raphael Pidoux. In 2006 Quatuor Mosaïques was invited to Spain to perform for King Juan Carlos I, using the Monarch’s personal collection of Stradivari instruments.

Quatuor Mosaïques has an extraordinarily extensive discography that includes works by Haydn, Mozart, Arriaga, Boccherini, Jadin, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn, as well as works by modern composers. Recordings of the Wiener Klassik repertoire (Haydn string quartets: Op. 20, 33, and 77; and the quartets of Mozart dedicated to Haydn) have won numerous prizes, including the Diapason d’or, the Choc du Monde de la Musique, and a Gramophone Award.

The quartet’s four members met while performing with Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s Concentus Musicus in the 1980s, and decided to perform on original instruments as a classical “caper quartet.” Although the quartet performs on period instruments, it embraces the European quartet tradition, constantly allowing for the evolution of its repertoire as it strives to reveal the music’s psychological underpinnings.