CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Tetzlaff Quartet

Zankel Hall
Saturday, November 8th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Pre-concert talk starts at 6:30 PM in Zankel Hall: Christian Tetzlaff in conversation with Jeremy Geffen, Director of Artistic Planning, Carnegie Hall.

Tetzlaff Quartet

MOZART String Quartet in D Minor, K. 421
BERG Lyric Suite

SIBELIUS String Quartet in D Minor, Op. 56, "Voces intimae"

Encore:
MOZART Molto allegro from String Quartet in G Major, K. 387

Program Notes:

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
(1756–1791)
String Quartet in D Minor, K. 421

By the early 1780s, Mozart had completed his informal apprenticeship in string quartet writing under Haydn. If the elder composer had brought the classical quartet genre to full maturity, the younger invested it with unprecedented emotional depth and complexity. Nowhere are these qualities more apparent than in the six quartets composed between late 1782 and early 1785, and known collectively as the “Haydn” Quartets. In dedicating the set to his esteemed mentor, Mozart reciprocated the magnanimous gesture Haydn had made several months earlier, when he famously proclaimed to Wolfgang’s father that his son was “the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.”

Composed in June 1783, K. 421 is the second of the “Haydn” Quartets and the only one in a minor key. Yet the quartet bears few traces of the high tragic style that Mozart often associated with the minor mode. The character of the music is, on the whole, warmly lyrical rather than vividly dramatic. Only the two outer movements do much more than hint at the weightier passions, and even there the predominant mood is genial and relaxed. The luminous intensity of the D-Minor Quartet derives, instead, from the 27-year-old Mozart’s extraordinary economy of expression. The music seems to have been pared down to the bare essentials; even the development sections are highly compressed.

In the opening Allegro, the brooding D-minor theme, at first gentle, then assertive, soon gives way to a graceful counter subject in F major. Both melodies are introduced by the first violin, which clearly plays the leading role in the ensemble. But Mozart’s conception of the string quartet, like Haydn’s, was fundamentally egalitarian, and he apportions the thematic material among the four instruments in a democratic fashion. Listen particularly for the inner voices, which are full of interest and variety. After a concise, harmonically unsettling development, the original theme returns in darker guise, the climactic D-minor chord leading unexpectedly to a limpid, triple-time Andante in F major.

The third movement Menuetto further explores the contrasts of tonality, texture, mood, and rhythm. In the Trio section, for example, Mozart neatly reverses the driving dotted-note figure heard in the upbeat to the principal theme, altering the pattern from long-short to short-long. The springy delicacy of this middle section accentuates the more propulsive character of the surrounding minuets. The final Allegretto ma non troppo is a set of four variations notable for their harmonic elasticity. A brisk coda reaffirms the home key and brings the quartet to an exhilarating close.

Performance time: approximately 28 minutes

Composed in 1783, the String Quartet in D minor received its first Carnegie Hall performance in Chamber Music Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on February 14, 1893, with the New York Symphony String Quartet (Adolph Brodsky and Jan Koert, violins; Ottokar Nováèek, viola; and Anton Hekking, cello).


ALBAN BERG
(1885–1935)
Lyric Suite

Despite its innocuous title, Berg’s Lyric Suite is among the most famously hermetic pieces of music. Its “secret program” made headlines around the world when it was brought to light by the American composer and musicologist George Perle, in the June 1977 issue of the Newsletter of the International Alban Berg Society. To be sure, the commotion had less to do with the music itself than with the sensational revelation of Berg’s dalliance with the wife of a well-to-do Prague industrialist fifty years earlier. To all appearances, the composer had been happily married. No one seems to have suspected his extramarital liaison, let alone guessed that he had immortalized it in one of his most widely performed works.

Berg first met his future paramour in May 1925, when he traveled to Prague to attend a performance of excerpts from his opera Wozzeck. “My brain is on fire,” the composer wrote excitedly to his wife, Helene, in Vienna. Soon his heart would be burning as well. Although Berg repeatedly reassured Helene that there was nothing between him and Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, in reality they were conducting a torrid affair that would end only with his death in 1935. Helene would go to her own grave in 1976, innocent of her husband’s infidelity. Unbeknownst to her, Perle had already tracked down an early published score of the Lyric Suite that Berg had inscribed to Hanna as “a small monument to a great love.”

In page after page of handwritten annotations, the infatuated composer provided a comprehensive key to the story behind his music. The preface to the miniature score that Berg presented to Hanna misleadingly stated that the suite’s structure was “mostly lax,” the six movements being “but loosely connected.” Nothing could have been farther from the truth. In fact, Berg had meticulously mapped out every bar of music, down to the level of individual pitches, tempos, and even note durations. As an organizing principle, he relied not only on the twelve-note method of composition developed by his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, but also on the numbers 23 and 10 (which had special significance for the lovers), and the musical equivalent of his and Hanna’s initials: In German notation, A,B, H, and F correspond to A, B- flat, B, and F, respectively.

To the average listener, of course, neither the arcane formal structure of the Lyric Suite nor its elaborate “secret program” is as important as the visceral impact it makes in performance. Whatever complexities lie beneath the surface, the warm-blooded sensuality and rhapsodic lyricism of Berg’s richly colored score make it eminently accessible, even on first hearing. The composer helpfully provided a road map to the listener’s emotional journey in the adjectives attached to the movement titles: jovial, amorous, mysterious, ecstatic, passionate, delirious, gloomy, and desolated. The music limns these changing moods, its fevered intensity unrelenting until, at the end, the four instruments fade out one by one; the musical staves literally disappear from the printed page.

Performance time: approximately 28 minutes

Composed between 1925 and 1926, the Lyric Suite received its Carnegie Hall and US premieres on October 22, 1931, with the New York Philharmonic and Erich Kleiber, conductor. It received its first performance here by a string quartet in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on May 21, 1973, with the Concord String Quartet (Mark Sokol and Andrew Jennings, violins; John Kochanowski, viola; and Norman Fischer, cello).


JEAN SIBELIUS
(1865–1957)
String Quartet in D Minor, Op. 56, “Voces intimae”

Sibelius’s spirits were at a low ebb in the dreary winter months of 1908–1909. Although his fame was gradually spreading beyond his native Finland, his mounting debts were a constant source of worry. Moreover, a tumor in his throat had raised the alarming specter of cancer, and his outlook did not improve when doctors ordered him to give up drinking and smoking. (“Life is something totally different without these stimulants,” he complained to his brother.) Always volatile, the 43-year-old composer fell prey to sharp mood swings and frequently wallowed in depression.

Whether consciously or otherwise, the brooding, inward-looking character of the D-Minor Quartet—subtitled “Voces intimae” (“Inner voices”)—mirrors Sibelius’s state of mind during its half-year period of gestation, from November 1908 to April 1909. Nearly two decades had passed since his last essay in the quartet genre; in the meantime, he had devoted himself chiefly to symphonies and symphonic poems. At last, feeling increasingly oppressed by the “weight of tradition,” he had resolved to cast off the plush romanticism of his early works in favor of the leaner, bleaker, more modern language of the D-Minor Quartet.

The quartet is cast in five movements rather than the traditional four. (The short, scherzo-like Vivace sounds almost like an appendage to the first movement. Indeed, Sibelius referred to it as the “first-and-a-half movement.”) A sense of intimacy is immediately established by the opening dialogue between first violin and cello. Thereafter, both plot and texture thicken, with frequent doublings and unison passages—a characteristically Sibelian device. The tenderly ruminative Adagio is the musical and emotional heart of the quartet. Here Sibelius allows himself to develop his ideas on an expansive scale before returning, in the last two movements, to a more compressed mode. Terse melodic and rhythmic motives impart a breathless intensity to the Allegretto and Allegro, the latter a kind of demonic moto perpetuo.

The D-Minor Quartet was a milestone in Sibelius’s career. With it, he declared, “I have left the training ship and gained my master’s certificate. Now I shall set course for the open sea.” Yet although “Voces intimae” is generally considered a masterpiece, the composer himself gave it a mixed review. “The melodic substance is good but the sonorities are another matter,” he observed in his diary. “The texture could be more transparent and lighter and, why not say it, more quartet-like.” Apparently Sibelius had second thoughts, for as the score of the quartet was going to press, he revised the ending to make it even denser and more “symphonic.” At the same time, he continued to pursue the spare and increasingly elliptical style that found expression in his next major work, the Fourth Symphony of 1911.

Performance time: approximately 26 minutes

Composed between 1908 and 1909, the String Quartet in D Minor received its Carnegie Hall premiere on April 23, 1981, with the Guarneri String Quartet (Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley, violins; Michael Tree, viola; and David Soyer, cello).

—Harry Haskell

© 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Tetzlaff Quartet
Christian Tetzlaff, violin
Elisabeth Kufferath, violin
Hanna Weinmeister, viola
Tanja Tetzlaff, cello

The Tetzlaff Quartet is rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the world's most fascinating chamber ensembles and has received critical acclaim since its founding in 1994.

In addition to concerts in Germany, the Quartet frequently performs in France, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland. They have performed at the Louvre in Paris, Société Philharmonique of Brussels, Vienna Musikverein, and at such international festivals as the Berliner Festwochen, Schleswig-Holstein, and Bremen Musikfest. This season they make their US debut with performances in at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; Zankel Hall; and Spivey Hall in Atlanta. They are currently at work on a recording of works by Schönberg and Sibelius on the AVI label.

Christian Tetzlaff's artistry stems from a musical integrity and technical assurance that enable him to realize intelligent and compelling interpretations. He is known for performances and recordings of a broad spectrum of the repertoire, ranging from Bach's unaccompanied sonatas and partitas, to 19th-century masterworks by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Brahms; and from 20th century concertos by Bartók, Berg, and Shostakovich to world premieres of contemporary works.

He has appeared with the orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Toronto, among many others in North America, and with the major European ensembles including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, Vienna Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.

Highlights of Mr. Tetzlaff’s current North American season include appearances with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, The Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, New York Philharmonic, Cincinnati and Houston symphonies, and the Toronto Symphony, with which he will perform the North American premiere of Mark Anthony Turnage’s Violin Concerto, “Mambo, Blues and Tarantella, ” a work written for him. He also plays all-Bach recitals in five US cities; duo recitals with pianist Leif Ove Andsnes in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Boston, Princeton and New York; and performs with the Tetzlaff Quartet in its North American debut.

Mr. Tetzlaff's highly regarded recordings reflect the breadth of his musical interests. They include concertos ranging from Haydn to Bartók; an album of 20th-century sonatas by Janáček, Debussy, Ravel, and Nielsen with Mr. Andsnes; the complete works for violin and orchestra of Jean Sibelius with the Danish National Radio Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard, which won the prestigious Diapason d'or; a Grammy-nominated album of Bartók's Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 with Mr. Andsnes, and Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin, all on Virgin Classics; Brahms’s Sonatas for Violin and Piano with Lars Vogt on EMI Classics; Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Russian National Orchestra and Kent Nagano on PentaTone Classics; and Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Tonhalle Orchestra and David Zinman on Arte Nova. His most recent releases are the Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin on the Musical Heritage and Haenssler labels, and the violin concertos of Brahms and Joachim with the Danish Radio Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard on Virgin Classics.

Mr. Tetzlaff makes his home near Frankfurt with his wife, a clarinetist with the Frankfurt Opera, and their three children. He currently performs on a violin modeled after a Guarneri del Gesu, made by German violinmaker Peter Greiner.

Violinist Elisabeth Kufferath studied at the Musikhochschule Lübeck and the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she was a student of Donald Weilerstein. She is laureate of the 1991 Cleveland Concerto Competition and the Vienna Modern Masters International Competition, where she won the first prize in 1996. In 2003 she was awarded the IBLA Foundatio’s Distinguished Musician’s Award. A frequent guest at international festivals including Lucerne, Schleswig-Holstein, Rheingau, Ravinia, and Aspen, Ms. Kufferath has performed as a soloist and in chamber music ensembles at the Philharmonie in Berlin, Cologne Philharmonic, Vienna Musikverein, and the Louvre in Paris, as well as in Rome, Florence, Brussels, Israel, Russia, China, and Southeast Asia. Her regular chamber music partners include Isabelle Faust, Antja Weithaas, Patrick Demenga, Lars Vogt, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and the Jean Paul Piano Trio. Ms. Kufferath was concertmaster of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra from 1996 to 2004. She has been a professor of violin at the conservatory in Detmold, Germany, since 2004.

Violist Hanna Weinmeister was born in Salzburg and began her early studies there at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg. She later attended the Musikhochschules in Vienna and Lübeck. She is a laureate of numerous competitions, including the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg (1991), the Concours International Jacques Thibaud (1994), and the International Parkhouse Award in London. Ms. Weinmeister has appeared as a soloist with the Munich and Berlin philharmonics, SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg, Mozarteum Orchestra, Bruckner Orchestra Linz, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, under such conductors as Franz Welser-Möst, Eliahu Inbal, and Michael Gielen. Her chamber music appearances have included collaborations with Heinrich Schiff, Leonidas Kavakos, Heinz Holliger, Gidon Kremer, Alexander Lonquich, Alexei Lubimov, and Benjamin Schmid. Ms. Weinmeister taught at the Conservatory in Bern from 2000 to 2004, and has been concertmaster of the Zurich Opera Orchestra since 1998. She plays a Benett Stradivarius viola from 1692.

Cellist Tanja Tetzlaff was a student of Bernhard Gmelin and Heinrich Schiff at the Hamburg Conservatory the Salzburg Mozarteum, respectively. She has won several international competitions including top prize at the first Internationale Musikwettbewerb in Vienna in 1992, and the third prize at the 1994 ARD Competition. Ms. Tetzlaff has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe, the US, Australia, and Japan, and regularly plays at many international festivals. She has appeared with most major German orchestras, as well as with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Radio Symphony Orchestra Moscow, Camerata Salzburg, and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra Brisbane, among others, with conductors including Daniel Harding, Sir Roger Norrington, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Paavo Järvi. Ms. Tetzlaff is especially interested in chamber music, and collaborates with such musicians as Lars Vogt, Alexander Lonquich, Martin Fröst, Leif Ove Andsnes, Florian Donderer, and Gunilla Süssmann. She plays a violoncello made in 1776 by Giovanni Baptista Guadagnini.