CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Takács Quartet

Zankel Hall
Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 7:30 PM

Takács Quartet
·· Edward Dusinberre, Violin
·· Károly Schranz, Violin
·· Geraldine Walther, Viola
·· András Fejér, Cello

HAYDN Quartet in C Major, Op. 74, No. 1
JANÁČEK String Quartet No. 2, "Intimate Letters"
BRAHMS Quartet in C Minor, Op. 51, No. 1

Encore:
SHOSTAKOVICH Polka from The Age of Gold, Op. 22

Program Notes:

The Concert At a Glance

Three of the Takács Quartet’s four concerts at Carnegie Hall this year will be built around the three quartets of Johannes Brahms, paired with Franz Joseph Haydn’s three quartets published as Op. 74. This thoughtful programming will allow us to see the “father of the string quartet” in a mature phase of his career, and appreciate how his legacy lived on in the music of Brahms almost a century later. Representative chamber works by César Franck, Leoš Janáček, and Béla Bartók will complete the programs, suggesting exciting artistic paths beyond the Austro-German tradition.

In this first concert, we find Brahms in an unusually agitated mood. Haydn offers his inimitable combination of serenity, wit, and an extraordinary richness of detail. Janáček’s “Intimate Letters,” a stunning confessional work, shows that there are virtually no limits to what four string instruments can express.

Notes on the Program
By Peter Laki

JOSEPH HAYDN Quartet in C Major, Op. 74, No. 1
Born March 31, 1732, in Rohrau, Austria; died May 31, 1809, in Vienna.

Composed in 1793, Haydn’s Quartet in C Major was probably heard first at Count Apponyi’s residence in Vienna, before being introduced to the public by J. P. Salomon’s quartet in London during the 1794–95 season. Tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of this work.

Among the many new impulses Haydn received in London during the year and a half he spent there in 1791–92 was the institution of the public concert, which didn’t exist yet in Vienna. Haydn had spent the better part of the previous 30 years writing music for the private functions of his employer, Prince Esterházy, at his rural estate. The idea of a venue in a big city open to anyone for the price of a ticket was fairly new, and it didn’t fail to have a decisive influence on Haydn as he entered the final stages of his long career. It is well known how he rethought his whole approach to orchestral music in the 12 London symphonies, but his other major instrumental genre, the string quartet, was equally affected by the new experiences.

Upon his return to Vienna, Haydn composed a new set of six quartets, which were eventually published in two installments, under two different opus numbers (71 and 74, with three works in each opus). They were publicly performed in London when Haydn returned there for a second sojourn, equal to the first in length; yet their dedicatee, the Hungarian aristocrat Count Georg Apponyi, had them previously performed in his salon.

The pair of chords with which the quartet opens clearly has to do with public concert life; its function is to tell the audience to stop talking so that the piece may begin. (Each quartet in the Op. 71/74 set begins with similar “noise-killers.”) The music that follows gives the first violin an almost concerto-like leading role—something we find in many of Haydn’s early quartets but few of the mature ones, in which the composer strove to make the four parts as close to equal as possible. This time, however, he wanted to feature his friend, violinist Johann Peter Salomon, who had been responsible for bringing him to England and who, as an impresario, concertmaster, and quartet leader, was an important presence in the London music scene.

In other respects, the first movement of Op. 74, No. 1, displays many characteristics of Haydn’s late style. The harmonic language is extremely advanced, with a great deal of “chromatic” notes (these are half-steps outside the principal key, whose function is to increase the tension). Also, having set the stage for a contrasting second theme, Haydn introduced a new version of his first theme instead; by using this “monothematic” construction, he achieved an unusually high degree of motivic unity in many of his works from the 1790s.

On the surface, the second movement is a simple song—but that simplicity is deceptive, for there are plenty of harmonic adventures in the music, the most striking being two long-held chords in what is the most distant key possible in relation to the principal tonality. This represents a musical “problem” situation that is eventually resolved by a return to the home key. Yet, since the foreign key was so distant, the modulation back to the starting point has to be gradual, in a carefully planned process involving a number of steps that make the transition seamless and almost imperceptible.

We find the same apparent simplicity concealing a great deal of sophistication in the third and fourth movements as well. The “oompah” bass at the beginning of the minuet sets the tone for a folklike Ländler, but the continuation takes off in some surprising new directions. The “Trio” or middle section is more subdued; here Haydn plays with the length of the phrases, which are sometimes longer and sometimes shorter than the standard musical period of 4 + 4 measures.

A contradanse melody receives the “royal treatment” in the finale. Haydn relies heavily on counterpoint: each instrument is rhythmically and thematically independent from the others. Yet the composer contrasts contrapuntal complexity with textures of a very different kind: the work ends on a long drone played by the viola and the cello, over which the two violins offer a final restatement of the main contradanse melody.

LEOŠ JANÁČEK String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters”
Born July 3, 1854, in Hukvaldy, Moravia; died August 12, 1928, in Moravská Ostrava.

Composed in 1928, Janáček’s String Quartet No. 2 was first performed on May 18, 1928, by the Moravian String Quartet in Brno, Czechoslovakia. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on December 3, 1974, with the Purcell String Quartet: Norman Nelson and Frederick Nelson, violins; Philippe Etter, viola; and Ian Hampton, cello.

In his 70s, Leoš Janáček was younger at heart than many people half his age. Some of his greatest works were written at a point in life when other composers slow down if they don’t stop writing altogether. This late efflorescence had a lot to do with an encounter in the summer of 1917 that changed Janáček’s life. The composer—who had just begun to emerge from many years of neglect with the sensational Prague premiere of his opera Jenùfa—met a young woman named Kamila Stösslová at a spa in Moravia. He was 63, she 26. They were both married—she had two young children. Janáček fell passionately in love. Rejuvenated by his feelings for Kamila, he completed, in the space of a decade, four operas, two piano concertos, the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass, and two string quartets. The second of these is subtitled “Listy dùvìrné” (“Intimate Letters”), though Janáček originally wanted to call it “Love Letters.” It is the most direct reflection of this remarkable relationship, in which correspondence played a major part. There are more than 700 surviving letters from Janáček to Stösslová (published in Czech in 1990 and in English four years later)—an amazing group of documents that, in the words of translator and editor John Tyrrell, “go to the heart of Janáček’s inner life and … contain a great love story.”

But the four musical “letters” contained in the quartet’s four movements go to emotional regions that words can never reach. This is music of uncommon intensity. Just as a person in love can’t find rest, so the music keeps changing tempos and instrumental textures in a totally unpredictable, yet by no means illogical, way.

Janáček wrote this quartet in January and February of 1928. His original plan was to replace the viola in the quartet with the Baroque viola d’amore (“the viola of love”). This later turned out to be impractical, and the regular string-quartet scoring was retained, but the viola part often carries special meaning and plays many extremely important solos. The very first time it enters (after an energetic opening motif played by the other three instruments), it plays pianissimo and sul ponticello (near the bridge, resulting in a special, mysterious timbre). The two contrasting themes of the opening—do they represent two people in a relationship?—will undergo their respective, individual evolutions in the course of the movement. Sometimes they are stated with blunt simplicity; other times, they are developed with great sophistication. At the end of the movement, the viola takes over the energetic opening theme in a passionate Allegro at whose conclusion the first violin plays it once more, at half speed, as a grandiose final gesture.

The second movement opens with a tender melodic figure played, once again, by the viola. In the course of the movement, the character of this figure will be played in a great many different harmonizations and instrumentations, now expressive and mysterious, now sweeping and powerful. At one point, the first four notes of the melody are turned into a rapid accompaniment figure, set against the same melody, played in a powerful fortissimo and in slow motion. Then, as an utter contrast, a playful, folk-like tune appears, and turns from folk-dance to lament in a matter of seconds. The recapitulation is combined with a surprise return of the twin motifs from the first movement. In the words of the eminent Janáček scholar Jaroslav Vogel, the movement ends “in a loud, festive garb and a mood of solemn thanksgiving.”

The third movement starts like a lyrical intermezzo, with all four instruments playing in harmony in the same rhythm. The idyll is soon disrupted by a more agitated second theme, which appears in many forms, in changing tempos and different register. Finally it is stated with extreme force by the first violin in its highest register. Janáček told Kamila about this movement that it was “very cheerful and then dissolve[d] into a vision which would resemble your image, transparent, as if in the mist.” The first theme returns and, surprisingly, takes on the agitated rhythmic quality of the second—the two people in a relationship are affecting and influencing one another. A pianissimo recall of the second theme, and a few sudden fortissimo measures, end the movement.

Like the third movement, the finale opens with a theme of deceptive simplicity, this time a vigorous folk-dance; once more, the initial mood is disrupted by episodes in turn dramatic and painfully nostalgic. In the middle of the movement, the second violin plays a fiery cadenza all made up of trills, which is repeated; the trills are then transformed into nervous figurations that remain present for the rest of the movement. The folk-dance reappears but is not allowed to bring about a “resolution:” the quartet is left curiosly open as it ends on a strong dissonance: the love between Janáček and Stösslová was not to find fulfillment on this earth.

After listening to the Moravian String Quartet play through the new work for him, Janáček wrote to Kamila:

Those cries of joy, but what a strange thing, also cries of terror after a lullaby. Exaltation, a warm declaration of love, imploring; untamed longing. Resolution, relentlessly to fight with the world over you. Moaning, confiding, fearing. Crushing everything beneath me if it resisted. Standing in wonder before you at our first meeting. Amazement at your appearance; as if it had fallen to the bottom of a well and from that very moment I drank the water of that well. Confusion and high-pitched song of victory: “You’ve found a woman who was destined for you.” Just my speech and just your amazed silence. Oh, it’s a work as if carved out of living flesh. I think that I won’t write a more profound and a truer one.


JOHANNES BRAHMS Quartet in C Minor, Op. 51, No. 1Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg; died April 3, 1897, in Vienna.

Completed in 1873, Brahms’s Quartet in C Minor, Op. 51, No. 1, may have been begun as much as 20 years earlier. It was first performed in the year of its completion in Vienna by the Joachim Quartet. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere 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.

In the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, the key of C minor acquired a very special symbolic significance. Associated with extremely turbulent emotions and sometimes outright tragedy, the tonality of C minor was used to express tense dramatic moments in the trial scene in Mozart’s Magic Flute, the opening “Chaos” movement of Haydn’s Creation, or the portrayal of Coriolan’s troubled soul in Beethoven’s overture of the same name. With its “fateful” opening motif, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony forever confirmed the character of the key in the minds of subsequent generations of musicians.

Brahms inherited the idea of a “tragic” C minor from his predecessors, and it is surely no accident that he used that key in three major works, each of which took many years to find its final shape and thus played an important part in Brahms’s development as a composer. The three works are the First Symphony, the Piano Quartet, Op. 60, and the present string quartet. It is said that Brahms destroyed as many as 20 of his early string quartets; the fact that the first quartet he decided to publish is in C minor is certainly noteworthy.

One of the most striking features of this quartet is the extent to which three of its four movements are dominated by a single melodic idea—and an extremely simple one at that: the first three notes of the minor scale in ascending order. Those three notes are the principal building block of the quartet’s opening melody, and they are heard almost constantly throughout the movement, either in its original form or with some modificiations that, however, always keep the connection clearly recognizable. This motivic “saturation,” as commentators have called it, is a technical tour de force but also a means to ensure an unusual level of emotional concentration.

The energy of this rising motif animates the tempestuous first and last movements of the quartet; in the second-movement Romanze, the same motif, in a much slower tempo, serves to express solace and comfort. In the third movement, the primary melodic direction is reversed. The themes are now predominantly descending, not ascending, and the character of the music is that of the Brahmsian “intermezzo.” Here the mood is relaxed and gentle but not as playful as in a scherzo, although the movement follows the outline of a scherzo with its contrasting middle section (“trio”). The latter, whose tempo is faster than that of the opening, is the most cheerful moment of the entire quartet.

Brahms fashioned both the passionate opening theme and the lyrical second melody of his finale out of the above-mentioned three-note motif. After a tempestuous development, the work ends with a coda, where Brahms, surprisingly, used the very same device found at the end of Haydn’s Op. 74, No. 1: a long drone on the cello’s open C string, which, in both works, has the function of bringing stability into a constantly changing musical process.


Copyright © 2007 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Peter Laki writes frequently about classical music and is the
program annotator of The Cleveland Orchestra.

Takács Quartet
·· Edward Dusinberre, Violin
·· Károly Schranz, Violin
·· Geraldine Walther, Viola
·· András Fejér, Cello
Recognized as one of the world’s premiere string quartets, the Takács Quartet is renowned for the ability to fuse four distinct, expressive musical personalities into gripping, unified interpretations. Based in Boulder at the University of Colorado, the Takács Quartet performs 80 concerts a year worldwide, performing throughout Europe as well as in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Korea. The members of the quartet are Associate Artists at the South Bank Centre in London, performing several concerts there each year. The 2007–08 season highlights include four concerts at Carnegie Hall: “Everyman,” inspired by Philip Roth’s novel of that name, in which they will perform with the Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a three-concert series focusing on Haydn and Brahms. In North America, they will perform in over 30 cities, and European tours include performances in Vienna, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Frankfurt, and Brussels. In May 2008 the quartet will perform a new piece by James Macmillan, commissioned by the South Bank.

The Quartet’s multi-award winning recordings include the late quartets by Beethoven, which in 2005 won Disc of the Year and Chamber Award from BBC Music Magazine, a Gramophone Award, and a Japanese Record Academy Award. Their recordings of the early and middle Beethoven quartets collected a Grammy, another Gramophone Award, a Chamber Music of America Award, and two further awards from the Japanese Recording Academy.

In 2005 the Takács Quartet signed a contract with Hyperion Records; a disc featuring Brahms’ Piano Quintet with Stephen Hough will be released in November 2007. The Quartet has also made 16 recordings for the Decca label since 1988 of works by Beethoven, Bartok, Borodin, Brahms, Chausson, Dvořák, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Smetana. The ensemble’s recording of the six Bartok string quartets received the 1998 Gramophone Award for chamber music and, in 1999, was nominated for a Grammy.

The quartet is known for innovative programming. The group collaborates regularly with the Hungarian folk ensemble Muzsikas, performing a program that explores the folk sources of Bartok’s music. The Takács performed a music and poetry program on a 14-city US tour with the poet Robert Pinsky. This season they will perform the program “Everyman” with actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Upcoming commissions include works by James Macmillan, Wolfgang Rihm and Daniel Kellogg.

At the University of Colorado, the Takács Quartet has helped to develop a string program with a special emphasis on chamber music. The Quartet’s commitment to teaching is enhanced by summer residencies at the Aspen Festival and at the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara. The Takács is a Visiting Quartet at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London.

The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai, and András Fejér, while all four were students. It first received international attention in 1977, winning first prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The Quartet also won the Gold Medal at the 1978 Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions and first prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet Competition in 1978 and the Bratislava Competition in 1981. The Quartet made its North American debut tour in 1982. Violinist Edward Dusinberre joined the Quartet in 1993 and violist Roger Tapping in 1995. Violist Geraldine Walther replaced Mr. Tapping in summer, 2005. Of the original ensemble, Károly Schranz and András Fejér remain. In 2001 the Takács Quartet was awarded the Order of Merit of the Knight’s Cross of the Republic of Merit.