CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Brentano String Quartet

Weill Recital Hall
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Brentano String Quartet
·· Mark Steinberg, Violin
·· Serena Canin, Violin
·· Misha Amory, Viola
·· Nina Lee, Cello
Thomas Sauer, Piano

MOZART String Quartet in B-flat Major, K. 589, "Prussian"
ELLIOTT CARTER Piano Quintet
BACH Contrapunctus XIV, BWV 1080 from The Art of Fugue
BARTÓK String Quartet No. 6

This concert is made possible, in part, by an endowment fund for young artists established by Mr. and Mrs. Anthony B. Evnin and the A.E. Charitable Foundation.

Program Notes:

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART String Quartet in B-flat Major, K. 589, “Prussian”Born January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria; died December 5, 1791, in Vienna.

Composed in the spring of 1790, Mozart’s String Quartet in B-flat Major received its Carnegie Hall premiere in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on January 18, 1963, with the Amati String Quartet: Richard Leshin and Shirley Marcus, violins; Maxine Johnson, viola; and Harold Schneier, cello.

Mozart composed his B-flat Quartet the year before he died. This quartet and its companion works, K. 575 and K. 590, are often referred to as the “Prussian” quartets, based on Mozart’s intention to dedicate them to the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm II. Until recently it was assumed that the King had actually commissioned these quartets—Mozart wrote only three of a planned set of six—but recent scholarship suggests that this was wishful thinking on Mozart’s part. Deeply in debt, he probably composed them on speculation, hoping to be rewarded after the fact by a happy royal recipient. Friedrich Wilhelm was an enthusiastic amateur cellist, and accordingly the cello is often the featured soloist in these three quartets, as Mozart strove to capture the King’s fancy.

We are accustomed to thinking of Mozart as the effortless genius, from whose brain great works of music sprang fully formed. In reality, it is evident that his later quartets gave him a fair amount of trouble: the six great quartets that he dedicated to Haydn had their early drafts and their false starts, and the “Prussian” quartets were a project of several months’ duration, which he at one point referred to as “that exhausting labor.”

Despite his feelings about his last three quartets, there is nothing laborious in the atmosphere of the music itself. The six “Haydn” quartets, which date from several years before, bear the marks of rich effort and inventiveness, and they astonish with their contrapuntal complexity and ambitious means of expression. In these later quartets, the air is far more transparent, the message more simply stated. In the case of the B-flat Quartet, the four-movement format has a compact, streamlined quality; there is no one movement that claims to be the weighty center of the piece. The textures more often favor homophony (melody in one voice, simple accompaniment in the others), although contrapuntal passages still abound. And if Mozart does not entirely avoid the rich, chromatic harmony of many of his mature works, he seems to favor simplicity in his harmonic language as well.

The first movement is an airy sonata form, starting up high in the upper voices and waiting a few bars before introducing the cello’s voice, which is prominently featured throughout the exposition. Triplets, appearing early on, proceed to dominate the rhythmic texture, imparting a nimble motion to the music. Despite a shadowy journey through remote keys in the central development section, the movement remains essentially blithe throughout its compact form, unencumbered by a coda or any other structural “extra.”

The second movement opens with a lovely cantilena for the cello, with a simple accompaniment; it is hard to imagine a more perfect showcase for this instrument’s lyrical upper register. After this melody is echoed by the first violin, swirling 16th-note figurations carry the music to a different key and to the other melodic idea of the movement, a grave and elegant statement passed between first violin and cello. The movement as a whole evokes the composer’s finest love arias from The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute.

The minuet movement is a stately dance, which attempts to proceed with dignity, but is chuckled at by 16th-notes in the lower instruments, first loudly in the cello and then softly in the viola. Eventually the 16th-note motion pervades the entire texture, with some brilliant first-violin passages leading up to a tongue-in-cheek conclusion in the viola part. The contrasting Trio section is actually longer than the main section, and contains the most elaborate music of the quartet. Characterized by a rapid bariolage figure that starts in the second violin and is passed around the group, this section is a sonic collage, with bits of melody overlaid on top of a busy contrapuntal exchange.

The finale is a lighthearted, graceful movement whose main idea is like a game of leapfrog, always echoed at half a bar’s distance. Other manifestations of fun are a hopping figure that plays with the meter, changing it from 6/8 to 3/4, and frequent sudden dynamic changes. The movement recalls distantly the first movement of the “Hunt” Quartet in its meter, key, and exuberance, but this movement is a lighter traveler, remaining true to its own quartet in its agile motion, its lean form, and its economy of means. The ending is a Mozartean signature: a strong, assertive phrase answered by a witty, quiet rejoinder.
—Misha Amory

ELLIOTT CARTER Quintet for Piano and String Quartet
Born December 11, 1908, in New York.

Tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of Carter’s Piano Quintet, composed in 1997.

Quintet for Piano and String Quartet was composed during the summer of 1997 for the pianist Ursula Oppens and the Arditti Quartet, commissioned for them by the Library of Congress with the intention of giving its premiere at a concert celebrating my 90th birthday at the Library.

The work is in one movement of many changing characters and contrasts. The moods and materials of the piano are contrasted with those of the string quartet, which, itself, is a combination of four different strands that maintain somewhat independent existences, played by the four strings.
—Elliott Carter


JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Contrapunctus XIV, BWV 1080 from The Art of Fugue
Born March 21, 1685, in Eisenach, Germany; died July 28, 1750, in Leipzig, Germany.

Composed in 2007, Phantasmagoria was first performed by Trio Con Brio on August 12 of this year in Roskilde. Tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of this work.

With The Art of Fugue, a veritable Bible of fugal techniques and expression, Bach produced a monumental edifice. (The idea of fugue, for the uninitiated, is that of a musical form that deals with a number of voices all discoursing on shared thematic material, a “subject,” in much the same way debates focus on a subject.) A compilation of fugues based on a single subject (and its variations), The Art of Fugue seems to be an exhaustive study of the possibilities of the form, a composer testing his mettle, expanding his horizons. It has long been debated whether the work is in fact a study, theoretical or conceptual, never meant to be performed. Were it meant to be performed, there is much speculation on what instrumentation was intended; is it a keyboard work, a work for a consort of like instruments, for a broken consort, a vocal group? The piece is written in “open score”—on four staves, one per part, with no other indications. There is much room for discussion, for scholarly musings, and musicological excavation. What is clear to us is that this is a golden treasure trove of riveting musical rhetoric, elevated, intricately woven round-table discussions that make for an engaging concert experience. It is music for which we have a deep love and for which we feel we can bring to life effectively through the medium of the string quartet.

The Art of Fugue as a whole forms a sort of treatise comprising a set of discussions related to a common theme. Imagine hosting a series of fascinating evenings devoted to discourse on politics or a specific political problem, dealing with one main insight on each such evening. In much the same way as such a series of evening sessions would, we find that this set of fugues exhibits a certain shared “aboutness,” rooted in descent from a common fugue subject. Sometimes other, secondary subjects are brought in to comment on and shed light on the first (such as in Contrapunctus XI, which has two additional subjects), or a theme is turned upside down to be viewed from a new angle (Contrapuncti IV, VI, and XI), or it is stated rather more slowly or quickly in order to lend it a different weight (Contrapunctus VII). Parts support or challenge one another. All these are familiar concepts to anyone who has been engaged in fruitful debate, and make for stimulating repartee.

Such a mammoth achievement from the great composer’s last days comes to us only incomplete, as the final fugue (Contrapunctus XVIII) trails off unended, thus inviting romantic speculation. There is the most likely apocryphal story of Bach dying as he dictated the final fugue, having just incorporated his own name as a musical cipher into the fabric of the piece. Of all the parts of The Art of Fugue, this final, unfinished fugue is the lengthiest, even truncated as it is, and arguably the loftiest as well. Alone in this work it does not feature the subject common to all the other fugues, although its first subject can be understood as a variation on it. Instead it features fugal writing on three different subjects that get intertwined as the piece progresses. The third of these subjects is Bach’s own name, spelled out in pitches (H being the German signifier of our B-natural) as if he were signing his own piece. Just after the integration of all three theme, the piece breaks off. It has been shown, however, that these themes can all be combined with a fourth, the fourth being the principal subject of the entire The Art of Fugue, thus gloriously contextualizing this much mused-on subject as the crowning achievement of the entire work. Without the final section, the main subject remains implied, its aura having been fully illuminated. It is rather like figuring out who a man is through his influence on others, or learning the story of the life of Jesus through the accounts of competing gospels. We are able to arrive at the fullest truth of the subject by encountering its reflections in other themes that fit with it. And although I would give (almost) anything to know the rest of this beautiful, haunting piece, I also believe that as it stands it makes a moving and powerful statement. It is the torso of a magnificent, powerful ancient sculpture, and we apprehend it even without direct knowledge of its entirety.
—Mark Steinberg

BÉLA BARTÓK String Quartet No. 6
Born March 25, 1881, in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now Sînnicolau Mare, Romania); died September 26, 1945, in New York.

Composed in 1939, Bartók’s String Quartet No. 6 received its Carnegie Hall premiere on April 12, 1964, in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) with the Philadelphia String Quartet: Veda Reynolds and Irwin Eisenberg, violins; Alan Iglitzin, viola; and Charles Brennand, cello.

In 1939, haunted by both the looming specter of the Second World War and burgeoning personal difficulties (first and foremost his mother’s grave illness and death), Béla Bartók produced what was to be his final string quartet, his sixth. It is a curious and powerful work, seemingly two distinct quartets amalgamated into one: a poignant lament that reveals its full dimensionality in stages as the piece progresses, and, sandwiched between occurences of the lament, a more conventional set of tripartite movements, ranging in character from playful to bitterly sarcastic.

Although it is the music of the lament that gives this piece its truest profile, we know now that at the start of his work, Bartók had not yet included it in his plan. He began with a contrapuntally alert movement (now the main, fast section of the first movement), filled with quicksilver exchanges of material, replete with clever inversions and intertwinings. There is folk-like music here as well and, although the music is consistently characterful, ranging from good-natured teasing to agitated muttering, it is rather more objective than personal. The second movement is a march, reminiscent of the Recruiting Dance of the Contrasts for piano, clarinet, and violin. It has a nasty, pompous edge to it, a caricature that brings to mind the military horrors growing in Europe at that time, the start of a war that was to displace Bartók from his beloved Hungary forever. Bartók sets up a foil for this rigid, sometimes oddly limping march with a wild, rhapsodic trio section. The third movement proper is a Burletta, or burlesque, distorted, ironic and sarcastic. It displays all the trappings of comedy, yet there is bile just beneath the surface (think Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, perhaps). In this case the trio section is a gentle, folk-inspired, brief reprieve—a moment of innocence recalled.

The formal plan of the piece is most often described as an introduction preceding each of the first three movements, with the introductory material becoming the driving force of the entire fourth movement. The introductions explore what I have called the lament, marked Mesto, or “sad.” This starts as a solo viola (single) line. Before the second movement, it is in two parts: the cello primary, colored by a quiet but richly textured contrapuntal line shared by the other three instruments. Prefacing the third movement, it comes as a three part texture. The last movement then explores the material at greatest length, and with four independent lines. For me, the experience of performing the piece suggests a slightly different relationship between materials. It has never felt to me that the Mesto material is introductory in any sense, but rather that it is turned away from time and time again, a sadness that is temporarily pushed aside, eyes averted, by engagement with some more outer world. Upon the return to this material it feels like the real music, the true topic of the work, is found anew. Finally the last movement completely inhabits this world, as well as exploring the shadow it casts looking backward at the “real” world of the main part of the first movement. It is a feeling somewhat echoed by Bartók’s actual working process. He had originally planned for the fourth movement to have a four-part version of the Mesto followed by another quick movement, folk-inspired and dance-like, and he even sketched out a good deal of music for this version. But this final time he found himself unable to turn away from the world of the Mesto. Whether this is due to his mother’s death, the horrors of the war, his impending exile, or to purely artistic compulsion, we will probably never know. The piece is unimaginable today in any other form, so powerfully does its trajectory speak to our way of living in the midst of grief and loss.

It is telling to examine the final three notes of the Mesto theme as first stated by the viola, for they give us a quotation from Beethoven’s final quartet, Op. 135, under which Beethoven writes “es muß sein”: “it must be.” And so it must; despite all that is to follow, it is the Mesto material that reveals the genuine soul of the piece, the truest and only possible worldview at that moment. A further Beethoven reference follows, when the full quartet responds in unison to the alienated solo viola line. For anyone who is familiar with the earlier work, this response will inevitably bring to mind the Overtura of the Große Fuge, that monumental final movement of the original version of Beethoven’s Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130. Not only does this Beethoven movement represent mighty wrestling with the forces of chaos we encounter in the world, but it shatters the world of the previous movement, the famous Cavatina, the movement Beethoven claimed he couldn’t recall without its summoning a tear to his eye. Thus in retrospect, the opening of the Bartók may take on the emotional resonances of the Cavatina, an exploration of immense vulnerability and, quite significantly, the complete inability to give voice to our very most significant and intense emotions. (For those familiar with the Beethoven, I refer to the “beklemmt” section of that movement.) Ultimately the Mesto music gives us not passionate wailing, but sadness beyond comprehension and beyond expression. It cries out not to another soul, but into the abyss, speaking of immeasurable loss but without loss of dignity.

For all its contrasts, the Sixth String Quartet is not a dramatic, narrative piece (like the Second String Quartet, with which it shares the idea of a slow, emotionally difficult final movement). Instead it has the aspect of a villanelle (such as Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night”), circling around its central idea until its most direct and potent revelation at the close of the work. There is continual reclaiming of and reengaging with the powerful opening mood. In this case, the fullest unveiling of the Mesto material, in four voices and significantly extended in length, is followed by a reflecting back upon the material of the first movement proper. This last movement then becomes also an expression of memory in the midst of despair, the games of the first movement now muted and transformed by mature reflection, disengaged yet arrestingly poignant. Any trace of artifice is now dissolved.

At the very close of the work, following the introduction of eerie, otherworldly gasps and whispers, the viola, lonely once again, sings out the opening of the Mesto theme, still where it was at the start of the piece. Finally, under a hollow sustained fifth the cello gives only the first five notes of the theme, pizzicato, in chords. Strangely, the device is most akin to the ending of Haydn’s “Joke” Quartet, where we are conditioned to expect a certain continuation and are left in the lurch, as it were. Here, however, we are left with infinite expectation and a sense that the Mesto theme cannot, in fact, be complete. Its resonance trails off into memory, into emptiness.
—Mark Steinberg

Copyright © 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Brentano String Quartet
·· Mark Steinberg, Violin
·· Serena Canin, Violin
·· Misha Amory, Viola
·· Nina Lee, Cello
Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. Within a few years of its formation, the Quartet garnered the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award; and in 1996 the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center invited them to be the inaugural members of Chamber Music Society Two, a program which has become a coveted distinction for chamber groups and individuals ever since. The Quartet had its first European tour in 1997, and was honored in the UK with the Royal Philharmonic Award for Most Outstanding Debut. That debut recital was at London’s Wigmore Hall, and the Quartet has continued its warm relationship with Wigmore, appearing there regularly and serving as the hall’s Quartet-in-Residence in the 2000–01 season.

In recent seasons the Quartet has traveled widely, appearing all over the US and Canada, in Europe, Japan, and Australia. It has performed in the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Konzerthaus in Vienna; Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and the Sydney Opera House. The Quartet has participated in summer festivals such as Aspen, the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, the Edinburgh Festival, the Kuhmo Festival (Finland), the Taos School of Music, and the Caramoor Festival.

In addition to performing the standard quartet repertoire, the Brentano Quartet has a strong interest in both very old and very new music. It has performed many musical works pre-dating the string quartet as a medium, among them Madrigals of Gesualdo, Fantasias of Purcell, and secular vocal works of Josquin. Also, the quartet has worked closely with some of the most important composers of our time, among them Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Steven Mackey, Bruce Adolphe, and György Kurtág. The Quartet has commissioned works from Wuorinen, Adolphe, Mackey, David Horne, and Gabriela Frank. The Quartet celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2002 by commissioning 10 composers to write companion pieces for selections from Bach’s The Art of Fugue, the result of which was an electrifying and wide-ranging single concert program. The Quartet has also worked with the celebrated poet Mark Strand, commissioning poetry from him to accompany works of Haydn and Webern.

The Quartet has been privileged to collaborate with such artists as soprano Jessye Norman, pianist Richard Goode, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida. The Quartet enjoys an especially close relationship with Ms. Uchida, appearing with her on stages in the US, Europe, and Japan.

The Quartet has recorded the Op. 71 quartets of Haydn, and has also recorded a Mozart disc for Aeon Records, consisting of the K. 464 Quartet and the K. 593 Quintet, with violist Hsin-Yun Huang. In the area of newer music, the Quartet has released a disc of the music of Steven Mackey on Albany Records, and has also recorded the music of Bruce Adolphe, Chou Wen-chung and Charles Wuorinen.

In 1998, cellist Nina Lee joined the Quartet, succeeding founding member Michael Kannen. The following season the Quartet became the first Resident String Quartet at Princeton University. The Quartet’s duties at the University are wide-ranging, including performances at least once a semester, as well as workshops with graduate composers, coaching undergraduates in chamber music, and assisting in other classes at the Music Department.

The Quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” the intended recipient of his famous love confession.

Thomas Sauer, Piano
Pianist Thomas Sauer is highly sought after as soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. A member of the Mannes Trio, ensemble-in-residence at the Mannes College of Music in New York City, Mr. Sauer also collaborates frequently with the renowned instrumentalists Midori and Colin Carr. Recent appearances include concerto performances with the Quad-City Symphony; solo performances at Carnegie Hall and Merkin Concert Hall, and St. John’s College (Oxford); chamber music performances at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; duo recitals with Colin Carr at the Holywell Music Room (Oxford) and the Wolf Trap Center; duo recitals with Midori at the Philharmonie (Berlin) and the Palais des Beaux Arts (Brussels); performances at the Marlboro, Portland, Seattle, El Paso Pro Musica, Four Seasons, and Salt Bay chamber music festivals; performances with members of the Juilliard String Quartet at the Library of Congress; and numerous concerts with the Brentano String Quartet.

Mr. Sauer’s records include five Haydn piano sonatas (MSR Classics); Hindemith sonatas with Misha Amory (Musical Heritage Society label); music by Ross Lee Finney with violinist Miranda Cuckson (Centaur Records); and music of Britten and Schnittke with cellist Wilhelmina Smith (Arabesque Recordings). In recent seasons, Mr. Sauer has premiered works by Philippe Bodin, Robert Cuckson, Sebastian Currier, Keith Fitch, David Loeb, Donald Martino, and David Tcimpidis.

A member of the piano faculty of the Mannes College and the music faculty at Vassar College, Mr. Sauer is the founder and director of the Mannes Beethoven Institute.