CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Brentano String Quartet

Weill Recital Hall
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Brentano String Quartet
·· Mark Steinberg, Violin
·· Serena Canin, Violin
·· Misha Amory, Viola
·· Nina Lee, Cello
Michael Kannen, Cello

GESUALDO Two Madrigals from Book IV
·· Io parto, e non più dissi
·· Io pur respiro in cosí gran dolore
BEETHOVEN String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127
SCHUBERT String Quintet in C Major, D.956

This concert is made possible, in part, by the generous support of Mr. and Mrs. Anthony B. Evnin and the A. E. Charitable Foundation.

Program Notes:

CARLO GESUALDO Two Madrigals from Book IV (arr. Mark Steinberg)
Born ca. 1561, in Naples; died September 8, 1613, in Avellino.

Tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of these works.

Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, wrote some of the most startling, gripping, fiercely expressive music the world has ever known. His biography has lured many into curiosity about his music (he murdered his first wife and her lover, and most likely his second son as well, whose paternity he doubted), and there have been many discussions of his psychological profile. But in the end, the strength and unflinching audacity of his music alone is more than enough to draw us to him. Aldous Huxley, the great thinker and writer, wrote of listening to Gesualdo’s music while under the influence of mescaline:

“These voices,” I said appreciatively, “these voices—they’re a kind of bridge back to the human world.”

And a bridge they remained even while singing the most startlingly chromatic of the mad prince’s compositions. Through the uneven phrases of the madrigals, the music pursued its course, never sticking to the same key for two bars together. In Gesualdo, that fantastic character out of a Webster melodrama, psychological disintegration had exaggerated, had pushed to the extreme limit, a tendency inherent in modal as opposed to fully tonal music. The resulting works sounded as though they might have been written by the later Schoenberg.

“And yet,” I felt myself constrained to say, as I listened to these strange products of a Counter-Reformation psychosis working upon a late medieval art form, “and yet it does not matter that he’s all in bits. The whole is disorganized. But each individual fragment is in order, is a representative of a Higher Order. The Highest Order prevails even in the disintegration. The totality is present even in the broken pieces. More clearly present, perhaps, than in a completely coherent work. At least you aren’t lulled into a sense of false security by some merely human, merely fabricated order. You have to rely on your immediate perception of the ultimate order. So in a certain sense disintegration may have its advantages. But of course it’s dangerous, horribly dangerous. Suppose you couldn’t get back, out of the chaos ...” (The Doors of Perception, 1954)

It would be hard to put it better. Gesualdo partakes of the aesthetic of the Mannerists, exaggerating color, proportion, and gesture to reveal emotional truths. Think, for example, of the strained, elongated figures of El Greco. (And although mescaline is perhaps inappropriate in a public concert setting, the music alone may inspire such reveries in those with the right combination of attention and sensitivity.)

Startling juxtapositions and contrasts, discontinuities and disruptions had been a part of Gesualdo’s expressive arsenal from the start. But, just as we all know of people of strong character who come to be more completely themselves as they age (in fact, it seems to be a truism), so do the madrigals in the final book, Book VI (1611), exhibit an even greater density of these characteristic moments such that they do, indeed, threaten to whirl into chaos. The amount of emotional turmoil we can precariously contain within our lives is on occasion fantastically large. At times we feel we just barely manage to cheat the forces of collapse. This is the volatile world of heightened experience these madrigals evoke, repeatedly holding us in the grip of the concentrated moment.

We present here two madrigals from this final book in an instrumental setting. During Gesualdo’s life the madrigals were sometimes performed instrumentally, on viols, accompanying theatrical performances of a melancholy cast; historical tradition is on our side.

The first of the madrigals, “Io parto, e non più diesi” says:
I go. I can say no more because my grief has taken the life from my heart. In my suffering I lament, “I live in pain. But may I never cease to suffer.” I was dead but now I am alive, for even the dead would be brought back to life to hear my piteous cries.

The second, “Io pur respiro in cosi gran dolore” states:
Even in agony, I still breathe, and you still live, O pitiless heart. Ah, since there is no more hope of again seeing our beloved, death, give us aid; take this life. Torture me not, but with a single stroke, end my life and woe.


LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127
Baptized December 17, 1770, in Bonn, Germany; died March 26, 1827, in Vienna.

Composed in 1824–25, Beethoven’s String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127, was first performed on March 6, 1825. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere in Chamber Music Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on November 19, 1891, with the Beethoven String Quartet: Gustav Dannreuther and Ernst Thiele, violins; Otto K. Schill, viola; and Adolf Hartdegen, cello.

Stylistic evolution is a major theme in any discussion of Beethoven’s oeuvre, as it is with artists such as T. S. Eliot and Picasso. For a man whose uncanny perception of the profundities of the human condition shone through his music from the very start, from a larger-than-life soul and intellect, it is deeply meaningful to see how life experience and philosophical questioning over time come to be reflected in the art work. Beethoven is in fact the quintessential example of the idea of a late style in music, of a broadening of insight and the willful manipulation of form and rhetoric to accommodate that insight.

Coming out of his “middle” period, the so-called heroic style epitomized by works such as the “Eroica” Symphony or the Op. 59 quartets, Beethoven’s vision of the world and of his, and by extension mankind’s, place in it underwent a radical metamorphosis. Ego, the primacy of effort and the battle of ideas begin to dissolve and make way for a vision of wholeness, of a sacred order. All that he had explored with the sense of a human protagonist in his music shifts so that the composer no longer seems so much in the world as of it. Beethoven was deeply interested in Hindu and Brahman philosophy at this point in his life (as was fashionable at the time) and copied into his notebooks numerous statements from their sacred texts. The relationship with time, will, and vision all move in new directions in the late quartets.

In the E-flat Major Quartet, Op. 127, in particular, we find a spiraling inwards, a refutation of earlier models of drama and struggle. There is an omnipresent sense of dissolving into acceptance and clarity, and for Beethoven it is an uncommonly tender and introverted work. The quartet opens with a curious framing device. It begins with a grand chordal announcement (marked Maestoso), one which, due to the key, it is hard not to associate with the “Eroica” Symphony. As the phrase reaches upward, it comes to rest not on the expected dominant harmony but on the sub-dominant. In emotional terms this means that instead of reaching up toward a chord that will validate the strength of the home key, the phrase falls gently back into a more subjective, even subjunctive, key area that is a release from the key in which we begin. It is a pulling back, a turning away from the expected outer triumph toward self-acceptance and a ruminative kind of exploration. This first harmonic move very much sets the stage for the way the piece will operate as a whole, and in fact turns out to point also to the key of the otherworldly slow movement as well as to a central pitch of the finale. The main theme of the first movement appears at this moment, dissolved into with all the voices either keeping their previous pitch or actually sustaining through the moment of arrival. The boundary is a watery one, that of entering into a meditative state, and the flow of the music is simplicity itself, with tenderly falling phrases. At the moment of expected dramatic contrast, the second theme, Beethoven thwarts these expectations and gives us a theme of a sadder cast but refusing to engage in dialectic with the first theme. The opening Maestoso music returns two more times in the movement, the first announcing the development section. But the second comes early in the structure of the whole and then fails to appear to announce the recapitulation, the moment when we should feel a true sense of arrival and coming to terms with built up conflict. Instead the music subsides into the return of the first theme, in a way that suggests a refusal to wrestle with the material and instead melts into serenity. The coda of the movement could hardly be more filled with intimate tenderness, the public music of the Maestoso having been left far in the past.

The second movement is a set of variations on a prayerful theme introduced with hesitant half gasps that echo the harmonic ploy of the opening of the piece, once again gently descending into the subdominant. A theme of infinite patience and grace opens up into an extraordinary set of transformations. Already in the first variation, the climaxes, looking forward and somehow prescient, give us a pre-echo of the climax of the entire work in the coda of the Finale. The second variation enters the world of play, evoking the natural joy and wonder in children’s games, in this case an acrobatic game of leapfrog between the violins. The center of the movement rises up to a distant, unexpected, and radiant key area, where the theme achieves a sense of religious ecstasy sung out in operatic style. It is a simple shift, and yet it reveals an entire world tangential to the one in which we typically dwell, as if Beethoven is able to lift us out of the plane of our existence. I am reminded of the moment in Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, where a sphere lifts the protagonist, a square, out of the plane in which he lives and suddenly, with dizzying and overwhelming insight, our hero can see the insides of seemingly impenetrable figures from his world. The sense of clarification from a distance is as if we have been privileged to see into the beyond. As we are gently placed back in the mortal sphere, the illumination of this insight continues to glow; the beauty of our world glimmers and grows more rarefied. Despite a dark interlude, the theme eventually gets spun out into a gossamer line, initially in the first violin, accompanied by undulating pulsations derived from the introductory gesture of the movement. The coda of the movement recalls the parallel universe shift of the middle of the movement within the space of three measures, a final reminder both of Elysium and of the reflection of its splendor in our own world.

The Scherzo again has an introductory gesture, but this one is finally straightforward and playfully announces a movement that is filled with clever contrapuntal games and serves as a foil to the depth of the previous movements. Lines that skip upward are answered by others that flip them upside down, reminiscent of the leapfrog variation in the previous movement. The music gallops and flirts with the idea of a more graceful dance without ever giving in to it. Again in this movement we find a boundary-dissolving device, a single chord that stutters, changes to minor, then begins to pulsate and whirl, leading into a tornado-like torrent, transporting us to an Oz where there is a folkish, perhaps pagan stomping dance. This whirling music teases with a brief reappearance at the end of the movement, just enough almost to throw the main rhythm of the movement off course, but all is righted at the final moment for an enthusiastic ending.

The Finale begins with a curious opening gesture, vigorously emphasizing the A-flat sub-dominant that has been so important earlier in the piece. It is an arresting moment, rich with personal struggle and striving; it wends its way downward in curious curves, tempted in many directions at once. Yet when it lands at the bottom, it is in the home key of the piece, with a melody that is both gentle and folklike in its quiet yodeling. The theme itself emphasizes the A-flat twice before lifting it upward so that it can gently topple over and find its way back home. This rising idea of A-flat to A-natural to a B-flat dominant that can release into the home key is an encapsulation of the function of this movement, a lifting out of contemplation back into the world with a renewed sense of harmony with what is. The most touching and exalted boundary dissolution comes in the coda of this final movement, where Beethoven holds time prisoner with an ellipsis that blossoms into a trill. The trill contains the A-flat once again and then releases that pitch, and with it the tether of self-hood, into a visionary reflection of the perfection that surrounds us. The great painter Mark Rothko said “all teaching about self-expression is erroneous in art … knowing yourself is valuable so that the self can be removed from the process.” For Beethoven in the late quartets, as evidenced in Op. 127 and particularly in this lustrous coda (and like in Rothko’s mature paintings), the self is dissolved into a broader and more inclusive vision. Effort is replaced with acceptance and the profoundest love.

—Mark Steinberg


FRANZ SCHUBERT String Quintet in C Major, D. 956
Born January 31, 1797, in Vienna; died there November 19, 1828.

Composed in 1828, Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, D. 956, was published in 1853. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere in the Chamber Music Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on November 19, 1891, with the Beethoven String Quartet: Gustav Dannreuther and Ernst Thiele, violins; Otto K. Schill, viola; and Adolf Hartdegen, cello, along with Emil Schenck, cello.


Sensitivity to beauty both fulfills and exacts an exorbitant price. Eugene Ionesco has written:

Beauty is a precarious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well. Often it seems to me to be an evil flower of nothingness, or else the cry of the world as it dies, or a desperate, sumptuous prayer. (Present Past Past Present, 1968)

More than almost any other composer, Schubert expressed the duality of beauty, its innocence and its terror, its embrace and its rebuff. With exquisite sensitivity he shows us gleaming visions and the pain of their unreachable distance; his all too human longing for the Eden beyond our grasp speaks to the exile in each of us. Schubert is the quintessential exile, feeling alienated from the comforts of society, excruciatingly aware of the ambiguities of nature and fate, both seductive and cruel.

From the very first phrase of the C-Major Quintet, all is laid bare. The opening C-major harmony is the very embodiment of stability and purity, and yet it destabilizes immediately, gapes open and exposes a previously hidden harsh dissonance, then turns back to the opening harmony, now, in one fell swoop, stripped of its innocence. At the ending of the phrase that same dissonance, free of the underlying C of the opening, resolves as it should; this resolution is answered by a distant echo, a siren call. Removed in dynamic, rhythm, and register from the rest of the phrase, this siren call is emblematic of a yearned for purity that seems unattainable in the real world of the opening chord. After the opening phrase is reinterpreted in a darker hue, in minor, by the lower four instruments the siren call takes over and lures us, as Sirens are wont to do, toward the rocks. The cataclysm of this arrival, however, dissipates and the music melts, unexpectedly, into a second theme that seems the apotheosis of tenderness. This is among the most-beloved themes in the literature, and for good reason, as it seems to express a perfection of balance and contentment. And yet, it is painfully private and far away, a vision rather than an enveloping serenity. (As we explore the space around it, we are eventually shown the stone wall that seals it off from us, a half step above where we are.) This sort of vision is one of Schubert’s greatest gifts to us; it is all the more beautiful because he is removed from it, perennially glancing through the window. One of the most piercing of these visions is found in the outer sections of the second movement of this quintet, a hymn that floats above the mortal sphere. It is beheld with wonderment by the second cello and first violin who gaze upon it offering only inchoate whispers and sighs, for there is no more than that to be said. (Here, too, the vision provokes anxiety and desperation in the middle section, again up a half step.) In the final movement, we are twice privy to the most intimate moments of tranquility, two duets for the cellos (echoing the second theme of the first movement), which disappear all too quickly into the mists of the accompanying drones and arpeggios.

These visions, being always out of reach, inspire wandering, pathos, and defiance. In all of these, Schubert had recourse to identification with a group with whom he would have been familiar in Vienna, the Gypsies. (In the following discussion I am indebted to the writings of Jonathan Bellman for insight and clarification.) Peripatetic in lifestyle and in soul, they were journeyers across an inclement landscape, much as Schubert felt himself to be, and much as we all find ourselves at times. Whether or not common perceptions were reliable, the stereotype of the Gypsies was of a proud and defiant people who were able to express profound sorrow and exultant joy in an abandoned, almost animalistic way, untempered by kowtowing to society. They were cursed as outcasts, yet found ways to put forth a brave face when confronted with adverse circumstance. All this aligned almost frighteningly well with Schubert’s own self-image and the issues he sought to relate in his work. From a musical standpoint, Schubert had access to all of these associations by recourse to the then popular style hongrois, which was not only an exoticism but a summoning of a complete expressive world. Certain types of syncopations (alla zoppa, meaning limping), snapping grace notes, dotted rhythms, the spondee (a metric foot comprising two longs), bagpipe drones, and quite a few other devices served to evoke this style. In the C-Major Quintet, there are evocations of the style hongrois in every movement, and the last movement is almost completely within the Gypsy mood.

The end of the exposition of the first movement brings the first of these, distinguished by syncopation, the spondee, snapping grace notes and dotted rhythms. This figure takes over the entire development section, and even for Schubert, who is in any case king of wandering, traveling music, it is uncommonly searching and troubled. Hungarian virtuosic flourishes even infiltrate the opening material when it makes its final appearance in the coda of the movement. The Gypsy music is taken up again in the central section of the slow movement, as a response to the seraphic chorale, now with a defiant rage, shut off from the paradisiacal vision. It is alluded to with a single threatening gesture at the close of the movement as well, once the hymn has been restated, as a reminder that our dreams are not ours to inhabit. In the scherzo, a movement as outward as can be, filled with hunting horns and extroverted dancing galore, the Gypsies reappear in the extraordinary central trio section. Here there is a turning inward, and low droning bagpipe fifths give a consoling warmth to lines that plead and despair. The degree to which the trio contrasts with the scherzo part of the movement in mood, key, and meter is fairly revolutionary, and this contrast brings it into relief as having uncommon profundity and truth. By referencing the style hongrois here, Schubert can call upon the mystery of a song that comes from the depths of pure pathos, shut off from societal influence. The Gypsy music thus comes at the center of each of the first three movements.

There have been people who find the last movement of this quintet a letdown, too light and too much in a popular style to be a fitting peroration for such a monumental masterpiece. But in tracing the Gypsy element from movement to movement, one can see that indeed this is a fitting and, in a sense, a necessary conclusion to the journey. Schubert is not one for a Beethovenian sense of conquest or victory. Once we have experienced the tension between utopian vision and earthly shackles, we can expect no tidy coming to terms. In the face of persecution, the Gypsies continue to dance and make music, to entertain even those who oppress them. Schubert, in the midst of a world that doesn’t understand him, and which doesn’t offer him the peace he craves, finds strength in his status as an outcast. Vienna is here, too, with its swoop and sway, but inevitably it is the Gypsy music that takes over in the end. Unable to sum up, the music accelerates as the piece draws to a close; when the fundamental C is reached at the end, it is not without the D-flat a half step above pressing against it, reminding us that there is, in the end, no easy sense of home.

—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.

Michael Kannen, Cello
Cellist Michael Kannen was a founding member of the Brentano String Quartet, and for seven years he performed with that group on concert stages around the world, on radio and television, and on recordings. During those first seven years, the Brentano String Quartet was awarded the first Cleveland Quartet Award, the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, the Martin E. Segal Award from Lincoln Center, and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s award for best debut recital in England for the 1997–98 season. With the Brentano String Quartet, Mr. Kannen regularly appeared in such venues as Wigmore Hall in London, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Sydney Opera House, Alice Tully Hall in New York, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

In addition to his work with the Brentano String Quartet, Mr. Kannen has been a member of the Meliora String Quartet and the Figaro Trio. He is currently a member of the Apollo Trio. Mr. Kannen has been heard with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Berkshire Bach Society, and has appeared at major summer music festivals, including the Spoleto festivals in Charleston, Italy, and Australia; Chamber Music Northwest; the Rockport Chamber Music Festival; the Cactus Pear Music Festival in San Antonio; the Cascade Head Music Festival in Oregon; the Vancouver Chamber Music Festival; the Caramoor Music Festival; and the Skaneateles Music Festival. He has served on the faculties of the Yellow Barn Music Festival and Tanglewood. Mr. Kannen performs regularly with flutist Paula Robison and harpsichordist Kenneth Cooper, and has collaborated with such artists as Jessye Norman, Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Sergiu Luca, Hilary Hahn, Donald Weilerstein, Eugene Drucker, Robert Levin, Mitsuko Uchida, David Golub, Charles Neidich, Gary Hoffman, and Eliot Fisk. Mr. Kannen frequently performs on period instruments, and has recently recorded the music of Robert Schumann on period instruments with the chamber group Context in Houston. He has also recorded new music on the CRI label.

Mr. Kannen is currently the Director of Chamber Music at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, where he holds the Sidney Friedberg Chair in Chamber Music. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, violist Maria Lambros, and their son, Daniel.