CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Vogler Quartet

Weill Recital Hall
Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Vogler Quartet
·· Tim Vogler, Violin
·· Frank Reinecke, Violin
·· Stefan Fehlandt, Viola
·· Stephan Forck, Cello

HAYDN Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 64, No. 6
JÖRG WIDMANN String Quartet No. 4 (US Premiere)
BEETHOVEN String Quartet in E Minor, Op. 59, No. 2, "Razumovsky"

Program Notes:

By Susan Halpern

JOSEPH HAYDN String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 64, No. 6
Born March 31, 1732, in Rohrau, Austria; died May 31, 1809, in Vienna.

Composed in 1790, Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat Major was first performed in June 1791 in the Festino Room in Hanover Square, London, England. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere on February 23, 1958, at Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) with the Montreal String Quartet: Hyman Bress and Mildred Goodman, violins; Otto Joachim, viola; and Walter Joachim, cello.

In 1790, Haydn’s 30-year tenure as staff composer and conductor to the princely Esterházy family concluded, and his career took a sudden turn. For many years he had been a servant-musician, though an honored one in a tradition that dated back to the Middle Ages. As soon as the Prince died, Haydn became a formidably successful freelance musician. In effect, he was a touring celebrity, and by 1795, he had become quite wealthy.

Even before his separation from the Esterházy Court, Haydn was widely admired as the most formidable composer of his time because Mozart, who was his only equal, was still a relatively obscure figure outside of Austria. Haydn’s fame spread, and in the 1780s he was receiving commissions from the most fashionable concert-giving organizations in Paris, the world’s most stylish musical capital. At that time, the world was changing rapidly. Distances were growing shorter and class distinctions were beginning to break down even before the Revolution in France.

The six quartets of Haydn’s Op. 64, written in 1790, were not dedicated to a mighty nobleman, but to a bourgeois named Johann Tost who, when young, had probably been a violinist in the Esterházy orchestra. Tost left music to become a businessman, made a fortune as a wholesale merchant, married a woman of high position and great wealth, and before long was able to commission chamber music from Haydn, Mozart, and other composers of the time. Haydn was then on better terms with Tost’s wife than with Tost himself, who had angered the composer with some suspect dealings in the publication rights to several of his important compositions. Perhaps this commission was Tost’s (or Frau Tost’s) peace offering. Although string quartets were then still largely reserved for private, domestic music-making on the Continent, in 1791 Haydn took this set to London, where the quartets of Op. 64 received their first performance in June in the Festino Room in Hanover Square. Subsequently, these same quartets were featured on many more concert programs and helped Haydn make his fortune in England.

These highly original, even daringly advanced works greatly appealed to the tastes of the consuming public, and they were quickly published in Amsterdam and Paris, as well as in London and Vienna. Each of the six is different in style, character, and construction; all offer novelty in both form and substance, and generally present Haydn in a carefree, even jubilant mood.

No. 6 is sometimes known as the “Railwayman Quartet,” a rather strange subtitle. The nickname comes from the last five measures of the first movement that move with increasing rhythmic and dynamic pace and are said to be suggestive of a train that is picking up speed.

The first movement of this quartet, Allegro, is easy going and has only one theme. It starts with a discussion between the four strings before Haydn scales down, beginning the development with two voices only. The slow movement, Andante, is lyrical and in ABA form with the central section in the minor mode. The central part of this movement has urgency and insistence. In the third movement, Menuetto: Allegretto, Haydn scores the first violin in its highest register, soaring four octaves above middle C in the trio, while he has the other violinist anchor the theme far below. The last movement Finale: Presto, a rondo, containing contrapuntal material, in a very quick tempo, has been described by Reginald Barrett-Ayres: “Haydn leaves Op. 64 with a laugh, [with] … sheer buffoonery, albeit artistic to boot. Phrases broken off in mid-stream, pauses, soft staccato augmentations, and rushing scales are all mixed together to make a hilarious coda, ending with four fortissimo chords.”

JÖRG WIDMANN String Quartet No. 4
Born June 19, 1973 in Munich, Germany.

Composed in 2005, String Quartet No. 4 was first performed by the Vogler Quartet January 16, 2005, in Essen, Germany. Tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of this work.

Widmann studied the clarinet with Gerd Starke at the Munich Hochschule für Musik and later with Charles Neidich at Juilliard. As a soloist, he guest performs with major orchestras and has given concerts with such conductors as Christoph von Dohnányi and Kent Nagano. Several clarinet concertos have been dedicated to and premiered by him. Since 2001 Widmann has been professor of clarinet at the Freiburg Staatliche Hochschule für Musik.

When he was 11 years old, Widmann began his study of composition with Kay Westermann and later continued it with Hans Werner Henze, Wilfried Hiller, and Wolfgang Rihm. He has received the Belmont Award for Contemporary Music of the Forberg Schneider Foundation (1999), the Schneider-Schott Music Award (2002), and Paul Hindemith Prize (2002). His opera Das Gesicht im Spiegel was selected by the jury of experts of the Opernwelt magazine as the most important world premiere of the 2003–04 season. In 2004, Widmann received the Arnold Schoenberg Prize from the Arnold Schoenberg Centre of Vienna and the Berlin German Symphony Orchestra. Widmann is a Fellow of the Berlin Wissenschaftskolleg. In 2004 he became composer-in-residence at the Berlin German Symphony Orchestra and the Salzburg Festival. In 2006, Widmann received the Claudio Abbado Composition Award of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Academy.

At the center of his chamber music oeuvre are his string quartets: String Quartet No. 1 was followed by No. 2, “Choralquartett,” Largo; and No. 3, “Jagdquartett” (“Hunt Quartet”), Scherzo. The whole multi-work series, intended as a quartet cycle, was completed by the world premieres of String Quartet No. 4 by the Vogler Quartet, and String Quartet No. 5, “Versuch über die Fuge” (“Essay on the Fugue”), for string quartet and soprano, premiered in February 2005 in Cologne by Juliane Banse and the Artemis Quartet.

String Quartet No. 4 was first performed on January 16, 2005, by the Vogler Quartet, to whom it is dedicated, and it receives its US premiere tonight. Widmann believes the quartets in his series can either be presented individually or together as one long cycle.

The Fourth Quartet is an Andante, and its point of departure is the concept of a “walking tempo” (the Italian word andante comes from the verb andare, “to walk”). In this single-movement piece, in which pizzicato (plucking the strings) is a recurring element, the quarter notes signify walking; the eighth notes, running. The piece is conceived as a theme and variations, but not in the traditional sense, where one theme is laid out and then the variations follow. Here the thematic material remains the same from the beginning to the end, but the background varies. The piece is in a kind of ABA form, with long note-values at the beginning that speed up to a climax in the middle, where the loudest and the most dissonant point is reached. The piece then trails off softly.


LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN String Quartet in E Minor, Op. 59, No. 2, “Razumovsky”
Baptized December 17, 1770, in Bonn, Germany; died March 26, 1827, in Vienna.

Composed in 1806, Beethoven’s String Quartet in E Minor was first performed in Vienna on February 1807; it received its Carnegie Hall premiere on December 20, 1892, with the New York Symphony String Quartet: Adolph Brodsky and Jan Koert, violins; Ottokar Nováèek, viola; and Anton Hekking, cello.



Copyright © 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Susan Halpern contributes program notes to numerous musical organizations.

Vogler Quartet
·· Tim Vogler, Violin
·· Frank Reinecke, Violin
·· Stefan Fehlandt, Viola
·· Stephan Forck, Cello

Formed in East Berlin in 1985, the Vogler Quartet quickly established itself as one of the finest quartets of its generation. Mastering a repertoire of over 200 works from all periods and musical styles, the quartet is widely recognized for their uncommon musical intelligence, homogeneous sound, insightful interpretations, and unconventional programming. The group now pursues an international schedule of concerts and master classes in prestigious venues all over the world. In 2008 the Vogler Quartet will return to North America for their seventh tour in as many years, which will include recitals at Carnegie Hall and in Washington, DC.

In 1993 the Vogler Quartet instituted its own concert series at the Konzerthaus in Berlin; because of its great popularity, they now offer a parallel series in Neubrandenburg. In 1999 the quartet founded the Vogler Spring Festival in Sligo, Ireland, which brings together international artists for chamber music every spring. Ongoing collaborations are important to the quartet and have included such artists as Philippe Cassard, Angela Cheng, David Geringas, Markus Groh, Isabelle van Keulen, Daniel Müller-Schott, Ian Parker, Alfredo Perl, Menahem Pressler, Jan Vogler, Antje Weithaas, Jörg Widmann, baritone Dietrich Henschel, and the Artemis, Pellegrini, and Petersen quartets.

The Vogler Quartet is also strongly committed to the performance of contemporary music. World premieres during the 2005–06 season included Jörg Widmann’s Fourth String Quartet (dedicated to the Vogler’s 20th anniversary) and Was Orpheus sah—Klangbilder für Streichquartett by Frank Michael Beyer.

Trained at the Hanns Eisler Music Institute in Berlin, the Vogler Quartet first attained recognition in 1986, after winning first prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. Shortly thereafter, BMG/RCA produced the quartet’s first CD. Since then, the group has recorded works by Bartók, Beethoven, Berg, Debussy, Janáček, Ravel, Shostakovich, Verdi, and the complete string quartets of Brahms and Schumann. For Nimbus Records, the quartet has recorded Max Reger’s string quartet and clarinet quintet (with Karl Leister), as well as the quartets of Karl Amadeus Hartmann and Hanns Eisler. Most recently released recordings include single-composer CDs of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert for Hänssler. Future projects include the world premiere recording of Frank Michael Beyer’s Was Orpheus sah— Klangbilder für Streichquartett for Hänssler, and the piano quintets of Ludwig Thuille (with pianist Oliver Triendl) for CPO.