Emerson Quartet

Special Invitation: Hear Eugene Drucker read from his new novel, The Savior, perform Bach's beautiful "Chaconne" for solo violin, and answer all your burning questions. This fundraiser for Friends of Chamber Music will take place at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, October 3 in the intimate setting of a beautiful home in Southwest Portland and will include an autographed copy of The Savior and a delicious dessert reception. Seating is limited! Call 503.224.9842 for details. Monday program Generously sponsored by John &  Rebecca Green Haydn | Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2 Bartók | Quartet No. 3 Beethoven | Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1 Tuesday programGenerously sponsored by George & Sarah OhJanácek | Quartet No. 1, "Kreutzer Sonata" Saariaho | Terra Memoria, for String Quartet Brahms | Quartet in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2  Emerson Master Class: Members of the Emerson Quartet will conduct a master class with students from Portland State University at noon on Tuesday, October 2 in the recital hall (room 75) in Lincoln Hall at PSU. The public is invited and admission is free.Program Notes: Joseph Haydn (Born March 31, 1732, in Rohrau; died May 31, 1809, in Vienna)  Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2 The six quartets in Haydn’s Op. 20 were known to his contemporaries as the “Sun Quartets” because his publisher decorated the cover of the first edition with a drawing of a rising sun. They are also known as “The Great Quartets” because they are large, fully mature works that demonstrate Haydn’s mastery of quartet form.In his early career Haydn had written in the Rococo style, noted for its superficial charm, lightness of touch, and elegance. By the time he composed the Op. 20 quartets, he was writing music that was emotionally intense and charged with a dramatic sense of urgency and energy. This more serious music was characterized by Haydn’s use of more complex polyphonic textures and his belief that each instrument in the ensemble should have a significant part in the musical conversation.The Quartet No. 2 in C Major opens in what Barrett-Ayres calls “a contrapuntal mood,” in which the cello and second violin behave like the subject and countersubject of a fugue, one of the compositional processes that Haydn used in three of the quartets. According to Barrett-Ayres, the entire quartet highlights a conflict between polyphony and homophony, major and minor, tension and release.The quartet is homotonal: each of its movements is composed in the same key or its related minor key. This homotonality serves as a unifying device in the work. The first movement Moderato, in C Major, is followed by a Capriccio in C minor. A menuet and trio in the major key lead into the energetic fugue of the final movement.The most intriguing movement from a musical perspective is the Capriccio; its improvisatory freedom and unpredictability signal a clear departure from the standard quartet form. In their 2006 study of the Haydn quartets, Margaret and Floyd Grave describe the movement as a “parody of operatic practices...with passages reminiscent of arioso, recitative, and lyrical aria” in which the “action proceeds from one theatrical moment to the next,” during which listeners “enjoy the experience of a dream-like escape from the constraint” of traditional form. Its logical tonal design, however, bestows order on the whole movement.— Program Notes by John Noell Moore Béla Bartók (Born March 25, 1881, in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary; died September 26, 1945, in New York City)  Quartet No. 3 The Third Quartet, written ten years after the Second Quartet, is one of Bartók’s most compact works in any genre; it lasts only fourteen minutes, and a lot happens in that brief time. Here the composer is experimenting with arch form, the most perfect examples of which are the Fourth and Fifth quartets. The Third is in one continuous movement, divided into four sections: Prima parte (slow), Seconda parte (fast), Ricapitulazione della prima parte (not a literal reprise, but a condensation of some of the materials of the first part), and a Coda, based on the second part.As the Quartet opens, the three lower instruments set the backdrop for the violin’s introductory melody with a cluster of minor seconds. This announces the new direction that Bartók’s harmonic language has taken: the Quartet will be dominated by chords based on seconds and fourths, as well as polychords. The compositional procedure is as rigorous as the harmony; there is almost nothing that does not spring from three or four basic motives. By now there is a complete incorporation of the Balkan folk rhythms so close to Bartók’s heart. The fast parts are full of metric changes, from 3/8 to 5/8 to 2/4 and so on, and abundant cross-rhythms result from canonic imitation. Brusque, syncopated chords often accompany the melodic lines. The music is bursting with rhythmic vitality and doesn’t let us sit still.The main motive of the Prima parte consists of three notes, rising a fourth and descending a third. The intervals of the motive are sometimes expanded, but its shape is always recognizable. A second motive is played sul ponticello (near the bridge) by the violins. Their glassy sound, with the muted accompaniment of the lower instru­ments recycling the three-note main motive, creates an example of “night music.” Night music appears in many of Bartók’s mature works. Slightly anxious, sometimes sinister, sometimes sad, it provides atmos­phere and always functions as a change of texture and mood. One can imagine the sound of crickets on a hot summer evening, or a walk through a forest with strange things lurking at every turn in the path, or simply a journey through one’s own unconscious.The Seconda parte’s main motive is a scale ­line, up and down, plucked in parallel triads by the cello. The main use of triads in this piece is right here, not as a functioning part of the harmonic fabric, not to anchor a particular key, but as a melodic gesture which, if anything, obscures the tonality. The only thing that secures the key here is the second violin’s buzzing trill on D. Soon the first violin plays a bouncy, almost completely disguised variation of the cello’s pizzicato motive. Here begin the metric changes mentioned above (from 3/8 to 5/8 and so on). What sounds like a second theme, played first by the viola and cello in fortissimo octaves to a jabbing accompaniment by the violins, is actually another variant of the pizzicato motive.  Later, a fugue is built on the bouncy, asymmetrical melody first played by the violin, but as a fugue subject it is flattened out into a passage of even running notes. The fugue is full of inversions and strettos — the piling-up of statements of the subject before each voice has had a chance to state it in its entirety. The ear boggles at the beehive frenzy of ordered activity.In this piece, Bartók produces some of his most experimental sonorities. Great virtu­osity is demanded from the players in producing glassy and percussive textures, in constantly changing meters, and in maintaining rhythmic stability during intensely complicated contrapuntal passages. The Coda provides the most striking example of this: at one point the two violins are in canon a half-step and an eighth-note apart (it sounds as if they had been thrown off and were desperately trying to get back together), while the lower instruments play long, downward glissandos that sound like the wails of air-raid sirens. From here the music hurtles relentlessly toward the end. Huge sonorities are achieved through double stopping in all the instruments, and the work ends abruptly with a series of percussive chords.— Program Notes by Eugene Drucker (Emerson String Quartet)  Ludwig van Beethoven (Born December 16, 1770, in Bonn; died March 26, 1827, in Vienna) Quartet In F Major, Op. 59, No. 1The first “Rasoumowsky” Quartet seems more like the consummation of a style than the beginning, in chamber music, of Beethoven’s middle period. The spacious conception, the high expressivity, the sweep of formal structure, the beautiful melodies, the rich harmonies, the surging rhythms, and the brilliant string writing — all attest to surety, confidence, and maturity.The monumental Allegro opens with a serene and noble first theme, starting low in the cello and soaring up to the first violin’s highest register. Several other distinctive melodic phrases round out the first group of themes before the first violin introduces the upward-stretching second subject. Again, further themes fill out this second group. A codetta, based on a melody obviously derived from the first theme, concludes the exposition. The development, which starts like a repeat of the exposition, is vast in size and imaginatively varied, with a brilliant fugal center section. The cello sneaks in to start the recapitulation under a descending scale in the first violin. The building and enriching process continues through the recapitulation and concluding coda.Musicians in Beethoven’s day considered the opening rhythmic drumming on one note in the second movement strange and oddly amusing. Although the movement is lighter in mood than the Allegro, it still is somewhat restless and ill at ease. As in the previous movement, Beethoven uses many themes, some dancing and gaily abandoned, others more lyrical and songlike. The structure can be interpreted either as a scherzo with two trios or as sonata form; in any case it is a thoroughly satisfying movement that grows organically and inevitably from the melodic material.Scholars suspect that the enigmatic words, “A weeping willow or acacia tree upon my brother’s grave,” penned by Beethoven on the sketches for the third movement, give an insight into the intent of this great and profoundly moving slow movement. Some say that the brooding intensity has to do with the composer’s distress over his brother Casper Carl’s marriage to Johanna Reiss, six months pregnant, and his belief that Casper’s life had effectively ended. Others hold that the sorrow was evoked by the memory of another brother, born one year before Ludwig, who died in infancy. In any event, the lament, written in sonata form, has two cantilena themes, both characterized by wide intervals between the notes. The first is stated at the outset by the first violin; the second is sung by the cello while the violin weaves a filigree accompaniment above. The rest of the movement grows from these two melodies, as Beethoven continuously re-examines, reworks, and recasts them until a series of brilliant runs in the first violin brings the movement to an end.The Thème Russe (Russian theme) of the finale follows without pause. No one is sure whether Count Rasoumowsky asked Beethoven to include a Russian melody in the quartet, or whether the composer did it to honor his patron. Nevertheless, it has been determined that Beethoven derived the melody from a collection of Russian folk songs published by Ivan Pratsch. While the song was originally in a minor key and in a slow tempo, it appears here in a major key and at double the speed. In this sonata-form movement, the dancelike rhythm of the first theme is followed by a contrasting legato subsidiary subject played by the second violin. At the very end Beethoven slows down the last statement of the Thème Russe by a factor of four, before a brilliant flourish concludes the quartet.— Program Notes by Melvin Berger, from Guide to Chamber Music   Leos Janácek (Born July 3, 1854, in Hukvaldey, Moravia; died August 12, 1928, in Ostrava) Quartet No. 1, “Kreutzer Sonata”                           In October 1923, sixty-nine year old Leos Janácek, inspired and requested by the famous Bohemian Quartet, decided to write the first of his two late, programmatic quartets, which immediately took their place among leading quartet works of all time. Between October 30 and November 7, 1923, in Brno, Janácek’s Quartet based on Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata, and dedicated to the Bohemian Quartet, was written. “I had in mind a miserable woman, suffering, beaten, wretched, like the great Russian author Tolstoy wrote about in his Kreutzer Sonata,” Janácek wrote in a letter to Kamilla Stösslová on October 14, 1924. In view of the intrinsic dramatic quality of Janácek’s music, it is no surprise to discover that in his first chamber composition of his last and culminating period, he returned once again to a literary theme which he had expressed in music, in 1908–09, with two versions of a piano trio (whereabouts unknown).But why the Kreutzer Sonata? This story by Tolstoy, whose mercilessly strong condemnation of the institution of marriage shook the minds and perhaps even the sensibilities of several generations, was almost a provocation to Janácek to set it to music. Centered in the tragic tale of the marriage of the despotic, jealous Pozdnyshev were a number of basic themes with which Janácek came to grips over the decades: love and jealousy, the effect of music on the senses and acts of man, crime and punishment, and (primarily) the cruel constraints of human liberty.Without violating the basic dramatic foundation of the tale or avoiding the catastrophic culmination of the narrative itself, Janácek conceived his Quartet No. 1 as a unified, intact, psychological drama. Unlike Tolstoy, Janácek comes forward in defense of women and their rights. Among the most remarkable features of Janácek’s musical idiom is that directly from the music of this quartet we trace the main outlines of the story, follow the tale as it unfolds, and even discover the degree of Janácek’s ideological deviation from Tolstoy’s conception.The first movement of the quartet is the exposition of the drama. Janácek is painting portraits. His view, concentrated on “compassion for the miserable, prostrate female being,” chiefly follows the central character and her transformations.The second movement is a perpetela. Smartly bounding into the action is the cosmopolitan violinist, the future seducer. The spine-chilling, furtive trembling of the music tells of the fateful encounter, the first admissions of love are heard, and the tension increases. The provocative interval of the fourth, the musical form of a manifestation of love, forebodes the tragic end.In the third movement — the crisis — the power of the music of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonata” unleashes the passion: love in the woman, jealousy in the husband. In the introductory passage of the movement there is a rapid accumulation of merciless onslaughts of wild figuration — Janácek’s famed short rhythmic passages (scasovka) — which then turn into the drastic music of accusations and revenge, accompanied by sobbing. The wretched woman, after pitiful sighs, flees to her vision of love, now expanded to the breadth of a hymn.In the fourth movement, the plaintive and moving monologue of the tormented woman introduces the last act of the tragedy, which reaches its climax for Janácek, not in the terrible deed, but in the purified awakening of the murderer over his dying victim. “I looked . . . at her bruised disfigured face, and for the first time I forgot myself, my rights, my pride, and for the first time saw a human being in her . . . And so insignificant did all that had offended me, all my jealousy, appear, and so important what I had done, that I wished to fall with my face to her hand, and say: ‘Forgive me,’ but dared not do so.” (Tolstoy)Janácek’s Maestoso rapturously expresses in music the catharsis, equal to the magnificent conclusions of his operas, returning human dignity not just to the victim but to the penitent. From here the path leads directly to the climactic expressions of Janácek’s humanism, particularly to his last opera, “From the House of the Dead.”But Janácek, the intrepid fighter for human freedom, goes even further in his quartet. Whereas Tolstoy in the Kreutzer Sonata actually denies the very existence of love and basically condemns marriage as a dangerous illusion, for Janácek love is one of the greatest and highest values, and the most precious gift of human life — and a marriage which is a prison of emotions is an immoral one.— Program Notes by Milan Skampa (Violinist of the Smetana Quartet)  Kaija Anneli Saariaho (Born October 14, 1952, in Helsinki, Finland)Terra Memoria, for String Quartet Kaija Anneli Saariaho was born in Finland and currently lives in Paris. She composed Terra Memoria in 2007 on commission from The Carnegie Hall Corporation, and it was premiered by the Emerson String Quartet at Carnegie Hall in New York City on June 17, 2007. The score bears a dedication “for those departed.”While she was growing up, Kaija Saariaho was so drawn to visual imagery that she imagined she might seek a career as a painter or a designer. But she veered instead toward music, studying at Helsinki University and the Sibelius Academy, where she was a pupil of Paavo Heininen, the composer, teacher, and musicologist who was emerging as an eminence grise behind Finland’s ascent in the international musical avant-garde. Following her graduation, in 1981, she worked with Brian Ferneyhough and Klaus Huber at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg. She developed an interest in the developments of Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail in the field of “musique spectrale,” and in 1982 she installed herself in Paris (where she has lived ever since), and became involved in electronic composition at the Institut de Recherche et de Coördination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), the musical technology center headed by Pierre Boulez.During the 1980s she often found inspiration for her compositions in the physical phenomena of nature: the refraction of light in Verblendungen, her first major work (1982–84); the Aurora Borealis in Lichtbogen (1986); and the opposed characteristics of matter in the states of geological crystal and smoke in Du cristal . . . à la fume (1988–89). Much of her music of that time seemed monolithic, yet its surface was typically enlivened by scurrying detail, by intricate variations of sound that traced busy patterns through the texture of the large orchestra. In the 1990s (and on into the new century), her music took on an increasingly lyrical flavor, as her basic outlook evolved. Recent works, including her operas L’Amour de loin (2000; Grawemeyer Award in 2003) and Adriana Mater (2006), have basked in luxurious expanses of unabashed sensuousness.Saariaho has provided this comment about Terra Memoria: Terra Memoria is my second piece for string quartet, the first being Nymphea, which was written in 1987. Twenty years have passed since Nymphea and my musical thinking has evolved much in that time, but my initial interest in string instruments has remained as vivid as ever. I love the richness and sensitivity of the string sound and, in spite of my spare contribution to the genre, I feel when writing for a string quartet that I’m entering into the intimate core of musical communication.   The piece is dedicated, “for those departed.” Some thoughts about this: we continue remembering the people who are no longer with us; the material — their life — is complete; nothing will be added to it. Those of us who are left behind are constantly reminded of our experiences together: our feelings continue to change about different aspects of their personality; certain memories keep on haunting us in our dreams. Even after many years, some of these memories change, some remain clear flashes which we can relive. These thoughts brought me to treat the musical material in a certain manner; some aspects of it go through several distinctive transformations, whereas some remain nearly unchanged, clearly recognizable. The title Terra Memoria refers to two words which are full of rich associations: to earth and memory. Here earth refers to my material, and memory to the way I’m working on it. —Program Notes by James M. Keller, from Carnegie Hall debut, June 2007 Johannes Brahms (Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg; died April 3, 1897, in Vienna)  String Quartet in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2 The Brahms second string quartet has a history similar to that of his first essay in this form. Begun in the 1850s, it was subjected to countless revisions over the following decades before he finally submitted it for publication in 1873. It was given its premiere in Berlin by the Joachim Quartet on October 18, 1873, some two months before the C minor Quartet.If it can be said that the first quartet was written under the specter of Beethoven, the spirit that informs the second belongs to Bach. The music abounds in polyphonic devices that were favored by the older composer. Brahms made particular use of canons, in which one instrument imitates a line first played by another, starting a little after the first. Although polyphony requires a keen intellectual grasp, Brahms, like his forebear, puts the craft to expressive purpose, successfully concealing the technical concerns behind the musical effect.The quartet also pays homage to Brahms’s good friend, Joseph Joachim, the outstanding violinist, composer, and organizer of the Joachim Quartet. Joachim’s personal motto was the notes F-A-E, standing for Frei, aber einsam (Free, but lonely). Brahms made these notes the second, third, and fourth notes of the first movement’s main theme. Inspired by Joachim, Brahms chose as his motto, F-A-F, Frei, aber froh (Free, but glad), and also wove these notes into the musical texture. Brahms probably would have dedicated the two Op. 51 quartets to Joachim, but a petty dispute at the time of publication led him to inscribe them instead to Dr. Theodor Billroth, a well-known physician and an avid chamber music player. The quartet opens with the gracefully arching F-A-E theme, followed by a three-note upbeat, which also appears later in the theme of the last movement. The development section is an outstanding demonstration of polyphonic writing, replete with canons, inversions, and retrograde motion, in which the melody is, respectively, imitated, turned upside down, and played backward. At the start of the recapitulation, the viola plays the Brahms three-note F-A-F motto; just before the coda, the second violin plays F-A-F overlapped with Joachim’s F-A-E.Over a sinuous, implacable line in the viola and cello, the first violin sings the warmly lyrical theme of the second movement. As this melody is extended, the first violin and cello, in canon, interrupt with an outburst that is almost operatic in character. When the first violin comes back with the opening melody, however, it is a false return in the wrong key. Finally, the cello sets things right by bringing the melody back in the expected key of A Major.The Quasi Minuetto is marked by a charmingly archaic quality. Two sparkling interludes, though, come along to disturb the calm flow. Following each of the interludes are passages that display the telling effect of Brahms’s skills. In an amazing double canon, the first violin and viola play a slowed-down augmentation of the interlude theme in imitation, while the second violin and cello have a variant of the Minuetto theme, also in imitation.The Finale sparkles with the musical and rhythmic energy of a czardas, a fast, wild Hungarian dance. Alternating with the varied statements of the czardas tune is a relaxed, waltzlike melodic strain. The coda starts with the cello and first violin giving out the opening melody slowly and quietly in canon; then the entire quartet plays it even more softly, with notes of longer duration. Eventually, the four instruments pick up speed and volume, bringing the music to a brilliant conclusion.   Program Notes by Melvin Berger from Guide to Chamber Music