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Home , Beethoven (Mähler), Chamber music, G minor, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

CONCERT #5 - Released February 17, 2021

LUDWIG VAN No. 6 for and in , Op. 30, No. 1 Allegro Adagio molto espressivo Allegretto con variazioni

Amy Schwartz Moretti violin / Orion Weiss piano

Wolfgang Mozart for Piano and Strings in minor, K. 478 Allegro Andante

Benjamin Bowman violin /Jonathan Vinocour / Edward Arron / Jeewon Park piano frequently alternates between excited episodes and (1770-1827) moments of quiet reflection. The main theme is built Sonata No. 6 for Violin and Piano in A Major, from a series of rising intervals. A brief coda ends it Op. 30, No. 1 (1802) peacefully. Most recent SCMS performance: Summer 2011 In triple meter the Adagio, molto espressivo opens Enjoying early fame as both and , with a floating violin line over gently coaxing the year 1802 threatened Beethoven’s prospects for rhythmic thrusts on the piano. As if to stress the ongoing success. Attempts to secure a court position importance of the violin the piano supports the failed to materialize. Worst of all, his deepening bowed instrument’s expressive long-breathed deafness and attendant despair began to isolate him melodies with understated prodding alternating from the world around him. with simple arpeggios. It is the piano, however, that has the final, albeit softly spoken, word at the In October came his famous , the movement’s end. , a letter he wrote but never sent to his brothers wherein he expressed In its initial form, Beethoven provided an energetic his terrible anguish and doubt, and admitted to and virtuosic finale before replacing it with an thoughts of suicide. The writing of this epistle served Allegretto con variazioni based on a lyrical tune as a genuine catharsis for the composer, freeing with six variations. The theme itself is a sweet him to get on with the task of his life—to redirect rising melody that anticipates Schubert’s melodic his considerable energy and eruptive feelings into sensibilities. Violin and piano exchange leadership . By year’s end he had completed his roles in episodes embracing lyricism and skittish Second , the massive so-called “Eroica” humor. The fifth variation, reverting to the minor, Variations, the three Op. 31 Piano , and the allows Beethoven to flex his contrapuntal strengths three Sonatas for Piano and Violin, Op. 30. Beethoven before returning to an uplifting conclusion back dedicated the Op. 30 set to Tsar Alexander I, though in the major. And what did he do with the rejected he had to wait until 1815 to get paid for his efforts original finale? He saved it until finding an when the Russian ruler attended the Congress of appropriate place for it as the finale to the far better . known “Kreutzer” Sonata.

The Sonata in A Major opens with an Allegro that starts quietly and unhurriedly despite the tempo indication. Rapid scale fragments, however, hint (1756–1791) at greater speed to come. Very shortly Beethoven Quartet for Piano and Strings in presents the main theme announced by the piano. , K. 478 (1785) Briefly the theme moves into the minor and sounds Most recent SCMS performance: Summer 2017 as if it’s going to turn fugal, but it almost immediately abandons that seeming journey. Throughout the Over roughly two decades beginning in the , movement up and down scales frequently recur. As Franz Haydn transformed the light-hearted, if to establish parity among the players the outdoors-oriented into maturity, is highly “conversational,” a true rather than drawing on his knowledge of both piano with violin (as in earlier violin/piano polyphony and the newer homophonic Classical style. sonatas). Note that the original title was “sonata for By the mid-, his younger colleague Mozart paid piano and violin,” very typical at time. tribute to the older master in a set of six “dedicated to Haydn.” For the next two-plus centuries As the movement proceeds, the Allegro marking the string quartet has served as the primary chamber seems increasingly appropriate, though the music format. The piano , which adds a piano to

WINTer festival // the string quartet, had also found a comfortable he had a special resonance to G minor, analogous niche by the closing years of the eighteenth century. to Beethoven’s choice of minor when dealing with The imposing presence of the piano gave that themes of darkness and adversity. Mozart’s only two combination a -like “heft.” Additionally it minor-key are cast in G minor, as is his was tailor-made for existing string quartets that relentlessly agitated , K.516 (other than could easily be joined by a keyboardist. a recently unearthed symphony in that has yet to enter the symphonic canon). The , on the other hand, was not nearly as popular a format. In 1785, the publisher Franz The galvanic, shall we say “threatening” vigor of Anton Hoffmeister asked Mozart to create three such the Piano Quartet, K.478, provides a powerful works for use by amateur players. Only two came to anticipation of the darker complexion of Romantic- fruition, largely because the first piece, in G minor, music, though it undoubtedly drew some of its proved far beyond the technical capacity of most forcefulness from Haydn’s “” (“storm amateur musicians, prompting Hoffmeister to ask and stress”) symphonies from the late 1760s and Mozart not to complete the project. Mozart, by the . time he received and complied with the “cease and desist” request, had already composed the second The G-minor Quartet’s bold Allegro surges work, K.493, in E-flat Major. menacingly, its serious demeanor heightened through irregularities of phrasing that would have A major challenge in writing for that format lay in an proved difficult for amateur musicians to perform essential difference between Mozart’s conception and even sophisticated listeners of the time to fully and that of C.P.E. Bach and his younger brother assimilate. . Their works were essentially keyboard pieces with optional string parts. Until The Andante that follows, in pacific B-flat major, Mozart, works for piano and strings (including would have been entirely more to general liking, its violin/piano sonatas) were treated as piano music. primary melody reflecting the composer’s operatic Mozart’s impassioned G minor Piano Quartet, on the experience and orientation to vocal melody. So too other hand, is laid out in true chamber fashion, as a does its second theme, achingly sad in the manner conversation among equivalent participants. of the Countess’ music in Le nozze di Figaro, which dates from the same period. Typically most Classical-era confined their music to major keys, a reflection of the rosy optimism The finale fits the mold of esthetics by of the self-proclaimed , a not returning to the first movement’s home key of viewpoint already under strenuous attack in such G minor, but rather providing a “happy ending” to literary masterpieces as ’s Candide, with its a piece begun in an uncompromisingly turbulent Leibnitz-lampooned figure, Pangloss, uttering manner. Marked Allegro moderato, this movement his Polonius-like bromide about this being “the is a deftly constructed rondo filled with humorous best of all possible worlds.” Mozart used minor keys asides and Haydnesque surprises. sparingly, but always effectively. As is well-known,

Program Notes by Steven Lowe

february 17, 2021 // program notes WINTER festival //