Takács Quartet

CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS Saturday & Sunday, March 22 & 23, 2014 Hertz Hall Takács Quartet Edward Dusinberre first violin Károly Schranz second violin Geraldine Walther viola András Fejér cello THE SIX STRING QUARTETS OF BÉLA BARTÓK Saturday, March 22, 2014, 8pm PROGRAM Béla Bartók (1881–1945) String Quartet No. 1, Op. 7 (1907–1908) Lento Poco a poco accelerando all’allegretto Introduzione (Allegro) — Allegro vivace Bartók String Quartet No. 3 (1927) Prima parte (Moderato) — Seconda parte (Allegro) — Ricapitulazione della prima parte (Moderato) — Coda (Allegro molto) Played without pause INTERMISSION Bartók String Quartet No. 5 (1934) Allegro Adagio molto Scherzo: Alla bulgarese Andante Finale: Allegro vivace CAL PERFORMANCES 1 2 PROGRAM Sunday, March 23, 2014, 3pm PROGRAM Béla Bartók (1881–1945) String Quartet No. 2, Op. 17 (1915–1917) Moderato Allegro molto capriccioso Lento Bartók String Quartet No. 4 (1928) Allegro Prestissimo con sordino Non troppo lento Allegretto pizzicato Allegro molto INTERMISSION Bartók String Quartet No. 6 (1939) Mesto — Più mosso, pesante — Vivace Mesto — Marcia Mesto — Burletta: Moderato Mesto This performance is made possible, in part, by Patron Sponsors Earl and June Cheit. Cal Performances’ – season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES HERE IS a particular exhilaration that in tradition; enormous in their range of ex- Tcomes with performing the six Bartók pression. They are fundamental documents of string quartets that make up the complete modern music, integral to the study of the dis- cycle. Our performances have been influenced cipline and the subject of many learned trea- by working regularly with the Hungarian folk tises. But the true importance of these group Muzsikás, whose sense of adventure and masterpieces lies not in their demonstrable joyful abandon has hopefully crept into our mastery of the craft of composition, not in the performances of these monuments of 20th- fierce intellect that attended their creation, but century quartet literature. in the way they allow us to share the spirit of As with Beethoven cycle programs, we one extraordinary man who affirmed his arrange the order of the quartets to give a life—and ours—by wresting order from sense of Bartók’s musical journey. In the first change and contradiction. program, the late romanticism of the Quartet Change and contradiction came to Bartók No. 1 is rudely shattered by the explosive both as a Hungarian, with the waning of the modernist tendencies of No. 3. To conclude old ways of life that provided the bedrock of the program, No. 5 shows Bartók at the peak the nation’s culture, and as a musician, with of his compositional powers, with its extraor- the erosion of the traditional tonal system dinary spectrum of colors, rhythmic vitality, upon which compositions had been founded and range of emotion. The second program for nearly three centuries. Bartók confronted begins with the Quartet No. 2, which presents both of these potential threats in the quartets melancholy and yearning lyricism in the outer by drawing melodic, rhythmic, and textural movements and a capricious second move- inspiration from the indigenous songs and ment giddy with excitement and momentum. dances that he collected during his decades of We follow this with No. 4, itself a striking field research on the subject, and then forging journey from its rigid, uncompromising first those musical elements into logical forms movement and spectral, nightmarish second molded from new tonal alloys that melded to the humanizing cello solo in the middle convention and innovation. movement. The humorous fourth movement In so doing, he mirrored his own life: by and festive dance finale leave performers and showing in the Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 (com- audience alike in a completely different place posed when he was 27 and 34, and the only from where we began. two of the quartets bearing opus numbers) Of course, the cycle must end with the Sixth how the folk sources to which he had devoted Quartet, where Bartók achieved an unprece- his early years could affirm his coming of age dented degree of emotional depth—a sense by providing the basis for establishing his dis- of resignation and even withdrawal from tinctive creative voice; by showing in the the world. Quartets Nos. 3 and 4 (ages 46 and 47) how that musical speech could be made to encom- Takács Quartet pass the most rigorous discipline and individ- ualism; and by showing in the Quartets Nos. 5 * * * and 6 (ages 53 and 58) how the experience of life (and art) could both sharpen and mellow The string quartets of Béla Bartók are monu- the personality to reflect the wisdom of ma- ments of music, virtually unsurpassed by any turity. Bartók’s six string quartets transcend body of work of any other composer: unim- the mere notes that are their medium to peachable in their form and technique, with record the unfolding and renewing of a the tiniest motivic atom set spinning elegantly human spirit, a process of creativity and com- through the universe of an all-embracing munication that perfectly embodies the com- structure; ingenious yet masterful in their use poser’s artistic credo: “I cannot conceive of of sonority; daring harmonically yet grounded music that expresses absolutely nothing.” CAL PERFORMANCES PROGRAM NOTES String Quartet No. >, Op. D in slow tempo on a lamenting theme, whose imitative technique was probably influenced Composed in IQHO–IQHP. Premièred on by the fugue that opens Beethoven’s C-sharp March IQ, IQIH, in Budapest by the Waldbauer- minor Quartet, Op. 131. Formal contrast is Kerpely Quartet. provided by the movement’s central section, based on a descending theme in worried The year 1907, when he was 26, was a crucial rhythms (marked “very impassioned”) initi- time both personally and professionally for ated by the viola above a drone in the cello. (As Béla Bartók. In January, he was appointed to a means of unifying the overall structure of the the faculty of the Budapest Academy of Music Quartet, the opening interval of this melody— as teacher of piano, and he soon became rec- a falling half-step—serves as the germ from ognized as one of Hungary’s most talented which the themes of the two later movements keyboard virtuosos and pedagogues. By 1907, grow.) A return of the opening canon, floating he had begun to establish himself as a com- high in the violins, rounds out the movement’s poser and a folk music researcher, though his form. An inconclusive harmony leads without original works to that time, largely under the pause to the next movement. sway of late German Romanticism, had not The form of the spectral Allegretto is related yet revealed his distinctive creative personal- to Classical sonata-allegro wit h three themes: ity. He was then also much occupied with a falling melody of short phrases introduced thoughts of Hungarian nationalism (he even by the second violin after a hesitant introduc- eschewed business suits for a short period in tion; a flowing waltz-like strain given by the favor of traditional peasant dress), and the inner strings above an ostinato murmur from manner in which the music he was docu- the cello and first violin; and a quiet, subdued menting on his research trips through the motive accompanied by pizzicato notes from Transylvanian countryside could be most ef- the cello. After a tightly woven development fectively incorporated into his original works. section, however, the themes are recapitulated The String Quartet No. 1, Bartók’s first pub- not in their expected order, but in reverse, a lished chamber work and his earliest generally technique that creates a structural symmetry recognized masterpiece, is an important doc- (1–2–3–development–3–2–1) for which ument of that formative time in his life. Bartók showed great fondness in many of his Though certainly touched by elements of pro- later compositions. grammatic autobiography (Ernő Lendvai It is in the finale that Bartók moved beyond found in it “first descent—then ascent. The the extended Romantic style of the earlier entire work possesses a dramatic [progres- movements toward the characteristic compo- sion] because the ‘return to life’ [Zoltán sitional idiom, grown from the distinctive Kodály’s description of the finale] is brought melodic leadings and fiery dance rhythms of about by catharsis, a purifying fever”), the Hungarian folk music, that informs his greatest Quartet is, above all, a purely musical record works. The movement is introduced by a pre- of the profound evolution of Bartók’s stylistic ludial paragraph in which the cello makes language from its Germanic, Romantic origins bardic pronouncements that are separated by to its mature basis in the quintessential ele- excited punctuations from the upper strings. ments of Hungarian folk song. Elliott The main part of the movement is a sort of Antokoletz paired it with Strauss’s Elektra, also modern sonata-rondo whose structural de- completed in 1909, as “epitomizing late marcations are often blurred by the continuous Romantic music on the threshold of a new thematic working-out. The movement’s second chromatic idiom.” theme, however, a folkish tune similar to the The first movement is a darkly emotional one on which Kodály based his “Peacock” essay grown from the harmonic richness of Variations of 1939, is placed in high relief by Wagner’s Tristan, and not unrelated to the ripe its slow tempo and Impressionistic trilled ac- Expressionism of Schoenberg’s 1899 Verklärte companiment. (Bartók was much interested in Nacht . The Quartet begins with a close canon the music of the new French composers during PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES the work’s composition. He purchased a copy music becomes transmuted into modern music of Debussy’s String Quartet in October 1907.) is the following: The composer does not make Though the First String Quartet is among the use of a real peasant melody but invents his own earliest of Bartók’s works to exhibit the stylistic imitation of such melodies...

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