Danish String Quartet Frederik Øland, Violin Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, Violin Asbjørn Nørgaard, Viola Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, Cello
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Sunday, November 22, 2015, 7pm Hertz Hall Danish String Quartet Frederik Øland, violin Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, violin Asbjørn Nørgaard, viola Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, cello PROGRAM Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) String Quartet in C major, Op. 54, No. 2 (1788) Vivace Adagio Menuetto: Allegretto Finale: Adagio — Presto — Adagio Thomas Adès (b. 1971) Arcadiana, Op. 12 (1994) I. Venezia notturno II. Das klinget so herrlich, das klinget so schon III. Auf dem Wasser zu singen IV. Et… (tango mortal) V. L’Embarquement VI. O Albion VII. Lethe INTERMISSION Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135 (1826) Allegretto Vivace Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo Der schwer gefasste Entschluss: Muss es sein? Es muss sein! Es muss sein! Grave, ma non troppo tratto; Allegro Cal Performances’ – season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. 19 PROGRAM NOTES Joseph Haydn (6<87–6=5>) systematically victimized by publishers String Quartet in C major, Op. :9, No. 7 throughout his career, replied without sympathy, “Thus Herr Tost has swindled you; Composed in @FGG. you can claim your damages in Vienna.”) Perhaps to augment their market value, the six By the 1780s, Haydn’s fame in Paris was quartets were issued in two sets of three immense. His music first appeared there in compositions each as Opp. 54 and 55, a January 1764 , when the publisher de la procedure that Haydn apparently approved Chevardiàre brought out “ Six Symphonies ou since he permitted Artaria in Vienna to publish Equators Dialogués ,” which were not them in the same manner soon thereafter. Such symphonies at all but rather Haydn’s Op. 1 entrepreneurial success encouraged Tost to try String Quartets. Nevertheless, the vogue for the his hand at commerce, and by 1790 he had compositions of this “Maître de Musique à abandoned music as a career and settled in Vienne,” as de la Chevardiàre’s edition dubbed Vienna as a cloth merchant. During that same this Viennese master of music, grew rapidly. In year, he married Maria Anna von Jerlischek, a March 1764, Venier issued Haydn’s Symphony wealthy lady attached to the household of No. 2 in C, and six string trios were printed by Prince Nicholas Esterházy, and he used her de la Chevardiàre later that year. The demand fortune as collateral for his burgeoning for Haydn’s music in Paris became so great that business. It is unknown whether Haydn publishers procured pieces by some of his dedicated the Op. 54 Quartets to “the wholesale followers and passed them off as his original merchant Johann Tost” out of admiration for compositions. So pervasive was this practice his playing while in the Esterházy orchestra, or that more spurious than authentic for his assistance in the dealings with Sieber compositions appeared under Haydn’s name (Tost also helped with the Viennese publication in Paris between 1775 and 1780. By the time of the Quartets), but the “Tost” Quartets are Haydn contributed his six “Paris” Symphonies among the most lustrous jewels in the diadem to Le Concert de la Loge Olympique in 1786 of the composer’s chamber music. and 1787, his compositions had become some The Quartet in C major (Op. 54, No. 2) is, at of the most sought-after music in Paris. once, a tribute to Tost and one of Haydn’s most Haydn capitalized on his Parisian notoriety daring formal experiments. Though Haydn by composing a half-dozen string quartets and here preserved much of the conversation- two symphonies (Nos. 88 and 89) in 1787– among-equals quality of the quartet form that 1788 to sate the French appetite for his works. is among his greatest contributions to this He gave the scores of these new compositions branch of musical composition, the first violin to Johann Tost, the principal second violinist throughout is given a featured role, soaring in his orchestra at Esterháza from 1783 to repeatedly into its highest register, leading the 1788, who left his post in March 1788 to try ensemble in the presentation of thematic his luck in Paris as a soloist; Haydn entrusted material, rising in intricately constructed arches him with negotiating a deal for engraving the above the background of the other instruments. symphonies and quartets with the publisher Indeed, the Adagio almost becomes a miniature Sieber. The sly Tost, however, sold Sieber not concerto movement as the violin drapes its two but three symphonies, the third being a intricate musings across the melancholy piece by Adalbert Gyrowetz that the violinist chorale tune of the lower strings. Haydn’s taste passed off as Haydn’s. (Gyrowetz later had for innovation in this Quartet elicits surprise enormous difficulty persuading French bordering on shock. On the very first page of musicians that this was, indeed, his work. the score, for instance, the main theme begins, When Sieber complained about this shady deal as it should, boldly and with clear purpose, but to Haydn, the composer, who had been before even its first phrase is completed, it PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES disintegrates into fragments and silence. A won the Second Piano Prize in the BBC Young second try produces the same indecisive result. Musician of the Year Competition in 1989. Only when the music drops into a wildly That same year he entered King’s College, unrelated key does it seem able to sustain itself, Cambridge, where his principal teachers but then needs some quick shifts of harmony included Hugh Wood, Alexander Goehr, and to get back into its proper formal track. All of Robin Holloway, and he began establishing his this within just the first two-dozen measures. reputation as a composer when the BBC Similar musical legerdemain is performed in Philharmonic under Mathias Bamert played the Menuetto . The strains that fill the movement’s his Chamber Symphony at the Cambridge outer sections—so pleasing in themselves that Festival in 1990; he graduated from their relationship to the little two-note falling Cambridge in 1992 with highest honors. Other motive which served as the first movement’s works of sharply defined but greatly varied second theme could easily be overlooked— character quickly brought Adès to wide stand in startling juxtaposition to the solemn, prominence—the piano solos Still Sorrowing minor-mode plaint that occupies the central and Darknesse Visible , the song cycles Five Eliot episode. Most unconventional of all, however, Landscapes and Life Story , and Catch and Living is the Quartet’s finale. The movement begins, Toys for chamber orchestra—and in 1993 he as some finales do, with a stately introduction was appointed Composer-in-Association to the in slow tempo. This introduction, though, Hallé Orchestra; he composed These Premises grows and grows, until it seems that it will take Are Alarmed in 1996 for the Hallé’s inaugural over the entire movement. Just as that thought concert in the new Bridgewater Hall in settles in, however, Haydn breaks off his Manchester. His opera Powder Her Face , based Adagio , and sends in a rambunctious Presto , on the story of the uninhibited Duchess of the perfect music for a spirited ending. But just Argyll, created an international sensation when when the music appears headed for its closing it was premièred at the Cheltenham Festival in gestures, the Presto halts on an inconclusive 1995, and it has since been heard in London, harmony, the music draws a short breath, and Berkeley, Aspen, Magdeburg, New York, the movement turns its closing measures over Helsinki, Brisbane, and Aldeburgh. In 1997, to the stately music with which it began. One of Adès was appointed Britten Professor of the wonders of Haydn’s genius is the manner in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music; which such daring, even brazen originality is he has also served as Artistic Director of the molded into music of polish, suavity, and Aldeburgh Festival and Music Director of the apparent inevitability. Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. He was Resident Composer with the Los Angeles Thomas Adès (b. 6><6) Philharmonic from 2005 to 2007, and held the Arcadiana, Op. 67 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer Chair at Carnegie Hall in 2007–2008. He is also Composed in @HHC. Premièred on November @E, active as a pianist and conductor, with many @HHC, in Cambridge, England, by the concert and broadcast performances in Endellion Quartet. Europe, America, and Japan. Adès’s quickly accumulating list of distinctions includes the Not since the youthful days of Benjamin Britten Paris Rostrum (1994, for Living Toys , judged has a young British composer created such the best piece by a composer under 30), 1997 excitement as Thomas Adès. Adès ( ah -diss), Royal Philharmonic Society Prize (for Asyla ), born in London on March 1, 1971, studied Elise L. Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music piano with Paul Berkowitz and composition Society of Lincoln Center ( 1998 , for with Robert Saxton at the Guildhall School of Arcadiana ), Salzburg Easter Festival Prize Music before first coming to notice when he (1999), Munich Ernst von Siemens Prize for PROGRAM NOTES Young Composers (1999), a 1999 Mercury alludes to the eponymous Schubert Lied. The Prize nomination (for the recording of Asyla on title of movement V [ L’Embarquement ] derives EMI), 2000 Grawemeyer Prize (for Asyla , the from Watteau’s painting The Embarkation from youngest composer to receive that prestigious the Island of Cythera in the Louvre. Movement award, the largest international prize for VII [ Lethe ] bears the name of the mythical River composition, since its inception in 1985), and of Oblivion. The second [ Das klinget so herrlich, an honorary doctorate from the University of das klinget so schön ] and sixth movements [ O Essex (2004); in November 2010, he was Albion ] inhabit pastoral Arcadias, respectively named Musical America ’s “Composer of the Mozart’s ‘Kingdom of Night’ [i.e., recalling the Year.” London’s Barbican Centre staged a enchanted bells by which Papageno calms retrospective festival of Adès’s work in 2007 .