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b55307.qxd 19/06/2007 17:29 Page 12 WHLive0019 Made & Printed in England Škampa Quartet Recorded live at Wigmore Hall, London, on 23 November 2006 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Škampa Quartet String Quartet in D major K. 575 22.48 quartets 01 Allegretto 07.17 02 Andante 04.12 03 Menuetto: Allegretto 05.19 Allegretto 04 05.57 String Quartet in D K. 575 V Mozart BEDRICH SMETANA String Quartet No. 2 String Quartet No. 2 in D minor 18.45 Smetana 05 Allegro 05.18 Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8 06 Allegro moderato — Andante cantabile 05.32 07 Allegro non più moderato, ma agitato e con fuoco — Molto moderato, quasi marcia 04.33 08 Finale: Presto — Allegro — Moderato allegro — Con fuoco 03.20 DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No. 8 in C minor Op. 110 20.49 09 Largo — 04.43 10 Allegro molto — 02.53 11 Allegretto — 04.28 12 Largo — 05.01 13 Largo 03.40 14 Applause 00.51 tracked separately so it can be programmed out if desired Total time: 63.14 b55307.qxd 19/06/2007 17:29 Page 2 Chamber music on Wigmore Hall Live WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) String Quartet in D major K. 575 (1789) Available from all good record shops and from www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/live Allegretto Andante Menuetto: Allegretto Allegretto In the spring of 1789 Prince Karl Lichnowsky invited Mozart to travel with him to Germany, where the composer hoped to earn some much-needed cash by demonstrating his talents to the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm II. The King was himself an accomplished cellist, and Mozart resolved to compose a set of string quartets for him. The task was one that brought with it a particular problem: how to assign a prominent melodic role to the cello without seriously compromising the integrity of his quartet writing. Mozart’s solution was a radical one: if the cello was to be melodically emancipated, then it would have to be on equal terms with the three remaining players. It’s not by chance that when the three works of his projected series he did manage to complete were eventually published, they were announced as ‘concertante’ quartets. Ironically enough, Mozart never made a NASH ENSEMBLE KOPELMAN QUARTET penny out of them: although he corrected the proofs of the first edition, it appeared Beethoven Clarinet Trio in B flat Schubert String Quartet in D minor, just a few weeks after his death in December 1791. Mendelssohn Octet ‘Death and the Maiden’ So eager was Mozart to begin composing his quartets that it seems he had done WHLive0001 Tchaikovsky String Quartet in E flat minor WHLive0010 at least the bulk of the work on the first of them, K. 575, by the time he returned to ARDITTI QUARTET Vienna, on 4 June. However, the remainder of the year found him preoccupied with Nancarrow String Quartet No. 3 YSAŸE QUARTET other projects – chiefly Così fan tutte – and it wasn’t until May 1790 that he resumed Ligeti String Quartet No. 2 Debussy String Quartet in G minor work on his string quartets. Dutilleux String Quartet ‘Ainsi la nuit’ Stravinsky Concertino; Three Pieces Mozart’s first thought for the D major Quartet K. 575 was to have its opening WHLive0003 Fauré String Quartet Op. 121 WHLive0012 theme shared between first violin and cello. The theme is given out sotto voce above ACADEMY OF ANCIENT MUSIC a repeated pedal-note, and its first eight bars are scored for the upper three instru- Concerti and Concerti Grossi by MICHAEL COLLINS & FRIENDS ments alone. At the ninth bar, Mozart attempted to introduce the cello with the Handel, J S Bach and Vivaldi Schubert Shepherd on the Rock theme’s answering phrase; but having given the repeated pedal-note thus far to the WHLive0005 Schubert Octet in F major WHLive0017 viola, and realizing that he needed a change in sonority here, he was forced instead NASH ENSEMBLE to transfer the repeated note to the cello, and to have the viola play the answer to Schumann Märchenerzählungen the violin’s theme. Having neglected to allot the cello a royal role in the opening Moscheles Fantasy, Variations & Finale Brahms Clarinet Quintet in B minor 2 WHLive0007 11 b55307.qxd 19/06/2007 17:29 Page 10 Best Quartet prize in the Premio Vittorio Gui competition in Florence. The following subject, Mozart made amends in the second year the young quartet was awarded the first prize in the Charles Hennen subject, whose short phrases are passed competition in the Netherlands and in 1992 they received a special prize from the from one instrument to the other, almost in Czech Chamber Music Society. the manner of an operatic quartet. Building The Quartet made its debut in February 1993 at Wigmore Hall, an appearance an entire movement out of such relaxed which won them the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for the best debut of that material clearly presented Mozart with a very year. William Lyne, the Director of Wigmore Hall, commented that ‘after their first real problem if he wanted to create the concert in 1993 one sensed their tremendous rapport with the audience’; so much tension necessary for a piece on so large so that a year later Wigmore Hall appointed the Škampa Quartet as its first artists- ascale. Hisanswer layin the tinyphrase in-residence, a highly successful collaboration which lasted five years. The Škampa in quick notes which separates the main Quartet performs regularly throughout Europe, America, Japan, Australia and New theme’s two halves, and he duly used it to Zealand, enjoying collaborations with artists including Josef Suk, Nikolai generate an intensely worked passage in the Demidenko, Kathryn Stott, Melvyn Tan, Martin Roscoe, Lars Vogt, Finghin Collins, central development section. Dame Anne Evans, Itamar Golan, Ronald van Spaendonck and John Williams. Mozart may have felt that he had under- The Škampa Quartet has made nine recordings on the Supraphon and Legend used the cello in the opening movement. labels of Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Mozart, Ravel, Schubert, Smetana, Janácvek, At any rate, the King’s instrument assumes Dvorvák and Suk and most recently, has collaborated with the Czech cross-over an unusually prominent role in both the artist/composer Iva Bittova on a unique disc of arrangements of Janácvek folk songs quartet’s inner movements. Like the opening subject of the first movement, the for voice and string quartet. Their recordings of Janácvek and Smetana quartets for Andante’s theme is played sotto voce. It is followed by another of Mozart’s operatic Supraphon received rave reviews. quartets, and eventually by a further subject played in the cello’s topmost register. The members of the Škampa Quartet are increasingly in demand for their The cello leads again in the reprise of the opening theme, before the piece sinks to teaching and have taught on courses atWigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw in a serene close. Amsterdam, the University in Mexico City and the Royal Academy of Music in If the minuet itself presents a conventional string-quartet texture, its trio is London, where in May 2001, they were appointed Visiting Professors of Chamber essentially an accompanied cello solo. The theme of the finale is given out in the Music. form of a cello solo, too, this time with viola accompaniment. The subject is one that lends itself to treatment in the form of a closely knit canon, and Mozart does not Produced by Andrew Keener neglect the opportunity to present it as such during the course of the movement. Engineered by David Hinitt; Assistant Engineer: Simon Eadon Particularly splendid from this point of view are the central episode, where the cello Recorded live at Wigmore Hall, London, 23 November 2006 and viola have the theme in canon by inversion, with the violins interjecting a new Director: John Gilhooly ‘running’ idea, again answering each other in mirror form; and a later passage Wigmore Hall Live — General Manager: Helen Peate; Head of Sales and Marketing: Claire Hargrove which has two inversion canons running simultaneously. This being Mozart, all this Front Photograph by Michelle Robek learning is, needless to say, worn lightly, and the listener is barely aware of the Photograph of the Škampa Quartet on page 9 by Ivan Pinkava music’s complexities. Manufactured by Repeat Performance Multimedia, London 10 3 b55307.qxd 19/06/2007 17:29 Page 4 V ŠKAMPA QUARTET BEDRICH SMETANA (1824–1884) String Quartet No. 2 in D minor (1882–3) Pavel Fischer violin Jana Lukášová violin Allegro Radim Sedmidubský viola Allegro moderato — Andante cantabile Lukás Polák cello Allegro non più moderato, ma agitato e con fuoco — Founded in 1989 at the Prague Academy under the guidance and encouragement of Molto moderato, quasi marcia Antonín Kohout and Milan Škampa of the Smetana Quartet, the Škampa Quartet Finale: Presto — Allegro — Moderato allegro — Con fuoco has since established itself on the international chamber music circuit. Within half Smetana’s Second String Quartet has never had the success of its predecessor in a year of its foundation, the Velvet Revolution gave this young quartet its first taste E minor. It is true that it was written in extremely difficult circumstances, and as a of freedom to tour abroad to Europe, the United States and the East, where they result is a more concise, even claustrophobic work; but it is nevertheless a deeply have been invited to return ever since. moving document. At the time Smetana composed it, in the early months of 1883, Having studied with Piero Farulli of the Quartetto Italiano, with members of the he was seriously ill with syphilis. He had been subject to fits – or what he described Amadeus Quartet and with Walter Levin of the LaSalle Quartet, the Škampa as ‘cramp in the brain’ – since the previous year, and had clearly suffered a stroke.