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WHLive0019 Made & Printed in England Škampa Quartet Recorded live at , London, on 23 November 2006

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Škampa 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

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Chamber music on Wigmore Hall Live (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 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 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 , 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 , 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 , with members of the he was seriously ill with syphilis. He had been subject to fits – or what he described 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. Quartet’s excellence was first recognized in 1990 when it became the winners of the He was unable to speak, and to add to his woes he had been deaf for some eight years. His new string quartet – the last work he managed to complete – was composed strictly against doctor’s orders. Its concentrated nature is due at least in part to the fact that he was able to work only for a few minutes each day. ‘I can’t write quickly without moving my head or disturbing my nerves’, he explained to his friend and confidant Josef Srb-Debrnov at the end of February 1883, in a letter that leaves us in no doubt about the appalling physical and mental problems with which he had to wrestle in order to compose the work. The quartet is finished except for the finale, but to find a real conclusion with chords and cadences is difficult. At times I get confused, but I no longer have spots before my eyes and the rushing in my ears is less forceful. Alas, I tend to lose my memory when composing so that if a movement is too long I cannot remember the principal melody. If the working-out takes some time I forget the qualities of the melody and look on it as if it were the work of a stranger. The Quartet, completed on 12 March, is a work that is scarcely less autobiographi- cal than its famous predecessor. ‘The new quartet’, Smetana told his biographer Václav Zelený, ‘begins where From my Life ended, after the catastrophe. It represents the whirlwind of music in a person who has completely lost his hearing. No one has the slightest notion how musical ideas run away from a person who is

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It is the ‘rocking’ motif, too, in a vastly accelerated form, that forms the main deaf, and if I don’t commit them to paper immediately I can’t remember how they subject of the ferocious scherzo-like second movement – a piece whose dynamic were even half a day later.’ level scarcely dips below fortissimo for an instant, and which is punctuated One peculiarity of the D minor Quartet is the fact that each of its movements throughout by stabbing accents. The D-S-C-H motto also plays an important begins with an idea given out by all four players in unison. In the case of the part, being given out at different speeds simultaneously. At the climax of the piece, opening movement, that idea consists of an upward-surging rush of triplets whose over a ‘sawing’ accompanimentsfff from the two lower instruments, the violins shape generates the material of the entire piece to come. This is not a sonata- forcefully interject a conspicuouslyJewish-sounding theme from the finale of movement, but an episodic piece whose first contrasting idea is a slower and much Shostakovich’s E minor Piano Trio. The same passage makes a return in the closing gentler motif in F major (the real key of the movement, despite the work’s D minor bars of the movement, this time with the original quartet texture inverted. label), whose outline clearly derives from the opening triplet motif. The rushing The Allegretto middle movement transforms the autobiographical motto into a triplets soon return in their original form, and are developed at greater length, in a wry waltz whose rhythm is intermittently subverted by a sudden change to duple passage that culminates in another broad motif, played this time con fuoco. metre – not least at the point where the opening theme of Shostakovich’s First Cello The second movement opens with a fanfare-like flourish, out of which the main Concerto, with its ‘chugging’ repeated-note rhythm, is quoted. At the end of this polka theme emerges in the key of E minor – almost as though Smetana were G minor piece Shostakovich effects a seamless transition via a broad solo violin deliberately referring back to the main key of his first quartet, which also contained passage to the C minor Largo that follows. a polka movement. The polka eventually leads to a short passage for muted strings The first in the# concluding pair of slow movements begins with a much more in which the viola, accompanied by a subdued form of the initial fanfare, gives out forceful and ponderous version of the Cello Concerto’s theme. In the central part of a new idea in the major which bears the curious marking of zephyroso. The warmly the piece the biting repeated-note interjections abate; and over a desolate and expressive trio is a lullaby in the major. It reaches long-drawn C pedal from the viola and cello, the first violin gives out the haunting a grandiose climax before the reprise of the melody of the# song Tormented by grievous bondage. The title clearly held deep polka; but there is also a coda whose final bars personal significance for Shostakovich; and although in the end he dedicated the return to the major, with a nostalgic recollection Quartet not to his own memory, but to the victims of fascism, Isaak Glikman of the trio. maintained that the composer felt himself the victim of a different kind of totali- In the third movement, two contrasting ideas tarianism. The final moments of the movement combine the song’s outline with the alternate. The opening bars are in the form of a repeated-note motif, while the violin adds the D-S-C-H motto. dramatic tremolo with stabbing accents, whose The motto is taken over by the cello at the start of the final Largo. The opening figuration rises chromatically until the music bars of this concluding movement also recall the ‘rocking’ motif from the first reaches a peak of intensity before it is suddenly movement; and the music’s contrapuntal nature serves as an additional means of broken off, and the cello introduces an important bringing the work full-circle. Towardsthe end, where the motto informsallstrands secondary idea. Above this new idea, with its of the texture, the players put on mutes, and the music fades into the distance with yearning ascending melodic interval, an echo of a last reminiscence of the ‘rocking’ motif. the movement’s initial storm lingers on in the Programme notes by Misha Donat © 2007 first violin part. The cello’s theme gives rise to alyricalfugato, and, after further densely

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contrapuntal writing, to a passionate climax. At the end, the music sinks to a close Federation – a post for which Party membership was with a dying fall that provides a bridge to the finale. a prerequisite – and his formal induction to the Party The impetuous Presto opening bars of the last movement (this time the took place on 14 September 1960. The Eighth Quartet ‘stabbing’ accents occur mostly off the beat) lead to a more moderately paced main was first performed by the on theme based on the same figuration, with its characteristic interval of the falling 2 October, with a repeat performance for the fourth. A still slower episode seems intent on revisiting the second movement’s Composers’ Union being given the following day. polka rhythm, before the initial idea returns. This time there is no let-up, and the For Isaak Glikman, the new quartet marked music gradually gathers pace, in preparation for an ending of orchestral splendour. Shostakovich’s farewell to life: the composer appa- rently associated his joining of the Party with a kind (1906–1975) of moral death. Shostakovich had played the work to Glikman on the piano immediately on his return from String Quartet No. 8 in C minor Op. 110 (1960) Dresden, and had told him it was to be his last work. Largo — He had acquired a large quantityofsleeping pills, Allegro molto — and hinted at his intention to commit suicide. Allegretto — Glikman claimed to have removed the pills out of harm’s way. Certainly, Shosta- Largo — kovich seems to have planned his Eighth Quartet as his own obituary. ‘When I die’, Largo he told Glikman, ‘it’s hardly likely that someone will write a quartet dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write it myself. One could write on the title-page, In the summer of 1960 Shostakovich travelled to East Germany in the company of “Dedicated to the author of this quartet”. The main theme is the monogram D, Es the film-maker Leo Arnshtam. The two men were long-standing friends, and had [E flat], C, H [B natural], that is – my initials. The quartet makes use of themes from been fellow-students at the Leningrad Conservatoire. Arnshtam was planning a my works, and the revolutionary song Tormented by grievous bondage.’ documentary entitled Five Days and Five Nights, about the destruction of the city The D-S-C-H monogram, derived from the German musical transliteration of of Dresden by the Allied bombing raids in February 1945, and the plan was for his name, was one Shostakovich used in a number of works, but nowhere so Shostakovich to provide the music for it. Shostakovich toured Dresden, and pervasively as in the Eighth Quartet. The opening Largo begins immediately with a watched some harrowing newsreel footage, but in the end he felt unable to contri- broad version of the monogram on the cello, out of which a contrapuntal texture is bute to the project. Instead, he retired to the resort of Gohrisch in Saxony, where, in gradually built up. Soon, a reminiscence in slow-motion of the main theme from the space of just a few days, he composed his Eighth String Quartet. ‘However Shostakovich’s First Symphony, composed some 35 years earlier, is inaugurated much I tried to draft my obligations for the film’, Shostakovich told his friend Isaak by the first violin, before being passed to second violin and viola. This leads even- Glikman just a few days after completing the Quartet, ‘I just couldn’t do it. Instead tually to a new ‘rocking’ idea – almost like some emotionless, benumbed lullaby. I wrote an ideologically deficient quartet nobody needs’. The same idea soon provides the accompaniment to a desolate theme whose Shostakovich’s sarcastic reference to the new quartet as being ‘ideologically poignancy is enhanced by the glow of C major warmth it casts over the bleak C minor deficient’ is intimately bound up with the troubled history of his relationship with proceedings. The ‘rocking’ motif is one that will be heard again during the course of the Communist Party. Just a month before his trip to Dresden, Khrushchev decided the finale. to appoint Shostakovich as Chairman of the Composers’ Union of the Russian 6 7 b55307.qxd 19/06/2007 17:29 Page 6

contrapuntal writing, to a passionate climax. At the end, the music sinks to a close Federation – a post for which Party membership was with a dying fall that provides a bridge to the finale. a prerequisite – and his formal induction to the Party The impetuous Presto opening bars of the last movement (this time the took place on 14 September 1960. The Eighth Quartet ‘stabbing’ accents occur mostly off the beat) lead to a more moderately paced main was first performed by the Beethoven Quartet on theme based on the same figuration, with its characteristic interval of the falling 2 October, with a repeat performance for the fourth. A still slower episode seems intent on revisiting the second movement’s Composers’ Union being given the following day. polka rhythm, before the initial idea returns. This time there is no let-up, and the For Isaak Glikman, the new quartet marked music gradually gathers pace, in preparation for an ending of orchestral splendour. Shostakovich’s farewell to life: the composer appa- rently associated his joining of the Party with a kind (1906–1975) of moral death. Shostakovich had played the work to DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Glikman on the piano immediately on his return from String Quartet No. 8 in C minor Op. 110 (1960) Dresden, and had told him it was to be his last work. Largo — He had acquired a large quantityofsleeping pills, Allegro molto — and hinted at his intention to commit suicide. Allegretto — Glikman claimed to have removed the pills out of harm’s way. Certainly, Shosta- Largo — kovich seems to have planned his Eighth Quartet as his own obituary. ‘When I die’, Largo he told Glikman, ‘it’s hardly likely that someone will write a quartet dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write it myself. One could write on the title-page, In the summer of 1960 Shostakovich travelled to East Germany in the company of “Dedicated to the author of this quartet”. The main theme is the monogram D, Es the film-maker Leo Arnshtam. The two men were long-standing friends, and had [E flat], C, H [B natural], that is – my initials. The quartet makes use of themes from been fellow-students at the Leningrad Conservatoire. Arnshtam was planning a my works, and the revolutionary song Tormented by grievous bondage.’ documentary entitled Five Days and Five Nights, about the destruction of the city The D-S-C-H monogram, derived from the German musical transliteration of of Dresden by the Allied bombing raids in February 1945, and the plan was for his name, was one Shostakovich used in a number of works, but nowhere so Shostakovich to provide the music for it. Shostakovich toured Dresden, and pervasively as in the Eighth Quartet. The opening Largo begins immediately with a watched some harrowing newsreel footage, but in the end he felt unable to contri- broad version of the monogram on the cello, out of which a contrapuntal texture is bute to the project. Instead, he retired to the resort of Gohrisch in Saxony, where, in gradually built up. Soon, a reminiscence in slow-motion of the main theme from the space of just a few days, he composed his Eighth String Quartet. ‘However Shostakovich’s First Symphony, composed some 35 years earlier, is inaugurated much I tried to draft my obligations for the film’, Shostakovich told his friend Isaak by the first violin, before being passed to second violin and viola. This leads even- Glikman just a few days after completing the Quartet, ‘I just couldn’t do it. Instead tually to a new ‘rocking’ idea – almost like some emotionless, benumbed lullaby. I wrote an ideologically deficient quartet nobody needs’. The same idea soon provides the accompaniment to a desolate theme whose Shostakovich’s sarcastic reference to the new quartet as being ‘ideologically poignancy is enhanced by the glow of C major warmth it casts over the bleak C minor deficient’ is intimately bound up with the troubled history of his relationship with proceedings. The ‘rocking’ motif is one that will be heard again during the course of the Communist Party. Just a month before his trip to Dresden, Khrushchev decided the finale. to appoint Shostakovich as Chairman of the Composers’ Union of the Russian 6 7 b55307.qxd 19/06/2007 17:29 Page 8

It is the ‘rocking’ motif, too, in a vastly accelerated form, that forms the main deaf, and if I don’t commit them to paper immediately I can’t remember how they subject of the ferocious scherzo-like second movement – a piece whose dynamic were even half a day later.’ level scarcely dips below fortissimo for an instant, and which is punctuated One peculiarity of the D minor Quartet is the fact that each of its movements throughout by stabbing accents. The D-S-C-H motto also plays an important begins with an idea given out by all four players in unison. In the case of the part, being given out at different speeds simultaneously. At the climax of the piece, opening movement, that idea consists of an upward-surging rush of triplets whose over a ‘sawing’ accompanimentsfff from the two lower instruments, the violins shape generates the material of the entire piece to come. This is not a sonata- forcefully interject a conspicuouslyJewish-sounding theme from the finale of movement, but an episodic piece whose first contrasting idea is a slower and much Shostakovich’s E minor Piano Trio. The same passage makes a return in the closing gentler motif in F major (the real key of the movement, despite the work’s D minor bars of the movement, this time with the original quartet texture inverted. label), whose outline clearly derives from the opening triplet motif. The rushing The Allegretto middle movement transforms the autobiographical motto into a triplets soon return in their original form, and are developed at greater length, in a wry waltz whose rhythm is intermittently subverted by a sudden change to duple passage that culminates in another broad motif, played this time con fuoco. metre – not least at the point where the opening theme of Shostakovich’s First Cello The second movement opens with a fanfare-like flourish, out of which the main Concerto, with its ‘chugging’ repeated-note rhythm, is quoted. At the end of this polka theme emerges in the key of E minor – almost as though Smetana were G minor piece Shostakovich effects a seamless transition via a broad solo violin deliberately referring back to the main key of his first quartet, which also contained passage to the C minor Largo that follows. a polka movement. The polka eventually leads to a short passage for muted strings The first in the# concluding pair of slow movements begins with a much more in which the viola, accompanied by a subdued form of the initial fanfare, gives out forceful and ponderous version of the Cello Concerto’s theme. In the central part of a new idea in the major which bears the curious marking of zephyroso. The warmly the piece the biting repeated-note interjections abate; and over a desolate and expressive trio is a lullaby in the major. It reaches long-drawn C pedal from the viola and cello, the first violin gives out the haunting a grandiose climax before the reprise of the melody of the# song Tormented by grievous bondage. The title clearly held deep polka; but there is also a coda whose final bars personal significance for Shostakovich; and although in the end he dedicated the return to the major, with a nostalgic recollection Quartet not to his own memory, but to the victims of fascism, Isaak Glikman of the trio. maintained that the composer felt himself the victim of a different kind of totali- In the third movement, two contrasting ideas tarianism. The final moments of the movement combine the song’s outline with the alternate. The opening bars are in the form of a repeated-note motif, while the violin adds the D-S-C-H motto. dramatic tremolo with stabbing accents, whose The motto is taken over by the cello at the start of the final Largo. The opening figuration rises chromatically until the music bars of this concluding movement also recall the ‘rocking’ motif from the first reaches a peak of intensity before it is suddenly movement; and the music’s contrapuntal nature serves as an additional means of broken off, and the cello introduces an important bringing the work full-circle. Towardsthe end, where the motto informsallstrands secondary idea. Above this new idea, with its of the texture, the players put on mutes, and the music fades into the distance with yearning ascending melodic interval, an echo of a last reminiscence of the ‘rocking’ motif. the movement’s initial storm lingers on in the Programme notes by Misha Donat © 2007 first violin part. The cello’s theme gives rise to alyricalfugato, and, after further densely

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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. Quartet’s excellence was first recognized in 1990 when it became the winners of the He was unable to speak, and to add to his woes he had been deaf for some eight years. His new string quartet – the last work he managed to complete – was composed strictly against doctor’s orders. Its concentrated nature is due at least in part to the fact that he was able to work only for a few minutes each day. ‘I can’t write quickly without moving my head or disturbing my nerves’, he explained to his friend and confidant Josef Srb-Debrnov at the end of February 1883, in a letter that leaves us in no doubt about the appalling physical and mental problems with which he had to wrestle in order to compose the work. The quartet is finished except for the finale, but to find a real conclusion with chords and cadences is difficult. At times I get confused, but I no longer have spots before my eyes and the rushing in my ears is less forceful. Alas, I tend to lose my memory when composing so that if a movement is too long I cannot remember the principal melody. If the working-out takes some time I forget the qualities of the melody and look on it as if it were the work of a stranger. The Quartet, completed on 12 March, is a work that is scarcely less autobiographi- cal than its famous predecessor. ‘The new quartet’, Smetana told his biographer Václav Zelený, ‘begins where From my Life ended, after the catastrophe. It represents the whirlwind of music in a person who has completely lost his hearing. No one has the slightest notion how musical ideas run away from a person who is

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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 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 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