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The ARC Ensemble (Artists of The Royal Conservatory) Saturday, September 26, 2015 at 3:00 pm This is the 540th concert in Koerner Hall The ARC Ensemble Joaquin Valdepeñas , clarinet Erika Raum , violin Marie Bérard , violin Steven Dann , viola Winona Zelenka , cello David Louie , piano Dianne Werner , piano PROGRAM Mieczysław Weinberg: Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, Op. 12 I. Allegro II. Adagietto III. Allegro Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581 I. Allegro II. Larghetto III. Menuetto – Trio I – Trio II IV. Allegretto con Variazioni INTERMISSION Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57 I. Prelude: Lento II. Fugue: Adagio III. Scherzo: Allegretto IV. Intermezzo: Lento V. Finale: Allegretto Mieczysław Weinberg Born in Warsaw, Poland, December 8, 1919; died in Moscow, Russia, February 26, 1996 Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, Op. 12 (1943) The Soviet Union was a precarious refuge when Weinberg fled Warsaw in 1939. But unlike many of his émigré colleagues in the West, he enjoyed considerable success in his adopted country, especially during the 60s and 70s when Emil Gilels, Mstislav Rostropovich, Kiril Kondrashin, the Borodin Quartet, and Leonid Kogan all performed and recorded his works. Weinberg’s massive oeuvre – over 150 opus numbers –found favour on the opera stage, in chamber and orchestral programs, and on movie soundtracks. However it is only in the last dozen years or so that his music has begun to enjoy similar enthusiasm in the West. Mieczysław Weinberg was born in Warsaw on December 8, 1919. His father, Shmuel, worked as a violinist and conductor at the city’s Yiddish theatre. He provided Mieczysław with his first practical experience and exposed him to traditional and liturgical Jewish music – elements of which informed his work for the rest of his life. Eight years at the Warsaw Conservatory provided Weinberg with a thorough musical grounding and he became an exceptional pianist. With the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939, Weinberg fled from Warsaw, first (on foot) to Minsk, then to Tashkent, 2000 miles away, in eastern Uzbekistan. Many intellectuals and artists had been evacuated here, among them the illustrious actor and theatre director Solomon Mikhoels, a Latvian Jew whose daughter, Natalia Vovsi, Weinberg soon married. It was in Tashkent in April 1943 that Weinberg completed his first sonata for violin and piano. He dedicated it to Mikhoels, who was probably responsible for introducing Weinberg to Dmitri Shostakovich. Immensely impressed, Shostakovich assisted in Weinberg’s move to Moscow. In the three movements of this richly melodic and only occasionally unsettled sonata, there is little indication of recent trauma: Weinberg’s flight from Poland, the physical exhaustion and privations he suffered, and the Nazi savagery that he witnessed. While Weinberg was in Tashkent, the jazz trumpeter, Eddie Rosner, another Polish refugee, told Weinberg that his family had been deported from Warsaw; their deaths in the Trawninki camp were only confirmed in the early 1960s. And yet the sonata is balanced and introspective, with recurring passages of contained majesty, and more than a hint of Johannes Brahms. The music is conversational and the material refers to itself, rather than to any external narrative. Wisps of the sonata’s opening melody are found in the first movement of Weinberg’s first symphony, which he had completed the previous year. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Born in Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756; died in Vienna, Austria, December 5, 1791 Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581 (1789) Although Mozart’s two major works for clarinet, the quintet and the concerto, have long been cornerstones of the instrument’s repertoire – there are currently over 120 commercially available versions of the quintet – both were originally written for the basset clarinet. Designed and played by the Viennese virtuoso Anton Stadler, a member of the Imperial Court Orchestra, it extends the regular instrument’s lower range by five notes. Stadler premiered the quintet at the Burgtheater on December 22, 1789 in a concert presented by Vienna’s Tonkünstler-Societät. The proceeds supported the widows and orphans of its members. Mozart’s quintet was sandwiched between the two halves of a cantata by Vincenzo Righini, a practice which was as familiar at the time as it is bizarre today. 1789 was not the happiest year of Mozart’s short life. He was chronically short of money and his popularity, at least in Vienna, was on the wane. In mid-November, Mozart’s wife Constanza gave birth to a little girl who survived only a few hours. She was the fourth of Mozart’s children to die in infancy. Commentators note that Mozart was less productive during this period, and although this may well be accurate in the rarified context of his extraordinary output, he nevertheless produced a number of substantial works. In addition to the clarinet quintet there are seven arias, two piano sonatas, a string quartet, the arrangement of Handel’s Messiah , several sets of German dances for orchestra, and an opera – Così fan tutte – whose character in no way reflects any of the hardships of the preceding year. There is a definite melancholy to the clarinet quintet however. The opening interval of its first movement is identical to that of the clarinet concerto, but what follows is more restless prayer than buoyant extravagance. The second movement is essentially an extended aria, the clarinet substituting for the human voice. Wistful and breathtakingly beautiful, it is testament to Mozart’s affection for the instrument – Anton Stadler must have reveled in its performance. The Menuetto and Trios (both of them) sigh rather than smile. The final movement, a skittish theme and variations, moves into sunlight with virtuosic moments for both first violin and clarinet. The quintet is one of the earliest and also one the finest examples of its genre. Whether the clarinet blends into string textures, emerges as soloist, or supports the strings with liquid accompaniment figures, one is always aware of Mozart’s effortless, supernal command of the instrument’s resources and timbre. Dmitri Shostakovich Born St. Petersburg, Russia, September 25, 1906; died in Moscow, Russia, August 9, 1975 Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57 (1940) In early 1936 an article in Pravda reprimanded Shostakovich for his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District : it had failed to conform with the precepts of “socialist realism” and he was accused of “formalism, decadence, and vulgarity.” This was not simply a bad review. Stalin had attended the opening night, and against a background of arbitrary death sentences and imprisonment in the Gulag – the “reign of terror” – Pravda was sending a deadly warning. In fact it threatened as much with its concluding sentence: “Things could end very badly for this young man.” With the Fifth Symphony, and especially the Piano Quintet which was officially premiered on November 23 rd , 1940 at the Moscow Conservatory’s Maly Hall, Shostakovich reclaimed his position as an approved composer; at least for the time being ( Lady Macbeth remained shelved for the next several decades however). The Beethoven Quartet, whose members were longtime friends of Shostakovich, performed the work with the composer himself at the piano. Its reception was rapturous and both Intermezzo and Finale, as well as the Scherzo , had to be repeated. There were further triumphant performances during November and December, and tickets were at a premium. It is impossible to imagine a chamber work, or indeed any concert work, enjoying equivalent success today, entering and confirming its place in the canon in the space of a few months. The quintet also earned Shostakovich the Soviet Union’s newest and richest award, the Stalin Prize, for cultural achievement (Aram Khachaturian and Nikolai Myaskovsky were also musical recipients that year). Shostakovich gave the award of 100,000 rubles to charity. When Shostakovich began writing the quintet in the summer of 1940, Hitler’s assault on the Soviet Union, (Operation Barbarossa) was still a year away. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the non-aggression treaty with the Third Reich, was in place but it was accompanied by a deep national anxiety. Whether the Piano Quintet reflects the zeitgeist is difficult to say. There are passages of foreboding and introspection certainly, but we invariably experience a piece of music with the knowledge of events that take place after its composition, and this “backshadowing,” as Michael André Bernstein has described it, is particularly insidious when a work precedes momentous events, in this instance, a horrific war and the Holocaust. We listen “through” our associations and emotions of the time, coat our experience with them and then, if we are not on our guard, we invest the work with some kind of foreknowledge. Shostakovich uses the quintet ensemble rather differently than his predecessors, Brahms, Schumann, Dohnányi, Dvořák, and Taneyev for example. Instruments are partnered with each other in duo and trio permutations while the power of the entire ensemble is often reserved for dramatic high-points. There is a similar stylistic variety: suggestions of Bach in the Prelude and Fugue for example. The brief and insouciant Scherzo is followed by the Classical simplicity of a sustained and ravishing violin melody which opens the Intermezzo. The cello pizzicati that support it become an insistent tread as the melody develops and gradually builds to an impassioned climax, which then subsides into a quiet acceptance. The Finale , with its themes that are by turns quirky and noble, thrill contemporary audiences as they first did during the Moscow winter of 1940. The quintet’s final pages are the very opposite of the traditional grand gesture: a modest wave of the hand as Shostakovich gently closes the door to one chamber music’s 20 th century masterpieces.

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