上海四重奏 2020年2月12日至13日 BOARD OF PROGRAM BOOK CONTACT DIRECTORS CREDITS US James Reel Arizona Friends of Editor President Chamber Music Jay Rosenblatt Post Office Box 40845 Paul Kaestle Tucson, Arizona 85717 Vice-President Contributors Robert Gallerani Phone: 520-577-3769 Joseph Tolliver Holly Gardner Email: [email protected] Program Director Nancy Monsman Website: arizonachambermusic.org Helmut Abt Jay Rosenblatt Recording Secretary James Reel Operations Manager Cathy Anderson Wes Addison Advertising Treasurer Cathy Anderson USHERS Philip Alejo Michael Coretz Nancy Bissell Marvin Goldberg Barry & Susan Austin Kaety Byerley Paul Kaestle Lidia DelPiccolo Laura Cásarez Jay Rosenblatt Susan Fifer Michael Coretz Randy Spalding Marilee Mansfield Dagmar Cushing Allan Tractenberg Elaine Orman Bryan Daum Susan Rock Alan Hershowitz Design Jane Ruggill Tim Kantor Openform Barbara Turton Juan Mejia Diana Warr Jay Rosenblatt Printing Maurice Weinrobe & Trudy Ernst Elaine Rousseau West Press Randy Spalding VOLUNTEERS Paul St. John George Timson Dana Deeds Leslie Tolbert Beth Daum Ivan Ugorich Beth Foster Bob Foster Traudi Nichols Allan Tractenberg Diane Tractenberg 2 FROM THE PRESIDENT Our celebration of Beethoven’s 250th anniversary The argument in favor is that there is no single right continues this week with a pair of concerts by the way to play Beethoven, and each score offers a wealth Shanghai Quartet, presenting nearly one-third of of interpretive options. Each ensemble we present has Beethoven’s string quartet output. The Jerusalem its own distinctive approach to the music—free- Quartet will have its turn in April, and we’ll conclude wheeling, or elegant, or intense. Opening your ears to the festivities in the fall with double concerts by the multiple interpretations can lead you to hear new Auryn, Juilliard, and Pacifica Quartets. details in a score, and think about the music in a different way. Most of these ensembles will also be playing music by composers other than Beethoven. Even so, a few of And so we forge ahead. Besides, you’ll have all summer Beethoven’s quartets will be getting more than one to binge-watch The Crown. airing over the course of 2020. At our most recent meeting, the AFCM board debated whether or not such repeats are a bad thing. The argument against repeat performances is that JAMES REEL Beethoven fatigue is already a danger with all sixteen President quartets offered in a single year, and then, when you see that we’ll open next season with a second rendition of the “Harp” Quartet, you’ll decide that this is too much of a good thing and just stay home and binge-watch The Crown. 3 SHANGHAI QUARTET FEBRUARY 12, 2020 SHANGHAI QUARTET Over the past thirty-five years the Shanghai Quartet has become one of the world’s foremost chamber ensembles. The Shanghai’s elegant style, impressive technique, and emotional breadth allow the group to move seamlessly between masterpieces of Western music, traditional Chinese folk music, and cutting- edge contemporary works. Formed at the Shanghai Conservatory in 1983, soon after the end of China’s harrowing Cultural Revolution, the group came to the United States to complete its studies; since then the members have been based in the U.S. while maintaining a robust touring schedule at leading chamber-music series throughout North America, Shanghai Quartet Europe, and Asia. Weigang Li, violin Yi-Wen Jiang, violin The Shanghai Quartet has an extensive discography Honggang Li, viola of more than thirty recordings, ranging from the Nicholas Tzavaras, cello Schumann and Dvořák piano quintets with Rudolf Buchbinder to Zhou Long’s Poems from Tang for string quartet and orchestra with the Singapore MKI Artists Symphony. The Quartet has also recorded a One Lawson Lane, Suite 320 Burlington, VT 05401 collection of Chinese folk songs called Chinasong, featuring music arranged by Yi-Wen Jiang reflecting on his childhood memories of the Cultural Revolution in China. The Quartet has recorded the complete Beethoven string quartets and is currently recording the complete Bartók quartets. The Shanghai Quartet performs on four exceptional instruments by Stradivari, Guarneri, Goffriller, and Guadagnini, generously loaned through the Beare’s International Violin Society to honor the quartet’s thirty-fifth anniversary. Serving as Quartet-in- Residence at the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University since 2002, the Shanghai Quartet will also join the Tianjin (China) Juilliard School in fall 2020 as resident faculty members. The Quartet also is the Ensemble-in-Residence with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and visiting guest professors of the Shanghai Conservatory and the Central Conservatory in Beijing. They are proudly sponsored by Thomastik-Infeld Strings and BAM Cases. This is the fourth appearance of the Shanghai Quartet on AFCM’s concerts; we heard them most recently in October 2017. 4 EVENING SERIES PROGRAM FOR FEBRUARY 12 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) String Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, no. 3 Allegro Andante con moto Allegro Presto LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) String Quartet in F Minor (“Serioso”), Op. 95 Allegro con brio Allegretto ma non troppo Allegro assai vivace ma serioso Larghetto espressivo—Allegretto agitato INTERMISSION LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127 Maestoso—Allegro Adagio, ma non troppo e molto cantabile Scherzando vivace Finale: Allegro 5 PROGRAM NOTES FEBRUARY 12, 2020 BEFORE BEETHOVEN LEFT BONN for Vienna in earlier themes—for example, in its recapitulation 1792, his friend Count Waldstein told him that there the second theme functions as a bass accompaniment “he would receive the spirit of Mozart from Haydn’s for the first theme. hands.” Beethoven had hoped to study with Mozart As a departure from the classical scherzo, Beethoven’s in Vienna—but since Mozart had recently died, third movement is a gentle intermezzo (D major) Beethoven undertook instruction from Haydn with a mysterious contrasting section in D minor. The instead. However, Beethoven, whom Haydn called vigorous Presto finale, which suggests good-natured “The Great Mogul,” was too impatient to appreciate rustic dance, opens with an incisive three-note motif the master’s lessons, and the studies soon ended that sustains its momentum until the whispered because of their temperamental differences. But when conclusion. Beethoven began to write his Opus 18 Quartets he closely examined the mature quartets of Mozart and BEETHOVEN WROTE HIS Opus 95 string quartet especially Haydn for guiding principles. A high point for his friend and confidant Nikolaus Zmeskall, of his “first style period,” the Opus 18 set was written an amateur cellist and composer who frequently from 1798 to 1800 and published in 1801. It reveals hosted informal chamber music sessions in his home. the pervasive influence of Haydn and Mozart but This quartet was initially completed in 1810, but hints at the imminent expansion of Classicism’s Beethoven revised it extensively in 1814 and boundaries. Beethoven’s originality is evident in all premiered it that year. Before its publication six Opus 18 Quartets, each of which opens with a Beethoven wrote in a letter: “The Quartet is written small generative idea that gradually expands to form for a small circle of connoisseurs, and it is not to be a large and uniquely detailed design. performed in public.” Possibly he issued this directive because he perceived that the quartet was stylistically Despite Haydn’s position as Beethoven’s early far ahead of its time and therefore likely to be mentor, it was reported that when the aging misunderstood. Although Opus 95 is Beethoven’s composer heard these inventive and deeply expressive final middle period quartet chronologically, it reveals quartets at Prince Lobkowitz’s concerts, he decided to characteristics of his final set of quartets, begun ten abandon string quartets and devote his efforts to years later. Most notably there is often similarly terse choral masses. Since Viennese composers typically expression, the result of strongly stated ideas avoided competing genres, this observation most separated by minimal transitions. probably holds truth. Beethoven inscribed the words Quartetto serioso on The D Major Quartet unfolds with ease and elegance, his manuscript and included the word “serious” in the but Beethoven’s sketchbooks reveal the intensive third movement’s tempo marking. There is conjecture labor of its creation. The first of the Opus 18 set to that this subtitle, as well as the pervasive mood of be completed, this quartet shows his new mastery tragic intensity in Opus 95, stems from Beethoven’s of counterpoint—a high baroque technique of unfortunate love affair with the much younger combining diverse but complementary lines. Therese Malfatti during this same year. The quartet Beethoven described counterpoint as “a hard nut, shows expressive affinities to the Goethe-inspired but one that must be cracked” in order to create the Egmont Overture, also in F minor, which it intricate yet clear texture he desired. immediately followed. Although the quartet offers songful obeisance to Like his other four middle period quartets, Opus 95 Mozart, Beethoven’s innovative details permeate the opens with a movement in sonata form. However, the work. Each of the lyrical Allegro’s two themes begins brusquely passionate Allegro con brio is the most in harmonies unorthodox for their time, leading condensed and elliptical movement that Beethoven critics to charge that Beethoven had violated tonal ever wrote in that form. Pared to essentials, the rules. In the eloquent Andante con moto movement movement eliminates the customary repeat of the (B-flat major), Beethoven inventively references exposition. Its two contrasting themes undergo only a brief development and a truncated recapitulation. 6 PROGRAM NOTES FEBRUARY 12, 2020 The second movement (D major) develops two “Although we do not understand it, each of us was contrasting ideas, a cantabile theme and a fugato that conscious that we had been in the presence of suggest the opening movement of the much later something higher than ourselves, beyond our quartet Opus 131.