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557496 bk Pleyel1 US 05|12|2005 14:56 Page 4 year also took top prizes at Chamber Music Yellow Springs (OH) Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. In September 2004, the quartet was awarded second prize and the Pièce de concert prize at the Eighth Banff International String Quartet Competition, and the following month, the ensemble was featured in a Ignaz national broadcast of Minnesota Public Radio’s long-running programme Saint Paul Sunday. Summer 2005 brought concerts at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium and at the Honest Brook, Mohawk Trail, and Cooperstown Chamber Music Festivals, to be followed by concerts in New York at Merkin Concert Hall and a PLEYEL Lincoln Center début. The ensemble’s recording of the six string quartets, Op. 2, of Ignaz Pleyel, marks the quartet’s recording début and a first recording that, in two releases, includes the complete set of quartets. The Enso¯ String Quartet has performed at festivals throughout the United States and abroad since its inception in 1999, including featured appearances at such music festivals as La Jolla SummerFest, Chautauqua Institution, Green String Quartets, Op. 2 Nos. 1-3 Lake Festival (WI), and the Great Lakes Music Festival. Internationally, the quartet has performed for the Asociación Nacional de Conciertos in Panama, the Tuckamore Festival in St John’s, Newfoundland, toured Costa Rica as guest artists in the Twelfth International Costa Rica Music Festival, and were selected for a two-week Enso¯ Quartet residency at France’s Académie européenne de musique d’Aix-en-Provence. For two years the quartet was graduate Quartet-in-Residence at Rice University, followed by appointment as Guest Quartet-in-Residence, in addition to residencies at Northern Illinois University and at the Britten-Pears Young Artists Programme at Aldeburgh. The Enso¯ String Quartet draws together four young musicians from around the world. Its members hold degrees from the Juilliard School, Curtis Institute of Music, University of Indiana, Royal Northern College of Music (UK) and the University of Canterbury (New Zealand). The members of the ensemble met while pursuing graduate degrees at Yale University, where they later worked with the Tokyo String Quartet. Other prominent musicians with whom the group has worked include members of the Cleveland, Alban Berg, and Takács quartets, Joseph Silverstein, and composer Joan Tower. The quartet’s performances have been broadcast on PBS, Chicago’s WFMT, Wisconsin Public Radio and Canada’s CBC radio. The ensemble’s name, enso¯, is derived from the Japanese zen painting of the circle which represents many things; perfection and imperfection, the moment of chaos that is creation, the emptiness of the void, the endless circle of life, and the fullness of the spirit. Scores and parts for the works featured on this recording are available from: ARTARIA EDITIONS LTD PO Box 9836 Te Aro Wellington, NEW ZEALAND http://www.artaria.com The sources upon which the editions used in this recording have been made are: String Quartet in A major, Op. 2 No. 1 Edited by Dianne James - Artaria Editions AE232 Graeffer print [1784]:Vienna, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde String Quartet in C major, Op. 2 No. 2 Edited by Dianne James - Artaria Editions AE233 Graeffer print [1784]:Vienna, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde String Quartet in G minor, Op. 2 No. 3 Edited by Dianne James - Artaria Editions AE234 Graeffer print [1784]:Vienna, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde 8.557496 4 557496 bk Pleyel1 US 05|12|2005 14:56 Page 2 Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831) You will find them worth the trouble. They are very well three movements: the exception is the fourth quartet in String Quartets, Op. 2 Nos. 1-3 written and most pleasing to listen to. You will also see E flat which adds a brief 29-bar Minuet between its slow at once who was his master. Well, it will be a lucky day movement and finale. The slow movements are directed The string quartets of Ignaz Pleyel occupy a central We do not know when Pleyel first began to for music if later on Pleyel should be able to replace to be played con sordini, a favourite device of Pleyel place in his prolific musical output. Pleyel’s interest in compose string quartets although in at least one early Haydn. and one he would have encountered on numerous the medium is unsurprising given that he studied with biographical sketch it is claimed that he took several Pleyel composed the majority of his 57 authentic occasions in the music of his teacher. They are very Joseph Haydn for several years in the 1770s. What is manuscript quartets with him to Italy. These works, string quartets in less than a decade. Unsurprisingly, Italianate in flavour with their beautiful first-violin more surprising in a composer routinely dismissed as which remain unidentified, may have been composed there is a high degree of stylistic consistency within the cantilena and one can imagine Luigi Tomasini, the derivative and largely content to ape the style of his during his years with Haydn or perhaps during his time series and a number of important characteristics can be leader of Haydn’s orchestra and the man whom he teacher is that Haydn’s influence on his approach to as Kapellmeister to Count Erdödy. Whichever the case, seen. The most obvious of these is Pleyel’s preference considered the best interpreter of his quartets, playing quartet composition was rather less marked than one Pleyel’s earliest quartets were composed during for a three-movement rather than a four- movement these movements with relish. The most interesting might expect. Pleyel, clearly, was not convinced that Haydn’s so-called ‘Quartettenpause’, the nearly cycle. This represents a radical departure from Haydn’s structurally of the slow movements is that of the sixth Haydn had all the answers and this doubt manifested decade-long interval between the composition of the model although three-movement quartets – and quartet. The first fifty odd bars of the movement suggest itself very early in his career. epochal Op. 20 Quartets and the brilliant quartets of symphonies for that matter – were extremely common variation style and structure (as do the sectional In 1776 Pleyel completed his studies with Haydn Op. 33. With the completion of the Op. 20 Quartets in during the late eighteenth century. Another interesting headings in the source), but the main theme is not really and enjoyed a great personal triumph with the 1772 Haydn recognized that he had reached a major tendency in Pleyel’s quartets is the reduction in the varied at all despite its obvious thematic promise. successful staging of his marionette opera Die Fee artistic impasse. He had immeasurably expanded the length of the development section in sonata-form Instead, the movement unfolds as a series of couplets, Urgèle at the National Theater in Vienna. An emotional and intellectual horizons of the medium but movements in the later quartets. This contraction and each focusing on a different instrument, only the first of appointment as Kapellmeister to Count Erdödy soon he had done so using means that he felt offered limited the growing emphasis on lyricism rather than thematic which stays in the tonic. With the reprise of the theme in followed and for a time at least Pleyel seemed set to potential for further development. His response was to manipulation represents a conscious rejection of between (minus repeats) and the gradually diminishing pursue a similar professional path to Haydn. The stop composing quartets until he had found a way Haydn’s approach to large-scale musical construction surface rhythms typical of the variation style, the musical resources at his disposal were excellent and forward. Mozart, who had quickly written a set of six but one that is also inextricably linked to Pleyel’s movement becomes an extended variation-cum-rondo Erdödy himself was an exceptionally generous and quartets in imitation of Op. 20, famously followed suit. fondness for concertante writing with its demand for structure, a derivative perhaps of Haydn’s characteristic cultivated patron. Nonetheless, much to his surprise, Pleyel, then, found himself in an unusual position. He simpler musical textures and his cultivation of an alternating or double variation form. Pleyel’s harmonic Pleyel requested extended leave of absence as early as had studied with the most famous composer of quartets intensely lyrical style. language is also striking at times with some lovely 1778 on the grounds that he needed to undertake further in Europe and yet was aware, as probably no one else The six String Quartets Op. 2 were first published chromatic shadings and also a number of unexpected studies to perfect his art. After prolonged discussion was, that Haydn himself was unconvinced that his finest in 1784 by the Viennese publisher Graeffer with a modulations including the juxtaposition of third-related Pleyel was granted leave and headed off to Italy where works to date represented the best way to compose dedication to Haydn. Haydn’s opinion of the works is keys which was to become one of the most important he spent much of the next few years travelling string quartets. With no answer forthcoming from not known but he must have been impressed by their hallmarks of Haydn’s late style. extensively, composing and experiencing Italian Haydn (Mozart would not have figured in his thinking rich variety of thematic material and the flexibility and The ghostly presence of Haydn can be heard musical life at first hand. Pleyel’s Italian experiences at this time) Pleyel turned to other models, notably imagination with which Pleyel handled his musical throughout all these splendid works but there are exerted a powerful influence on his evolution as a Haydn’s earlier quartets, and in particular the Op.

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