Sunday, February 28, 2016, 3pm Hertz Hall Danish String Quartet Frederik Øland, violin Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, violin Asbjørn Nørgaard, viola Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, cello

PROGRAM

Per NØRGÅRD (b. 1932) Quartetto Breve (1952)

Leoš JANÁČEK (1854 –1928) String Quartet No. 1, “Kreutzer” (1923) Adagio; Con Moto Con Moto Con Moto; Vivo Con Moto

INTERMISSION

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770 –1827) String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131 (1825-1826) Adagio, ma non troppo e molto espressivo Allegro molto vivace Allegro moderato Andante, ma non troppo e molto cantabile Presto Adagio quasi un poco andante Allegro

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15 PROGRAM NOTES

String Quartet No. 1, “Quartetto Breve” very nature of the strings — has always had a PER NØRGÅRD (B. 1932) central place in my output, demonstrated by the string quartets, concertos with string Composed in 1952. soloist, chamber, and solo works. The interest dates back to my school years, when I was for - Per Nørgård, Denmark’s leading musical tunate to be able to compose for a cello-playing modernist, was born on July 13, 1932 in the schoolmate and to accompany him on the Copenhagen suburb of Gentofte, began study - piano. I discovered then the innumerable nu - ing piano when he was eight and composition ances of sound and playing varieties offered by a few years later, and took his professional just one bow, four strings and five fingers.” The training at the Copenhagen Conservatory as Quartet No. 1 is in two sections played without a student of Vagn Holmboe. After graduating pause, the first ( Lento, poco rubato ) spacious in 1955, he studied with Nadia Boulanger in and intensely expressive, the second ( Allegro Paris before returning to Denmark in 1958 to resoluto ) agitated and intricately conversational. teach at the Odense Conservatory and write music criticism for the Copenhagen newspa - per Politiken . He joined the faculty of the String Quartet No. 1, “After Tolstoy’s The Copenhagen Conservatory in 1960, and five Kreutzer Sonata ” years later moved to the Århus Conservatory, LEOš JANÁČEK (1854 –1928) which he made the center of experimental composition in Denmark; he retired from the Composed in 1923. conservatory in 1994. Nørgård has been in - Premiered on October 17, 1924 in Prague by volved with several important Danish compe - the Bohemian Quartet. tition committees and composers’ societies, and won numerous awards for his works, In the summer of 1917, when he was 63, Leoš which include six operas, three ballets, inci - Janáček fell in love with Kamila Stösslová, the dental music and film scores (including di - 25-year-old wife of a Jewish antiques dealer rector Gabriel Axel’s Oscar-winning 1987 from Písek. They first met in a town in cen - Babette’s Feast ), eight symphonies, concertos tral Moravia during World War I, but, as he for cello, harp, piano, percussion and accor - lived in Brno with Zdenka, his wife of 37 dion, oratorios, and many choral, chamber, years, and she lived with her husband in Písek, piano, vocal, and tape compositions. they saw each other only infrequently there - Danish musicologist, conductor and com - after and remained in touch mostly by letter. poser Erling Kullberg, a specialist on the coun - The true passion seems to have been entirely try’s contemporary music and a leading on his side (“It is fortunate that only I am in - authority on Nørgård, characterized that com - fatuated,” he once wrote to her), but Kamila poser’s early works, from the 1950s, before he did not reject his company, apparently feeling turned to more avant-garde idioms, as imbued admiration rather than love for the man who, with “The Universe of the Nordic Mind.” The with the successful staging of his Jenůfa in seven-minute String Quartet No. 1 of 1952, the Prague in 1915, eleven years after its premiere first of Nørgård’s six works in the form, con - in Brno, was at that time acquiring an inter - firms both Kullberg’s stylistic contention and national reputation as a master composer. the work’s subtitle — “Quartetto Breve.” Whatever the details of their relationship, Nørgård wrote, “My first string quartet has firm Kamila’s role as an inspiring muse during the roots in the Nordic tradition and is strongly in - last decade of Janáček’s life was indisputable spired by Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) and my and beneficent — under the sway of his feel - teacher Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996). The spec - ings for her he wrote his greatest music, in - trum of sound, the gesticulation — in short, the cluding the operas Katya Kabanova , The

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Cunning Little Vixen and The Makropoulos Man Who Disappeared (the true account of a Affair , the song cycle The Diary of the Young Brno lad who vanished from home to run Man Who Disappeared , the two string quar - away with a Gypsy girl), Janáček’s first quar - tets (the second of which he titled “Intimate tet broaches the subject of love outside Letters”), the Glagolitic Mass and the accepted societal bounds — all three works Sinfonietta for Orchestra. seem to have been pleas to Kamila to requite The first quartet was written in a blaze of his own passion for her. Jaroslav Vogel ob - creative inspiration in a single week — served that in these compositions “the hero - October 30-November 7, 1923 — just after ines could all be identified with Kamila. They Janáček had returned from the International gave Janáček — and this is a paradox of his Society for Contemporary Music Festival in one-sided love — the full possibility of show - Salzburg, where his Violin Sonata was per - ing the right of a woman to choose her love formed. For his subject (most of Janáček’s and happiness according to her own heart, compositions, whether for voices or instru - subjects through which he became also a ments, grew from some literary or program - spokesman for a moral revolution.” matic germ), he settled on Leo Tolstoy’s 1889 The quartet was not the first musical real - short story The Kreutzer Sonata , which was ization that Janáček had attempted of inspired by that author’s exposure to Tolstoy’s story. During a short period of study Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, in Vienna in May and June 1880, he wrote Op. 47. Ian Horsbrugh summarized the tale three movements of a string quartet inspired in his biography of Janáček: “In Tolstoy’s story, by the tale, and late in 1908 he composed a the tragic events of the marriage are told by piano trio on the subject for a performance the husband to the author as they travel to - by the Friends of Art Club in Brno on April 2, gether on a rail journey. The man, 1909. Since both earlier pieces are lost, it is Pózdnyshev, is cynical about love and about impossible to compare them with the finished marriage. He recounts with passion his jeal - quartet, but the composer’s friend and biog - ousy of the violin-playing Trukhachévski, rapher Max Brod noted that “several of the whom, ironically, he had introduced to his ideas were employed.” The Quartet No. 1 was wife — ‘a strange, a fatal force led me not to premiered in Prague on October 17, 1924 by repulse him.’ One evening his wife and this the Bohemian Quartet (which had requested man perform Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata to the work from the composer and which re - a small gathering, and, in spite of ceived its dedication), and was later heard at Pózdnyshev’s forebodings, the concert was a the ISCM Festival in Venice in September success. But the first movement of the sonata 1925 and in New York two years later. had a ‘terrible effect’ on him. ‘It was as if quite Though it is possible to fit Janáček’s new feelings, new possibilities of which I had “Kreutzer” Quartet into traditional musical till then been unaware, had been revealed to forms, the power and progress of the work me,’ and, after the intense jealousy of the pre - may also be equated with the emotional un - vious weeks, ‘that music drew me into some folding of Tolstoy’s marital tragedy. The quar - world in which jealousy no longer had a place.’ tet opens with a terse, rising three-note motive However, Pózdnyshev goes away on a business (short–short–long), perhaps the symbol of the trip, but returns home unannounced, finds his heroine’s ultimate despair, which is immedi - wife in the company of the other man, and, ately juxtaposed with a folk-like ditty that may gripped by a terrifying frenzy, he stabs her reflect the story’s Russian setting. Contrast is with his ‘curved Damascus dagger.’” provided by a lyrical theme of ambiguous Like Katya Kabanova (in which the hero - rhythmic structure, evocative of the woman’s ine is also killed by her jealous husband for unsettled longing, and a darting figure of arch - her infidelity) and The Diary of the Young ing shape that is a super-heated variant of the PROGRAM NOTES opening despair motive. These elements are asking Beethoven for “one, two or three quar - played out to create a tonal picture of Tolstoy’s tets, for which labor I will be glad to pay you character, whom the composer described to whatever amount you think proper.” After a Kamila as “a pitiable woman who is maltreated, hiatus of a dozen years, Beethoven was eager beaten and murdered.” The second movement, to return to the medium of the string quartet, the quartet’s scherzo, is based on a theme, re - and he immediately accepted the commission ally not much more than a melodic fragment and set the fee of 50 ducats for each work, a frequently terminated by a sour dissonance, high price but one readily accepted by Galitzin. that could depict either (or both) the foppish Though badgered regularly by the Russian violin player or what Vogel called “the short- Prince (“I am really impatient to have a new lived satisfaction of the heroine’s desire.” The quartet of yours. Nevertheless, I beg you not to internal regions of the movement contain an mind, and to be guided in this only by your in - icy tremolo passage played ponticello (“ at the spiration and the disposition of your mind”), bridge ”), denoting, according to Vogel, “the Beethoven, exhausted by his labors on the chilling pang of temptation,” and a wide-inter - Ninth Symphony in 1823-1824, could not val melody that conjures the woman’s passion complete the Quartet in E-flat major (Op. 127) and her confessions of love. The third move - until February 1825; the second quartet (A ment begins as a sentimental duet in close im - minor, Op. 132) was finished five months later; itation for violin and cello whose melody was and the third (B-flat major, Op. 130) was writ - modeled on the second theme of Beethoven’s ten between July and November, during one of 1803 “Kreutzer” Sonata (dedicated to the the few periods of relatively good health that French violinist and composer Rodolphe Beethoven enjoyed in his last decade. Fulfilling Kreutzer). The duet is repeatedly broken off by the commission for Galitzin, however, did not slashing interjections from the other instru - nearly exhaust the fount of Beethoven’s cre - ments, however, and the tenderness of the be - ativity in the realm of the string quartet. Karl ginning becomes exhausted as the music Holz, the composer’s amanuensis and the sec - proceeds. The movement ends with a tired ond violinist in Schuppanzigh’s quartet, which sigh. The tragedy culminates in the finale, gave the first public performances of Galitzin’s which bears such performance markings as quartets, recorded, “During the composition “desperately,” “shyly” and “as in tears.” The of the three works for Prince Galitzin, music, largely derived from the stark motive Beethoven was assailed with such an over - that opened the quartet, is arranged in a whelming flow of ideas that he went against his steadily increasing line of tension, which, will, as it were, to write the Quartets in C-sharp wrote Vahn Armstrong, “mirrors the pace of minor and F major.” Beethoven began sketch - Tolstoy’s story, in which the husband, believ - ing the C-sharp minor quartet in December ing himself deceived and mad with jealousy, 1825, immediately after Op. 130 was com - rushes home and there murders his wife as her pleted, and worked on it during the following lover flees.” months at his flat in the Schwarzspanierhaus, near the site of the present Votiv-Kirche. By May 1826, the piece was sufficiently advanced String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131 for him to begin offering it to publishers, and (1770 –1827) he sent inquiries to the firms of Schott in Mainz, Schlessinger in Paris and Probst in Composed in 1825-1826. Leipzig. The quartet was finished in July and accepted by Schott the following month, but On November 9, 1822, Prince Nikolas the final details of the score’s publication were Galitzin, a devotee of Beethoven’s music and not fully settled until March 24, 1827, just two an amateur cellist, wrote from St. Petersburg days before Beethoven’s death.

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Beethoven’s last year was one of emotional the city, but stopped first for a game of bil - and physical turmoil, occasioned not only by liards.) Karl was finally bundled off to the army the declining state of his health (deafness, of on January 2, 1827. On March 10th, Beethoven course, as well as gout and a serious and wrote to Schott asking that the C-sharp minor painful intestinal inflammation), but also by quartet be dedicated to Field Marshal von the difficult relationship with his nephew Karl, Stutterheim in appreciation for the favor he whose custody he had won from his widowed had done for the family. Exactly two weeks sister-in-law in a vicious court battle in 1820. later, he signed the document granting all Karl had proven a continuing trial for the rights to the piece to Schott — it was the final bachelor Beethoven, and by 1825 (he was time he wrote his name. He received last rites nineteen), he had acquired an unsavory local that same day. On March 26th, two days later, reputation as a financial deadbeat, womanizer Beethoven was dead. Karl served for five and general ne’er-do-well. Beethoven ha - undistinguished years in the military, and then rangued him incessantly about his conduct became a farm manager. The estates that he in - (much of which was probably brought on by herited first from Ludwig and, in 1848, from rebellion against his gruff and domineering Johann allowed him to live in comfort until his uncle), and by July 1826, only days after the C- death at the age of 52 in 1858. sharp minor quartet was finished, matters Though Beethoven told Karl Holz that he came to a head with Karl’s attempted suicide. considered the C-sharp minor quartet his To spite his uncle, Karl chose to shoot himself greatest achievement in the form, perhaps be - in the head in the Helenenthal, one of the com - cause it was his most daring such work in poser’s favorite spots in Vienna, but he was not terms of its formal concept (“Art demands of sufficiently dedicated to his exercise to make a us that we not stand still,” he counseled Holz), complete success of it. Karl was hospitalized he never heard it in performance. The piece until September, after which he and Uncle was tried out at the offices of the Viennese Ludwig spent the next three months at the publisher Artaria in September 1826, and Gneixendorf estate of the composer’s brother (perhaps) given a private reading in Johann, a successful apothecary, where it was December, but it did not receive its formal decided to get the lad out of Vienna (where public premiere until 1835, eight years after suicide was a crime) by enlisting him in the the composer’s death. The quartet was played army. (While at Gneixendorf, Beethoven wrote privately for , an ardent ad - his Op. 135 quartet and created a new finale mirer of Beethoven, in November 1828, only for the Op. 130 quartet to replace the monu - five days before he died. Holz reported that mental . This was the last music he when Schubert heard the work, “He fell into wrote.) Given the delicate nature of Karl’s such a state of excitement and enthusiasm health and emotional constitution, finding a that we were all frightened for him.” As with garrison that would accept him was no easy all of Beethoven’s late quartets, Op. 131 matter, and Beethoven appealed for help to gained performances and understanding only Stephen von Breuning, a member of the slowly, but it has come to be regarded by Austrian War Council and his long-time many as peerless in the chamber repertory. friend and patron (the Violin Concerto was Joseph de Marliave wrote, “This quartet, mu - dedicated to him), who found a place for Karl sically, is unanimously recognized as the rich - in Field Marshal Joseph von Stutterheim’s reg - est, the most significant of this art form, of iment at Iglau. Uncle and nephew returned to which it is probably the summit. We find in Vienna in December, staying along the way at its sumptuous efflorescence the most striking a miserable inn whose damp, drafty rooms ex - qualities of Beethoven’s last works: original - acerbated Beethoven’s illnesses. (Karl was sent ity; free form that is always plastic yet rigor - for a doctor immediately upon their arrival in ously logical; and an intellectual spirituality PROGRAM NOTES within every bar and every note. We recog - Richard Wagner, “reveals the most melan - nize here, as in most of the last quartets, a choly sentiment in music.” John N. Burk psychological concept. It is the elevation of found that here “the process of the intellect is the soul — filled with the nobility of a suffer - always subservient to that of the heart,” and ing man tested by grief — out of the most ir - J.W.N. Sullivan waxed almost metaphysical in remediable melancholy into joyful struggle concluding that this is “the most superhuman and victory over his adversaries — toward the piece of music that Beethoven ever wrote. It is innermost reconciliation.” Martin Cooper, in the completely unfaltering rendering into his fascinating study of Beethoven’s last music of what we can only call the mystic vi - decade, concluded that this is “the purest stuff sion. It has that serenity which, as Wagner of music, exquisitely and logically constructed said, passes beyond beauty and makes us and finished to the highest degree.” aware of a state of consciousness surpassing The C-sharp minor quartet may well our own.” The following Allegro offers emo - be Beethoven’s boldest piece of musical tional respite as well as structural contrast. A architecture — seven movements played tiny movement ( Allegro moderato — Adagio ), without pause, six distinct main key areas, 31 just eleven measures in the style of a rumina - tempo changes, and a veritable encyclopedia tive recitative, serves as the bridge to the ex - of Classical formal principles. So adventurous pressive heart (and formal center) of the and unprecedented was this structural plan quartet, an expansive set of variations that that Maynard Solomon allowed, “Beethoven seems almost rapt out of quotidian time. The may be regarded as the originator of the fifth movement, “the most childlike of all avant-garde in music.” Though it passes be - Beethoven’s scherzos,” according to Joseph yond the Fifth Symphony, Fidelio and Egmont Kerman, alternates two strains of buoyantly in its harmonic sophistication and structural aerial music: a feather-stitched arpeggiated audacity, this quartet shares with those ear - theme previewed by the cello and stated in lier works the sense of struggle to victory, of full by the first violin, and a more lyrical mo - subjecting the spirit to such states of emo - tive first given in octaves by the violins above tional unrest as strengthen it for the winning the playful accompaniment of the lower of ultimate triumph. “Music should strike fire strings. The short, introspective Adagio in in the heart of man,” Beethoven told his stu - chordal texture is less an independent move - dent and patron Archduke Rudolph in 1823. ment than an introduction and foil for the fi - “There is no loftier mission than to approach nale, whose vast and densely packed sonata the Divinity nearer than other men, and to form (woven with references to the fugue disseminate the divine rays among mankind.” theme of the first movement) summarizes the This supreme masterwork is music of tran - overall progress of this stupendous quartet in scendent vision. its move from darkness and struggle toward The opening movement is a spacious, pro - light and spiritual renewal. foundly expressive fugue which, according to ©2016 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

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MBODYING THE QUINTESSENTIAL ELEMENTS The Danish String Quartet’s 2015–16 sea - E of a ensemble, the Danish son includes a release of their début disc on String Quartet has established a reputation ECM Records, a first-time tour of China as for their integrated sound, impeccable into - well as summer performances at the Mostly nation, and judicious balance. With their Mozart Festival, Maverick Concerts, Cape Cod technical and interpretive talents matched by Chamber Music Festival, Toronto Summer an infectious joy for music-making and “ram - Music Festival, and Ottawa Chamberfest. paging energy” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker ), International highlights include concerts in the quartet is in demand worldwide by con - Berlin, Copenhagen, Glasgow, and London, cert and festival presenters alike. Since mak - and a début at the Louvre Museum in Paris. ing their début in 2002 at the Copenhagen Their repertoire is diverse, from Nielsen, Festival, the group of musical friends has Abrahamsen, Adès , and Shostakovich to demonstrated a passion for Scandinavian Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Debussy, and composers, who they frequently incorporate Haydn. Currently in their third season with into adventurous contemporary programs, the CMS Two program, they will perform all while also proving skilled and profound per - four of the Nielsen string quartets in the Rose formers of the classical masters. In 2012 the Studio and the final concert of a six-concert New York Times selected the quartet’s concert Beethoven cycle at Alice Tully Hall. This past as a highlight of the year, saying the perform - November, the quartet launched their record - ance featured “one of the most powerful ren - ing of Danish folksongs entitled Wood Works , ditions of Beethoven’s Op. 132 String Quartet released by the Dacapo label and distributed that I’ve heard live or on a recording.” This by Naxos, at SubCulture in New York. It was scope of talent secured them a three-year ap - selected by NPR as one of the best classical al - pointment in the coveted Chamber Music bums of 2014, and the Quartet was featured Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two on an NPR Tiny Desk Concert performing Program that began in the 2013–14 season. works from the highly acclaimed album. The quartet was also named as a BBC In addition to their New York perform - Radio 3 New Generation Artist for 2013–15. ances, the quartet’s robust North American ABOUT THE ARTISTS schedule takes them to Ann Arbor, Seattle, The Danish String Quartet was awarded Orange County, Santa Barbara, Phoenix, First Prize in the Vagn Holmboe String Buffalo, Durham, Humboldt, Cedar Falls, and Quartet Competition and the Charles Calgary this season, as well as two weeks of Hennen International Chamber Music residency activities and performances at Cal Competition in Holland, and the Audience Performances. The quartet will make their Prize in the Trondheim International String début at the Savannah Music Festival in spring Quartet Competition in 2005. They were 2016. Last season, the quartet presented the awarded the 2010 Nordmetall Ensemble U.S. première of Danish composer Thomas Prize at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Agerfeldt Olesen’s Quartet No. 7, “The Festival in Germany and, in 2011, received Extinguishable,” at the University of Chicago the prestigious Carl Nielsen Prize. Presents series and subsequently performed In 2006 the Quartet was Danish Radio’s the work in St. Paul, Santa Barbara, Pasadena, Artist-in-Residence, giving them the oppor - New Haven, Gainesville, Jacksonville, and tunity to record all of Carl Nielsen’s string Laramie. In addition to its commitment to quartets in the Danish Radio Concert Hall, highlighting Scandinavian composers, the subsequently released to critical acclaim on Danish String Quartet derives great pleasure the Dacapo label in 2007 and 2008. In 2012 in traditional Scandinavian folk music. the quartet released an equally acclaimed The Danish String Quartet made their West recording of Haydn and Brahms quartets on Coast début in summer 2013 at Music@Menlo. the German AVI-music label. They recorded They returned to Menlo in 2014 to perform works by Brahms and Fuchs with award-win - programs of Haydn and Beethoven quartets ning clarinetist Sebastian Manz at the as part of a busy summer festival schedule that Bayerische Rundfunk in Munich, released by also included performances in Ireland, AVI-music in 2014, and recently signed with France, and at home in Denmark. ECM Records for future recording projects. Since winning the Danish Radio P2 Violinists Frederik Øland and Rune Chamber Music Competition in 2004, the Tonsgaard Sørensen and violist Asbjørn Quartet has been greatly desired throughout Nørgaard met as children at a music summer Denmark, and in October 2015 they presented camp, where they played both football and the ninth annual DSQ-Musikfest, a four-day music together, eventually making the tran - event held in Copenhagen that brings together sition into a serious string quartet in their musical friends the quartet has met on its trav - teens and studying at Copenhagen’s Royal els. In 2009 the quartet won First Prize at the Academy of Music. In 2008 the three Danes eleventh London International String Quartet were joined by Norwegian cellist Fredrik Competition, as well as four additional prizes Schøyen Sjölin. The Danish String Quartet from the same jury. This competition is now was primarily taught and mentored by called the Wigmore Hall International String Professor Tim Frederiksen and have partici - Quartet Competition, and the Danish String pated in master classes with the Tokyo and Quartet has performed at the famed hall on Emerson string quartets, Alasdair Tait, Paul several occasions. They returned to Wigmore Katz, Hugh Maguire, Levon Chilingirian, and Hall in March 2015 to perform a program of Gábor Takács-Nagy. Visit the quartet online Haydn and Shostakovich. at www.danishquartet.com.

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