Tetzlaff Quartet Christian Tetzlaff, Violin Elisabeth Kufferath, Violin Hanna Weinmeister, Viola Tanja Tetzlaff, Cello
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Streaming Premiere – Thursday, October 8, 2020, 7pm Tetzlaff Quartet Christian Tetzlaff, violin Elisabeth Kufferath, violin Hanna Weinmeister, viola Tanja Tetzlaff, cello Filmed exclusively for Cal Performances at b-sharp studio, Berlin, Germany, on September 19–20, 2020. PROGRAM Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 130 with Grosse Fuge in B-flat major, Op. 133 Adagio ma non troppo – Allegro Presto Andante con moto, ma non troppo. Poco scherzoso Alla danza tedesca. Allegro assai Cavatina. Adagio molto espressivo Große Fuge (Great Fugue) INTERMISSION String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132 Assai sostenuto – Allegro Allegro ma non tanto Holy Song of Thanksgiving from an Invalid to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode. Molto adagio – Andante Alla marcia, assai vivace (attacca) Allegro appassionato The Tetzlaff Quartet appears by arrangement with CM Artists. Recordings by the Tetzlaff Quartet are available on the Ondine and CAvi Music labels. Note: following its premiere, the video recording of this concert will be available on demand through January 6, 2021. Patron Sponsors: Charles and Helene Linker 1 PROGRAM NOTES Ludwig van Beethoven temporaries could come to terms with it, and String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 130; while such hope may seem clueless, perhaps he Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 felt he had provided enough audience-pleasing String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132 music in the first five movements for his listen- By the mid-1820s, when Beethoven wrote his ers to cut him some slack at the end. He seems last string quartets, he had long since made at last to have admitted he had gone too far, and deafness work in his favor. Without the reality in his new finale he offered something short of sound to confine his imagination, new musi- and sunny, more in keeping with the spirit of cal possibilities opened. Unconventional his late the earlier movements and, because it is in pro- works may be, but the challenges they present portion to them, transferring the work’s center to a listener are their own reward. And while of gravity to the Cavatina. The alternate ending Beethoven’s contemporaries may have found is worth hearing, and adopting it arguably his late works odd, the 200 years between then makes for a more balanced, structurally sound and now have been filled with so many won- string quartet. But also one less interesting. ders and horrors that rhythmic displacements At first hearing, the individual movements and unexpected harmonies seem more part of have little apparent in common, but from so the world than alien to it. The two quartets on careful a builder as Beethoven we expect rela- this program, both composed in 1825, each ex- tionships and correspondences between move- press a kind of manifesto that makes a case for ments. The grave unison opening, for one living. Try to explain what ignites such music, example, will find its counterpart in the first given the circumstances Beethoven faced while measures of the fugal finale. Although this first creating it—ill health, a social isolation imposed movement is tightly knit, it seems bipolar, shift- in part by deafness and in part by his own less ing constantly between a somber adagio and an than gracious demeanor, and who knows what upbeat (even ecstatic) allegro. other wretchedness brewed in a mind too im- The brief second movement is a magical dis- mersed in sickness and misanthropy, forced too play of perpetual motion, not a measure too long to accommodate the loss of the one sense many or too few. (as he himself put it) in which he ought to have The Andante picks up where the Presto left excelled. These quartets refuse even to hint at off, and a similar sense of endless motion in- such misery. And each includes a slow move- habits the flowing melody, rippled with gestures ment for which the word “sublime” might have that seem continually to repeat but which, like been invented. the swells that wrinkle a river’s surface, are On the subject of words: the first audience never exactly the same. The first violin yearns for Beethoven’s Opus 130 String Quartet earned his opening line, an anticipation of the great a few choice ones from him: “cattle” and “asses.” tune at the heart of the Cavatina. Why, he wondered, could they not get their ears This quartet is a fusion of the exalted and the around the great serious fugue with which he popular. The German dance movement proves capped the first five movements, each so im- that Beethoven could write a tune with the best mediately appealing in its own way? He was of them. Set to words and sung on Broadway, being defensive. In fact, he was not sure his fi- this would be a show-stopper. nale was right, and when his publisher asked for A cavatina is a song or aria; the word is re- an alternate ending, he very uncharacteristically lated to the now obsolete cavation, a hollowing obliged. (The fugue was published separately as out, as in excavation. In this darkly voiced his Opus 133.) These days, string players tend to music, Beethoven indeed mines a vein of emo- favor the fugue over Beethoven’s alternate end- tion. After stately reflection from the ensemble, ing. To call the Grosse Fuge a tour de force is to the second violin introduces a song-without- give it short shrift. It retains all its power to words that is one of Beethoven’s most beautiful shake and disturb. Beethoven hoped his con- creations, a soulful cousin to the preceding 2 PROGRAM NOTES movement’s show-stopping dance. Against a University of Michigan and University of pulsing figure, the first violin utters anguished, Washington, who speculated that it helped broken phrases that fade at last into tranquility. shape the Cavatina of Opus 130. A few months Now comes the epic finale, so different from after Beethoven began composing his Opus 132 what has preceded it. After a brief introduction Quartet, a bout of inflammatory bowel disease of themes, the slashing fugue interrupts and threatened to finish him, or so he believed. continues with increasing ferocity. In great jabs, When he was able to work again, he gave thanks first and second themes are torn apart, fused, in this music for his recovery. transformed. Watch the players. See what effort Beethoven’s hymn of gratitude, the third this brutal music demands. After an interlude movement of this five-movement work, could of calm, the dynamic level rises abruptly. well stand alone, it is so complete a statement. Beethoven taunts us, then throws us back into But it lies embedded between some other ex- rough water growing rougher. Casting off all re- traordinary music, beginning with a remark- straint, the music threatens to spin out of con- able essay in ambiguity. Starting in the cello and trol. Only concentration and muscle can hold moving up one by one, through the viola, then it together. Suddenly it seems to exhaust itself the second violin, then the first, each player in- and for a moment grows almost giddy. Again tones a four-note figure whose effect achieves momentum gathers, subsides, bursts out in one something other than its apparent aim. more recall of the slashing figure that initiated Seemingly, Beethoven intends to establish a for- the fugue. Then Beethoven reconciles his bidding atmosphere, and yet, even if you do not themes, then closes. Triumphantly. see the musicians as they enter, low strings to • • • high, he creates an effect of slowly rising, as eethoven’s physicians were faced with a though from shadow into light. After this com- wreck. Even today, the medical world pact introduction, the first violin begins the Bmarvels at the composer’s many ail- push forward, switching abruptly from assai ments—deafness, of course, but also kidney and sostenuto to allegro. Then the cello states a liver disease, deteriorating bones, and cardiac theme—taken up immediately by the first vio- arrhythmia, a malady that in recent years cap- lin—made up of closely spaced intervals, a tured the imagination of researchers from the phrase of three rising tones plus four falling 3 PROGRAM NOTES tones. This will serve as the main theme and a The “Dankgesang” is a meditation. Succumb primary reference point, recurring and binding to it. Note the movement’s first four-tone the movement. phrase, so different from the phrase that opened Throughout the exposition, impassioned the quartet, and yet so reminiscent of it. A little writing is spelled by lyrical episodes, the seri- more than three minutes into the music, tempo ous and the buoyant interlacing, much as the and meter shift (toandante from adagio and introduction drew light from dark. We hear rec- from 4/4 time to 3/8) and a new theme enters, ollections of the introduction, explorations of bright and optimistic. “Neue Kraft fühlend,” the rising-falling main theme, the charm of Beethoven writes at this point in his score— Beethoven’s songful inclinations—all of this “feeling new strength.” He alternates this “re- emphasizing the delicate balance of shade and covery” music with his hymn. When he brings sun. In the coda, passion dominates until all the hymn back for its final appearance (about falls to a whisper. Out of this near-silence, with 11 minutes into the movement), it is to be a gradual rise into a sudden forte—mirroring played “Mit innigster Empfindung”—“with the the levitation we sensed in the quartet’s first deepest feeling.” This seems an impossible di- moments—the ensemble joins in final, lacerat- rection, for Beethoven appears already to have ing figures while the first violin injects rapidly spent the supply of emotion.