Saturday, April 2, 2016, 8pm First Congregational Church Musicians from Marlboro Cynthia Raim, piano Samuel Rhodes, viola Robin Scott, violin Brook Speltz, cello Itamar Zorman, violin PROGRAM Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809 ) Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2 Moderato Adagio — Menuetto: Allegretto Fuga a 4 Soggetti: Allegro Itamar Zorman, violin Robin Scott, violin Samuel Rhodes, viola Brook Speltz, cello Alban BERG (1885-1935) Lyric Suite Allegretto gioviale Andante amoroso Allegro misterioso – Trio estatico Adagio appassionato Presto delirando – Tenebroso Largo desolato Itamar Zorman, violin Robin Scott, violin Samuel Rhodes, viola Brook Speltz, cello INTERMISSION 15 PROGRAM Antonín DVO R˘ ÁK (1841-1904) Quintet in A Major, B. 155, Op. 81 Allegro, ma non tanto Dumka: Andante con moto Scherzo (Furiant): Molto vivace Finale: Allegro Robin Scott, violin Itamar Zorman, violin Samuel Rhodes, viola Brook Speltz, cello Cynthia Raim, piano Steinway Pianos Marlboro Recording Society Sony Classical Bridge Records Cal Performances' 2015-2016 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. PROGRAM NOTES Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2 No. 40, the Requiem, and other of his Viennese Joseph Haydn masterworks. Haydn, as well, explored the ex - There exists a strain in the German character panded expression of the Sturm und Drang in that seems to demand the expression of strong the Symphonies No. 44 in E minor ( Mourning ), emotions and profound thoughts in its art No. 45 in F-sharp minor ( Farewell ), No. 49 in works. It was probably inevitable therefore that F minor ( La Passione ), and No. 52 in C minor, the ephemeral sweetness of much music of and in his splendid Op. 20 string quartets. the Rococo and early Classical periods would The six works of Op. 20, composed in 1772, not be entirely satisfactory to northern tastes. were known to Haydn’s contemporaries as the Beginning as early as the 1750s, there came into “Sun Quartets” because the cover of their first the works of several important composers, no - published edition (1774) was emblazoned with tably Carl Philip Emanuel Bach (“He is the a drawing of the rising sun. The sobriquet was father, and we are his children,” said Haydn), just as appropriate for musical reasons, since a striving after a heightened musical style these were really the earliest quartets in which through the use of minor keys, sudden con - Haydn’s full genius in the form dawned. trasts, chromatic harmonies, and a pervasive “Everything that his later works were to bring sense of agitation. The name given to this new to fruition is here, not merely in embryo but expressive tonal dialect was borrowed from breaking into flower,” wrote Rosemary Hughes. Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger’s 1776 play, Sir Donald Tovey added, “With Op. 20, the his - Wirrwarr, oder, Sturm und Drang (Confusion, torical development of Haydn’s quartets reaches or, Storm and Stress ). Klinger’s drama grew from its goal; further progress is not progress in any the soil of Rousseau’s philosophy of free per - historical sense, but simply the difference be - sonal expression, an idea that was to become tween one masterpiece and the next.” Haydn doctrine for Romantic artists and which found applied to the Op. 20 quartets the richness of an earlier manifestation in some music of the invention and mastery of craft learned in the late 18th century. Mozart tried out the Sturm three dozen symphonies he had written during und Drang style in his Symphony No. 25 in the preceding decade. These works are remark - G minor of 1773, and returned to it with stun - able for the manner in which all four of the ning results in Don Giovanni , the Symphony instrumental voices participate fully in the mu - PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES sical conversation, a distinct stylistic advance was being readied for its December premiere, over the Rococo divertimento , in which the vi - Alban Berg undertook two new works. One olins largely played their pretty tunes above the was a song on Theodor Storm’s poem “Schliesse discrete background of the lower strings. mir die Augen beide” (“Close, O Close My Haydn’s new musical democracy is confirmed Eyes”); the other was a suite for string quartet. by the contrapuntal nature of all the move - Both would employ Schoenberg’s new theory ments, especially the finales, four of which use of “Composition with Twelve Tones,” and were fugal procedures. The importance of the Op. 20 related in that they shared the same tone row. quartets was not missed by Haydn’s colleagues Berg had set the Storm text once before, in a and successors—Mozart wrote six quartets di - ripe, post-romantic style in 1907, and the new rectly under their influence (K. 168-173, the version, written to celebrate the 25th anniver - first and last of which have fugal finales) and sary of Universal Edition, the publishing house Beethoven copied out the first of the set for his that had so strongly supported the music of own study. Schoenberg and his followers, was intended to The second of the Op. 20 quartets, in C show the stylistic changes that had occurred Major, opens with a full sonata-allegro form en - during the intervening two decades. The two riched with enough counterpoint to lend many songs were published together as a supplement of its passages the quality of a Baroque chorale to an article by Willi Reich in the periodical Die prelude. The Adagio , with its stark, unison pro - Musik in February 1930. Berg dedicated the nouncements, bold melodic leaps, and porten - first song to Helene, his wife. The second was tous C-minor tonality, is not far removed in inscribed to Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. spirit and technique from some scene of pro - A complex and fascinating tale of secret love found pathos in an opera seria . The movement surrounds the work that became the Lyric Suite . pauses on an incomplete harmony to lead di - In May 1925, Berg went to Prague to hear rectly into the Minuet , one of the most under - Alexander von Zemlinsky conduct a perform - stated, indeed, almost dreamy, of all Haydn’s ance of fragments from the yet-unstaged essays in that form. The finale is a rollicking Wozzeck for a contemporary music festival. fugal melange of four different subjects whose Arrangements were made for Berg to stay at the interweavings fly about with such seemingly home of the wealthy Czech industrialist merry abandon (but complete compositional Herbert Fuchs-Robettin. Berg wrote home to control) that Haydn placed the legend, “Thus his wife, Helene, who remained in Vienna, of one friend runs away from the other,” beneath the “matter-of-course luxury” he enjoyed with the last measure of his manuscript. his hosts. What he did not write—what he kept from all but a tiny handful of his closest Lyric Suite friends—was that he had fallen reelingly in love Alban Berg with Hanna, Fuchs-Robettin’s wife (and the sis - “Now I am about to make the most difficult of ter of Austrian novelist Franz Werfel). It was a all high dives—into a new piece. May it be suc - passion that he nurtured in secret and that fu - cessful,” wrote Alban Berg to his colleague in eled his creativity for the rest of his life, though composition and fellow student of Arnold he continued to live in Vienna and she in Schoenberg, Anton Webern, on September 15, Prague while both maintained outwardly re - 1925. And quite a leap it proved to be: not just spectable home lives. The Lyric Suite was the into another work, but also into a revolutionary first night blossom of their romance. new method of composition and into a pas - The composition of the Lyric Suite took Berg sionate, clandestine love affair that all commin - well over a year, with frequent painful inter - gled to produce one of the most fascinating ruptions due to attacks of asthma and stomach cryptograms in the history of music. disorders delaying its completion until late in In the fall of 1925, while his controversial 1926. The work was conceived from the begin - opera Wozzeck , completed three years earlier, ning as a secret musical embodiment of his re - PROGRAM NOTES lationship with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, though “one eternal love.” Concerning the numerology the dedication of the printed score was to (23 and 50), he explained that the number 23 Zemlinsky, who not only served as a musical in - had for him a special significance, a revelation fluence on the piece but was also the agent of he had received from Wilhelm Fliess’ theory ex - the lovers’ meeting. During his life, Berg said pressed in Von Leben und Tod (From Life and nothing about the content of the six-movement Death ) that all animate things are governed by string quartet, though his movement tempo cycles of 23 days for males and 28 for females. markings included such suggestive words as To appease the Fates, for example, Berg tried to “jovial,” “amorous,” “ecstatic,” “delirious,” and finish each of his scores on the 23rd of the “desolate.” Quotations from Tristan and Zem - month. He chose the number 10 to represent linsky’s Lyric Symphony (from which Berg Hanna, so that the number 50 ([2+3=5] x 10) seems to have borrowed his title), both of them was the mathematical symbol of their mystical texted works expressing a poignant desire for union. Markings in colored pencils in the score mystical union with the beloved beyond this indicated the associations of the themes with life, suggested deep meanings behind the tones. the persons involved—not just Alban and Equally intriguing was the mathematical puz - Hanna, but also with the Fuchs-Robettin chil - zle that Berg embedded in the music—every dren, and even with her husband.