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June 8, 2008 June 8, 2008 YORK BOWEN FELIX MENDELSSOHN Phantasy Quintet for bass clarinet and string String Quartet in E flat Major, Opus 12 quartet, Op. 93 The year 1829 was a glorious year In the first half of the 20th century, England for Felix Mendelssohn. He became experienced a musical renaissance. It celebrated all over Germany for having started, more or less, with Sir Edward resuscitated, at the Singakademie of Berlin, Elgar and went on to include Frederick Bach’s long-neglected St. Matthew Delius, Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Passion. On the strength of his success, Williams, , and many others. It Mendelssohn undertook a voyage to was a superbly rich—albeit occasionally Italy, France, and England in order to inward looking—period of English music, sample a bit of non-German culture. and York Bowen (1884-1961) was a major He was 20 years old that year and filled figure in its pantheon. Often called the with boundless energy, dedicating the “English Rachmaninoff,” he was a prolific better part of each day to composing composer and pianist who performed with music. (Mendelssohn was also an many famous musicians. Bowen was also accomplished artist and managed to a fine organist, , and horn player and find the time to fill many notebooks with a professor of piano at the Royal Academy drawings and paintings). of Music. England welcomed the composer Written in 1932, the Phantasy Quintet rapturously, giving him ever more derives its structure from the entry confidence in his own gifts. The quartet requirements of the Cobbett Phantasy in E flat Major, Opus 12, begun in the Competitions, initiated in 1905 to further spring of 1829 just after the performance the cause of British chamber music. The of The St. Matthew Passion, was work is written in a single movement, completed in that September. which attempts to cover the range of a It bears the dedication “An B. P.” The full three or four movement sonata. Thus, initials belonged to a young Berlinoise the first section, corresponding to the named Betty Pistor, admired by first movement of a sonata, presents two Mendelssohn. themes in a ternary arrangement. The middle section, which is introduced by a The quartet owes a great deal to the quasi-recitative passage for bass clarinet influence of “second period” Beethoven, followed by a linking passage featuring exhibiting innumerable musical a viola solo, corresponds to a second quotes and structural likenesses. The movement, and the third, a brilliantly Canzonetta, particularly, recalls a driven allegro con spirito, represents a Beethovenien scherzo but, as always, finale. The whole piece, constructed Mendelssohn, with his favorite little with seamless skill, is rounded off with a whirling motifs and staccato sixteenth sustained tranquillo coda, which returns notes, makes it unmistakably his own. to the mood of the opening bars. t

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June 8, 2008 Lichnovsky who had a private string quartet. The patronage of some of these Quintet in E flat Major, Opus 4 benefactors is reflected in Beethoven’s dedications of several important Although it may appear to be a chamber works. He studied with Haydn chronological impossibility, the matrix and Salieri and distinguished himself not of the Quintet in E flat Major, Opus 4, is only as a composer, but as a formidable to be found in Beethoven’s Wind Octet, pianist with a gift for improvisation. Opus 103. The octet was written in 1792, but not published in that form until well Soon after its composition, Beethoven after the composer’s death (1827). In revised the original wind octet, which he 1792 Beethoven was just 22 years old, seems to have liked very well, to create and he had left Bonn, the city of his birth, a wind quintet. In 1795, he rearranged forever. He settled in Vienna where he the wind quintet, tinkering with the remained until his death. harmony a little bit, and it became the String Quintet, Opus 4. Peggy Pearson The conditions of his entry into has continued this tradition by arranging Vienna were auspicious. Music-loving the quintet as it will be played today, and aristocrats supported him, and he lived, the oboe will replace the first violin. for short time, with the Prince Karl Von