PREVIEW NOTES Emerson Quartet Friday, October 18 – 8:00 PM Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center Program Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80 Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1 Felix Mendelssohn‐Bartholdy Ludwig van Beethoven Born: February 3, 1809 in Hamburg, Germany Born: December 16, 1770 in Bonn, Germany Died: November 4, 1847 in Leipzig, Germany Died: March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria Composed: 1847 Composed: 1806 Last PCMS performance: Artemis Quartet, 2013 Last PCMS performance: Pavel Haas Quartet, 2009 Duration: 27 minutes Duration: 44 minutes Mendelssohn’s last great work, the Quartet in F Minor The first of three quartets Beethoven dedicated to the was written in response to the death of his beloved Russian nobleman Count Rasumovsky is generally sister Fanny. Completed two months before his own considered the greatest of all Beethoven quartets. The death, the work has a noticeable darker, seemingly expansive opening theme spans four octaves of the cello tragic tone. The lively accompaniment that before it is fully stated. This theme is developed and Mendelssohn is known for is replaced by slow, heavy passed through the entire ensemble before reaching the syncopations that are filled with grief. Overflowing with development section of the first movement―a massive turbulent emotion, it is a rare work of visceral intensity double fugue. The rhythmic and melodic development from a famously reserved artist. comes to a climax with a diminished chord that takes the work onto a divergent course until finding its way Quartet No. 14, Op. 142 back to the harmonic home of the recapitulation. The Dmitri Shostakovich rest of the work continues with the adventurous Born: September 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg, Russia confidence of Beethoven’s middle period. Written Died: August 9, 1975 in Moscow, Russia shortly after the “Eroica”, it is considered truly Composed: 1973 groundbreaking even today. Last PCMS performance: Jerusalem Quartet, 2012 Duration: 27 minutes Shostakovich’s Op. 142 was written for Sergei Shirinsky, cellist of the Beethoven String Quartet. The work won Shostakovich the Glinka Prize. Dark and intense in melodic and harmonic materials, it still contains the humorous cryptic references Shostakovich is known for. Both occur in the third movement; the first is a plucked cryptogram for Seryozha (the affectionate form of Sergei) while the second is a quote from the aria Seryozha, khoroshiy moy (Seryozha, my Darling) from Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. .