Written in June of 1790 and given the number 590 in Ludwig Koechel’s 1862 catalogue of the composer’s work,
Mozart’s F Major Quartet is the last string quartet he ever wrote, composed roughly a year and a half before his death, at 35. It was the third and last of an eventually abandoned project of six string quartets to be written for King Frederick William II of Prussia, a commission Mozart had snagged on a visit to Berlin in 1789. But Mozart, ever short of funds, was forced to quit the idea and instead turn over the whole affair to his Viennese publisher, Artaria—who, taking their time (and in a manner which reminds one of how Schubert was treated by his publishers), did not bother to publish the three completed works until December of 1791, three weeks after the composer’s death.
From the opening theme of the first movement of the quartet, two characteristics appear: one of constant thematic development and the soloistic role given to all four of the musicians (something which Haydn, as the father of the string quartet, had pioneered, and from which his younger colleague would learn). The developmental mid-section and the recapitulation are concise, with the coda starting as a second development section but quickly wrapping things up in Mozart’s witty, operatic manner. As to the second movement, marked not the usual slow Adagio or Andante but rather Allegretto, Alfred Einstein once remarked, “One of the most sensitive movements in the whole literature of chamber music, it seems to mingle the bliss and sorrow of a farewell to life. How beautiful life has been! How sad! How brief!” Looking back from the vantage point of our cynical 21st century, we may dismiss such a comment as quaint and sentimental; and yet, while Mozart had confidently sketched his own musical catalogue to contain musical projects going past the year of grace 1800, common sense would dictate that, in certain ways, the proverbial walls were closing in. The bedrock of the movement is little more than a plain, simple rhythm, soon subjected to a plethora of emotional depths, developments and meditations.
The opening of the minuet of the F major Quartet is rich in its use of appoggiaturas—quick, ornamental little notes, played just before the “big” ones of a particular tune: in the case of the main “A” section, these notes are long, while in the central Trio, they are short. This quality, combined with the movement’s habitually irregular phrase lengths (say, seven, or five bars to a phrase, instead of the usual four), create a brilliant air of eccentricity which must have made Haydn proud, as he doubtless mused over those Artaria prints of these “Prussian” quartets death the tragic loss of his young friend. Cast in an equally (and wonderfully) complicated fusing of sonata and rondo form, the quartet’s finale is something of a miracle from the composer’s pen. A high-speed car chase of a movement, this vivacious ending indeed has all of the “Papa Haydn” manner, with sudden contrapuntal passages, unexpected silences, and even the imitation of bagpipes—providing a brilliant conclusion to Mozart’s tragically short quartet career.
Premiered in February of 2014 at New York’s Symphony Space by the very artists we hear today, Tania León’s Ethos for piano and string quartet was—fittingly for our purposes today—was performed as part of a concert celebrating the composer’s 70th birthday. Ethos is dedicated to the memory of Isaiah Sheffer—the late Founding Artistic Director of Symphony Space and a longtime acquaintance of the composer. Ethos was commissioned by Symphony Space with support from the New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artists Program.
Each of the three movements is titled after lines from poems by Isaiah’s daughter, Susannah Sheffer, as found in her collection This Kind of Knowing (2013, Cooper Dillon Books):
I. In the cage where the heart paces,
II. blaze of lights
III. Viridian. Ochre. Cobalt blue.
Composed and premiered by Anthony de Mare in 2012, Tania León’s going…gone was commissioned as part of his trailblazing series “Liaisons: re-imagining Sondheim from the Piano.” In this case, the composer—remembering the days of her youth in New York when she would queue for inexpensive Broadway theater tickets—ruminates of Stephen Sondheim’s wistful “Good Thing Going” from his 1981 musical, Merrily We Roll Along.
– Alexander Platt
As is well known, Dmitri Shostakovich had a close working relationship with the members of Russia’s Beethoven String Quartet, and he entrusted the premieres of most of his 15 quartets to them. Early in this celebrated relationship, while they were preparing their performance of the very first of them, the ensemble wondered as to whether Shostakovich might compose a quintet for piano and strings that they might play together; Shostakovich agreed almost immediately. He composed the Piano Quintet in G Minor during the summer of 1940 and performed it with the group in Moscow on November 23rd of that year in the hall of the Moscow Conservatory. So enthusiastically was it received by the audience on that occasion, that the performers had to repeat the Scherzo and Finale.
The opening movement is broad and declamatory in style; the Bach-like fugue of the second movement, which follows without pause, is dramatic and profound, with its principal theme simultaneously sounding as if it might be a melancholy Russian folk song. After building to an impassioned climax —by which time all of the instrumentalists have had their chance with this strange idea—the music relaxes and gradually fades into a muffled silence. The feeling that this is the composer’s homage to the many preludes and fugues of J.S. Bach has not escaped many. Ten years later, Shostakovich would compose his own 24 Preludes and Fugues for piano in reverence to the Leipzig master who was, along with Mahler, his very favorite composer.
The fiery Scherzo is typical (but never wearisome) of the composer’s grand guignol style, bursting forth with two repetitions of an almost naive little tune in the piano, against an aggressive accompaniment in the strings. More than one commentator has noted as to how this may symbolize the Russian individual, in his ultimately hapless struggle with the Soviet state. While writing the Quintet Shostakovich was once again in favor with Joseph Stalin and his henchmen, having just recovered from a nervous breakdown induced by their continual harassment of him in the 1930s. The Intermezzo, again invoking the composer’s love of Bach, contrasts a flowing melody with a persistent “walking bass” line.
The mood of the Finale, recalling that of the composer’s Fifth Symphony of 1937, is overwhelmingly positive; within its generally martial character it even contains the quotation of the tune traditionally played at the entrance of the clowns in Russian circuses. But here again, evoking the tradition of the “fool” in the works of Dostoyevsky, and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, we are led to question as to whether this joyous, parade-ground atmosphere is genuinely hopeful or tragically false; Shostakovich gives us perhaps a hint when this mood is suddenly extinguished in a “wisp of a coda” (to quote James Keller), or, in the words of Melvin Berger: “an indifferent shrug.” Whatever the case, any joviality this work inspired amongst its Russian audiences, forced or otherwise, would soon be obliterated: seven months to the day after the Piano Quintet’s premiere, Adolf Hitler would commence his Operation Barbarossa, unleashing the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
– Alexander Platt
