Minguet Quartett
Saturday 28th February, 7.30 pm
Mozart: String Quartet KV 421
Pēteris Vasks: 4th String Quartet
Brahms: String Quartet Op 51 no 1
Programme notes by Julian Davis
Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791)
String Quartet No 15, in D minor, K421 (1783)
Allegro moderato: Andante: Menuetto & Trio: Allegretto ma non troppo – più allegro
String quartets were still a new thing in the 1780s, having been mainly developed by Haydn, who wrote over 60 during his lifetime. Haydn had just published a set of six ‘Russian quartets’ in 1781, and we heard one of them in Bollington in the Sacconi Quartet’s concert last month. Mozart wrote a set of six quartets soon afterwards: he dedicated the set to Haydn, and they’re often called the ‘Haydn quartets’. String quartets were usually written for playing in a patron’s home (or palace), or indeed the composer’s house, and this one was probably played at Mozart’s house with Haydn playing first violin and Mozart the viola.
This quartet was written in 1783, it was the second of Mozart’s ‘Haydn quartets’, the only one of the set in a minor key, and one of Mozart’s most intense quartets. This was an exciting but challenging time for him: he had moved to Vienna in 1781, married Constanze the following year, and now he was working hard to establish himself in the Viennese musical scene.
The first violin opens the first movement with a quiet declamatory phrase, and the minor key naturally dominates the mood despite contrasting major key sections. The accompaniment of repeated quavers in second violin and viola recurs throughout the movement. In fact the motif of repeated notes keeps recurring prominently throughout the rest of the quartet, giving a unifying coherence to the whole piece. Listen out for many other examples of similarity in the themes. The atmosphere of pathos anticipates Schubert and Beethoven, who would be writing their quartets decades later.
The second movement is a gentle Andante, but despite the quiet elegance the mood remains serious. Those repeated notes are heard in the first few bars, and also at the start of the contrasting central section.
The third movement, a minuet and trio, was said by Constanze to express Mozart’s reactions to the birth of their first child Raimund, as he was composing in the next-door room. But for all the lightness and poise of the trio, the drama of the minuet reminds us that times were difficult, and that baby Raimund would die at just two months of age.
The Finale is a set of four variations, with a slightly faster coda. It’s superficially jaunty but the mood is always ambiguous – those repeated notes are still there in the delicate main theme – and there is an atmosphere of melancholy throughout until the very end.
Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946)
String Quartet No 4 (1999)
I Elegy
II Toccata I
III Choral
IV Toccata II
V Meditation
The Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks is 80 this year, and his music has become increasingly well known, with a wide variety of accessible and engaging works. He has written six string quartets, this one in 1999 to celebrate his mother’s 90th birthday, and to reflect on the passing of the 20th century. The arch-form palindromic structure is similar to Bartók’s 4th and 5th quartets, where the outer movements reflect each other, and the 2nd and 4th movements form a pair, either side of a contrasting centrepiece.
Here are his own words about the piece:
‘While working on the score, I often reflected upon the passing century. My reflections were sombre ones. There has been so much bloodshed and destruction, and yet love’s power and idealism have helped to keep the world in balance. I wanted to speak of these things in my new quartet, not from the side-lines but with direct emotion and sensitivity.’
The opening Elegy (Vasks calls it an ‘encounter with the past’) is quiet and contemplative, with a slow rising and falling line above an uneasy accompaniment. The two Toccatas are short and fierce, and frame a Choral, a long lament that reaches a climax with a series of high chords that eventually sink quietly to lead directly into Toccata II. In the final Meditation an ecstatic violin solo soars high above the other instruments. The composer wrote ‘I saw an angel flying over the world looking at the world’s condition with grieving eyes.’
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
String Quartet in C minor, Op 51 no 1 (1873)
Allegro: Romanze: Poco adagio: Allegretto molto moderato e comodo: Allegro
Brahms published three string quartets. The first two, his Op. 51, were completed in 1873 when he was 40, though he had been working on them for several years. He had drafted numerous string quartets before this, but was notoriously self-critical, and commented that as Mozart had taken such trouble with his ‘Haydn quartets’ he was anxious to do his best to produce ‘one or two passably decent ones’. He was also acutely conscious of working in the shadow of Beethoven, who himself had written 16 quartet masterpieces. But Brahms of course succeeded in producing his own highly original and personal pieces of music: Schönberg praised the quartets for their advanced harmony, and for their organic development, where the main themes of the first movement provide the germ out of which much of the work grows.
The two Op. 51 quartets were dedicated by Brahms to ‘his friend, Dr Theodor Billroth in Wien’. Billroth was Professor of Surgery in Vienna, renowned for developing modern abdominal surgery, but also a talented amateur pianist and violinist who had nearly pursued a musical career. He was a trusted confidant of Brahms, taking part in many trial performances of the composer’s works.
This C minor quartet has something of the ruggedness and strenuous energy that came to be associated with some of Beethoven’s famous works in that key, such as the ‘Pathétique’ piano sonata, the 3rd piano concerto, and the 5thSymphony. The mood and associations with not only Beethoven, but also Mozart and Schubert, would have been part of Brahms’ musical consciousness, and the choice of key for the opening of this quartet would have been no accident.
The first movement opens with a tense upward-thrusting theme for the first violin, joined by the second violin, against a pulsating accompaniment for viola and cello. We hear the same upward momentum and dotted rhythm in the final movement. The music proceeds with what’s been described as ‘ordered turmoil’, as the themes are explored and developed.
The middle movements are simpler, in contrast to the density of the outer movements. The 2nd movement, a ‘Romanze’, is poetic and song-like, with hesitant melodies and an inward elusive atmosphere. The 3rd movement, far from a fast scherzo, is more of a gentle intermezzo that opens with a sighing repetitive but restless melody, full of calm and quiet melancholy. The middle section is sunnier and relaxed, but the interlude is over in no time and the feeling of restless melancholy takes over again.
The Finale brings us back to the stormy and strenuous mood once again, with an opening similar to the very start of the piece, and we’re in a complex dense sound-world as the movement rushes towards a forceful resolute end.