STRING QUARTET IN D MAJOR, OP. 71, NO. 2, HOB.III:70Josef Haydn (1732-1809)

Adagio—AllegroAdagio cantabileMenuetto: Allegro and TrioFinale: Allegretto—Allegro

STRING QUARTET NO. 1, OP. 7, Sz.40Béla Bartók (1881-1945)

LentoAllegrettoAllegro vivace(2nd movement sometimes referred to as Poco a poco accelerando all’allegretto)

:: intermission ::

PIANO QUINTET NO. 2 IN A MAJOR, OP. 81Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)

Allegro ma non tantoDumka: Andante con motoScherzo—Furiant: Molto vivaceFinale: Allegro

3june

Frida

y

7 PM

opening nightparker quartetDaniel Chong, violin

Ying Xue, violin

Jessica Bodner, viola

Kee-Hyun Kim, cello

WITH

Menahem Pressler, piano

the program

35TH SEASON | ROCKPORT MUSIC :: 1

WEEK

1

GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY JERRY AND MARGARETTA HAUSMAN

Rockport Music invites all concert guests to attend a reception to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of the Festival immediately following

the concert at the Rockport Art Association & Museum across the street.

STRING QUARTET IN D MAJOR, OP. 71, NO. 2, HOB.III:70Josef Haydn (b. Rohrau, Austria, March 31, 1732; d. Vienna, May 31, 1809)

Composed 1793; 20 minutes

Haydn lived and worked from 1761 to 1790 at Esterháza, the Esterházy family estate east ofVienna, near the Hungarian border. As part of his duties at Esterháza, Haydn wrote not onlyoperas, symphonies, and concertos, but also many works for small string ensemble—stringtrios and his early string quartets—for performance within the estate’s exclusive walls.

Moving back to Vienna from the Hungarian countryside in 1790 after the death of his employer,Nikolaus Esterházy, Haydn entered a world much changed during his long residency atEsterháza. He had left the city in 1761 as an apprentice and a promising musician, and hereappeared in that city as a confident, respected composer—albeit one who had lived for thepast 29 years out in the country. His fame had spread across Europe and beyond, and upon

his return to Vienna, Haydn was immediately visited by the german-born violinist and concert impresario Johann Peter Salomon, who hadarrived with a contract for a tour of London.

During two extended stays in London (1791-2 and 1794-5), Haydn en-joyed enormous musical, financial, and social successes. He com-posed a great deal of music, including twelve new symphonies, and hebecame familiar with the changing ways of the concert world and itsaudiences. Chamber music, for example, was being released from itsconfines within the elite private homes of its sponsors, and Salomon’spresentation of Haydn’s Opus 64 string quartets in public performancesmet with great popular acclaim.

Following the triumphs of Haydn’s two lengthy residencies, he mighthappily have returned to London for a third, and more extended visit.However, in 1795, when the newest successor to the Esterházy line,Prince Nikolaus II, invited the now famous composer to return to thefamily employ, Haydn accepted. He spent the rest of his life as amember of the Viennese Esterházy court, writing string quartets, symphonies, and great choral works, such as The Creation and The Seasons.

Count Anton georg Apponyi (1755-1817), a prominent music patron inVienna, commissioned the String Quartets of Opus 71/ Hob.III:69-71,which were first performed by Johann Peter Salomon and threecolleagues during the winter of 1794 in a London concert. The so-called“Apponyi” Quartets give evidence of Haydn’s growing awareness ofcomposing string quartets for a more public audience and a large performance space.

The middle piece of the three, the Quartet in D major, Op. 71, No. 2,opens with a slow rise of the curtain, a four-measure, stately Adagio.The main body of the movement features two basic thematic motifs:

swirls of sixteenth notes in stepwise groups that impel a forward motion, and hoppingthemes of octaves and other wide-spaced intervals that spark an uplifted feel to the livelyAllegro. The slow movement features the first violin as a leader in its arioso character as

Notes on the

programby

Sandra Hyslop

2 :: NOTES ON THE PROgRAM

In 1919 the musicologistAnthony van Hoboken(1887-1983) began toassemble an enormouscollection of raremusic scores, includingat least a thousand ofHaydn’s compositions. From 1957 to 1971, in a great achievement ofscholarship, Hoboken published anauthoritative thematic catalog ofHaydn’s entire musical oeuvre.

Hoboken organized the compositionsby categories—symphonies, overtures,operas, and so on—numbered fromHoboken: I through Hoboken: XXXII.Hoboken’s category III comprises all83 of Haydn’s string quartets.

By the time Hoboken’s catalog becameavailable, the old publishers’ opusnumbering system had become sostrongly identified with Haydn’smusical works, those familiar numberscontinued in widespread use in spite of some inaccuracies that such usageperpetuated. In modern usage, bothOpus and Hoboken numbers oftenappear—Opus for traditional familiarity,Hoboken for historical accuracy.

well as its rich harmonic inventions. The Minuet, brisk and extroverted, might well havebeen marked “Scherzo.” The D-major Quartet ends with an exuberant finale that, onceagain, depends on the strong leadership of the first violin—who, in the first performance,was Haydn’s colleague Johann Peter Salomon.

STRING QUARTET NO. 1, OP. 7, Sz.40Béla Bartók (b.Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary [now Sînnicolau Mare, Romania] March 25, 1881;d. New York, September 26, 1945)

Completed January 27, 1909; 31 minutes

In his autobiography, Béla Bartók wrote, “In 1907 I was appointed professor at the Academyof Music and I particularly welcomed this appointment because it gave me an opportunity tosettle down at home and pursue my research into folk music.” This understated note aboutthe professional advancement of that year belies the volatility of his personal life and themusic that it awakened.

In 1907 the 26-year-old Budapest professor met a beautiful 19-year-old violinist, Stefi geyer,who aroused in him a passionate, and ultimately unrequited, love. It was a chargedcombination—increasing professional security and growing self-confidence as a composer,and catastrophic personal rejection. He poured out his heart to Stefi geyer not only in letters(from Transylvania, where he was collecting peasant music), but also in music—a three-movement violin concerto for and about her, which he had nearly completed when she endedtheir relationship in February 1908. He subsequently mined that concerto, with its “geyer”motif, for future works.

Among them was the String Quartet No. 1, which his friend Zoltán Kodály called “a return to life.” In the Quartet, Bartók used the “geyer” motif—an ascending intervallic pattern ofthirds—transformed into a sharp-edged melodic basis for a funeral dirge. The contrapuntalmovement and the dark orchestration of the instrumental voices speak of yearning and despair. The rich harmonic effects recall the nineteenth-century influences (Strauss andReger) that Bartók was in the process of shedding in his own music. The movement ends withan inconclusive wave of the hand, which also beckons the entrance of the second movement.

After a brief, tentative introduction, the Allegretto becomes increasinglymore confident. (Indeed, this movement is sometimes captioned “Poco apoco accelerando all'allegretto.”) Bartók creates a colorful tapestry outof three principal thematic elements of his own invention, and in the styleof the indigenous materials that he had begun to collect in the field.

In the final movement, Bartók includes actual folk song themes inaddition to his own folk-like materials.

As the tempo headings indicate (Introduction—Allegro—Allegro vivace),this is a movement that increases in fervor and intensity to the end. Heconstructs an astonishing fugal section on the theme of the movement’sopening phrase. The momentum builds, even with the frequent fluctuationsof tempos, and Bartók concludes the work with a brilliant and decisivechord in the quartet’s upper register.

35TH SEASON | ROCKPORT MUSIC :: 3

Dear Miss Stefi,

By the time I had finished reading yourletter, I was almost in tears—and that,as you can imagine, does not usuallyhappen to me every day…Why couldn’tI read your letter with cold indifference?Why couldn’t I put it down with a smileof contempt? Why should I be so affected by your reaction?...Afterreading your letter, I sat down at thepiano—I have a sad misgiving that Ishall never find any consolation in lifesave in music. And yet…

–From a letter written to Stefi geyer by Béla Bartók in February 1908

Heart-broken because theviolinist Stefi Geyer had rejected his love, Belá Bartókwrote the String Quartet No. 1 using some of the materials he had intended for a violin concerto that hehad composed for her.

PIANO QUINTET NO. 2 IN A MAJOR, OP. 81Antonín Dvorák (b. Nelahozeves, Czech Republic, September 8, 1841; d. Prague, May 1, 1904)

Composed 1887; 33 minutes

Antonín Dvor�ák maintained a profound devotion to the linguistic andmusical cultures of his homeland.“Not so many years ago,” he wrote,“Slavic music was not known to the men of other races. A few men likeChopin, glinka, Moniuszko, Smetana, Rubinstein, and Tchaikovsky,with a few others, were able to create a Slavic school of music…. Themusic of the people, sooner or later, will command attention and creepinto the books of composers.”

Just a few years before writing those words, Dvor�ák had completed thisPiano Quintet, so redolent of the Bohemian tunes and dance rhythmsthat had crept into his own composition book. The first performance ofthe work took place in Prague, January 1888, and Dvor�ák’s publisher, Simrock, issued it later that year, as Op.77—later changed to Op.81.

Dvor�ák proved repeatedly in his music the strength of his Slavic roots. The Piano Quintet in A major is a fine example. Composed at the same time as his second set of Slavonic Dances, theA-major Piano Quintet similarly expresses a love of his fatherland and its musical traditions.

The lyricism of the first movement is established immediately by thecello’s voice, with murmuring piano accompaniment, and is taken up byall the voices in a rich development. That conversation breaks off whenthe viola announces the second theme, fully as lyrical as the first. Theentire movement alternates between major and minor and covers abroad emotional territory.

The second movement, Andante con moto, is a Dumka, a Slavik musicalform that Dvor�ák would return to in 1890, with the composition of hismovement, Dvor�ák constructed his Dumka on a pattern of A B A C A BA: the A being the Dumka, the B sections having a jaunty rhythmicpattern of eighth notes against triplets, and the C section being a wilddance variation based on the piano’s triste opening statement of the maintheme. The movement closes, after the final A section, in deep quiet.

The Scherzo introduces the characteristics of the “Furiant,” a livelyCzech dance in 3/4 measure that Dvor�ák liked to substitute for themore traditional Scherzo. The middle section, poco tranquillo, contrastswith the first section through a transformation of the main theme fromthe vivace, still dancing, but as a gentle waltz, and then a simpletwo-step, before returning to the opening vivacious tempo. The Quintetcomes to a close with a sonata-form finale, which traverses an emotionalrange from somber to joyful.

Notes on the

programby

Sandra Hyslop

4 :: NOTES ON THE PROgRAM

In the nineteenth century, many European composers resisted thedominant forces of the Germanic language and musical culture, eventhough they were strongly influencedby its tenets. Like most agencies,Dvorák’s music publisher, theBerlin-based Simrock, wore blinders. Simrock insisted on printing the titlesof the Czech composer’s works, and hisname, in German. In 1885, finally exasperated with the “Anton” thatSimrock stubbornly clung to, Dvorákrequested that all his titles be given inboth German and Czech, and that his first name be listed as “Ant.”—allowing for both German and Czechinterpretations. This suggestion metwith a patronizing response from Simrock. Dvorák replied: “Your lastletter, in which you launched forthinto national-political explanationsamused me greatly…Forgive me forthis, but I just wanted to tell you thatan artist too has a fatherland in whichhe must also have a firm faith andwhich he must love.”

In honor of his patriotism,Czechoslovakia and the CzechRepublic have frequently issued postage stamps bearingDvorák’s image.

FAMILY CONCERT: SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 10 AMParker Quartet

Free, no tickets required.

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