Sunday, April 3, 2005 7:00 p.m.
Pre-concert lecture by Dr. Charles Barber at 6:15
Garrick Ohlsson and Friends:
Sarn Oliver, Sharon Grebanier, Geraldine Walther and Michael Grebanier
Beethoven, Twelve Variations on a theme from Judas Maccabäus
Elgar, Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84
Schumann, Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 47
Program Notes
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)Twelve Variations on "See here the conqu'ring hero comes" from Handel's Judas Maccabaeus, WoO 45 (for Cello and Piano) (1796)
Before the revolutionary series of symphonies, quartets and sonatas, the young Beethoven wrote a wide variety of chamber music to gain entry into the drawing rooms of his noble patrons. His first published opus was a set of piano trios and within a few years, he added a number of string trios and several works for cello and piano. Beethoven was the first to compose for this combination; his Op. 5 cello sonatas represent the birth of a genre. The same years produced three sets of variations for piano and cello including one based on a theme from Handel's oratorio Judas Maccabaeus.
Beethoven was a master of the Theme and Variations. Think of the Eroica, the Diabelli Variations or the innumerable other variation movements throughout his oeuvre. Beethoven seemed to have an inexhaustible store of fresh ideas as well as an instinctive sense for the larger line of development across variations creating a coherent dramatic whole.
Though the premise of a theme and variations is simple, the aesthetic goals are not. They challenge the composer to transform an idea into an entertaining variety of styles while retaining a recognizable aspect of its original nature as a unifying principle. The second unifying principle is the sequencing of variations for a satisfying dramatic narrative. What are the variables? In addition to changing the melody, harmony, rhythm and tempo, the intimate chamber ensemble enables variations of texture and dialogue. Within Beethoven's variations one finds the cello and piano taking turns as soloist, engaging in conversational call and response and joining in the exquisite mutuality of counterpoint. His skills as pianist and contrapuntalist enable Beethoven to further divide the keyboard into multiple voices for a composite texture of more than just the two parts that a duet implies.
A signature of Beethoven's variations is the use of strong contrast within a variation as well as the more obvious contrast across variations. Handel's concise and tuneful theme follows a clear ABA organization where the B section shifts to a minor key. Notice how Beethoven exploits this division to achieve striking contrasts in a variety of ways. Why a theme by Handel? Beethoven revered him. On his own deathbed, Beethoven is reputed to have named Handel as the single greatest composer in history.Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 47 (1842)
1842 is often called Schumann's Year of Chamber Music: in a stretch of nearly unbroken intensity, he produced three string quartets, a piano trio, the innovative piano quintet and the piano quartet. The Piano Quartet in E-flat-Major, Op. 47, was the last of the series, written within a few weeks. Given Schumann's affinity for the piano, it is not surprising that the piano quartet and piano quintet remain the most popular of his chamber works. Of the two, the quartet, with its smaller ensemble, is naturally more intimate, its character more delicate, and its chamber textures more pure. It is a wonder of clarity, concision and integration.
The first movement opens with a spacious introduction. Not a mere prelude, it reappears to announce the development section and it presents the four-note motive that dominates the movement. The sonata form is vivid due to its amazingly simple but effectively contrasting themes. The first is the four-note motive, stepping down then up. The second is a rush up the scale and an arpeggio rushing right back down. Despite their simplicity, each is shaped into pleasing melodic content and woven into a fluid narrative with crisp and forceful energy.
The Scherzo is perfectly nervous, nimble, and spiced with the urgency of the minor mode. Most scherzi are strongly sectional in their form and experienced as such. Schumann created his with the same fluid integration that characterizes the whole quartet. Though it has two trios rather than the usual one, the movement comes off as a nearly seamless continuity of unbroken motion. Both trios are laced with elements of the scherzo, which, by virtue of the form, recurs three rather than two times. More like a terse rondo, the entire movement rushes swiftly by, suddenly gone, unexpectedly.
The third movement Adagio checks all the slippery energy of the scherzo and nestles down into a gently flowing song. Here is Schumann the Romantic pouring out a tender duet aria between cello and violin that seems to speak so clearly without a single word. The middle section takes a cue from Beethoven by deepening the romantic into the sacred with a spare hymn that hallows with its graceful simplicity. All momentum nearly stops until the spell is broken by the return of the cello, made more poignant by new figurations in the violin and piano, and a melancholy in the tonality. The Adagio ends with a well-matched ethereal coda (recalling the hymn) that is also a prefiguration of the finale theme.
Schumann ends this delicious quartet in a blaze of motion and counterpoint. Starting as though it were a regal fugue from a Baroque suite, it soon moves into a second theme of swaying classical lyricism. Schumann achieves a blend of textures that is neither polyphonic nor homophonic but the indescribable hybrid that is the sine qua non of the Classical masters. As if to complete his organic survey of chamber features, Schumann employs the drive and swelling complexity of fugal imitation for an exciting and satisfying close.
Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84 (1919)
In a few years after the First World War and before the death of his wife, Sir Edward Elgar realized his last important period as a composer. He moved from London to the countryside seeking refuge from a variety of overbearing concerns including the war, poor health and financial troubles. Inspired by walks in the woods, Elgar turned his attention almost exclusively to chamber music, composing a violin sonata, a string quartet and the piano quintet in A minor. Elgar's quintet, though written as late as 1919, is intensely late Romantic, representing the twilight of the idiom well into the rise of modernism.
Lady Elgar's diary reveals the apparent inspiration for the quintet: a copse of bare trees, sad and sinister, was associated by local legend with evil Spanish monks whose punishment was to be cast into these static forms of longing regret. At the same time, Elgar nurtured his interest in supernatural Gothic fiction. Whether or not the quintet tells a particular story, it is highly suggestive, particularly in the first movement. Given the context of Elgar's life, however, one easily wonders if the quintet was not actually based on a more personal program.
The first movement is the most unusual. Dark, arresting and enigmatic, it is a fitful dream episodically haunted by several recurring components: a cryptic pair of motives, a wistful sigh, a driving march and a ghostly dance. The piano intones the initial motive (broken in two groups), with agitated interjections from the strings. Close attention reveals that most of the music is derived from this pregnant beginning. The eight-note motive and its agitated reply run throughout the music: in the base line of the driving march, the rhythmic lilt of the disembodied dance and the subject of a powerful fugato at the movement's climax.
The middle movement is often praised as the highlight of the quintet and Elgar's chamber music in general. Based on a spacious melody from the viola, it is tender and elegiac. But within its repose, it drifts chromatically into the eerie suspense of the first movement and swells into a tumult of hyper-romantic angst. Ultimately a reverie, it recalls the sharp pain of tragedy. As evidence of Elgar's compositional skill, the textures constantly shift, highlighting the reedy song of the viola, the liquid clarity of the piano, an aching duet with the cello, the charged atmosphere of shivering strings and pizzicato.
If the first movement is dark, and the second warm, the finale is decidedly bright. Elgar begins with the wistful sigh from the first movement, a ghost of the past returned. The mood is soon shaken and the music launches into a new 6/8 theme, recalling and developing the sweeping dance motion into a sparkling brightness. As if with a final, transfixed look backwards, the music thins into ghostly transition and a dark recall of the first movement, before turning again to the triumph of light. The recurrence of multiple motto themes gives the quintet a cyclical unity leaving a complex but curiously singular impression.
—Kai Christiansen
Garrick Ohlsson, piano
Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. Although he has long been regarded as one of the world s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, Mr. Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire, which ranges over the entire piano literature. A student of the late Claudio Arrau, Mr. Ohlsson has come to be noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire. His concerto repertoire alone is unusually wide and eclectic ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century and to date he has at his command some 80 piano concertos. A musician of commanding versatility, Mr. Ohlsson is a consummate chamber pianist who performs regularly with the world s leading chamber groups. He has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Takács and Tokyo String Quartets, among other ensembles. Together with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding member of the San Francisco-based FOG Trio.
Sarn Oliver, violin
Sarn Oliver was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He began playing the violin at four years and as his father taught music composition at many universities around the country, he had the opportunity to study under various teachers, among them Elmar Oliviera and Ronald Neal. Mr. Oliver attended the Juilliard School and received both his Bachelor and Master degrees as a student of Sally Thomas. He joined the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in 1993 where he met his wife Mariko Smiley, also a violinist in the orchestra. Currently he is performing in various chamber music series and one of his recent compositions, Trio One for two violins and viola, was recently performed at Davies Symphony Hall on the SFS Chamber Music Series. His first commission, Tilden Trio for piano, violin, and trombone was performed in the fall of 2004.
Sharon Grebanier, violin
Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and raised in Seattle, Sharon Grebanier attended the University of Washington, where she earned two bachelor's degrees in music and art, and a master's degree in music. While there, she was coached by the Philadelphia Quartet and won first prize in the Coleman Chamber Music competition. She also was awarded both the Silverstein Prize for outstanding violinist and the Henry Cabot Award for outstanding orchestral musician while a student at Tanglewood. Sharon joined the SFS in 1973, meeting her husband, SFS Principal Cellist Michael Grebanier, when he joined the Orchestra in 1977. She is an active chamber music performer and a founding member of the Aurora String Quartet, which has performed in New York, London, Tokyo, and Tahiti and has recorded the complete quartets of Mendelssohn and Prokofiev for Naxos. Sharon also performs occasionally with the FOG Trio and the Fleezanis, Walther, Grebanier x 2 string quartet.
Geraldine Walther, viola
Geraldine Walther has been Principal Violist of the SFS since 1976, having previously served as assistant principal of the Pittsburgh and Baltimore Symphonies and the Miami Philharmonic. A native of Florida, she studied at the Curtis Institute with Michael Tree of the Guarneri Quartet and at the Manhattan School of Music with Lillian Fuchs, and in 1979 she won first prize at the William Primrose International Competition. An avid chamber musician, Ms. Walther particularly enjoys playing in small ensembles with her SFS colleagues. She regularly participates in leading chamber music festivals, including Marlboro, Santa Fe, Tanglewood, Bridgehampton, and, most recently, the Telluride, Seattle, and Ruby Mountain festivals, Music at Kohl Mansion, Green Music Festival in Sonoma, and the inaugural seasons of Music at Menlo. She has collaborated with such artists as Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, and Jaime Laredo, and has appeared as a guest artist with some of the world s most renowned string quartets, including the Vermeer, Guarneri, Lindsay, Cypress, and St. Lawrence quartets. In 2001 she joined the Tokyo Quartet on a tour of Spain and Italy. In 2005, Ms. Walther will take a one-year leave of absence from the SFS to join the Takács Quartet, which is quartet-in-residence at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Michael Grebanier, cello
Michael Grebanier is in his twenty-fifth season as Principal Cellist of the SFS. A native of New York City, he attended the Curtis Institute of Music and studied with Leonard Rose, Carl Ziegler, and Orlando Cole. While still a student, he won the prestigious Walter Naumburg Award and made his recital debut in New York at the age of nineteen. Prior to joining the SFS, he was principal cellist of the Pittsburgh Symphony for fourteen years, the youngest musician to hold the post in that ensemble's history; before that he spent four seasons as a member of the Cleveland Orchestra. With violinist Jorja Fleezanis and pianist Garrick Ohlsson, Mr. Grebanier is a member of the acclaimed FOG Trio, and in 1982 he played the complete cycle of Beethoven cello and piano sonatas with Malcolm Frager. He has also been affiliated with a number of notable festivals, among them the Marlboro Festival in Vermont and the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico.