Sunday, October 30, 2005 7:00 p.m.
Members of the San Francisco Symphony
Members of the San Francisco Symphony
Sarn Oliver, violin
Amy Hiraga, violin
Nanci Severance, viola
Peter Wyrick, cello
Scott Pingel, bass
Timothy Day, Flute
Program
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartFlute Quartet in D Major, KV. 285
Allegro
Adagio
Rondeau
Gioacchino Rossini
Duetto fur Violoncello und Contrabass
Allegro
Andante Molto
Allegro
Heitor Villa-Lobos
Assobio a Játo (The Jet Whistle)
Allegro non troppo
Adagio
Vivo
INTERMISSION
Antonin Dvorák
Quintet in G Major for strings, Op. 77
Allegro con fuoco
Scherzo. Allegro vivace
Poco andante
Finale. Allegro assai
Program Notes
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756-1791Quartet for Flute, Violin, Viola and Cello in D major, KV. 285, c. 1777
Mozart's genius as chamber composer rests on his mature masterworks for string quartet and quintet, but his total oeuvre comprises a rich diversity of ensembles. Several compositions feature strings and a guest from the wind family: the flute, clarinet, oboe or horn. Primarily dating from an early period before the first "Haydn Quartets", the chamber music for winds offers perfect and colorful delicacies with exquisite chamber textures and superbly idiomatic part-writing sensitive to the innate characteristics of each featured guest. While the unemployed Mozart traveled around Europe with his mother seeking opportunity, he received a commission from an amateur flautist in Mannheim named Ferdinand Dejean. The commission produced three flute quartets including the Quartet in D major, KV. 285 completed on December 25, 1777.
Like many of his early chamber compositions for a wind instrument, the flute quartet is primarily in "concertante" style where the flute enjoys the prominent role as the strings artfully accompany. Though a sort of a "chamber concerto", the ensemble is intimate, the textures transparent, with a vivid contrast of color and articulation yielding pleasures unique to the purest chamber music. The lightness and brevity of the quartet place it stylistically in that charming realm of the Rococo, a brief, gallant flourish representing a hybrid of the emerging early classical period with traces of the lingering Baroque.
The quartet is compact, with only three short movements, the last two joined without pause. The first movement is a clear and lively sonata with a wealth of themes, a terse development and a wonderfully elaborated recapitulation. The middle movement suspends motion and mood in a wistful serenade with delicate pizzicati speckling a pensive melody in the flute, evoking the Baroque or possibly some further antiquity of austere grace and poise. This demure reverie is just about to evaporate, when, without pause, the moment is seized by am exuberant finale rondo, utterly contemporary again in all its shimmering Rococo excitement. Between rondo refrain and intervening episode, there is but gaiety, and the frivolity of effortless perfection.
Gioacchino Rossini, 1792-1868Duetto per violincello e contrabasso, c.1824
By his mid-thirties, Gioacchino Rossini was an internationally famous opera composer commanding enormous sums for musical services. By the age of 37, he essentially retired from composing though he continued to lead a lavish and notorious life to well into his seventies. Known primarily for his operas with their tear-off symphonic overtures, Rossini nonetheless penned a small cache of chamber works, notably his precocious string sonatas (at the age of thirteen), and various commissioned works sprinkled throughout his life. His duo for cello and bass was commissioned in 1824 by amateur cellist David Salomons for a soirée featuring a duet with the bass virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti. The duet is one of the most curious pieces in all of chamber history.
Outstanding concert string duets are rare. There are numerous studies, music for amateur domestic entertainment, private works for teacher and student. The string duet seems almost too spare and intimate for public performance, but such are its challenges: for the composer, supreme ingenuity of harmony and counterpoint, and for the performer, virtuosity, vulnerability and the duty of sensitive partnership. And always, to entertain. With his duet, Rossini delivers a gem, even with the improbable choice of cello and bass.
This three-movement duet is a delight in many pleasures. As one's listening shifts to the deeper range of cello and bass, the instruments reveal a whole new world of color, tone, and surprisingly, satisfying breadth. The first movement is introductory, then animated and by turns witty and rich, revealing the supple virtuosity of each instrument through deft repartee. The second movement utterly convinces with a soulful aria complete with dramatic swell, florid reprise and truly beautiful singing. The finale is a triumphant romp of virtuosity, finally obliterating any doubt that cello and bass are perfectly capable of making as much good music as any two fiddles ever could, at least with Rossini's unmistakable dramatic flair.
Heitor Villa-Lobos, 1887-1959Assobio a Játo (The Jet Whistle) for flute and cello, c. 1950
Villa-Lobos studied music through a diversity of sources: café music in Rio de Janeiro, folk music throughout Brazil, an impressionable exposure to Debussy, Ravel and Bach, followed by a lengthy stay in Paris in the 1920's, where he encountered the likes of Poulenc, Milhaud and Stavinsky. He returned to his native Brazil where he introduced the European repertoire and wrote volumes of strikingly original music in myriad and novel forms. Villa-Lobos became a national treasure, an international celebrity and the most highly esteemed Brazilian composer to date. His chamber output is daunting, including 17 string quartets written over a period of 42 years.
Written in 1950, Assobio a Játo (Jet Whistle) for flute and cello is a perfect example of Villa-Lobos' exotic style. His choice of flute and cello offers maximum contrast between high and low, metal and wood, wind and wire, breath and bow. With high contrasts in range and timbre, the texture is so transparent that it is polarized. Throughout the piece, the flute and cello are equal partners as they symmetrically exchange lead and accompaniment, or play together with such sinuous, divergent counterpoint that they seem nearly independent, coincidentally musical. The music is chromatic and cool, swirling over a vaulting range of pitch and, across three movements, a range of nuanced moods. Within the economy of a duet, Villa-Lobos paints an astonishingly vivid canvas. The title comes from a name Villa-Lobos gave to a particular novel technique the flautist must employ in the fast glissandi of the third movement sounding to him like a jet plane.
Antonín Dvorák, 1841-1904String Quintet in G major, Op. 77, c. 1875
Dvorák wrote a vast amount of chamber music: 14 string quartets, 2 piano quintets, 3 string quintets, 4 piano trios, 2 piano quartets, a string sextet, a string trio and numerous incidental pieces. The majority is well featured in the modern performance repertoire for good reason: Dvorák's remarkable consistency of quality and style, the hallmarks of which are endless melody, clear form, master craftsmanship, rhythmic vitality and a poignant expressiveness. Always Dvorák, Dvorák is always fresh. Like other composers for whom chamber music came naturally, Dvorák played the viola.
The String Quintet in G major, op. 77 was written much earlier in his career than its opus number would suggest. It is written in 1875, when Dvorák was 32 years old, originally numbered op 18. It lay, unknown, for over a decade, until Dvo_ák returned to some of his earlier unpublished work to polish and print in order to keep up with the demands of his well established fame. Though it is an early chamber work, it is unmistakably Dvorák.
The string instrument that turns a quartet into a quintet varies with each composer or work; Mozart added a viola, Schubert, a cello. Most string quintets feature one or the other. In this case, Dvorák chose the double bass, selecting an infrequent guest in the chamber ensemble but thereby matching the full palette of the symphony orchestra. The breadth and range of sound is notable in this lush quintet in at least three ways: the surprisingly deep baselines, the liberation of the cello, and the sheer fullness of sound. With Dvorák skill, what borders on the edge of a chamber orchestra maintains a rich chamber texture throughout.
The first movement is an energetic (con fuoco or with fire) sonata with crystal clear themes and a powerful development. The second movement comes closest to Dvorák's later style characterized by lively folk dance and his ability to expand the scherzo form with cogent variety. The third movement slows into a lyrical song, tinged with a blend of melancholy and nobility that earned Dvorák comparisons with Schubert. The finale restores the drive and drama of the earlier movements with yet more winning melodies, the fullest textures and the most prominent parts for the mighty groundswell of the bass.
Kai Christiansen is a musicologist and a frequent writer and lecturer on chamber music.
© Kai Christiansen. All rights reserved.