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Ralph Evans,
violin
Efim Boico,
violin
Chauncey
Patterson, viola
Wolfgang Laufer,
violoncello
Founded in Chicago in 1946, the Fine Arts Quartet had actually begun working together as early as 1939 while playing in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The Quartet's first performance took place in 1940, at which time military service in World War II intervened. It was not until 1946 that the Quartet began to rehearse and perform regularly, in particular on the ABC Radio Network's Sunday morning broadcasts from 1946 until 1954. The Quartet's first teaching residency, 1951-1954, was at Northwestern University. In 1963, the Quartet was invited to become Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and has been resident there ever since. Three of the Quartet's current artists, Ralph Evans, Efim Boico, and Wolfgang Laufer, have now been performing together for 25 years. Chauncey Patterson has joined them as interim violist, replacing Yuri Gandelsman who recently retired from the Quartet. The Fine Arts Quartet's complete Schumann Quartets CD on Naxos was selected for the 50th Grammy Awards Entry List (2008) in two categories: "Best Classical Album" and "Best Chamber Music Performance." In addition, the Quartet's recordings of the complete Mozart String Quintets, released by Lyrinx in SACD format, were selected for the 2003 Grammy Entry List and designated a "Critic's Choice 2003" by the American Record Guide. Special recognition was given for the Quartet's commitment to contemporary music: a 2003-2004 national CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, given jointly by Chamber Music America and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. For more information on the Quartet, visit http://www.fineartsquartet.org. The Fine Arts Quartet has previously appeared under the auspices of Chamber Music Columbus on February 6, 1965; January 15, 1972; and January 25, 1986.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Quartet in A major, op. 18, no. 5 (composed 1798-1800)
Allegro
Menuetto
Andante cantabile con Variazioni
Allegro
Though most of his published output until the year 1798 was chamber
music, Ludwig van Beethoven had conspicuously avoided the string quartet,
intimidated as he was by the examples of Haydn and Mozart. He had
studied the works of both of the older masters carefully, going so far as to
copy out certain movements in their entirety. He had met and perhaps
even taken a few lessons from Mozart in 1787 and he was a student of Haydn
for about a year during 1792 and 1793. Yet when the same Count Apponyi
to whom Hadyn had dedicated his Quartets, opp. 71 and 74
commissioned a quartet from Beethoven in 1795, he declined, feeling still
unequal to the challenge.
Praise for his early publications (the Piano Trios, op. 1; a number
of piano sonatas, including the not-too-shabby “Pathétique” op. 13;
and his first two piano concertos) boosted Beethoven’s confidence. He
began to sketch out his works in bound volumes of music paper rather than on
the random sheets he had previously used, reflecting a new sense of himself
as a serious composer. By 1800, he had completed his most ambitious
project to date, his six String Quartets, op. 18, dedicated to
Prince Josef Franz von Lobkowitz, who maintained a quartet in his Vienna
home.
Scholars disagree on the actual order in which the six quartets were
written, although the consensus on the Quartet in A major, op. 18, no. 5,
generally places it fourth, among the three later and more innovate
compositions rather than the three earlier and more conventional ones.
An upbeat first theme in the Allegro is followed by a somewhat more
earnest one, and a development without much in the way of development.
The minuet takes a sudden turn from A major into C sharp minor in its second
half; then the trio section features rhythmic eccentricities. The
Andante cantabile con Variazioni has a fairly simple slow theme in D
major with five variations. In the first variation, each instrument
enters in turn; the second highlights triplets in the first violin; in the
third, the two violins share accompanying roles while the tune sounds in the
viola and cello. The fourth variation is an exquisitely harmonized
version of the theme; the fifth returns to the business of the earlier
variations; and the long coda functions as almost another variant. The
Allegro finale brims with counterpoint.
Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975)
Echoes (composed 1965)
Prelude;
Valse lente;
Elegy;
Scherzo;
Nocturne;
Habañera;
Scherzo macabre;
Pastorale;
Allegro;
Epilogue
If you know the name Bernard Herrmann at all, you know that he wrote some
of the film world’s greatest and most influential movie scores. You
would be forgiven, however, for not knowing that he also wrote an opera
based on Wuthering Heights, a cantata based on Moby Dick, two musicals for
television, a symphony, and more than a half dozen works for various chamber
groups, most of them forgotten.
Born the son of Jewish immigrants in New York in 1911, Herrmann took up
violin as a child and began studying composition and conducting at New York
University while still in high school. He would eventually study there
in 1932-1933 with Percy Grainger, whose eclecticism gave Herrmann a real
sense of the range of possibilities open to him. At the same time, he
was working as an arranger and editor at the Harms music publishing house.
In 1933, he and fellow Harms orchestrator Hans Spialek formed the New
Chamber Orchestra. In addition to Herrmann’s own works, the ensemble
also championed those of Charles Ives, and the two became close friends.
In 1934, Herrmann became a conductor and arranger at the CBS Radio network,
where he worked for seventeen years. This brought him into contact
with Orson Welles, with whom he worked on The Mercury Theatre on the Air,
including the renowned October 30, 1938, War of the Worlds
broadcast. Welles and Herrmann worked together on Citizen Kane
(1941), which was the first of nearly fifty films Herrmann would score.
Probably his best known collaboration was with Alfred Hitchcock on no fewer
than nine films, including Psycho in 1960. Herrmann’s final
film score was Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Herrmann had
flown to Los Angeles on December 20, 1975, to record the score on December
22 and 23. He died in his sleep in his hotel room on December 24.
Strangely enough, Herrmann won only one Oscar, for the 1941 All That
Money Can Buy, actually beating out his own work on Citizen Kane.
Contrary to the practice of most film composers of his time, Herrmann
orchestrated his own scores and did so in often idiosyncratic and innovative
ways. He usually favored short and often repeated phrases and patterns
rather than long melodies.
Echoes, for string quartet, dates from 1965 after Herrmann’s
divorce from his first wife, the writer Lucille Fletcher, best known for the
play and subsequent screenplay Sorry, Wrong Number. Steven C.
Smith, in his A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of
Bernard Herrmann, speculates that the title Echoes is a
private reference to something Herrmann wrote to Fletcher at the time of
their separation: “More and more I feel that perhaps I am not
possessed of any real great talent. It is perhaps an echo of a talent
– that is why I can conduct and do all kinds of musical activities – they
are all echoes – never the real voice.” The one-movement work is in
ten sections of a mostly somber character, and is dedicated to Nancy
Sanderson, a friend who had endured a similarly difficult separation around
the same time. It received its premiere performance in London on
December 2, 1966. In 1971, the score served as the music for the
ballet Ante Room by Geoffrey Cauley for the Royal Ballet.
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Quartet in A minor, op. 41, no. 1 (composed 1842)
Introduzione: Andante espressivo;
Allegro
Scherzo: Presto; Intermezzo
Adagio
Presto
In February 1842, Clara and Robert Schumann launched a tour of Bremen,
Oldenburg, and Hamburg. Clara had been invited to play piano and
Robert, having begged off conducting his own works on this trip, grew
increasingly uncomfortable being shunted to the background. So instead
of continuing on to Copenhagen with his wife, Robert went home alone to
Leipzig in mid-March to nurse his depression with the odd combination of
alcohol and counterpoint.
Back in February before the tour, Robert had reported having “quartet-ish
thoughts.” Now he plunged headlong into extensive study of Mozart,
Beethoven, and Haydn quartets. On April 26th, Clara returned from the tour
and Robert’s mood improved considerably. By early June, he had moved
from quartet study to quartet writing and within five weeks, he had created
all three of his extant string quartets, dedicated to his friend Felix
Mendelssohn. Schumann’s Quartet in A minor, op. 41, no. 1 was
begun on June 4, 1842, and was likely the last of the three to be completed.
It was first performed for Clara’s 23rd birthday on September 13, but did
not receive its official public premiere until January 8, 1843, in Leipzig.
Though Schumann continued to churn out chamber works through January of 1843
before shifting his attention to choral music, all the remaining pieces
(including the Quintet, op. 44; the Fantasiestücke, op. 88;
and the Quartet, op. 47) featured his own instrument, the piano.
Many scholars argue that even the three string quartets betray Schumann’s
preoccupation (and comfort) with the piano in how he constructs and
embellishes themes.
Marked Andante espressivo, the slow introduction reflects
Schumann’s immersion in counterpoint earlier in 1842 as he prepared to take
on the string quartet medium. Then the first violin sounds the main
theme of the Allegro; a closely related second theme follows.
Placing the Scherzo second, Schumann offers an A minor Presto
and a C major trio section dubbed Intermezzo in a quick duple time
rather than the more common triple time. Schumann the songwriter
enters with the third movement Adagio, the main theme of which
recalls the Adagio of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, as many
listeners have noted. The Presto finale has only one real
theme, returning to A minor, a fugal development section, an A major section
marked Moderato, and a coda.
--
Program notes by Jay Weitz, Senior Consulting Database Specialist for music,
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio.
He is a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly
alternative newspaper Columbus Alive
(http://www.columbusalive.com).