Two More World Premieres in Harrisburg This Week

Earlier this year, there were two world premieres in Harrisburg within a two week period with Philip Glass’ Violin Sonata premiered at Market Square Concerts on February 28th and then Shulamit Ran’s “Lyre of Orpheus” on March 14th as part of Concertante’s on-going commissioning project called “1 + 5.”

This week there are two more world premieres in Harrisburg.

Tonight, Kevin Puts’ Arcana will be given its premiere at Concertante’s last concert of their Harrisburg season. This is another in their “1 + 5” series and will feature cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach with her colleagues. Those who attended Concertante’s preview last night at Harrisburg’s newly renovated Midtown Arts Center “Stage on Herr” (just before the mayoral debate) had a chance to hear the composer describe how the piece came about and what was going on with a few excerpts the musicians teased us with.

Along with Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) and a Beethoven string trio, you can hear Arcana (which the composer pronounces Arcāna) tonight at 8:00 at the Rose Lehrman Arts Center of the Harrisburg Area Community College. I’ll be doing the pre-concert talk beginning at 7:15 and composer Kevin Puts and cellist Alexis Gerlach are planning on joining us to talk about the music, how it came about and what it’s like bringing a new piece to life.

Then this weekend at the Harrisburg Symphony’s final concert of the season, Jeremy Gill’s Symphony No. 1 will finally be getting its first performance. I say “finally” because, as he put it, the ink was dry on it ten years ago and it’s just been a long wait to get someone to perform it.

He describes it as a one-movement work, inspired by the 7th Symphony of Jean Sibelius and the different creative issues and challenges that arise from writing a full-formed symphony in one continuous movement.

He’s now teaching at Temple University in Philadelphia so he’s not far away from his hometown of Harrisburg. People who attended Market Square Concerts’ January program with pianist Matthew Bengtson playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations also had a chance to hear more recent works including a new work by Jeremy Gill written to honor Elliott Carter as he approached his 100th birthday called “Eliot Fragments” (the Eliot in this case being the poet T. S. Eliot whose lines inspired these very brief pieces). On that occasion, pianist and composer talked to several groups of students as part of Market Square Concerts Soundscape series.

I hope to catch up with Jeremy this afternoon when he talks to the students at Capital Area School for the Arts before heading over to the Forum to hear Stuart Malina rehearse the orchestra in his Symphony.

The concerts are Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm at the Forum. An hour before each performance, Stuart Malina and Jeremy Gill will be talking about the new piece during the pre-concert talk.

The Harrisburg Symphony concert is called “Fate & Fantasy” which applies very well to Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony with its fanfare-like fate motive that pervades the piece and to Pablo de Sarasate’s Fantasy on themes from Bizet’s Carmen which has its own fate motive. Concertmaster Odin Rathnam will be the soloist in the Carmen Fantasy and in Beethoven’s Romance in F.

But “Fate & Fantasy” may also apply to a composer writing a symphony today who fantasizes about getting it performed if it wasn’t written on a specific commission in the first place and then is often fated to waiting a long time till he gets a chance to hear it other than in his head.

Soon I’ll be back to tell you about Market Square Concerts’ SummerMusic 2009 which will take place at Market Square Church and the Glen Allen Mill in July – plus look at some of the details of the up-coming new season 2009-2010 which will include a performance by the Cypress Quartet and composer Jennifer Higdon who'll be here with them for that January 2010 concert.

Many of you may remember Ms. Higdon's Percussion Concerto which the Harrisburg Symphony played in March 2008. They'll be playing 'SkyLine' from her CityScape in January 2010. And composer Kevin Puts will be on the Harrisburg Symphony's April concert when they perform his Symphony No. 2, Island of Innocence.

- Dr. Dick

What do you do when you're in Rome?

If you're composer Lisa Bielawa, you'll be writing a new composition, whatever other Romans may be doing.

In 1884, Claude Debussy won the Prix de Rome, one of the most important and influential honors to be granted to young French artists. Before him, Hector Berlioz won the prize in 1830, where he put the finishing touches on a little something called his Symphonie fantastique.

Rome was always a destination for creative artists, whether it was painters, writers or musicians. In fact, in 1905, the United States got into the act, establishing our own version of The Rome Prize at the American Academy of Rome.

And it was announced today that Lisa Bielawa has received this year’s Rome Prize in Musical Composition. And she will be writing a new piece that has been commissioned by – drum roll, please – Market Square Concerts of Harrisburg PA which will be premiered at the February concert of the 2009-2010 season.

Here’s the official press release which you can also read here, and also find out about three premieres she has coming up in the next few weeks along with a new CD coming out in May!

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April 16, 2009—New York, NY—The American Academy in Rome announced today that Lisa Bielawa is a recipient of the 2009 Rome Prize in Musical Composition. Established in 1894 and chartered by an Act of Congress in 1905, the American Academy in Rome is a center that sustains independent artistic pursuits and humanistic studies. Annual Rome Prize fellowship winners are selected through a national competition, and travel to Rome to refine and expand their own professional, artistic, or scholarly aptitudes. The Academy's Rome Prize winners are at the center of a multi-disciplinary environment, where artists and scholars are encouraged to work collegially within and across disciplines.

This September, Ms. Bielawa will join 14 other artists (working in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Design, Historic Preservation and Conservation, Literature, Musical Composition, or Visual Arts) as well as 15 scholars (working in Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and early Modern, or Modern Italian Studies) for a year-long fellowship at the Academy, located on the Janiculum, Rome's highest hill. While there Ms. Bielawa will compose an extended work for the Brooklyn Rider string quartet and herself as vocalist. The piece, which has been commissioned by Market Square Concerts in Harrisburg, PA, will be modular, performable at different lengths and in different venues and contexts, with or without vocal sections.

Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa was born in San Francisco into a musical family. She played the violin and piano, sang, and wrote music from early childhood. Ms. Bielawa moved to New York two weeks after receiving her B.A. in Literature in 1990 from Yale University, and became an active participant in New York musical life. She began touring with the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1992, and in 1997 co-founded the MATA Festival, which celebrates the work of young composers. Ms. Bielawa takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. The New York Times describes her music as, "ruminative, pointillistic and harmonically slightly tart," and Time Out New York praised her "prodigious gift for mingling persuasive melodicism with organic experimentation."
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Join us in February 20th, 2010, for another world premiere with Market Square Concerts and hear Lisa Bielawa’s brand new (and as yet unwritten) work which she and the Brooklyn Rider will perform at Market Square Church along with Philip Glass’s 5th String Quartet, Schubert’s “Death & the Maiden” Quartet as well as works by members of the Silk Road Ensemble.

I'll be telling you more about this concert and the up-coming season in future posts - not to forget SummerMusic 2009 this July as chamber music returns to the Mill - so just because the season is "ended" with the Guarneri Quartet doesn't mean there's nothing going on here till the Fall...

- Dr. Dick

Lucy Miller Murray's Big Day

“If I knew then what I know now, I probably never would have said ‘yes’...”

A couple of years ago, when I talked to Lucy Miller about getting Market Square Concerts started 25 years earlier, she figured it would just be a few concerts at the church (hence the name), she'd put up a few signs and – the classical music version of “Field of Dreams” - the audience would just show up.

Fortunately for us, she didn’t, she did - and they did, too.

Lots of hard work and perseverance, a book-worth of program notes and thousands of page turns later, she made up her mind it was time to retire. But the problem was finding someone willing (or naive enough) to take on the concert series so it would survive. Fortunately, Ellen Hughes said “yes” as well, and Lucy stepped down after founding Market Square Concerts 27 years ago, having turned an idea for presenting local concerts of chamber music into a nationally recognized treasure with world-class artists making regular appearances in Harrisburg.

The current season was the last one she had planned, including the world premiere of the Violin Sonata by Philip Glass and ending with another Farewell, a performance by the Guarneri Quartet during their Farewell Tour, one of the last performances they will give.

And so it seemed appropriate to have a celebration for her at a special dinner following the concert.

You can read about the concert and some of those unexpected things that can happen at a live performance in an earlier post, here.

At the start of that concert, Ellen and Market Square Concerts Board President James Cowden presented Lucy with a Proclamation from the Office of Harrisburg’s Mayer, Stephen R. Reed.

(The text is added below; see photos: (1) top, Lucy addressed the crowd after the concert, wearing an Egyptian ring that sparkled before she spoke; (2) at right, James Cowden joining Lucy & Martin Murray.)

After the concert, a special dinner and tribute for her was held across the Square at the Hilton. David McCorkle took even more photographs, some more of which I’ve posted here:

(3) Long-time friends and Market Square Concerts supporters listen to Lucy's remarks.

(4) Pianist Peter Orth, who gave the very first recital with Market Square Concerts and returned frequently, performing again in the 20th and 25th Anniversary seasons, sent Lucy a bouquet of 27 white tulips, one for each year.

(5) Lucy Martin Murray holding the Mayor's Proclamation, standing with her husband Martin in Market Square Church.

(6) The Guarneri Quartet’s violist, Michael Tree, with Lois Lehrman Grass.

(7) The Guarneri Quartet’s 1st Violinist, Arnold Steinhardt, with Marion Alexander, Tom Pheasant & Lucy.

Here is the text of Mayor Reed's Proclamation, saluting Lucy Miller Murray after her 27 years of involvement with Market Square Concerts:

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Office of the Mayor
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Proclamation

Whereas,
Amongst the most well-respected and loved local musicians and leaders is the inimitable Lucy Miller Murray, the founder and director of the Market Square Concerts series, who is today lauded as she retires after twenty-seven years of dedicated service to that organization; and

Whereas,
Lucy Miller Murray has received both national and international acclaim for the Market Square Concerts organization and under her leadership, the Market Square Concerts series has been recognized throughout the United States and the world as an innovative and successful phenomenon in the world of chamber music; and

Whereas,
Though she’s been helped by a dedicated Board of Directors, Lucy Miller Murray has achieved much of her success single-handedly, having concerts held throughout the Greater Harrisburg Region for the past twenty-seven years and having put the City of Harrisburg on the “chamber music map”; and

Whereas,
Appropriately and accordingly, Lucy Miller Murray is herein lauded as her retirement is celebrated on this day with a fantastic and memorable dinner at the Harrisburg Hilton; now, therefore be it hereby designated and

Proclaimed
That Sunday, April 5, 2009, be declared

LUCY MILLER MURRAY DAY

In and for the citizens of the City of Harrisburg, Capital of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, with all citizens urged to recognize and appreciated the important contributions that have been made to the City of Harrisburg and the surrounding region by this dedicated woman.

Set Under My Hand and Seal This
Eighteenth Day of February, Annum
Two-Thousand and Nine

Mayor Stephen R. Reed
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Ellen meanwhile has been very busy not just making sure everything ran smoothly this season but getting next season ready to go - and I'll be telling you more about the new 2009-2010 Season shortly. There will also be up-coming posts about SummerMusic 2009 with the return to the Mill in July by the Fry Street String Quartet, Stuart Malina, Odin Rathnam and Gerard Reuter.

And here's to Ellen Hughes, the Director of Market Square Concerts, and the next fifty years!

- Dr. Dick

The Guarneri Quartet, Indivisible

Sunday afternoon’s performance at Market Square Church by the Guarneri Quartet, one of their final performances on their grand farewell tour and the conclusion of Market Square Concerts' current season, proved the difference between a live concert experience and listening to a recording, perhaps even hearing a recording made at this concert. The unexpected can also add to this experience.

Market Square Church had been packed for its Palm Sunday service and the church was again packed a few hours later to hear the Guarneri Quartet play Haydn, Kodaly and Ravel (not a connection, necessarily: I’m just saying). Looking down from the choir loft, I counted room for maybe 12 more people just before the concert was to begin at 4:00.

A moment later, Ellen Hughes, the current director of Market Square Concerts, walked up to the raised platform where the stands and chairs were set up for the quartet to apologize that there would be a slight delay: many people were still trying to get their tickets and that they’d run out of programs, if anyone would care to donate theirs to the cause.

This was also the last concert planned by the founding director of Market Square Concerts, Lucy Miller Murray, “retiring” (if that is conceivable) after 27 years of being the Patron Saint of Chamber Music in the Harrisburg Area. And so it was appropriate to begin by having James Cowden, President of the Board, read the proclamation from the Mayor’s Office that April 5th, 2009, was “Lucy Miller Murray Day” in honor of her dedication to the arts in our community and especially to her 27 years with Market Square Concerts. And so the concert began with a standing ovation and the sense that, in many ways, this too was an Event.

Ellen then announced that there would be a further delay because, as it happened, the quartet’s second violinist, John Dalley, was delayed in traffic due to a tie-up around an accident on the highway and had not yet arrived! 3/4's of the quartet then came out for an impromptu Q&A, a.k.a. soft shoe and tap-dance to wile away the time.

There were jokes made that Dalley had just called them and he was fine, “just leaving Pittsburgh a few minutes ago.” Someone in the audience asked how many players in a string quartet.

Arnold Steinhardt told the touring musician’s nightmare. The quartet had decided early in their career not to travel as a Group of Four. Teaching in Maryland, they frequently flew from Baltimore to Boston and Washington. Rather than buying a ticket in advance, Steinhardt said he would get on Eastern Airlines’ shuttle plane, write a check for the stewardess and all would be well. He handed her the check but she said “This is the wrong amount.” He countered, “No, it’s the right amount for the shuttle to Boston.” She responded, “Yes, it IS the right amount for the shuttle to Boston but this is the shuttle to Washington, D.C.”

And of course, Steinhardt had to be in Boston to join his colleagues for an 8:30 concert.

So the stewardess made some calls and they quickly whisked Steinhardt, hurrying under the belly of the plane and under the bellies of various other planes to reach the Boston shuttle which was now being held for him. He made it, they took off and he arrived in Boston with a half-hour to spare.

And so, in the midst of this conversation with Michael Tree and Peter Wiley joining in, John Dalley appears from the side door at 4:22 to announce the concert has been canceled, we can all go home. (No stuffy group of classical musicians, this!) His colleagues joined him to go “backstage” to get their instruments. And at 4:30, the concert began.

It could not have been planned to open with a Haydn quartet nicknamed “The Rider.” And I’m thinking “how do you get off the road and start playing ten minutes later without warming up?” You would never have known.

Since the church does not have lights you can just flash to announce the end of intermission, the quartet's return to the stage-area led to a scramble for seats. On the downbeat of the Ravel, the church’s chimes rang out the half-hour. It had been assumed the concert would be over by now, if all had gone according to plan. But not much had, so far, and so the quartet immediately stopped, waited for the chimes amidst the laughter, and then began again.

But it occurred to me the chimes would continue to ring at 5:45 and 6:00 and the Ravel was about 30-35 minutes long. So I asked Newman Stare who was sitting with me in the choir-loft – he’s the church’s volunteer sound guy – if there was a way to turn off the chimes. He said he’d go check and disappeared down the steps. Fortunately, he managed to find the head custodian, Jim Quigley, who went into the basement room where he could disable the chimes.

And a good thing, too: looking at my watch, the Ravel ended right at 6:00:12 which meant the final beat of the quartet might also have coincided with the chimes, a fine performance ruined and instead of cheering, everybody would have laughed.

There was a standing ovation – a real one, not just the standard one – cameras flashed (including mine) and there was an encore. It didn’t sound familiar to me, though I recognized a couple of motives that sounded like Late-Beethoven (particularly the C-sharp Minor Quartet) but I knew it wasn’t an excerpt. Mendelssohn had composed his Op. 13 quartet when he was 18, inspired by the Late-Beethoven Quartets (then new), so I assumed it was the slow movement – gorgeously played – from that.

But no. Michael Tree told me backstage it was Mozart – Mozart!?! – from his Quartet in F Major, K.168, written when he was 17, some 50 years before Beethoven's quartet...

Autographs were signed – someone brought Steinhardt's “Indivisible by Four” to have the author sign it – and I met some students from Susquehanna University (my old alma mater), string players who had come down from Selinsgrove to hear the concert and take part in this Event.

The first time I heard the quartet live was in the early-70s (they had been together maybe 8 or 9 years then). The first time one of these students had heard them was 2 years ago and now they heard them after they’d been playing together for 45 years (Peter Wiley, the New Guy, had joined them in 2001, replacing his teacher, David Soyer, the original cellist, and the only personnel change in that long history).

The magic – all the extraneous experiences aside – was still in the playing. As often as they may have played these pieces (the Kodaly was on their latest recording), everything still sounded as fresh and exciting as if they had come to it just recently and wanted to give us their sense of enthusiasm for this music. But there is an intangible quality to quartet playing that you cannot learn or teach. Rather than sounding like four fine musicians who get together to play great music, they sound like a single organism and, for us, well worth the wait for 1/4 of it to arrive.

- Dr. Dick
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Photos: Top - Guarneri Quartet publicity photo w/John Dalley, Michael Tree, Arnold Steinhardt and Peter Wiley.
2nd - Martin & Lucy Miller Murray with the official Proclamation from the Office of Harrisburg Mayor Stephen Reed (photograph by David McCorkle)
3rd - 3/4's of the Guarneri Quartet - Arnold Steinhardt, Michael Tree & Peter Wiley - with Ellen Hughes (photograph by David McCorkle)
4th - Ellen Hughes backstage after the concert with the complete quartet: in score order, Arnold Steinhardt, John Dalley, Michael Tree and Peter Wiley (photograph by Dick Strawser)
5th - the Guarneri Quartet taking a bow after the Ravel (photograph by Dick Strawser)
6th - Michael Tree & Arnold Steinhardt signing autographs with members of the audience and Martin Murray (Steinhardt is holding a copy of his book Indivisible by Four) (photograph by Dick Strawser)
7th - Four from Susquehanna University (photograph by Dick Strawser)
8th - a publicity photo from Arnold Steinhardt's website with Michael Tree, original cellist David Soyer, John Dalley and Arnold Steinhardt
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The Guarneri Quartet's appearance with Market Square Concerts was sponsored by Pennsylvania Retina Specialists
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please note: this was not intended to be a review and the opinions expressed are those of the writer.

This Weekend's Music

While the Guarneri Quartet is wrapping up their Farewell Tour -- their performance this Sunday at 4pm at the Market Square Presbyterian Church will be one of their last concerts anywhere -- Sunday is also, according to Harrisburg Mayor Stephen Reed's proclamation, "Lucy Miller Murray Day," celebrating her contribution to the musical life of Central Pennsylvania.

Not only did she start Market Square Concerts 27 years ago and been running it up until this season, having passed the baton to Ellen Hughes, now, Lucy has also turned pages for numerous pianists and written extensive program notes for the series. Though she's never been able to parlay her page-turning expertise into a second career, she has taken her extensive collection of program notes and compiled them into a marvelous book called Adams to Zemlinsky: A Friendly Guide to Chamber Music which you can order here.

Here are her notes for this weekend's concert:

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 74, No. 3 “The Rider”

Haydn’s voluminous output alone does not explain his powerful musical and cultural influence. His 83 string quartets, though daunting in number, are also overwhelming in their stylistic breadth and ingenuity. They move across the boundaries of the Baroque and the Classical and, as suggested by the Op. 74 quartets, even suggest the dawn of Romanticism.

The move to a freer, more emotional expression was occasioned by the end of Haydn’s 29-year tenure as Kappelmeister in the court of the Hungarian aristocrat, Prince Paul Anton Esterházy. That, coupled with two highly successful visits to London, gave Haydn a wider musical exposure. For the first time he heard music played in public halls by professional musicians for a general public. This more democratic approach to music freed him from the decorative style demanded by the aristocratic amateur players and audiences. Prior to this, however, Haydn’s music had already taken on new emotional depths as a result of a philosophical influence that stressed the importance of faith and the senses as opposed to the logic and reason of the Enlightenment.

Shortly after returning from his first visit to London, Haydn was invited to compose a set of string quartets for his friend Count Anton Apponyi, a relative of the Esterházys. The invitation resulted in the three quartets of Op. 71 and the three of Op. 74, appropriately called the “Apponyi Quartets.” They were composed in the summer of 1793 in time for a triumphant return to London where they were received with great acclaim. With their more exaggerated emotional content marked by sharp harmonic contrasts, easily identifiable melodies, brilliant part writing, and faster tempos, here was music the public grasped.

In Op. 74, No. 3, we are called to attention by the opening three chords followed by a dramatic silence, a motto Haydn uses again and again in more than an introductory way. The first and the last movements with their rocking rhythms give the quartet its nickname, “Rider,” but the exquisite Largo assai is the soul of the work with its modulations from major to minor and its elaborate use of scales and arpeggios. Spiritual and noble, the slow movement is a monument of string quartet writing. The following Menuetto wears its crown lightly but still reveals Haydn as a master of counterpoint. Then we are thrust into the powerful Finale and take a wild gallop to the end.

(While 2009 marks the 200th Anniversary of the death of Franz Josef Haydn, today - March 31st - is the 277th Anniversary of the birth of the composer known not only as the Father of the Symphony but also the Father of the String Quartet -- Dr. Dick.)

Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967)
String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10

In his The Literarture of Chamber Music, Arthur Cohn makes a telling statement about Zoltán Kodály: No more fastidious composer exists in the field of 20th century music. Kodály’s musical glossary furnishes one of the best illustrations of authentic, national musical language. He has no intellectual artificialities; the music pours out in free style yet is as balanced as the most precise phrase that Mozart fashioned. It is a tamed music but roams freely on the tether of subtle Hungarian accent. Kodály is the Schubert of Hungarian music as Bartók is its Beethoven.

Kodály spent most of his life in his birthplace, Budapest, where he studied at both the University of Budapest and the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. The exception to this were his years in Paris where he studied with Charles Widor and was influenced by the music of Debussy. He returned to Budapest in 1907 to teach at the Academy of Music and to champion the cause of Hungarian music. Around this time he also befriended Bélá Bartók, and the two began their life-long study of Hungarian folk music. Like Bartók, however, Kodály was no simple imitator of folk melodies. In a 1955 speech, his telling comment on this subject was: “The music of the people…can be lifted out from beneath the rubbish heaped on top of it, and a higher art can be built upon it.”

Kodály’s “higher art” is readily evident in his String Quartet No. 2 composed in 1917. That war-ridden time might also explain the work’s prevailing darkness. In a 1946 lecture, Kodály himself commented, “There is no better stimulus for artistic work than suffering.” Indeed, Kodály suffered through both World War I and World War II in his native Hungary without losing his inspiration for composing or for the championing of Hungarian music. Referring to his own work in another lecture, he stated: “Some day the ringing tower of Hungarian music is going to stand. And if in its pedestal some of these stones will be lying and the rest destroyed, I shall regard without concern the night of my deep grave.” When he died in Budapest in 1967, he was one the most respected figures in Hungarian music and remains so today.

Together with its darkness, the first movement of the String Quartet No. 2 reflects modernity. We hear 20th century harmony yet, almost mysteriously, Kodály retains a certain lyricism. So, too, do we hear the influence of Debussy with even hints of bird song. Comparison, however, should not detract from its sheer originality.

In the second movement, Kodály takes a stronger stance with startling solos for violin, forceful cello statements, and dramatic pauses for all. Sonority is fully explored from the highest to the lowest ranges. The suggestion of a folk dance lightens things at the end but not at expense of dramatic effectiveness.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Quartet in F Major

“Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second,” said Ravel. That statement aside, his sole string quartet is elegantly crafted in Classical sonata form reminiscent of Mozart. Superimposed on that form are the gorgeous tonal colors and effects we associate with this twentieth century French master with an interest in music of the Far East.

The first movement opens with a rich melody shared by the four instruments and then handed to the first violin over rapid figures by the second violin and viola. An exciting tonal effect occurs when the violin and viola play two octaves apart. In the second movement, Ravel’s love of the exotic reveals itself in the suggestion of a Javanese gamelan orchestra. The rhapsodic third movement includes a reference to the opening melody, thus preserving form but always in lustrous and ever-changing colors. Stemming from a five-beat meter, the restlessness of the last movement is ended by a return to the first movement theme. Structure is not all, however, since the ravishing melodies and tonal colors remind us that this work is, indeed, emotional first and intellectual second.

Written in 1902-03 when Ravel was still a student at the Paris Conservatoire, the work is dedicated to his mentor Fauré who took issue with the last movement. Debussy, on the other hand, said to his younger colleague, “In the name of God, I implore you not to change a note of your quartet.” This encouragement is interesting in light of the endless comparisons that would be made between the Debussy and Ravel quartets, a comparison that led to a frosty relationship between the two composers. Ravel would comment, “It’s probably better for us, after all, to be on frigid terms for illogical reasons.” Yet the coupling of the two quartets on recordings continues to this day.

Ravel’s Quartet was premiered in Paris on March 5, 1904. That the Guarneri Quartet ends its 45-year career with performances of this work, as well as the two preceding it, confirms a great heritage.

©2009 Lucy Miller Murray

Lucy Miller Murray is founder of Market Square Concerts in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and served as director from 1982 to 2009. Her book, Adams to Zemlinsky: A Friendly Guide to Chamber Music, was published by Concert Artists Guild of New York and is available at amazon.com. A second edition is forthcoming.

The Guarneri Quartet: Getting Started

Hard to believe this weekend will be the last concert of the season for Market Square Concerts.

Harder to believe is it's the last opportunity for Harrisburg audiences to hear one of the legendary string quartets of our time. The Guarneri Quartet will be performing at 4pm Sunday afternoon at Market Square Church in what will be one of their last performances. The end of the 2008-2009 Season marks their retirement after 45 years of playing before the public.

My previous post looked at the "life cycle" of a string quartet. This one looks at how the Guarneri Quartet itself got started. There'll be another post soon about the music on the program: Haydn's "Rider" Quartet, Dohnanyi's 2nd Quartet (from their latest recording) and Ravel's Quartet.

Incidentally, you can read Guarneri violinist Arnold Steinhardt's blog, Fiddler's Beat, at his website (just follow the link at the bottom of the home-page).

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Some string quartets slowly come into existence, evolving out of a bunch of friends hanging out together who started playing through stuff and then decided to branch out beyond that weekend’s reading session or wedding gig.

Other quartets are brought into being by a higher power – usually a teacher or mentor – who points at them and says “You – form a quartet and play this program.”

Careers may begin with a big bang or, more likely, take years of hard work and promotion before they start receiving recognition, a long process during which more quartets will just give up trying.

Along the way, there might be some good reviews, a competition, acceptance by a high-powered agent, maybe even a lucky break with a big-name endorsement. Maybe a quartet or two got their big Carnegie Hall debut concerts by sitting around a mid-town Manhattan soda fountain the way Hollywood starlets got movie contracts in years gone by, but I wouldn’t suggest making it part of the plan.

In 1964, three violinists in their late-20s who’d all been students together at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute for Music – Arnold Steinhardt, John Dalley and Michael Tree – went to the Marlboro Music Festival. Like a roster of available participants, each musician played chamber music with different combinations of instruments and players.

Tree was interested in playing the viola and sometimes played violin, sometimes the viola, worried about the changes one needed to make physically, musically and temperamentally when switching between instruments on the same program. With his friends, he played quartets with a borrowed viola. Joined by cellist David Soyer, a few years their senior, they filled out the Mendelssohn Octet for the Budapest Quartet, one of the greatest quartets of all times, who was mentoring the festival along with the likes of pianist Rulolph Serkin and other famous musicians.

It was cellist Mischa Schneider (who’d been in the Budapest Quartet for 34 years then) who was first impressed by their interpretation. It seems these four young players came into the first rehearsal fully formed with their own interpretation, not like four players put together who would need to be taught and molded into the overall plan. It was 2nd Violinist Alexander Schneider (who even after his years in the quartet went on to mentor young string players until his death in 1998) who said they should form their own quartet.

So they did.

They took their name from the family of violin makers in Cremona, Italy, in the 17th and 18th Centuries, the Guarneri Family. By then, cellist David Soyer owned a cello made by Andrea Guarneri. But Michael Tree, who chose to play viola, didn’t even own a viola at the time and had to borrow instruments for the first few years.

(There’s a rumor going around that the three violinists had decided who would play viola by a coin-toss, which Tree says was absolutely not true: he was exploring playing the viola and was all too happy to become the group’s violist.)

In the next few seasons, with the endorsement by the Budapest Quartet, the newly-minted Guarneri Quartet – who also learned aspects of moderation and even temperament from their mentors which they also applied to the non-musical aspects of their relationship – performed at the Spoleto Festival, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and made some recordings for RCA.

Unlike most young quartets (both in terms of the quartet’s newness, their collective youth as well as their individual experience), the Guarneri had managed to soften the rough edges usually associated with newness. They sounded like an already mature ensemble.

The producer of their recordings urged pianist Artur Rubinstein, one of the greatest pianists of all time and then “pushing” 80, to listen to the Guarneri’s recording. He was more than impressed: he wanted to record with them.
So one day they got together and played through the Brahms Quintet, perhaps the most famous of all works for piano and string quartet. Rubinstein was almost 80, the quartet members ranged from 29 to 43. And yet it was a perfect match. They recorded it shortly afterward. At the end of that session, Rubinstein said he wanted to do the Schumann Quintet with them, too, so they read through that and recorded it the next day.

One could say “the rest is history.”
In addition to two recordings of the Complete Beethoven Quartets and the Mozart “Haydn” Quartets (both for RCA and for Philips), the complete Brahms String Quartets, String Quintets, plus the Piano Quartets and the Piano Quintet, the major Schubert Quartets and the String Quintet, plus the quartets of Schumann and Bartok along with the single quartets of Debussy and Ravel, there are recordings of the complete quartets of Arriaga (a Spanish composer who died before he was 20) and Leoš Janáček as well as quartets by Sibelius, Grieg and Verdi that are not often heard or recorded. You can find out more about some of their recordings available on-line here.

Their latest recording, released in February 2009 to coincide with their Farewell Tour, is SONY’s “Hungarian Album” which features three quartets including two by Ernő Dohnányi (his String Quartet No. 2 in D-flat Major, Op. 15 and String Quartet No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 33) plus Zoltán Kodály's String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10. The Kodaly is on the program this weekend with Market Square Concerts, along with Haydn’s “Rider” Quartet and Ravel’s Quartet.

Violinist Arnold Steinhardt, incidentally, has some recordings that are made available at his website’s quartet page: these are recordings you can download from some of their LPs which have never been transferred to CD before! You can sample them or purchase them. Enjoy!

- Dr. Dick
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Photo information: Top - Guarneri Quartet in 1965, the year after their founding (photo by Helen Wright).
2nd - The Guarneri Quartet in Munich in 1969 (photo by Irving Fisher)
3rd - recording with Artur Rubinstein from a 1971 recording session (photo by Dorothea von Haeften)
4th - the quartet in a cross-over pose (found at Arnold Steinhardt's website, presumably 1969 by Irving Fisher)

The Life Cycle of a String Quartet

One of the great quartets in the world of chamber music is drawing the curtain closed at the end of this season. The Guarneri Quartet has been playing for 45 years and the four members of the quartet decided that 2008-2009 will be their last season together. They’ll be performing one of their last concerts (ever) this Sunday afternoon at 4pm at Market Square Church in downtown Harrisburg. (This is my first post about the concert: there will be others, so check back.)

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The Life Cycle of the String Quartet

Locating them in their natural habitat may not be difficult, but there is no one field guide that I know of which will help you identify a string quartet just by listening to them, nor give you particulars of their range, identifying characteristics nor even any information about their life cycle.

First of all, how does a string quartet’s life begin?

Very often, friends will get together to play, perhaps as students, decide the chemistry works well, find themselves a name and, if they decide to pursue something beyond the local scene, an agent. Having a cool name helps, have good chemistry is essential – and the agent, a necessity.

Giving concerts puts them before the public and with any luck some influential critics. Winning a few competitions doesn’t hurt. In fact, today it too is almost a necessity.

Eventually, the quartet will be performing in better and bigger halls in larger and more important cities and, with any luck, drawing in some money to make worthwhile all the time spent practicing and rehearsing and performing, working the repertoire into shape for either the discerning public or the competition judges and dealing with internal issues ranging from interpretation to the conflicts that inevitably arise when four different people – possibly with four different personalities and temperaments – spend so much time together, like any other deeply committed relationship.

Lucky ones get to make recordings. Luckier ones get to keep theirs active in the catalogue (neither is so easy today).

The more famous a quartet becomes, the busier it gets, the more demands it creates on its own inner workings but also in the life-outside-the-ensemble of each component member. One quartet player described working with his colleagues as being “like a second marriage.” It is difficult to be on the road when the spouse is left home and the children are growing up. Fortunately today, while tours may be more numerous, they do not require the travel time they once took, chewing up great chunks of the calendar year. And now there are cell-phones and e-mail to help them stay connected with the roots at home.

There are probably no statistics kept anywhere that would indicate how many quartets are born to compare that to how many quartets, for instance, are performing in any one season. But the names of only a few of them will reach the Top Shelf.

How quartets die, metaphorically speaking, is easier to explain. Many simply disband at an early age, whether for lack of success if not failure, or because the chemistry sours, reality bites or individual career paths change as the members decide to pursue the less challenging world of the solo performer where there is only one person to argue with about phrasing, dynamics or repertoire.

If a quartet is a single musical organism made up of four individuals, what happens when one member leaves – for whatever reason – and has to be replaced?

For many groups it’s the equivalent of transplant surgery: the process is one thing, the period waiting for the newly transplanted member to take (or not be rejected) is another. Sometimes this works and other times it can lead to the nastiest blood-letting from which the patient would be lucky to survive.

Sometimes, quartets change their personal and reconstitute themselves as almost wholly new ensembles. Ralph Evans, the 1st Violinist of the Fine Arts Quartet which was founded in 1946, actually grew up listening to the recording made by the original Fine Arts Quartet. Now, there is a whole new generation of players carrying on the name.

The Juilliard Quartet has undergone similar re-configurations since it, too, was formed in 1946: its founding 1st violinist, Robert Mann, retired after 50 seasons with the ensemble. When they performed with Market Square Concerts during their 60th Anniversary season (and Market Square Concert’s 25th), Ronald Copes, the most recent “New Guy,” had already been with the group nine years. But now, Joel Smirnoff, the current 1st violinist, will be leaving at the end of this season to take on the role of president of the Cleveland Institute of Music (moving on to bigger and more extensive organizational issues), to be replaced by the Next New Guy, Nicholas Eanet, 36 years old and a former student of Robert Mann’s.

And so life goes on.

Each significant anniversary is approached with a justifiable celebration, perhaps new recordings or a series of re-issued recordings (at least in the days when that part of the business was still industrious) and a tour similar to a victory lap. There are inevitable comparisons to its own past and questions raised about its future: a quartet at this stage of its life never has the chance to just relax in the present.

Other quartets make it to a ripe old age which in the world of classical music, where the composers themselves are often 100 to 250 years old, is not so easy to define in merely mortal terms. Standard definitions according to Social Security or political term limitations need not apply. There is no determining formula to combine the quartet’s number of years spent before the public multiplied by the age of its individual members to come up with a Quartet Longevity Index.

So after so many years together, the question must be faced, eventually, “when is it time?”

If the members agree that it would be better to disband and retire at a certain point rather than reconfigure itself into a new generation, the passing of the quartet is filled with more than just nostalgia. This time, if the public is lucky, there will also be one more victory lap that becomes an emotional long farewell. You would think it would just be easier to put out a press release announcing its retirement but this would be read by its fans like an obituary of a dear friend, never getting the chance to hear them one last time, to say good-bye.

The Guarneri Quartet has decided this season will be its last. Was it a momentous decision made after much soul-searching?

Not exactly. As violist Michael Tree explained in an interview last autumn, about the decision they reached in June, 2007.

"It was last spring in New York, about five minutes before we were due on-stage. The thought was raised that we might consider ending our careers on what we hoped was a high note. And that was that. We all had similar feelings, and one of the things we've learned over the years is to keep discussion to a minimum."

After 45 years and with only one personnel change in its history, the Guarneri Quartet is in the process of taking that final tour. This Sunday is our chance to celebrate all those great years of music-making and say good-bye.

Need I add, “don’t miss it”?

You can now read how the Guarneri Quartet got its start.

- Dr. Dick