Summertime Music Making

Before long – eventually, one can only hope – summer will be a memory and we’ll all be complaining about how cold it is and dreading the possibility of another weekend snow storm.

But before it comes to that, put Market Square Concerts “Summermusic Festival 2011” on your July calendar.

Two thirds of the Mendelssohn Piano Trio (see left), Peter Sirotin and Ya-Ting Chang, are the new directors of Market Square Concerts – it became official on July 1st – and they will be among the performers of this summer's festival, along with their colleague Fiona Thompson, joining the returning Fry Street String Quartet (see below, right), oboist Gerard Reuter and frequent visitor pianist Stuart Malina, a.k.a. conductor and music director of the Harrisburg Symphony.

There are three concerts – as usual – but this year, none of them will be held at the Glen Allen Mill as in the past. While the mill was a lovely setting, the festival was just outgrowing the space that was available there – and since weather is always a gamble with any summer performance, the idea of having all the concerts inside an air-conditioned space was not unwelcome.

The first program is Friday, July 22nd, at Market Square Church in downtown Harrisburg, beginning at 8pm. The concert begins with a Haydn quartet – Op. 17, No. 6, not one of the one’s you’d expect to find – along with Bela Bartók’s Third Quartet, and in between, a duet for oboe and viola by American composer Alvin Etler. The program closes with one of the most popular piano quintets, the one by Antonín Dvořák.

In the past, the series was set up for a Wednesday evening, with two more concerts on the weekend, but this year the schedule’s a little different, too.

The second program takes place on Sunday, July 24th at 4pm and will be held in Poorman Recital Hall of Messiah College’s Climenhaga Arts Center in Grantham, and opens with a Beethoven rarity (‘rarity’ and Beethoven not usually found together): a set of variations on Mozart’s “La ci darem la mano” from Don Giovanni for oboe, violin and viola. A work many might feel isn’t heard nearly enough is Franz Schubert’s Fantasy in F Minor for piano duet (two on a bench) and the program concludes with the first of Brahms’ two string sextets, the one in B-flat Major. In between is a delightful pair of waltzes from the pen of Broadway legend, Stephen Sondheim.

The third program returns to Market Square Church on Tuesday, July 26th and it begins at a slightly earlier time than usual – 6:00pm. This program includes the other string sextet by Johannes Brahms, the “late” one in G Major along with Johann Halvorsen’s “arrangement” of a Handel passacaglia for violin and viola, the quartet for piano, oboe and cello by Josef Rheinberger, a contemporary of Johannes Brahms’, and a work inspired by a Caribbean island vacation, “Island Prelude” for oboe and strings by Joan Tower.

I’ll be posting more, shortly, about the music on each program.

For ticket information, call 717/214-ARTS or go to the Whitaker Center Box Office. Check the website for more information about the series. Tickets for all three programs are $80 each ($70/seniors) and individual program tickets are $30 each ($25/seniors).

The series is generously supported by contributions from the Jason Litton Memorial Fund and Dr. Linda Litton. The festival sponsor is the Orthopedic Institute of Pennsylvania and the season sponsor is Capital Blue Cross.

Beethoven with Miriam Fried & Jonathan Biss

If it seems that spring will never get here, April showers aside, let me point out Market Square Concert’s last program of the season is Tuesday, April 12th, at Whitaker Center when violinist Miriam Fried and pianist Jonathan Biss will perform four Beethoven violin sonatas – including the “Spring” Sonata.

That concert begins at 6:00 pm, earlier than the traditional starting time, so let me stress that 6pm is not a typo.

Why? Well, every now and them someone wonders if it wouldn’t be a good idea to have something available earlier in the evening so people leaving work at 5:00 would have a concert they could go to after work but before they go home and get settled in for the evening, putting off the homeward-bound rush-hour traffic. We’ve tried it a couple of times for the SummerMusic series and it seemed to work.

But this is the first time with one of the subscription series and, in this case, the reason’s a little different.

Concert dates are determined by what artists the presenter wants to present, trying to find a date in the mutual calendars of the presenter’s series and the artist’s schedule. This can often be a tight fit, depending on availability (and this is why winter concerts are such a bear because we can’t just postpone it till next week because of snow because, quite possibly, the artist will be playing in California or England that night and so isn’t available).

Ellen Hughes really wanted to bring young pianist Jonathan Biss and one of the great violinists in the world today, Miriam Fried, to Harrisburg and the only time it could work out, wouldn’t you know, was in between other engagements. Mr. Biss is substituting for Murray Perahia in a Chicago Symphony-sponsored recital there on Monday and has to be in Boston for a rehearsal on Wednesday morning with the Boston Symphony, playing Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto there – and in order to get there in time, he has to catch a flight from Harrisburg Tuesday evening, hence the earlier-than-usual start time. (I suspect this means there probably won’t be any time for an encore…)

This may be the first time Jonathan Biss appears in Harrisburg but it is not the first time Miriam Fried has been here: I last saw her in January of 1984 – speaking of snow dates. She played the Beethoven Violin Concerto on a very snowy night and it was one of those occasions where – aside from being unable to postpone the Tuesday night concert – two players in the orchestra were unable to make it. Unfortunately they were the bassoon section which meant the William Schuman Symphony No. 3 sounded a bit funky, especially in the long bassoon solo in the last movement’s fugue where we heard 8 measures of silence before the bass clarinet came in.

This presented a problem in the Beethoven concerto because not only are there some wonderful bassoon solos for the principal player, there’s a lot of wind section texture where the second bassoonist plays the all-important bass part. Lacking both of them would sound very strange and so I spent the first half of the concert conflating both bassoon parts into a single bass clarinet part – a solo here, the bass of the wind band there – and then Jim Dunn, our bass clarinetist at the time, sight read the part. It may have been the oddest sounding Beethoven Violin Concerto Miriam Fried ever played but it would’ve sounded odder with those missing bits… oh, well…

Jonathan Biss is Miriam Fried’s son, but this will also be a chance for me to hear the third generation of this musical family. In March of 1963, I attended my first Harrisburg Symphony concert when cellist Raya Gárbousova played the Dvořák Cello Concerto. She was the cellist for whom Samuel Barber composed his Cello Concerto and an artist Pablo Casals once called “the best cellist I have ever heard.” Her son, violist Paul Biss married Miriam Fried.

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For their Market Square Concerts program (did I mention it begins at 6:00?), they will be performing a program of four violin sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven:

Sonata No. 4 in A Minor, Op.23
Sonata No. 10 in G, Op. 96
Sonata No. 2 in A, Op. 12, No. 2
Sonata No. 5 in F, Op. 24 (“Spring”)

Unfortunately for us, Beethoven’s interest in the violin sonata didn’t match his creative output throughout his career like his symphonies, string quartets and piano sonatas. The first nine sonatas were all written in a four-year period early in his career and then one more came along as a “special occasion” during his Middle Period. His most famous (if not his greatest) sonata was for an African-English violinist named George Bridgetower – they gave it its premiere (the composition so hurried that Beethoven had to summon his copyist at 4:30am to have the violin part ready in time) but then later had a falling out (a disagreement over a woman, the story goes), so when it was published a few years later, it was dedicated to the great French violinist, Rodolphe Kreutzer who, it turned out, never played the piece. Beethoven had been hoping for some exposure as a result of this dedication.

That sense of marketing is also behind the dedication of the first set of violin sonatas which appeared in 1799, composed over the two years before that, and dedicated to the highly esteemed composer Antonio Salieri, one of the most powerful musicians in Vienna’s very tight musical world. We think of Salieri today (wrongly) as Mozart’s Murderer (great theater, though it is) but in his day he was a leading court composer and his approval meant good things for young musicians, especially a young 28-year-old from the German provinces. Beethoven studied briefly with Salieri – the art of setting Italian words to music – and these sonatas (although nothing to do with what he learned from the man) could be seen logically as dedicated out of gratitude to his one-time teacher. And, after all, the first set of six string quartets, written around the same time, were dedicated to Franz Josef Haydn, his primary teacher but also a wise move, politically: it was as if, having accepted the dedication, these great artists were putting their stamp of approval on the young composer who was just beginning his career.

Unlike Mozart, who wrote spontaneously, Beethoven’s was a creative struggle, judging from his notebooks. Sketches for the Op. 12 Sonatas appear in some notebooks going back to 1795, meaning he was thinking about if not actually working on them a few years before they were completed and sent to the publisher.

The first and last sonatas on this program form one of Beethoven’s contrasting pairs – for instance, the dramatic 5th Symphony followed by the bucolic 6th, justifiably nicknamed the “Pastoral” which he worked on at the same time and which were premiered together (their numbers, reversed). These sonatas were intended to be Op.23, Nos. 1 & 2, but due to an engravers error were each given separate numbers.

The A Minor is the dramatic one, turbulent and dark at times with more lyrical contrasts that usually end up subsumed by the drama.

The F Major is the “bucolic,” more relaxed one, if not exactly Pastoral in mood. Its sense of lightness and benign qualities have earned it the nickname “Spring,” a reminder that Beethoven enjoyed his summer trips to the countryside in order to compose in peace.

Both of these works were written more or less simultaneously in 1801. It is interesting to note that a year later, Beethoven would spend much of the summer and fall in the Viennese suburb of Heiligenstadt which any reader of concert program notes would immediately recognize as the place where Beethoven wrote his heart-rending “Heiligenstadt Testament,” describing his fears of losing his hearing: the symptoms had been increasing over the past few years, yet this never seemed to affect his music.

The last sonata to be composed came 10 years after its predecessor, the “Kreutzer.” It is usually overlooked because it does not seem to be an advance on the magnitude of the concerto-like 9th Sonata but there may be a practical reason for this. For whatever reason Beethoven did not continue writing violin sonatas as he did piano sonatas, the 10th was written for another French violinist, Pierre Rode, who was visiting Vienna in 1812 – a fateful year for Beethoven as well as Napoleon – and who, apparently, requested a sonata from the now well-established Beethoven.

It was written at the end of the year Beethoven completed the 7th and wrote the 8th Symphonies, during which time he (we assume) wrote his letter to the Immortal Beloved (whoever she may have been), met her (we assume) at a spa in Bohemia that summer and (we assume) broke up with her before he returned to Vienna (stopping off, by the way, to annoy his brother who was living with his girl-friend without having married her: you can read more about how Beethoven’s personal life intertwined with his creative life that year in this post at my blog, Thoughts on a Train).The bust (see right) was made by Klein in 1812, the likeness taken from a "life mask."

He returned to Vienna in November, then wrote the G Major Sonata for a concert in late December with Rode, aware that Rode, though four years his junior, was somewhat past his prime (as the story goes). The composer Ludwig Spohr, a great violinist in his own right, indicated when he was in Vienna in 1812 that Rode was already past his prime, finding later that Rode’s technique had deteriorated substantially that the man put aside playing the violin to focus on teaching and composing.

This may explain the lack of bravura in Beethoven’s last violin sonata. He wrote to his patron and student, the Archduke Rudolph, that “I did not make great haste in the last movement [of the G Major Violin Sonata] for the sake of mere punctuality, the more because, in writing it, I had to consider the playing of Rode. In our finales we like rushing and resounding passages, but this does not please R and — this hinders me somewhat.”

However, Spohr, who was in Vienna at the same time – essentially competing with Rode for audience – did leave an account of his acquaintance with Beethoven that would also lead us to believe that, because of his deafness, the composer was past his prime as a performer: Spohr heard a private performance of Beethoven playing the “Ghost” Trio that was “by no means an enjoyment.”

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“…in the first place, the pianoforte was woefully out of tune which, however, troubled Beethoven little, since he could hear nothing of it, and, secondly, of the former so admired excellence of the virtuoso, scarcely anything was left, in consequence of his total deafness. In the forte, the poor deaf man hammered in such a way upon the keys that entire groups of notes were inaudible, so that one lost all intelligence of the subject unless the eye followed the score at the same time. I felt moved with deepest sorrow at so hard a destiny… Beethoven’s almost continual melancholy was no longer a riddle to me now.” – Ludwig Spohr (Autobiography)
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Conversing with Beethoven, when they met at a restaurant, was unpleasant as Spohr had to speak “so loud as to be heard in the third room off.” They met frequently, both at Spohr’s home and at the restaurant. He found Beethoven “a little blunt, not to say uncouth; but a truthful eye beamed from under his bushy eyebrows.”

After Beethoven had been absent from the restaurant for several days, Spohr inquired if he had been ill? Beethoven replied, “My boot was and as I have only one pair, I had house-arrest.”

Such was Beethoven’s life at the time he composed this pleasant, genial violin sonata written for Rode – Spohr’s “rival” – but which, like the Piano Trio in B-flat Major written the year before, was dedicated instead to the Archduke Rudolph who, we should remember, was the only patron Beethoven had who always supplied him with funding even in difficult economic times like 1812.

- Dick Strawser

Last Concert of the Season: Beethoven, Biss & Fried

The final concert of Market Square Concerts 2010-2011 season is Tuesday night, April 12 at 6 p.m. at Whitaker Center.

(Yes, that’s 6pm – as in SIX p.m. – and that is not a typo! It is earlier than the usual start time of 8:00, so be warned!)

This recital features the charismatic and accomplished violinist Miriam Fried and her son, Jonathan Biss, whose career as a recitalist and orchestral soloist has taken off into the stratosphere. Jonathan Biss is coming to Harrisburg from Chicago, where he's substituting on Sunday for Murray Perahia in a Chicago Symphony sponsored recital.

Our concert on the 12th begins at 6 p.m. because he has to bolt to Boston immediately afterwards, where he'll begin rehearsals the next morning to play Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto with the Boston Symphony.

It’s Beethoven on the program in Harrisburg, in between – Fried and Biss will play four of Beethoven’s sonatas for violin and piano, a rare opportunity to enjoy a juxtaposition of examples of this music in a single recital.

I’ve posted more information about the music on the program here.

As Ellen Hughes writes in the press release, “This is the last concert with me as Market Square Concerts' Executive Director. My successors are the young, energetic and talented couple Ya-Ting Chang and Peter Sirotin as Executive and Artistic Directors respectively. Although they officially begin July 1, they'll be at the concert for you to meet on the 12th.

“The board of Market Square Concerts invites you to have a glass of bubbly to celebrate this happy transition at a reception after the concert. Brochures about our next season will be available at the concert."

Oh, and did I mention the performance begins at 6:00pm?

Lee Hoiby (1926-2011): Where the Music Came From

A week ago – Monday, March 28th, 2011 – Ellen Hughes forwarded an e-mail to me announcing that American composer Lee Hoiby had died that afternoon at the age of 85.

If you attended the Market Square Concerts program in March, 2009, you heard Hoiby’s “Sextet for Winds & Piano” with Stuart Malina joining the Dorian Wind Quintet and perhaps had a chance to meet the composer who’d driven down from his Catskill home for the performance. Most people I talked to after that concert were convinced his birth date in the program was a typo – no way was this jovial, vital man 83 years old!

You can read the post from Sequenza21 here which includes the official obituary, and a reminiscence by a friend in this post at New Music Box, here.

In addition to being a composer I have long admired, Lee was a friend whom I’d corresponded with occasionally since I was in high school, but I haven’t been able to bring myself around to writing about it on my own blog – soon, perhaps.

But you can read my accounts of his visit to Harrisburg two years ago here with a follow-up post about other works by Lee Hoiby I'd recommend for people in the audience who, liking the sextet, wondered what else was out there they could listen to. Also, these posts about dinner with Lee before that concert and then this one about some inspiring songs for composers or listeners, including one of Lee’s more famous songs, “Where the Music Comes From.”

As often happens when composers die, their music lives on – as if they’ve never really left us. It’s just sad knowing there will be no more music coming from where that music came from…

- Dick Strawser

The Bach Choir of Bethlehem in Harrisburg

This weekend, one of the great choirs in America comes to Harrisburg. The Bach Choir of Bethlehem – not so far away, after all – may be the “oldest Bach choir in America,” founded 113 years ago and internationally renowned for their performances and recordings of Bach’s works, they also perform music by other composers on their programs: in addition to one of Bach’s great motets, “Singet dem Herrn,” their Market Square Concerts program includes Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” and Benjamin Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb” as well as a new work by a composer whose name doesn’t begin with a B – Stephen Paulus, who wrote “A Dream of Time” as a commission for the choir’s celebration of conductor Greg Funfgeld’s 25th year as its artistic director and conductor.

The performance is at Market Square Church in downtown Harrisburg at 8:00 and there’s a special pre-concert talk given by conductor Greg Funfgeld beginning at 7:00, which is free to ticket-holders.

The program is entitled Songs of Hope – “From the Psalms of David to 18th century poetry by Christopher Smart written in an English lunatic asylum, and 20th century poetry by Carl Sandburg written in depression-era Chicago, the texts of our ‘Songs of Hope’ are moving affirmations of hope in the face of adversity” – appropriate given the current world news with the political unrest in the Middle East, the devastation in Japan following the recent earthquake there last week and our own concerns about extreme weather and the economy – and their performance here is in preparation for their newest CD which they’ll begin recording the following week.

Several people have told me they plan on going to the pre-concert talk just to get a good seat for the 8:00 performance. There’s been quite a buzz about the choir’s appearance here in the mid-state, so the attendance is expected to be very good.

The choir has its own blog and you can read more about their spring concerts here - with links to each work on the program – about the Bach motet, Britten’s cantata, “Rejoice in the Lamb,” Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms,” and the new work by Stephen Paulus, setting words of Carl Sandburg, “A Dream of Time.”

Joining the 60-voice choir will be the 8-member chamber orchestra, the Virtuosi of the Bach Festival Orchestra, as well as vocal soloists Rosa Lamoreaux (soprano), Daniel Taylor (countertenor), Benjamin Butterfield (tenor) and William Sharp (baritone), familiar names from previous performances and recordings made by the Bach Choir.

Conductor Greg Funfgeld talks about their spring program – this one specifically for their concert in Bethlehem the day after their performance with Market Square Concerts in Harrisburg.
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Here is a video by another famous American choir of another work by Stephen Paulus – his “Pilgrim’s Hymn” performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir:

Update: this is annoying - the video embed code from their website doesn't always seem to work in here, so here's a link to their page, instead. It's a beautiful piece, so please check it out!
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While for me it’s always a thrill to hear great music well performed, there is a personal connection here I am also looking forward to. William Sharp who frequently appears as a soloist with the Bach Choir and has recorded and performed around the country, in addition to teaching at Peabody Institute in Baltimore, was a grad student at the Eastman School of Music my last year there (his wife and I were among those struggling through their doctoral defenses at the same time). It was during a brief time when the great bass, Hans Hotter, best known for his Wagnerian roles and performances of Schubert songs, was in residency there – perhaps for a week. In addition to performing Schubert’s Winterreise, he gave daily master classes (which I think were primarily about Schubert songs) for the school's voice students.

While he worked with all of the students who performed for him, Hotter took an especial interest in Bill, hearing him every day to the point Bill was often preparing new repertoire for the next day's class, even (if I recall) sight-reading when Hotter wanted to hear more. Basically, it amounted to "public" lessons with one of the greatest singers in the world, invaluable experience, no doubt, but also a chance for those of us who sat in on the classes to hear Bill sing and, even in that short time, develop as a sensitive and intuitive performer.

So there’s a certain amount of “I-knew-him-when” pride every time I’d hear a new CD of Bill’s – beginning with the “AIDS Quilt Songbook” or any of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem recordings – and now, another chance to hear him live.
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This program with Market Square Concerts and the Bach Choir of Bethlehem is partially supported by a grant from Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, a program developed and funded by The Heinz Endowments; the William Penn Foundation; the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency; and The Pew Charitable Trusts; and administered by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. Season sponsor: Capital BlueCross. Market Square Concerts is a resident company of Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts. Support is also received from the Cultural Enrichment Fund and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
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photo credit: header photo by Paul Pearson, from the Bach Choir's blog; photo of William Sharp from his biography page at Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

The St. Lawrence Quartet with Mozart, Mendelssohn and John Adams

Can you guess which composer this critic is talking about?

"[This composer's] works do not in general please quite so much as [those by someone else]... [These works] confirm... he has a decided leaning towards the difficult and the unusual. But then, what great and elevated ideas he has too, testifying to a bold spirit!"

If this composer "leans toward the difficult and the unusual," your first reaction is probably some highly intellectual "contemporary" or at least early 20th Century composer like Schoenberg.

Actually, it's from an anonymous London critic writing in 1789 about Mozart's new set of six string quartets, dedicated to Haydn.

(Incidentally, when a Viennese publisher sent them to Italy for publication there, the copies were sent back because "the engraving is full of mistakes.")

The second of these quartets, the one in D Minor, K.421, opens Market Square Concert's program this week with the St. Lawrence Quartet.

(Oh, and the "someone else" whose quartets were more pleasing? Those by Leopold Kozeluch. When was the last time you ever heard a quartet by Kozeluch in a concert? Or, for that matter, any of his 33 symphonies or 22 piano concertos? Just sayin'...)

Also on the program is the first published quartet by Felix Mendelssohn and a more recent work composed especially for the St. Lawrence by one of America's leading composers today, John Adams, which they premiered in 2009.

Following that premiere, Allen Kozinn of the New York Times wrote that it was a “stylistically fluid extended fantasy, with the players moving seamlessly through a colorful sequence of episodes.”

This concert takes place at Temple Ohev Sholom in uptown Harrisburg, Thursday evening at 8:00. The temple is located at 2345 N. Front St., Harrisburg, and there is plenty of parking available.

I'll be offering a pre-concert talk at 7:00.

(Now, all we have to do is pray for good weather!)

The St. Lawrence String Quartet, one of the best known quartets from Canada, was founded over 20 years ago, and has long established itself among the world-class chamber ensembles of our generation.

Alex Ross of The New Yorker magazine writes, “The St. Lawrence are remarkable not simply for the quality of their music making, exalted as it is, but for the joy they take in the act of connection.”

They are Ensemble-in-Residence at Stanford University and all live in the San Francisco area. They have a busy touring and festival schedule, and we are fortunate that they are able to return to Harrisburg for another concert this season.

Tickets are $30, $25 seniors, $5 college/university students. School-age students are free. Tickets are available at 717 214-ARTS or at the door.

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Mozart wrote his "Haydn Quartets" – or less confusingly, the "Six Quartets Dedicated to Haydn" – between 1782 and 1785. Unlike many of his works which seemed to be written down in rough draft already complete and finished (complete as in already fully conceived; finished as in not needing any revisions to reach their final form), the sketches for these quartets show a long and (for Mozart) laborious process of trials and corrections.

The story goes that Mozart was so intrigued by what Haydn was doing in the String Quartet Medium with his latest published set – the six quartets, Op. 33 – which came out the year Mozart arrived in Vienna at the age of 25.

Also unusual for Mozart, who seems to have sprung Minerva-like fully formed without formal training, was this need to "study" someone else's music. So taking Haydn's music and studying it to "learn the art of quartet writing" might seem odd, in hindsight. Mozart had written quartets before and could no doubt have continued writing quartets as easily as he wrote symphonies, concertos and operas without "studying" anyone else's music to find out how to improve his craft.

However, that deference may also be a mark of maturity. Haydn, then over twice Mozart's age, after all, was the avowed "Great Composer" of the day – not just a popular one, like Kozeluch. Whatever Mozart was looking for when he arrived in Vienna – primarily, to make a living as a free-lancer rather than be stifled as a court musician in provincial Salzburg – he also realized he could benefit from learning what Haydn (himself, largely untaught) had already accomplished.

It's no small statement to say Mozart's six "Haydn" Quartets are among the finest of the 18th Century – even if they made difficult listening for some people more attuned to works by Kozeluch and other, equally forgotten but once popular composers.

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Both learning and a sense of homage are behind Mendelssohn's first published quartet, as well. Beethoven's last quartets were still new – in fact, so new, if it's true that the opening of the A Minor Quartet was inspired by Beethoven's Op. 135, the "Muss es sein? Es muss sein! (Must it be? It must be!)" statement that opens the last movement, Mendelssohn studied the score even before it had been given its world premiere performance! It was written as a direct response to the news that Beethoven had died on March 27th, 1827.

While his next quartet – the one in E-flat Major – may show less direct influence from Beethoven, Mendelssohn began this quartet at home in Berlin in 1829 but completed it in London in September while on the tour that was the inspiration for what became the "Hebrides Overture (Fingals' Cave)" and the "Scottish" Symphony.

Because the publishing of music does not always reflect the chronology of its composition, I need to explain that the 1st String Quartet was written two years after the 2nd String Quartet which in fact were both published before two works he'd composed a few years earlier.

Confusing? Yeah...

Op. 12 – String Quartet No. 1 in E-flat Major (1829, aged 20)
Op. 13 – String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor (1827, aged 18)
Op. 16 – Octet in E-flat Major (1825, aged 16)
Op. 18 – Overture to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1826, aged 17)
Op. 26 – "Fingal's Cave" or "The Hebrides" Overture (conceived 1829, completed 1830)
Op. 56 – Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, "Scottish" (begun 1829, completed 1842)

There is also a String Quartet in E-flat Major that he composed when he was 14 but it wasn't published until over 30 years after his death. Like the early string symphonies, it's regarded as a "student work" and was never given an opus number and is generally listed as "Quartet in E-flat (1823)" to distinguish it from the two quartets in the same key he did publish (No. 1 and No. 5).

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John Adams is regarded as one of the most important composers writing today. (He turns 64 next Tuesday, by the way). While his musical style is rooted in the "minimalism" of the 1970s and '80s, it's not a fair description of his music, just as not all of Debussy's music is "impressionistic" and Debussy and Ravel are no more identical for being branded "impressionists" than Philip Glass, Steve Reich and John Adams are identical for being branded "minimalists." Yet it's convenient and it won't go away.

As a medium, the string quartet comes with considerable historical baggage – the repertoire of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Bartok and Shostakovich being not just the greatest of the quartets but some of the greatest music ever composed.

This is not the first time Adams has composed a work for string quartet but it's the first time he's called it simply that – no fanciful title, just an abstract indication of a willingness to face up to this historic legacy.

It's essentially a two-movement work, though the first movement encompasses both the standard opening, more intellectual argument of a sonata movement and a contrasting slow movement.
The String Quartet was commissioned jointly by the Juilliard School for its Focus Festival and by Stanford University's "Lively Arts" and the Banff Center, written for the St. Lawrence Quartet who premiered it at Juilliard in January, 2009.

It was not an arbitrary pairing of composer and performer. Like many composers, he was inspired by hearing his performers playing something that so impressed him, he was suddenly taken by the idea of writing for them.

From an interview on NPR:

'When he heard them play, Adams said he was reminded of how much the sound of the string quartet is like "elevated human discourse ... like speech brought to the highest, most sublime level."

'Adams, like many composers before him, was hesitant to write a string quartet. But after he saw the St. Lawrence Quartet play Beethoven, he turned into what Nuttall describes as a "kid in a candy shop." All kinds of possibilities were suddenly open, and he began writing.'

Here are comments from reviews of the premiere:

“Like a perpetuum mobile, motion sweeps through the parts: it hums and purrs on the stage. The Canadians play the work as a scherzo with few points of repose. Electrified, like music which is in a constant current. The lively, rhythmically-charged, wild style of playing suits the 20-year-old ensemble, for which Adams has written the perfect work.” Ruhr Nachrichten

“A stunner…the piece boasts all the attributes audiences have come to associate with Adams’ best music… Its controlled restlessness yields to tremendous fervency, from the ‘ghostly’ elements of the first part to the second, with its ascending lines that rise and shimmer like heat off a highway…Adams at his most gripping, and the St. Lawrence players gave the work a fierce, go-for-broke reading.” Mercury News

And here is a YouTube audio (recorded from the NPR interview with its in-studio broadcast) of the final movement of John Adams' String Quartet with the St. Lawrence Quartet.

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January with Ching-Yun Hu, Beethoven, Ravel & Carl Vine

This weekend, Market Square Concerts presents a recital by pianist Ching-Yun Hu at Whitaker Center – Saturday evening at 8pm.

The program includes sonatas by Beethoven and Australian composer Carl Vine, Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit and two works by Chopin - the Barcarolle in F-sharp Minor and the Polonaise in A-flat, Op. 53, usually known as the "Heroic" Polonaise.

Tickets (available in the downstairs lobby at Whitaker the night of the performance or by calling 717/214-ARTS) are $30, seniors $25, college & university students $5. Tickets for school-aged children are free! (Concert sponsor is Keefer Wood Allen & Rahal, LLP.)

Described as "dazzling" and called "a pianist with the soul of Chopin," Ching-Yun Hu captured the top prize at the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv, where she was also awarded the Audience Favorite Prize, She then won the 2009 Concert Artists Guild International Competition.

Deeply impressed and equally moved by her artistry, a prominent music critic in Israel wrote, "This young woman brings with her the secret, the mystery and the style. She has the suspense of Brendel, Perahia's lyricism and Barenboim's depth. Are we witnessing the birth of a new Martha Argerich?"

Her Market Square Concerts program opens with one of Beethoven's earlier piano sonatas, published as Op. 2 in 1796, though several other, less daring works pre-date it. At the time, most sonatas were written for "household consumption" or the "amateur market." In an age when every young lady was expected to play the piano or sing, amateur (or, in German, "liebhaber") meant "having a love" for something compared to the professional, more knowledgeable expert (in German, "kenner" or "knower" of something) and, at least then, had no reflection on the level of talent involved.

Each of the three sonatas in this set, Opus 2, have different characters. This sonata was intended for the concert artist more than the household amateur, in days before famous concert artists roamed the halls of Europe performing for a living.

This brilliance – especially relying on Beethoven's skill as an improviser – may have accounted for the reservations Beethoven's teacher had about the pieces – and may also explain why Beethoven published these sonatas and not the earlier ones, their dedication to the old-fashioned Haydn notwithstanding. This dedication was a political formality as it was personal: Beethoven was then unknown but Haydn's name on the title page acted as a kind of endorsement.

Alfred Brendel plays the opening movement of Beethoven's C Major Piano Sonata, Op.2/3.
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Carl Vine might be a slightly less familiar name to American audiences. Born in Perth, Australia, in 1954, he switched majors in college from physics to composition and began his career as a composer of music for the dance. He has gone on to become one of Australia's most prominent composers and wrote his 5th String Quartet in 2007, his 7th Symphony in 2008, and a Violin Concerto that will be premiered this year.

His 3rd Piano Sonata was composed in 2007. According to the composer's web-site,

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This work is constructed in four sections that are to be played without breaks between them: fantasia – rondo – variations – presto.

The Fantasia introduces several ideas which reappear in various guises in all of the other movements, but also includes some undeveloped declamatory material. The Rondo explores a simple rhythmic motive while the Variations develop the chordal theme that opens the work. The Presto is a self-contained ternary structure that echoes thematic components from much that preceded it.

Piano Sonata Nº 3 was commissioned by the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival and the Colburn School, assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. The recipient of the 2004 Gilmore Young Artist Award, Elizabeth Schumann, gave the world premiere performance at Zipper Hall, Los Angeles, California on 11th May 2007.
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Hearing the brief sample (go to his website, click on the "piano music" link in the introductory paragraph, scroll down till you see the information on the Piano Sonata No. 3 and click on the 'speaker icon'), it has the energy and edge that reminds me of, say, a Prokofiev toccata (I was thinking somewhere between the finales of the 3rd Piano Concerto and the 7th Sonata) with that kind of stylistic integrity that makes me wonder "why haven't we heard more of this guy's music?"

Speaking of toccatas, here's the second half of his 1st Piano Sonata: it'll give you an idea.

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In addition to the two works by Chopin, a composer considered by many the "soul" of the Romantic repertoire, there is also one of the masterworks of early 20th Century piano music, Maurice Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, first heard in 1909. The first of its three movements depicts the water-sprite, Ondine, who longs for human contact, a well-worn subject of 19th Century romanticism heard both in music (sometimes called Melusine, she's the subject of a tone-poem by Mendelssohn and, as Rusalka, an opera by Dvorak, among others) and literature (think Hans Christian Anderson's tale of the Little Mermaid). The middle movement is a dark and eerie landscape called "Le gibet" or "The Gallows" with its "bell tinting at the walls of a city under the horizon and the carcass of a hanged man reddened by the setting sun". The final movement evokes the ghostly goblin, Scarbo, who pirouettes and scampers through the darkened recesses of your home (or your mind) in the middle of the night – terrifying enough to play the piece!

Here is Vladimir Ashkenazy playing Scarbo.

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