Borromeo String Quartet
Nicholas Kitchen, violin
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Kristopher Tong, violin
Mai Motobuchi, viola
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Yeesun Kum, cello
PRESENTSLudwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 74 “Harp”
Poco adagio – Allegro
Adagio ma non troppo
Presto
Allegretto con variazioni
Beethoven
String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130
Adagio, ma non troppo; Allegro
Presto
Andante con moto, ma non troppo
Allegro assai “Alla danza tedesca”
Cavatina: Adagio molto espressivo
Grosse Fuge Op. 133: Overtura; Allegro; Meno
mosso e moderato; Allegro molto e con brio
BORROMEO STRING QUARTET
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2020 – 3:00PM
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Borromeo String Quartet
PROGRAM NOTES
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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2020
BEETHOVEN
STRING QUARTET in E-flat MAJOR,
OP. 74 “HARP”(1809)
1799-1808 proved an extraordinarily productive decade for Beethoven, witnessing such monumental works as the Eroica and Pastoral symphonies, the Moonlight, Waldstein, and Appassionata piano sonatas, the Op. 18 and Op. 59 Razumovsky string quartets, the violin concerto, the 3rd and 4th piano concertos, and two versions of his opera Leonore. However, he wrote little in 1809, with good reason. Napoleon occupied Vienna after winning the battle of nearby Wagram in July, a fight involv-ing 300,000 soldiers and 60,00 deaths. Napoleon’s artillery then shelled Vienna, the explosions forcing Beethoven into his brother’s cellar with pillows around his ears to protect what was left of his hearing. That summer he wrote of the “indescribable misery which prevails in Vienna.”
Under such conditions Beethoven composed only three major works in 1809: Piano Concerto no. 5, Op. 73 “Emperor,” today’s String Quartet, Op. 74, and the Les Adieux
Piano Sonata, Op. 81a. However, Kai Christiansen feels that among all Beethoven quartets, Op. 74 “is somehow overlooked.” Unfortunate confirmation arrives in the latest Beethoven biography (by John Clubbe in 2016), which omits any mention of it. Yet Op. 74 is one of his most lyrical quartets — “a glorious work…bountiful and lavish” (Christiansen). Furthermore, quartet scholar Paul Griffiths states that it “provides an exhilarating display of wholly new textures” in addition to its celebrated pizzicatos. Beethoven’s emphasis on pizzicato tone color in the opening movement ultimately generated the ‘Harp’ nickname. It first appears in the transition section leading to the new key, but also recurs in the development, recap and coda sections of this
Sonata-form movement as well. Beethoven had used it quite sparingly in his earlier quartets, but now “it gains unprecedented importance…becoming an essential tone color” (biographer Lewis Lockwood). Still rare, these passages also herald its more extensive use in the Debussy and Ravel quartets almost a century later.
One of his longest, most disruptive and harmonically obscure introductions leads to a sunny Allegro movement with a balanced, eight-bar legato primary theme. In addi-tion to the pizzicato passages, the transition also recalls the shocking disruptions of
the introduction. The secondary theme which follows features legato 16th-note pas-sages in all instruments simultaneously, another of the ‘wholly new textures’ Griffiths referred to. And the broad coda (another ‘second development section’) fashions a surprising breakout cadenza for the first violin, the longest in any Beethoven quartet. It features continual 16th notes, and opens again with pizzicato accompaniment. The primarily gentle Adagio ma non troppo movement which follows blends Rondo form with Theme and Variations. Beethoven varies the soft, lyrical refrain each time it returns. Also like many variation movements, the rhythmic values accelerate as the movement progresses. But returning to rondo format, he sets the first episode — another primarily gentle violin theme — in the remarkable key of C-flat Major. Beethoven’s fiery Scherzo and Trio provides the true dramatic contrast in the quartet. Unlike all his previous quartet Scherzos, he avoids the tonic key, setting this Presto movement (with its two trios) in C Minor. And that’s part of the ‘joke’ (the Italian translation of ‘Scherzo’). Beethoven offers a deliberate parody of his 5th Symphony, beginning with a theme in the same rhythm and closing with a link to the finale (that also begins in a hushed A-flat Major, like the symphony).
But unlike that explosive, triumphant symphony finale, the Scherzo saves its final joke for the end of this segue, confounding expectations with a gentle Theme and Varia-tions movement. Another lyrical violin melody serves as the main theme in a quar-tet that offers so many such examples. This 20-bar Allegretto theme (an 8-bar phrase
answered by a 12-bar conclusion) reflects Beethoven’s middle-period motivic satura-tion, with 17 statements of the opening motive. This theme also vanishes immediately: subsequent variations maintain only the 20-bar frame. He plays his final joke of the quartet in the coda, as a dramatic conclusion in 16th-notes ends in a soft cadence. Beethoven scholar Joseph Kerman characterizes this quartet as an “open, unprob-lematic lucid work…gracious, balanced and untroubled.” It also remains one of the most gentle and accessible of all his works. That Beethoven could write this often overlooked masterpiece with Vienna suffering explosive bombardment might again call into question the supposed close connections between biography and artistic production.
BEETHOVEN
STRING QUARTET in B-FLAT MAJOR,
OP. 130 (1825)
T
he music of Bach cast a long shadow over Beethoven’s late works. He studied the preludes and fugues of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier as a young keyboard artist in Bonn. Thus “his move towards Bach in his final decade was like a homecoming” (Bee-thoven biographer Lewis Lockwood). Bach’s mammoth Goldberg Variations set found resonance in the increased emphasis on the variation genre in late Beethoven — the monumental Diabelli Variations and in the slow movements of four late string quar-tets, several piano sonatas, and the 9th Symphony, among other works. Similarly, theopening fugue in the Op. 131 string quartet and the massive fugue finales of the Ham-merklavier piano sonata and today’s Op. 130 quartet further reflect Bach’s influence. Beethoven’s first sketches for this quartet demonstrate that he planned the fugal finale as the goal of the quartet from the very beginning. Its huge length entailed a departure from the standard Classic era cycle of four movements. After a typically substantial opening movement, he both drastically reduced the size of the interior movements, and added more of them. This succession of small movements — “a string of pearls with different colors and facets” (Lockwood) — moves Beethoven closer to yet another Baroque genre, the collections of short dances in the suites of Bach and Handel. “The distortions and departures from standard forms in every movement also lead us fur-ther away from the Classic era” (biographer Maynard Solomon).
For example, the opening Sonata-form movement begins with what seems a typical slow (Adagio) introduction. Yet Beethoven returns to motives from it after only five bars of the first Allegro theme, and he states it twice to open the development section. In the most complex sonata-form movement of his career, Lockwood believes Beethoven created two primary themes “with alternating Adagio and Allegro tempos” (Lockwood). Listen for the cello solo introducing the lyrical secondary theme. Beethoven also trans-forms the two-note cadence of the introduction into shimmering magic throughout the development section (now at Allegro tempo), in simultaneous combination with the quarter and eighth-note primary theme and the cello secondary theme.
Beethoven now turns to the most compact and sprightly Scherzo and Trio of all his quartets. The entire Presto movement finishes in only two minutes. But even this brevity gives him time to distort the usual format by writing a Trio three times the length of the Scherzo — a very rare reversal of normal procedure. The lighthearted
Sonata-form Andante opens misleadingly in the wrong key. With penchant for throwing dust in our eyes, he opens in B-flat minor, the key of the previous move-ment. With the songlike viola melody of the third bar, however, this primary theme establishes the correct key (D-flat Major) in a movement of “charm and elegance.” Beethoven’s next dance, a gentle Waltz in 3/8 time, lulls us to sleep with perfectly balanced phrasing. That is, until he pulls the rug out from under us again — this time with a phrase any modern composer could be proud of. Beethoven presents the theme backwards, with every bar featuring a different string solo (Anton Webern’s
klangfarbenmelodie 100 years early). All joking ends in the following Adagio molto espressivo, however. Beethoven writes a tender and passionate setting in A B A form,
one of the most heartfelt slow movements in his career. Yet this beautiful Cavatina
(an opera aria genre) once again defies expectations with its asymmetry. After the huge “A” section finally lead to a “B” section with new key and triplets in the lower strings, only half the long “A” section returns with its haunting violin melody.
The Cavatina ends with the first violin on the pitch ‘G’ which all strings now state to provide another wrong-key continuation of the previous movement to open the monumental 741-bar Fugue. But this introduction quickly establishes the B-flat tonic and four brief variants of the theme herald each of the major sections to follow. The first section provides a 130-bar double fugue containing sustained dissonance and dense imitation not heard again until the 20th century. Yet “this is not a strict fugue in Bach’s sense…but rather a poetic discourse with fugal elements” (Lockwood). Bee-thoven reveals this in the next sections: a soft lyrical variant of the theme in G-flat Major (74 bars), and a dancelike version in both B-flat and A-flat Major (300 bars) before the huge conclusion re-establishes the B-flat tonic.
Russian Prince Nikolai Galitzin had commissioned “one, two, or three quartets” in 1822 (!), and this final one of the set left most audiences, musicians and critics bewil-dered. The reviewer for Europe’s most prestigious music periodical, the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, considered it “incomprehensible, like Chinese.” Yet given this incredibly varied and beautiful series of “brilliant, mercurial pearls,” it also remains “a work that stakes some claim to the pinnacle of the repertory” (Richard Kramer). And with its Baroque era suite-like structure and fugue, is it mere coincidence that Beethoven held the 1826 concert premiere of this quartet on March 21st – Bach’s birthday?
Borromeo String Quartet
E
ach visionary performance of the award-winning Borromeo String Quartet strengthens and deepens its reputation as one of the most important ensembles of our time. Admired and sought after for both its fresh interpretations of the classi-cal music canon and its championing of works by 20th and 21st century composers, the ensemble has been hailed for its “edge-of-the-seat performances,” by the Boston Globe, which called it “simply the best.”Inspiring audiences for more than 25 years, the Borromeo continues to be a pioneer in its use of technology and has the trailblazing distinction of being the first string quartet to utilize laptop computers on the concert stage. Reading music this way helps push artistic boundaries, allowing the artists to perform solely from 4-part scores and composers’ manuscripts, a revealing and metamorphic experience which these dedicated musicians now teach to students around the world. As the New York Times noted, “The digital tide washing over society is lapping at the shores of classi-cal music. The Borromeo players have embraced it in their daily musiclassi-cal lives like no other major chamber music group.” Moreover, the Quartet often leads discussions enhanced by projections of handwritten manuscripts, investigating with the audi-ence the creative process of the composer. And in 2003 the Borromeo became the first classical ensemble to make its own live concert recordings and videos, distrib-uting them for many years to audiences through its Living Archive, a music learning web portal for which a new version will soon be released.
Passionate educators, the Borromeos encourage audiences of all ages to explore and listen to both traditional and contemporary repertoire in new ways. The ensemble uses multi-media tools such as video projection to share the often surprising creative process behind some works, or to show graphically the elaborate architecture behind others. This produces delightfully refreshing viewpoints and has been a springboard
Nicholas Kitchen
for its acclaimed young people’s programs. One such program is MATHEMUSICA which delves into the numerical relationships that under-pin the sounds of music and show how musical syntax mirrors natural forms. CLASSIC VIDEO uses one movement of a quartet as the platform from which to teach computer drawing, video editing, animation, musical form and production processes to create a mean-ingful joining of music and visual art.
The BSQ has been ensemble-in-residence at the New England Conservatory and Taos School of Music, both for 25 years, and has, for over two decades, enjoyed a long-term relationship with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where it contin-ues to regularly appear. It is quartet-in-residence at the Heifetz International Music Institute, where first violinist Nicholas Kitchen is Artistic Director. The quartet was also in residence at, and has worked extensively as performers and educators with the Library of Congress (highlighting both its manuscripts and instrument collec-tions) and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The ensemble joined the Emerson Quartet as the Hittman Ensembles in Residence at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, and was recently in residence at Kansas University, the San Francisco Conservatory, and Colorado State University, where it regularly appears.
The BSQ’s presentation of the cycle of Bartók String Quartets as well as its lecture “BARTÓK: PATHS NOT TAKEN,” both of which give audiences a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear a set of rediscovered alternate movements Béla Bartók drafted for his six Quartets, has received accolades. Describing a Bartók concert at the Curtis Institute, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the quartet “performed at a high stan-dard that brought you so deeply into the music’s inner workings that you wondered if your brain could take it all in … The music’s mystery, violence, and sorrow become absolutely inescapable.”
Also noteworthy in the BSQ repertory are its dramatic discoveries within the manu-scripts of the Beethoven Quartets, and its performances of the COMPLETE CYCLE; the BEETHOVEN DECATHLON (four concerts of Beethoven’s last ten quartets, all with pre-concert lectures exploring his manuscripts); and single BEETHOVEN TRYPTICH concerts (one concert including three quartets). Its expansive repertoire also includes the Shostakovich Cycle and those of Mendelssohn, Dvořák, Brahms, Schumann, Schoenberg, Janáček, Lera Auerbach, Tchaikovsky, and Gunther Schuller. The Quartet has collaborated with some of this generation’s most important com-posers, including Gunther Schuller, John Cage, György Ligeti, Steve Reich, Aaron Jay Kernis, Osvaldo Golijov, Jennifer Higdon, Steve Mackey, John Harbison, Sebas-tian Currier, and Leon Kirchner, among many others; and has performed on major concert stages across the globe, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Suntory Hall (Tokyo), the Concertgebouw, Seoul Arts Center, Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, the Incontri in Terra di Siena Chamber Music
Festival in Tuscany, Kammermusik Basel (Switzerland), the Prague Spring Festival, and the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt.
The group premiered new works written for it by Sebastian Currier and Aaron Jay Kernis at recitals at Carnegie Hall, Shriver Concerts, and the Tippet Rise Art Center. The ensemble continues to perform violinist Nicholas Kitchen’s transcriptions of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and the Well-Tempered Clavier Bk. I, the latter of which the BSQ recently released an acclaimed premiere recording which hit the billboard charts.
“Nothing less than masterful” (Cleveland.com), the Borromeo Quartet has received numerous awards throughout its illustrious career, including Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Career Grant and Martin E. Segal Award, and Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award. It was also a recipient of the Young Concert Artists Inter-national Auditions and a prize-winner at the InterInter-national String Quartet Competi-tion in Evian, France.
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