Program Notes
The Vermeer Quartet
with Caroline Hong, piano
Saturday, November 17, 2007, 8:00 p.m.
Southern Theatre

            Shmuel Ashkenasi, violin
            Mathias Tacke, violin
            Richard Young, viola
            Marc Johnson, cello
                       With Guest Artist Caroline Hong, piano

About the Artists: Vermeer Quartet

Since its founding at Marlboro in 1969, the Vermeer Quartet has built a reputation as one of the great contemporary ensembles. The Vermeer has performed at most of the major festivals including Aldeburgh, Aspen, Bath, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, Santa Fe, South Bank, Spoleto, and Tanglewood. Members of the Vermeer have been on the Resident Artist Faculty of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb since 1970, and have presented annual master classes at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England since 1978. Each summer for over two decades, the Vermeer has been the featured ensemble for Bay Chamber Concerts in Maine. Two of their compact discs have been nominated for Grammy Awards. The Vermeer previously performed in Columbus under the auspices of Chamber Music Columbus on February 2, 2002, and October 1, 2005.

About the Artists: Dr. Caroline Hong

Dr. Caroline Hong is an Associate Professor of Piano at The Ohio State University. She has garnered top prizes in numerous competitions including the Frinna Awerbuch International Piano Competition (New York), the Chicago Civic Orchestra Soloist Competition, and the Society of American Musicians (Chicago). Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award-winning composer John Corigliano has called Dr. Hong "one of the greatest pianists I have ever heard." Dr. Hong previously performed with the Vermeer under the auspices of Chamber Music Columbus on October 1, 2005.

The Vermeer Quartet appears through arrangement with Arts Management Group, Inc., 1133 Broadway, New York, New York 10010.

Franz Schubert (born Vienna, January 31, 1797; died Vienna, November 19, 1828)
            Quartet in E-flat major, op. 125, no. 1 (D. 87)  (composed 1813)
                        Allegro moderato
                        Scherzo:  Prestissimo
                        Adagio
                        Allegro

Franz Schubert’s musical studies at Vienna’s Stadtkonvikt, the Imperial City Seminary, were interrupted by Napoleon’s occupation of the city from May through October of 1809.  But the young composer, who would someday be famous for an “unfinished” symphony, was soon producing compositions both finished and not.  His earliest surviving complete work was the Fantasie in G major, D. 1 for piano duet, dating from April/May 1810, and his first song from March 1811.  It was during a holiday from school in 1811 when violist Franz joined with his violinist brothers Ignaz and Ferdinand, and their cellist father Franz Theodor in a family quartet that would serve as his own private musical research and development department.

Quickly, Schubert progressed from fragmentary string quartets to completed ones as he learned to vary textures, control structure, and weave melodies.  During the course of 1813, he is believed to have written five or six quartets.  The Quartet in E-flat major, D. 87, was the last of those -- and the only one of them to enter the common repertoire -- written in November 1813 and published posthumously in 1830 as Op. 125, No. 1.  Because of its quality, it was long believed to date from 1817 or even later, but the discovery of the manuscript after World War I confirmed its earlier date.

Although works of the mature Schubert are known for the adventurous exploration of keys, all four movements of the Quartet, D. 87, are in the key of E-flat major.  Schubert’s gift for melody is on full display, however, in the Allegro moderato, with a three-part first theme, a syncopated second theme, and a third theme in the first violin over a quick dotted-note accompaniment.  Schubert confounds expectation by placing the Scherzo second rather than third.  The movement’s trio section moves into minor mode and features a folksy drone.  In the Adagio, the full quartet plays the first theme, but the second is heard in the first violin alone over a staccato accompaniment.  The Allegro finale has two lively themes in the first violin, the second of which recalls the opening of the first movement.

It was right around the time of this composition that Schubert decided to decline the offer of a scholarship to continue studying at the Stadtkonvikt and instead to begin training as a teacher, following in the footsteps of his father and brothers.  As it turned out, this career choice left him with much more time to compose than he would have had otherwise.  From this point onward, writing music became Schubert’s real career.

Frank Bridge (born Brighton, February 26, 1879; died Eastbourne, January 10, 1941)
            Quartet no. 1 in E minor (“Bologna”) (composed 1906)
                        Adagio; Allegro appassionato
                        Adagio molto
                        Allegretto grazioso; Animato
                        Allegro agitato; Allegro moderato; Adagio molto

Frank Bridge is one of those early twentieth century British composers whose name, obscure as it may be in the United States, is at least slightly more familiar than his music.  Ironically, that familiarity is due in large measure to a popular work composed by his sole composition student, Benjamin Britten, Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge from 1937.  Bridge himself specialized in songs and chamber music, writing relatively few of the large scale orchestral works that might have put his name in front of bigger audiences.  His only symphony was left unfinished at his death.

Born in Brighton in 1879, Bridge studied at the Royal College of Music under the stern composer and teacher Charles Villiers Stanford.  At the time, the RCM was regarded as the more traditional school, as opposed to the relatively free-spirited Royal Academy of Music, and Stanford was the RCM’s most exacting taskmaster.  Legend holds that Stanford helped stifle the creativity of a generation of RCM composers, but those who survived were assured of a firm musical foundation on which to build.

Bridge certainly took advantage of Stanford’s lessons and quickly gained a reputation as an excellent chamber music performer (first on violin and later prominently on the viola) as well as a talented conductor.  He first became known as a violinist in the Grimson Quartet, then later switched to the viola, which he played in the Joachim Quartet and, until 1915, the English String Quartet.

This insider’s knowledge of chamber music shines throughout his career as a composer, but most particularly in his early chamber works, including the Quartet no. 1 in E minor.  It was composed for, and received “mention d’honneur” at, a 1906 competition sponsored by the Accademia Filarmonica in Bologna, Italy.  Hence, the work’s nickname, the Bologna Quartet.  Bridge reportedly wrote the quartet so quickly that he had no time to make a second set of parts.  The Accademia would not return Bridge’s original score for two and a half years, postponing the premiere performance until 1909.

In the structure of the Quartet no. 1, one can see the legacy of the tightly-constructed phantasies that Bridge wrote for a series of competitions sponsored by Walter Wilson Cobbett, editor of the invaluable Cyclopaedia of Chamber Music.  The brief Adagio introduction to the first movement of the quartet introduces a descending cello motif that is taken up vigorously in the Allegro appassionato by the first violin.  A gentle viola tune offers contrast.  Like the phantasies, the Adagio molto has an arch form, dominated by a viola melody in the first part that is picked up by the cello after the lively midsection.  The lighthearted Allegretto grazioso scherzo is followed by the Animato trio, where the first violin and viola grapple with the pizzicato rhythms of the remaining strings, before that descending motif from the opening Adagio returns.  The first violin sounds both of the themes of the finale, but that initial descending cello idea comes back yet again to conclude the work.

Dmitri Shostakovich (born St. Petersburg, September 25, 1906; died Moscow, August 9, 1975)
            Piano Quintet in G minor, op. 57 (composed 1940)
                        Prelude:  Lento
                        Fugue:  Adagio
                        Scherzo:  Allegretto
                        Intermezzo:  Lento
                        Finale:  Allegretto

Believe what you will about Dmitri Shostakovich, but one can hardly deny the emotional power of his best works.  Whether you are convinced that he remained a committed Communist to his death in 1975 or that he built into his music clues about his growing disillusionment with the Soviet Union from the 1930s onwards, Shostakovich rests secure with his reputation as one of the most important of twentieth-century composers.

In 1936, Shostakovich had had his most serious run-in to date with Josef Stalin over the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District, which was accused of having an ideology muddled enough to appeal to bourgeois tastes.  During the next few years, the composer struggled to balance personal conscience with political constraints and to rehabilitate himself in the process.  With such works as his 1937 Fifth Symphony, he climbed back into the good graces of the powers-that-be.  Early that same year, he was invited to join the faculty of the Leningrad Conservatory, both a sign that he was succeeding and an indication of his commitment to the State and to the education of the people.

One relatively safe means of self-expression in such times was a return to counterpoint in the spirit of Johann Sebastian Bach.  So, when Moscow’s Beethoven Quartet, impressed by his String Quartet no. 1, op. 49, of 1938, asked Shostakovich to write a quintet they could perform together, the composer obliged with the Piano Quintet in G minor, op. 57, suffused with the flavor of Bach.  Shostakovich began writing in the summer of 1940 and finished in mid-September.  With the composer at the piano, the Beethoven Quartet premiered the work at the Moscow Conservatory on November 23, 1940.  Perhaps cementing his rehabilitation, Shostakovich received the very first Stalin Prize for the Quintet on March 16, 1941.  When he turned around and donated the 100,000 ruble award to the poor people of Moscow, he also no doubt impressed those who had attacked him a few years earlier.

In the manner of a slow Bach prelude, the first movement opens with the piano alone, emphasizing a three-note motif that weaves through all five movements of the quintet.  The strings respond, with the cello playing in a higher register than the others.  A quicker middle passage leads to a return to a variant of the opening Lento theme.  The first violin sounds the theme of the second movement Fugue, followed by each other string (all muted), and finally by the piano.  Eventually, the Lento theme returns in the piano and then cello.  Ironic and lively, the Scherzo pits the relatively simple piano part against the dense chordal accompaniment of the strings.  A contemplative violin plays over a steady cello accompaniment in the Intermezzo.  With the entrance of the other strings and finally the piano, a climax is reached, only to revert to the earlier mood of contemplation.  With barely a pause, the Finale opens with a calm piano mood that spreads to the strings.  Things then get more animated until that opening Lento comes back one last time, recalls other earlier themes, then glides to a gentle conclusion.

-Program notes by Jay Weitz, Senior Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio.  He is a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly alternative newspaper Columbus Alive (http://www.columbusalive.com)

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