Nelson
Lee, violin
Megan Freivogel, violin
Liz Freivogel, viola
Daniel McDonough, cello
The
Jupiter String Quartet, formed in 2001, is a particularly intimate group,
consisting of violinists Nelson Lee and Megan Freivogel, violist Liz
Freivogel (older sister of Meg), and cellist Daniel McDonough (husband of
Meg, brother-in-law of Liz). Meg
and Liz grew up playing string quartets with their two brothers, Ben and J.
Rehearsals were often quite raucous,
but they grew to love chamber music during weekly coachings with Oliver Edel,
a wonderful cellist and teacher who taught generations of students in the
Washington, D.C., area. Nelson also
comes from a musical family–both of his parents are pianists (his father
also conducts) and his twin sisters, Alicia and Andrea, play clarinet and
cello. Although Daniel originally
wanted to be a violinist, he ended up on the cello because the organizers of
his first strings program declared that he had “better hands for the cello.”
He remains skeptical of this comment
(he was, after all, only five), and suspects they may just have needed more
cellists, but is happy that he ended up where he did.
Daniel, Nelson, and Meg met at the
Cleveland Institute of Music, and when they were searching for a violist Meg
suggested they might consider her sister Liz, who was at nearby Oberlin
College. The quartet finished up
their schooling together at the New England Conservatory of Music, where
they were in the Professional String Quartet Training Program.
They currently reside in Boston,
Massachusetts. The quartet chose
its name because Jupiter was the most prominent planet in the night sky at
the time of its formation, and the astrological symbol for Jupiter resembles
the number four. There are also
musical references (for example, Holst’s
The Planets, in which Jupiter is
“the bringer of jollity”) that emphasize the connotations of happiness and
strength associated with the Roman god Jupiter.
In addition to its formal concert
schedule, the Jupiter String Quartet places a strong emphasis on developing
relationships with future classical music audiences through outreach work in
the school systems and other educational performances. They believe that
chamber music, because of the intensity of its interplay and communication,
is one of the most effective ways of spreading an enthusiasm for “classical”
music to new audiences. The
Jupiters have been fortunate to receive several recent chamber music honors,
including first prize in the Banff International String Quartet Competition,
grand prize in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competion, membership in
Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two, and Chamber Music America’s
Cleveland Quartet Award, which “honors and promotes a rising young string
quartet whose artistry demonstrates that it is in the process of
establishing a major career.”
The quartet also won the 2005 Young Concert Artists International auditions
and now holds YCA’s Helen F. Whitaker Chamber Music Chair.
Most recently, they were honored to
receive an Avery Fisher Career Grant.
They have been enthusiastically received at several major music
festivals, including the Aspen Music Festival, the Vancouver Chamber Music
Festival, the Caramoor International Music Festival, the Great Lakes Chamber
Music Festival, the Honest Brook Festival, the Skaneateles Festival, and the
Yellow Barn Music Festival. For
more information on the Jupiter String Quartet, see their Web site at
http://www.jupiterquartet.com.
The
Jupiter String Quartet appears through arrangement with AMG, Arts Management
Group, Inc., 37 West 26th Street, Suite 403, New York, New York
10010.
Joseph Haydn
(born Rohrau, Austria, March 31, 1732; died Vienna, May 31, 1809)
Quartet in F minor, op. 20, no. 5 (H.
III:35) (composed 1772)
Moderato
Menuet
Adagio
Finale: Fuga a 2
soggetti
When Joseph Haydn began compiling the “Entwurf-Katalog” (literally, draft
catalog) of his works around 1765, string quartets did not even have their
own separate section. Instead they were lumped together with all the
other multi-instrument divertimenti. Yet within the next few years
(and certainly by the time of his Opus 9 in 1769), Haydn would have
invented almost single-handedly the new genre of the quartet for two
violins, viola, and cello.
Creating a new genre is one thing; consummating it is something else
entirely. With the image of the sun coming up on the front page of the
1779 J.J. Hummel edition (giving rise to the moniker “Sun” Quartets), was
born the true string quartet with four independent voices. Donald
Francis Tovey would write of Haydn's Quartets op. 20: “There
is perhaps no single or sextuple opus in the history of instrumental music
which has achieved so much or achieved it so quietly.” Solidifying the
four-movement form and employing the cello for more than mere accompaniment,
Haydn moved from what he had termed the “divertimento a quattro” to what
others were already recognizing as “great.” (Another contemporary
nickname for the set was “Die Grossen Quartette.”)
Scholars differ about the order of composition among the six quartets, but
Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon follows the “Entwurf-Katalog” in placing
the Quartet in F minor, op. 20, no. 5, first. The key is one
rarely used in Haydn’s day, but one he employed occasionally, especially
during his “Strum und Drang” period. Its dark quality prompted Tovey
to dub this quartet “the most nearly tragic work Haydn ever wrote.”
Tense and somber, the Moderato is an epic sonata-form movement with a recap
that twice launches into further development and an extensive coda that does
so yet again. Unison playing by the viola and cello in the Menuet
emphasizes the continuing downbeat mood, relieved only momentarily by the
trio’s dancing over to F major. Gently pastoral, the Adagio features a
section marked (in Haydn’s idiosyncratic Latin) “per figuram redartationis,”
a sort of notated rubato. Working with a familiar theme (which Handel
used as “And with His stripes we are healed” in Messiah) and a counter
theme, Haydn builds an exceptional Fuga a 2 soggetti finale that
well displays his contrapuntal mastery.
Leos Janácek
(born Hukvaldy, Moravia, July 3, 1854; died Moravská Ostrava, August 12,
1928)
Quartet no. 1 ("Kreutzer Sonata") (composed 1923)
Janácek's Quartet no. 1 owes its subtitle only indirectly to its more famous namesake, Beethoven's "Kreutzer Sonata", the Violin Sonata, op. 47. Instead, Janácek was inspired by what he called "the unhappy, tormented, misused and ill-used woman, as described by the Russian writer Tolstoy" in his story The Kreutzer Sonata. For Tolstoy, a recital of Beethoven's work becomes an emblem of the "immoral effects" of emotional music and a warning against the entanglements of love.
In the grand tradition of artistic cross-fertilization, however, Janácek creatively misinterprets Tolstoy in an almost feminist light. Images of strong women who suffer at the hands of men abound in his operas, including Katya Kabanova and the one he started right after finishing this quartet, The Makropulos Affair.
Janácek's distortion of Tolstoy is hardly the only misleading thing about the Quartet no. 1. It's not really his first string quartet. In 1870, while a student at the Vienna Conservatory, Janácek wrote three movements of a quartet, which have since been lost. Strictly speaking, it's not a "sonata" in the classical sense of being for a solo instrument or a solo instrument with piano accompaniment. Like its sibling the Quartet no. 2, the Kreutzer has little in common with the traditional string quartet, except for its four-movement structure and some cyclic tendencies.
Furthermore, it's not even the first Janácek work related to Tolstoy's story. In the autumn of 1908, Janácek wrote a piano trio with the same subtitle, then revised it the next spring. Although no explicit trace of this piano trio has survived, Janácek is supposed to have reworked some of its material into the Quartet no. 1. Perhaps that explains how he managed to compose it so quickly, between October 30th and November 7, 1923.
Helping to organize the whole quartet is the slow two-bar theme of the Adagio, which resurfaces in different guises throughout the work. The second subject has a lighter, Russian folk dance flavor. In the second movement, a jagged version of that Adagio theme is set against a more lyrical accompaniment. Listen for the "sul ponticello" passage, where the bow plays close to the bridge.
Some commentators hear a reference to Beethoven's "Kreutzer" in the opening of the third movement, which soon erupts into violence. From this emerges the agitated Vivace section. The movement comes full circle with a return to its opening moments, but with a new accompaniment.
A darker, more fluid permutation of that original Adagio theme opens the finale. It is joined by a melody reminiscent of the tenth song in his cycle The Diary of One Who Vanished. All through, there is a struggle between emotional poles until the final reiterations of the second bar of the Adagio motto.
Ludwig van Beethoven
(born Bonn, December 16, 1770; died Vienna, March 26, 1827)
Quartet in E-flat major, op. 127 (composed 1824-1825)
Prince
Nicholas von Galitzin, an amateur cellist and the man responsible for the
first performance of the Missa
Solemnis, wrote to Beethoven in November of 1822, commissioning one,
two, or three new string quartets for his ensemble in St. Petersburg.
Having written no quartets since his
Opus 95 in 1810, Beethoven needed
little encouragement to re-cultivate this most fertile creative soil as soon
as he finished the mass and the Ninth
Symphony. In January 1823,
he accepted the commission, though he didn’t begin work in earnest for yet
another year. Unfortunately,
Galitzin was even slower to pay than Beethoven was to compose.
The three quartets (opp. 127, 132, and 130, in order of composition)
were completed and delivered by 1825, but Galitzin had paid only for the
first by the time of Beethoven’s death in March 1827.
The two estates would carry on the dispute over the remaining two for
a number of years before Galitzin’s heirs eventually paid Beethoven’s heirs
for the works.
Galitzin
certainly got his money’s worth for the
Quartet in E-flat major, op. 127,
even though Beethoven was dissatisfied with the its first performance by the
Schuppanzigh Quartet on March 6, 1825.
Visually supervising the rehearsals (he was, of course, totally deaf
by this time), the composer could see the frustration and confusion in the
players’ demeanor. He
immediately handed the work over to Joseph Boehm and his quartet, whose
performance within the month was much better received.
Thus was Beethoven emboldened on the experimental path through the
string quartet that was to occupy him for the remainder of his compositional
life.
Each
movement of Opus 127 opens with
some type of introductory deep breath, as if shoring up strength for the
struggles to follow. The chordal
Maestoso (2/4) opens the exposition (E-flat major), the development
(G major), and the recap (C major), offering three pillars of stasis in
contrast to the contrapuntal lyricism of the
Allegro (3/4). The
two-part Adagio (12/8) theme,
related to the Benedictus qui venit
of the Missa Solemnis, and its
far-ranging variations constitute one of the last of Beethoven’s expansive
slow movements. Variation I
finds the theme in the cello; Variation II (Andante
con moto) is a violin dialogue; the glowing third variation (Adagio molto espressivo) is a simplified version in E major; the
fourth features a development on fragments of the theme; the fifth sends the
first violin soaring before the coda.
After a
pizzicato introduction, the Scherzando
vivace (3/4) becomes playfully fugal with its dotted rhythms; the trio (Presto,
¾) has an impulsive violin theme over chordal accompaniment.
The Finale (2/2) has no
tempo indication but is full of folksy dance episodes and all varieties of
contrast. After a change of
meter (6/8) and violin trills, the movement slows down and lightens up,
concluding with three emphatic chords.
--
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).
