Brentano String Quartet Program Notes
December 4, 2006
MOZART: Quintet in C minor, K. 406
The opening of Mozart’s C minor quintet is not dissimilar to that of Beethoven’s piano concerto in the same key, starting out with almost brutally raw unison statements answered by a harmonized quiet response. For Mozart, the end of the unison theme features a falling diminished seventh, an interval with painful connotations to be explored later. The quiet response in the first phrase has the first violin reaching ever higher in a series of melancholic sighs. This dialogue between austere music and music that pleads and questions gives the movement its shape and meaning. The exposition gives us a moment of relief in the elegant and buoyant second theme in major, but when it returns, it is enshrouded in a veil of tears, in minor and with suspensions in the melodic line and a portentously murmuring accompaniment.
The Andante moves into the relative major and yet seems precisely to embody the feeling for which we create words like “bittersweet.” A gentle lilt is felt throughout despite off-balance stresses and heart-rending harmonic clashes. If this is perhaps a garden love scene in which none of the difficulties or vicissitudes of love are ignored, still there are moments when the innocent charm of the garden itself infects the proceedings and all is momentarily cleansed.
The Menuetto plays against type, not uncommon for Mozart. In the present case, Mozart gives a simple dance a rigorous contrapuntal treatment, severe and heavy. The theme starts with rhythmic ambiguity, having a pulse in three, twice as slow as the meter of the dance, a device used in the baroque at the ends of phrases. The contrasting trio section is for string quartet, with the second viola silent, and is a canon in inversion, a musical depiction of the still beauty in the double image of nature and its reflection in the water.
A series of variations closes the work. At two points in the movement the original idea of a wind serenade makes itself felt. The first of these is a variation in E-flat major in which we hear the call of hunting horns in the woods. In the original we hear actual horns, and here we have a reference to horns in the violas. Then, having found our way to C Major, we hear the type of music we expected all along in a serenade, and we escape the interior, complex world we have inhabited to gallivant in the open air. (2006 by Mark Steinberg)
MOZART: String Quintet in E flat Major, KV 614Mozart’s E flat Viola Quintet was his last serious chamber work. The Quintet evokes a divertimento played by wind instruments in the open air. Indeed, if one were to have to guess which of Mozart’s viola quintets originated as a work for winds, one might well choose this quintet rather than the C minor work.
For performers, the E flat Quintet is distinguished by its considerable technical demands, and by its paradox of carefree spirit crossed with substantial compositional scope. The first movement opens with a horn-like hunting call in the violas, which is answered by a descending figure in the violins. The working-out of this material starts right away, and is contrapuntally active; it leads directly to the movement’s other melody, which is sweeter and more intimate. Essentially the mood is festive and brilliant, with virtuosic demands made on all five players.The slow movement is courtly and ornate. It is not one of Mozart’s lyrical, aria-like slow movements, but evokes instead a graceful and dignified dance. The opening melody is the idée fixe of the movement, appearing many times in many guises, sometimes decorated by other voices, sometimes digressing into unexpected channels, but always recognizable by its repeated starting pitch.
The minuet is jovial, Haydnesque, celebratory. There is clever deployment of one small instrumental group against another, of violins vying with one another, of melodies being turned upside down, and then finally, an ominous C minor halt – after which the music teasingly and quietly draws a simple conclusion. The ensuing Trio is a musette-like creation, wherein a smooth, gentle tune is played out against a persistent E-flat in the bass; more than anything it evokes a celestial music box, spinning its gleaming idea out to an inevitable close.
A carefree melody opens the finale, full of high jinks and good humor. The movement that unfolds develops this joyful vein; in places the music recalls the final movement of Mozart’s 39th symphony, also in E-flat. In the middle section of the movement, the five voices get into a stormy argument, which takes a fugue-like form, complete with its own subject; but the episode is brief and hurriedly dissipates. The movement plays out according to the pattern of its sonata form, and closes with a joking coda: a teasing question with a boisterous rejoinder. (2006 by Misha Amory)
MOZART: String Quintet in C Major, KV 515Mozart’s C major Viola Quintet is among the greatest of his chamber music masterpieces. He wrote four major works for viola quintet during this period, and established the genre. The C major Quintet was composed in the spring of 1787; along with the G minor Quintet, it shows the composer at the height of his mature period, able to call into being music whose smooth surface masks the depth of invention and complexity lying beneath.
The first movement is in five-bar periods; this creates a wonderful asymmetry, and augurs a commitment to irregular phrase lengths. The texture is generally simple and homophonic, but just as the ear has become used to simplicity, the composer splits the group, and in the central development section of the movement, he abandons simplicity, exploring the polyphonic possibilities of his material in a troubled episode. The coda features complicated counterpoint among the voices, again inviting a darker tenderness which offsets the sunny, C major of the movement.
The Minuet employs a teasing device: a melody which crescendos to a surprising subito piano, then, on its second attempt, attains the forte it was aiming for. This is the first of several dynamic surprises, which crop up everywhere in the movement, an idée fixe of sorts. The Trio shifts to F major and, as if aware of having strayed, seems often unsure: instead of a flowing melody, the main idea is a hesitating two-note motif, and the key of F major is only established near the end of the section.
The slow movement takes the form of a tender duet between the first violin and first viola, as Mozart focuses on the orchestrational symmetry of the quintet. All the elements of opera aria are here, beautiful melodic contour richly adorned with ornaments and arabesques; only a text is lacking. The form is simple and without development, befitting the music’s straightforward message.
In the Finale, the mood is decidedly buffa. Effervescent and humorous, the five parts are sometimes united festively, sometimes scurrying about conspiratorially, handing messages back and forth. Despite all the humor and surprise, however, the movement’s strict rondo form describes an inevitable arc, so that the euphoric coda, with its glorification of the main theme’s leaping thirds, seems pre-ordained. (2006 by Misha Amory)
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