Willy Sucre and Friends play

 String Quartets

Violist Willy Sucre, joined by

violinists Krzysztof Zimowski

and Julanie Collier Lee 

with cellist James Holland.

The program should include:

I. Allegro ma non troppo

II. Andante

III. Allegro

Grazyna Bacewicz was born in Lodz, Poland on May 5, 1909 and died in Warsaw on Jan. 17,1969. She ranked as one of the worlds most eminent and prolific women composers. As Witold Lutoslawski once said, "the fact that Polish contemporary music has gained such a high rank, is due to Grazyna Bacewicz." Bacewicz was a child prodigy, the third of five children born in a musical family, where each was taught by their father on a different instrument. Before the age of twelve she played several violin concerti with local orchestras. She studied at the Warsaw Conservatory and at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. A virtuoso of the violin, who prior to World War II gave concerts all over Europe, she applied her consummate knowledge of the technical secrets of string instruments when writing compositions. Because of this, she has been able to extract from these instruments all their expressive possibilities. In 1955, at the peak of her brilliant career as a violinist, she left the concert stage to devote herself to composition. Rich in all existing forms, her life's work is impressive in quantity and diversity: seven violin concerti, seven string quartets, piano concerti, two piano quintets, five sonatas for violin and piano, several sonatas and pieces for violin solo, four symphonies, three ballets, and opera. She received numerous national, as well as international awards for her achievements such as a Gold Medal of the Belgian Government in 1965. Bacewicz also had a great literary talent. She managed to write four novels, a TV play and several essays.

Notes adapted from information supplied by Krzysztof Zimowski.

I N T E R M I S S I O N

I. Allegro vivo appassionato

II. Allegro moderato à la Polka

III. Largo sostenuto

IV. Vivace

Bedřich Smetana was born on March 2, 1824, in Litomyšl, Bohemia. As a young man, he composed music that captured the flavor of the region’s folk songs and dances and depicted its landscape, legends, and folk tales, thus contributing to the rising spirit of Bohemian nationalism. As the leading composer of Bohemia, Smetana followed a heavy schedule of composing, conducting, teaching, and performing and was involved, too, in promoting national Bohemian music. Then, at age fifty, tragedy struck with devastating suddenness; he became totally deaf. Even the biggest specialists could not help him; their primitive treatments were painful and ineffective. Nevertheless, it was while he was bereft of his hearing that he wrote his most celebrated chamber composition, the string quartet “From My Life.”

He began his E minor quartet in October 1876 and finished it on December 19. There was a private performance in Prague in 1878, with the young Dvořák playing viola. The official premiere, also in Prague, was on March 28, 1879, played by an ensemble made up of Ferdinand Lachner, Jan Pelikan, Josef Krehan, and Alois Neruda.

Like all well-written pieces of program music, the String Quartet in E minor can stand on its own as an “absolute” piece of music with no outside connections, but familiarity with the program the composer had in mind can definitely enhance the experience. Information about the meaning carried by this quartet comes from a letter Smetana sent to his close friend and confidante, Josef Srb-Debrnov, dated April 12, 1878: “As regards my Quartet I gladly leave others to judge its style, and I shall not be in the least angry if this style does not find favor or is considered contrary to what was hitherto regarded as ‘quartet style.’ I did not set out to write a quartet according to recipe or custom in the usual forms. . . . With me the form of every composition is dictated by the subject itself and thus the Quartet, too, shaped its own form. My intention was to paint a tone picture of my life.” Smetana died May 12, 1884, in Prague.

Notes  adapted from Melvin Berger's Guide to Chamber Music.

Time, date, and program subject to change.