Willy Sucre and Friends play String Quartets
Violist Willy Sucre
will be joined by
violinists Roberta Arruda
and
Carol Swift-Matton
with Joan Zucker on cello.
The program should include:
String Quartet No. 2
“Intimate Pages”
by Leoš Janáček
I. Andante con moto - Allegro
II. Adagio - Vivace
III. Moderato - Adagio - Allegro
IV. Allegro - Andante - Adagio
Leoš Janácek was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was born in Hukvaldy, Moravia on July 3, 1854 and died in Ostrava, on August 12, 1928.
Perfection is a goal - it could be said the goal - of most creators; Janáček was no exception in his “yearning for the ideal.” Clearly, he viewed work and study as the path to that unattainable mark. The composer was fascinated by sounds of nature and rhythms of peasant speech. His exercises in notating words and phrases led to his developing the notion of short, pithy musical “cells.” These became a mainstay of his musical language. Vocal music was another source of the unmistakable Janacek style. In his boyhood years, he was a chorister, and he later became a choral conductor. His fascination for language and his experience with the human voice may well explain why his musical speech is the most expansive and personal in his ten operas.
Although “Intimate Pages” is numbered the second of Janacek’s quartets, it is actually the third. The first effort, made early in his life in 1880, has been lost. It took Janacek only three weeks in early 1928 to compose “Intimate Pages”; the first performance, on September 11 that year, occurred a month after his death. The title refers to his infatuation, In the last years of his life, with the very young Kamila Stösslová the work was intended to be reflective of his passion. He abjured his original title, “Love Letters,” because (as he wrote to his bien-aimée) he wanted not “to deliver my feelings to the tender mercies of fools.”
Notes written by Elizabeth Lauer ©2005
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I N T E R M I S S I O N
String Quartet in C Sharp Minor, Op.131
by Ludwig van Beethoven
I. Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo
II. Allegro molto vivace
III. Allegro Moderato
IV. Andante, ma non troppo e molto cantabile
V. Presto
VI. Adagio quasi un poco andante
VII. Allegro
Beethoven was born December 16, 1770, in Bonn and died March 26, 1827, in Vienna. He began to work on Op. 131 late in 1825, after he had completed the three-quartet commission (Opp. 127, 130, 132) for Prince Galitzin, and presented it to the publisher on July 12 of the next year. Beethoven’s flippant note on the score— “Put together from pilferings from this and that” —caused the publisher great concern, and the composer had to assure the publisher that the music was completely original, and his remark was only a joke. In retrospect it now seems that his comment may have referred to the seven separate movements making up a unified work.
Lasting close to forty minutes, the quartet is divided into seven sections that are played without pause, creating a completely organic, well-integrated whole. The burden for projecting this underlying unity rests with the performers, who must maintain the proper relationships of tempo and mood for the work to flow smoothly from beginning to end.
The quartet was dedicated to Baron Joseph von Stutterheim, Field Marshal, in gratitude for accepting Beethoven’s nephew Karl into the baron’s regiment. Scholars believe that the first hearing was at a private concert in Vienna in December 1826, but that the initial public performance did not take place until 1835, long after Beethoven’s death. Beethoven once confided to friend Karl Holz that, while each of his sixteen quartets was unique, “each in its way,” his favorite was the C sharp minor, Op. 131. When Schubert heard the piece, Holz reported that “He fell into such a state of excitement and enthusiasm that we were all frightened for him.” Down to our own day many people, musicians as well as listeners, consider it the greatest quartet ever written.
Notes adapted from Melvin Berger's Guide to Chamber Music.
Time, date, and program subject to change.