the friends of chamber music | Live Performance. Be There.

SCHUBERT String Quartet No. 14 in D Minor, D. 810 “Death and the Maiden” Allegro Andante con moto Scherzo: Allegro molto Presto

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

BRAHMS Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 Allegro non troppo Andante un poco adagio Scherzo: Allegro Finale: Poco sostenuto; Allegro non troppo; Presto non troppo

Mark Steinberg violinSerena Canin violinMisha Amory violaNina Lee celloJuho Pohjonen piano

This concert is underwritten, in part, by The Sosland Family Foundation.

The International Chamber Music Series is underwritten, in part, by the William T. Kemper Foundation

Additional support is also provided by:

Brentano String Quartetwith juho pohjonen, piano

The Folly Theater8 pm Friday, September 26

T h e W i l l i a m T. K e m p e r I n t e r n at i o n a l c h a m b e r M u s i c s e r i e s

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Quartet in D Minor, D. 810 “Death and the Maiden” Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

I have not written many new songs, but I have tried my hand at several instrumental works, for I’ve written two Quartets for violins, viola and violoncello and an Octet, and I want to write another Quartet, in fact I intend to pave my way towards grand symphony in that manner.

So wrote Schubert to his friend Leopold Kupelweiser in March 1824. Having established his reputation with Lieder, the still young composer was turning more toward instrumental music in the mid-1820s. In this case, his inspiration came in part from a song he had composed in February 1817 on a text by Claudius: “Der Tod und das Mädchen,” (“Death and the Maiden”) D.531. Modern scholars believe that Schubert composed 19 string quartets. Three of those are lost, and another four were not completed. Most of the efforts date from his teenage years. Young Franz played viola creditably, and by age 14 was considered to be quite accomplished. The entire family was musical: older brother Ferdinand played first violin, brother Ignaz second violin, and Papa Schubert cello in the Schubert family musicales. His family were thus the first performers of all the youthful string works. Stylistically, the difference between the early quartets and this comparatively late one is overwhelming. No longer the Salieri student of counterpoint and vocal technique, by 1820 Schubert had earned a fair amount of recognition and established a circle of friends and admirers in Vienna. By 1824 he was ailing, already suffering from symptoms of the syphilis that would cut short his life only four years later. The specter of death clearly preoccupied him. Interestingly, the subtitle “Death and the Maiden” does not appear in the autograph manuscript, perhaps because the song was well known to Schubert’s Viennese audience. The D Minor quartet distinguishes itself by a unity of purpose that pervades all four movements. Its centerpiece is the slow movement, a set of five variations on “Der Tod und das Mädchen.” The original song is in D Minor, which is the overall tonality of Schubert’s quartet. For the slow movement variations, however, Schubert presents the melody in the subdominant key of G Minor.

Rather than quoting himself literally, he paraphrases the music of the song’s piano introduction. This part of Claudius’s poem deals less with fear, and more with acceptance of death and the peace that death may bring. The Maiden: Pass by, ah, pass by! Away, cruel Death! I am still young, leave me, dear one And do not touch me. Death: Give me your hand, you lovely, tender creature. I am your friends, and not to chastise. Be of good courage. I am not cruel; You shall sleep softly in my arms. All four quartet movements have rhythmic and melodic patterns in common, recurrent motives more Beethovenian than Schubertian. Indeed, Schubert displays a mastery of counterpoint and developmental technique unequalled in any of his earlier chamber works. This quartet is the ultimate synthesis of Lied (the German art-song) and chamber music. In its technical challenges and defiance, its range of expression from savage to tender and resigned, the “Death and the Maiden” quartet must be counted among Schubert’s greatest compositions.

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Lithograph of Franz Schubert by Josef Kriehuber, 1846

the friends of chamber music | Live Performance. Be There.

The opus numbers assigned to Schubert’s compositions are sometimes confusing and occasionally misleading. During Schubert’s lifetime, his different publishers each had their own numbering systems. Some works appeared without an opus number. Others were published posthumously; some first editions of his music were issued as late as 1850. Because Schubert was prolific, another method of clearly identifying individual works was necessary to avoid confusion. The Austrian biographer and bibliographer Otto Erich Deutsch (1883-1967) first published several articles and a book about Schubert in 1905. Deutsch had studied literature and art at universities in

Vienna and Graz. Early in his career, he worked as an art critic, bookseller, and bibliographic assistant. Ultimately his passion for music and curiosity about the great composers governed his activities. One year after the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, Deutsch fled to Britain. He lived in Cambridge until 1951, adopting British citizenship in 1947. Thus many of his scholarly contributions were first published in English. He was uninterested in music criticism, believing that documents and illustrations were the key to understanding the lives of such great composers as Handel, Mozart, and Schubert. Deutsch effectively invented the documentary biography, merging his background as an art historian with his keen interest in music. When he began compiling his Schubert catalogue, Deutsch drew on numerous 19th-century listings of Schubert’s works and his own documentary research. He correspondended extensively with owners of public and private collections containing Schubert’s autograph manuscripts. He worked on the book throughout the 1940s. First published in 1951, the Schubert: Thematic Catalogue of all his Works in Chronological Order was enlarged and updated in 1978, eleven years after Deutsch died. The catalogue is the source of the D. number that identifies Schubert’s individual compositions. It is a model of useful, concise, and accurate information about Schubert’s compositions, manuscripts, and early publication history.

– L.S. ©2014

OTTO ERICH DEUTSCH AND THE SCHUBERT CATALOGUE

Otto Erich Deutsch

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Quintet for Piano and Strings in F Minor, Op. 34 Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

One of the darkest musical canvasses of Brahms’s entire career, the Piano Quintet underwent several metamorphoses before it crystallized in its current form. The music dates from 1862, although it was not published until 1865. Originally Brahms intended it for string quintet. His friend and chamber music collaborator Joseph Joachim persuaded him that the string ensemble, even enlarged by the second cello, was insufficient to do justice to the work’s musical climaxes and symphonic conception. Switching to the keyboard, whose sound could achieve a more orchestral breadth, Brahms chose to rewrite the piece as a sonata for two pianos; in this version it was performed in Vienna in April 1864, more than two years before the Quintet’s première. (The two piano version was published in 1871 as Op. 34a.)

With two pianos at his disposal, Brahms achieved the power and clarity he sought, but he remained dissatisfied with the forfeiture of string color and timbre. He finally arrived at a synthesis of piano and strings. The result – in the version we hear – is a chamber music masterpiece that has been called the climax of his first maturity. The overall impression this quintet creates is one of grandeur and monumental tragedy. Perhaps because it underwent such extensive reworking, it is filled with a profusion of melodic ideas. If the grand scale and impassioned mood of the quintet as a whole are Beethovenian, its melodic abundance, particularly in second themes and in the slow movement, is more Schubertian. Brahms’s opening movement is initially restrained and tragic. Piano, violin and cello state the theme in stark unison before the full ensemble races forth with a series of angry, defiant musical utterances. These two contrasting ideas furnish much of the material that Brahms develops in the expansive Allegro non troppo. Along with a related motive that is introduced by a falling, sighing half-step, these musical ideas will recur in subtly altered form throughout the entire quintet. The slow movement, in tripartite (ABA) form, shares the dreamy, lyrical quality of the slow movement in the early Piano Sonata in F Minor, Op. 5. The scherzo is expansive and massive, with thunderous passages that call to mind the scherzo of the Beethoven Fifth Symphony. Brahms sets up a splendid contrast between the pizzicato pedal of the cello and the sinuous, syncopated meanderings of first violin and viola in unison. Their quiet opening statement switches meter briefly to introduce a rat-a-tat-tat reference, still pianissimo, to the first movement. Then the full ensemble explodes into the Beethoven allusion. The gentler side of Brahms’s musical personality manifests itself in the Trio, whose melody draws on the heritage of folk music. Still, there are grandeur and majesty in these gestures. The slow movement, in tripartite [ABA] form, shares the dreamy, lyrical quality of the analogous movement in the early Piano Sonata in F Minor, Op. 5. Piano introduces Brahms’s material in parallel thirds and sixths, with syncopated octave commentary from the strings. Hints of minor mode inflect the harmonies with an Eastern European flavor. Brahms is at his most Schubertian in this lovely movement.

Photographic image of Johannes Brahms by C. Brasch

the friends of chamber music | Live Performance. Be There.

A mysterious slow introduction – the only one in Brahms’s chamber music – opens the Finale. Marked Poco sostenuto (a bit sustained), that introduction is one of the sections for which strings were essential to deliver the desolate quality that Brahms desired. The balance of the finale is an abbreviated sonata/rondo. Brahms gathers momentum slowly, deceiving the listener with apparent switches of temperament, for there is much humor in this music to mitigate its darkness. Very likely the entire movement served as a structural model for the finale to the First Symphony (1862-1876). The quintet culminates in a magnificent, oversize coda that shifts into overdrive. Brahms recasts the main theme first in 6/8 time, then by syncopation, driving it toward its dramatic conclusion. Symphonic in its conception, the quintet is a masterpiece of the chamber music literature, providing a profound and memorable listening experience. Program Notes by Laurie Shulman ©2014

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The Cup of Death, by Elihu Vedder, 1885 (The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond)

The Early 19th Century Perspective of Death

From the late 17th century though the mid-19th century death was romanticized, and depicted as a human companion in art and literature. Dying and life-after -death were believed to be beautiful, peaceful experiences. One romantic depiction of death compared it with the emergence of a butterfly from a cocoon. The old notions of Heaven and Hell that had so motivated people in an earlier period now emphasized the reunion of loved ones in an afterlife; death was familiar and tame.

Mozart reflected the views of his time in a letter to his father in 1787:

As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity . . . of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.

Found a word or phrase that you are unfamiliar with? Check out our extensive Glossary beginning on page 118 to discover the meaning.

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Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim.

“Passionate, uninhibited and spellbinding,” raves the London Independent; the New York Times extols its “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism”; the Philadelphia Inquirer praises its “seemingly infallible instincts for finding the center of gravity in every phrase and musical gesture”; and the Times (London) opines, “the Brentanos are a magnificent string quartet...This was wonderful, selfless music-making.” In July, 2014, the Brentano Quartet succeeded the Tokyo Quartet as Artists in Residence at Yale University, departing from their 14-year residency at Princeton University. The Quartet also currently serves as the collaborative ensemble for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In recent seasons, they have traveled widely, appearing all over the United States and Canada, in Europe, Japan and Australia, and performed in the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Konzerthaus in Vienna; Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and the Sydney Opera House. In 2012, the Brentano String Quartet provided the central music (Beethoven Opus 131) for the critically-acclaimed independent film A Late Quartet. The feature film, directed by Yaron Zilberman, starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Christopher Walken and Mark Ivanir. In addition to performing the entire two-century range of the standard quartet repertoire, the Brentano Quartet has a strong interest in both very old and very new music. It has performed arrangements of many works pre-dating the string quartet as a medium, among them Madrigals of Gesualdo, Fantasias of Purcell, and secular vocal works of Josquin. The Brentano has also worked closely with some of the most important composers of our time, among them Elliot Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Steven Mackey, Bruce Adolphe, and György Kurtág. The Quartet has commissioned works from Wuorinen, Adolphe, Mackey, David Horne and Gabriela Frank. Within a few years of its formation, the Brantano garnered the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award. They are named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” the intended recipient of his famous love confession.

For more information visit www.brentanoquartet.com The Brentano String Quartet appears courtesy of David Rowe Artists

Brentano String QuartetOne of the brightest young instrumental talents to emerge from

Finland today, Juho Pohjonen has attracted great attention as one of the Nordic countries’ most intriguing and talented pianists.Juho Pohjonen was selected by András Schiff as the winner of the 2009 Klavier Festival Ruhr Scholarship. In addition, he has won numerous prizes in both Finnish and international competitions, including: First Prize at the 2004 Nordic Piano Competition in Nyborg, Denmark, First Prize at the International Young Artists 2000 Concerto Competition, Stockholm, the Prokofiev Prize at the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition 2003, and prize winner at The Helsinki International Maj Lind Piano Competition 2002.He made his debut at the Aspen Music Festival performing Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles… in 2012-13, and in that same year, was selected as one of fourteen musicians to work with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln’s ‘CMS Two Residency Program for Outstanding Young Artists.’ Mr. Pohjonen has given recitals in Hong Kong, Dresden, Hamburg, Helsinki, London (Wigmore Hall), New York (Carnegie Hall), San Francisco, Vancouver, Warsaw and at the Lucerne Piano, Savonlinna and Bergen festivals. He has performed with orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony, Danish National, Finnish Radio Symphony, Swedish Radio Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic and Lahti Symphony - with whom he toured Japan. Most recently, he has worked with such conductors as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Marek Janowski, Hugh Wolff and Lionel Bringuier.His debut recording Plateaux featured a performance of Scandinavian composer Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s piano concerto Plateaux pour Piano et Orchestre with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and a solo piano piece For Piano. His sensational opening recital at the 2010’s Music@Menlo Festival led to a recording for the Music@Menlo Live 2010 series entitled Maps and Legends: Disc 8.

For more information visit www.juhopohjonen.com Juho Pohjonen appears courtesy of Kirshbaum Demler and Associates

Joho Pohjonen has recorded for DaCapo and Music@Menlo LIVE

The Brentano String Quartet record for AEON

(distributed by Naxos of America)

Juho Pohjonen