Season Five concert 4 • Haydn and his Students IV
Quartets by Haydn, Beethoven, and Wranitzky
Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 8pm; St Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco
Please note: this
is an evening concert!
Sunday, April 15, 2012 at 4pm; All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Palo Alto
The New
Esterházy Quartet play our final subscription concerts on Saturday,
April 14 in San Francisco and Sunday, April 15 in Palo Alto. This
program is our fourth of quartets by Students of Haydn. You will hear a
charming work by Anton Wranitzky which offers in the place of the
traditional Minuet a Polonaise, or as he puts it, Alla
Polacca.
Anton Wranitzky, with his brother Paul, was a leader of the orchestra
for the first performances of Haydn's Creation, and he arranged that
oratorio for viola quintet. NEQ, with guest violist Benjamin Simon, will
perform Wranitzky's version of Part One of Haydn's Creation at Berkeley's Freight
& Salvage Coffeehouse at 8pm on Monday evening, April 30. For
details, please click here.
But back to our
mid-April program—Haydn himself will be represented by his serious and
experimental Quartet in F minor, Op. 20, No. 4. The first movement is as
F minor as can be, dense, intense, and tragic. The minuet that follows
is somewhat lighter, relieved by its trio, and the slow movement
following is an impassioned aria and improvisation for the first
violinist. Then a fugue, the Viennese Haydn's answer to Berlin critics
of his contrapuntal ability. Even German-speaking lands recognize a
north/south divide!
The second half
of the program is given to perhaps the most monumental quartet of
Haydn's recalcitrant student Ludwig van Beethoven, Op. 132 in A minor.
For those who know this work, we hope that our performance on
instruments appropriate to the sound that Beethoven heard (in his
imagination!) will give you new insights into what Beethoven expected
from his players and his audiences. For those to whom this work is
unfamiliar, we need only say that it is amazing and thrilling. That its
intricacies could have come from a man suffering with profound deafness
is nearly unimaginable.
Beethoven had
been ill with a variety of ailments and treatments for some years, but
in periods of remission he wrote his late quartets. The centerpiece of
Op. 132 is the slow movement which he entitled Holy
Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Divinity. Three increasingly
complex chorale episodes are interleaved with two lighter sections which
he called Feeling Renewed Strength. The effect of their
alternation is deep, and yet next he gives us a mock March fit to
accompany nothing less than some sort of early 19th century Keystone
Cops feature, which then leads to a melodramatic recitative, which
carries us into a wild, almost desperate finale that sends the cellist
to his fingerboard's (and his wits') end.
At the concerts
we will offer coupons good for discounted subscriptions to our Sixth
Season. We hope to see you there!
And lastly, a
reminder of Let's Make
History! a Classical Chamber Music Workshop presented by The San
Francisco Early Music Society at St.
Albert's
Priory, one block from the Rockridge BART station in Oakland, June
17–23. The members of the New Esterházy Quartet will offer you the
opportunity to hone your chamber music skills in this intensive one-week
seminar in classical performance practice. Participants will discover
new repertoire daily and perform casual concerts nightly. Individuals
and groups are welcome to apply. To find out more and to sign up please
click here.
Thanks for your support this season!
Kati, Lisa, Anthony, William
The New
Esterházy Quartet
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