2023-2024 Repertoire Master List
Alban Berg: Lyric Suite
Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 6 in B-flat Major, Op.18 No. 6
Johannes Brahms: String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 51 No. 1
Benjamin Britten: String Quartet No. 1
Gabriela Lena Frank: Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout
Vivian Fung: “Pizzicato” from String Quartet No. 1
Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartet
George Walker: String Quartet No. 1 “Lyric”
Mieczysław Weinberg: String Quartet No. 6
Concert Programs
Unlikely Muses
The three quartets on this program reflect deep relationships each composer had with another during their life that affected the course of their work. The last of Beethoven’s first six string quartets owes its wit, levity, and exploratory nature to Beethoven’s teacher Josef Haydn, the grandfather of the quartet. Though Beethoven and Haydn often clashed over their styles, later in life, Beethoven would acknowledge his musical debt to Haydn and the evolution of his quartets from their Haydn-esque beginnings. Although Fanny Mendelssohn did not have a public career as a composer like her brother Felix, the two were close musical confidants throughout their lives and influenced each other’s work deeply, as can be heard in her string quartet. Lastly, Alban Berg’s unlikely muse is Hanna Fuchs- Robettin, the inspiration of his Lyric Suite, discovered much later through a miniature score of the composer outlining a secret love narrative. In 1925 an affair began between them – both were married, and Berg composed the work over the next year as a musical manifestation of the excitement, trepidation, and suffering of their secret relationship, going so far as to include their initials in musical cryptograms throughout.
Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 6 in B-flat Major, Op. 18 No. 6
Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartet
Alban Berg: Lyric Suite
Cultures Entwined
From the dawn of time, musical inspiration has always involved some form of borrowing or mixing from one person or culture to another. Each composer on this program found themselves absorbed in a cross-cultural experience that either consciously or unconsciously had an effect on the quartet created in that period. Benjamin Britten had been on a tour of America since 1938 and by 1941, when he penned his first official string quartet, he was quite homesick. He composed this quartet in a residence near the ocean in Escondido, where he must have been reminded of the waves of his coastal birthplace of Lowestoft in the gentle and deep waves of the third movement of this work. Gabriela Lena Frank says, “Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout draws inspiration from the idea of mestizaje as envisioned by Peruvian writer José María Arguedas, where cultures can coexist without the subjugation of one by the other. As such, this piece mixes elements from the western classical and Andean folk music traditions.” The strings invoke the colors and playing styles of traditional Andean instruments, including the panpipe, tarka, guitar- like charango, and the quena flute. For Mieczysław Weinberg, the mixing of cultures was a sheer necessity due to his Jewish heritage. As anti-semitism persecuted his generation in Poland, he was forced to flee and ultimately settled in Moscow at the encouragement of his friend and colleague, Dmitri Shostakovich. Weinberg composed in a style that mixed the sardonic style of Shostakovich with an often wild and ecstatic Yiddish aesthetic that pervades his String Quartet No. 6.
Benjamin Britten: String Quartet No. 1
Gabriela Lena Frank: Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout
Mieczysław Weinberg: String Quartet No. 6
First Time’s a Charm
The works on this program are examples of each composers’ first attempts at the string quartet form which they approached with great respect and individual exploration. The normally precocious Beethoven waited until his eighteenth work to publish a string quartet. It then took three years for Beethoven to be satisfied with his first set of string quartets to publish them. While the beginning of the work evokes the style and techniques of Mozart and Haydn, the work evolves to showcase Beethoven’s signature gruffness and drama. Even younger than Beethoven was at the time he wrote his first quartet, George Walker composed his first quartet in a neo-romantic style when he was 23 years old, at a time when classical music in America was turning toward a more severe, mathematical approach. Canadian composer Vivian Fung wrote her first string quartet using one of the most iconic tools of the medium, the pizzicato. Fung says, “Inspired by listening to Asian folk music, the piece is influenced partly by the music of the Chinese plucked instruments pipa and qin as well as by the energetic rhythms of Indonesian gamelan.” Brahms, always a perfectionist and acutely aware of his place in history after Beethoven, composed around twenty “failed” string quartets over nine years of his life, reaching 40, before he was satisfied enough to publish his Op. 51, which contained two quartets. The first quartet is driven by a heart-palpitating fervor and the urgency and energy of this quartet seemingly pushes Brahms to the long awaited finish line of quartet firsts.
Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 6 in B-flat Major, Op. 18 No. 6
George Walker: String Quartet No. 1 “Lyric”
Vivian Fung: “Pizzicato” from String Quartet No. 1
Johannes Brahms: String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1
A Rose by any Other Name - Romanticism in Many Forms
Each work draws on each of their own types of Romanticism, some reflective of their age or in some cases, in opposition to it. Fanny Mendelssohn composed in a varyingly warm, earnest, mysterious, and truly poignant style. In true Romantic-era fashion, the third movement of her quartet pulls at the heartstrings with moments of intense passion and tragic sweetness. George Walker’s first string quartet, also called “Lyric,” is written in a neo-romantic style. The rich and bold tonality of this work was actually in stark opposition to the presiding academic style of the 1940’s which was leaning more towards serialism and a 12-tone modernist style. Composed a generation before Walker in the newly created 12-tone method of his mentor Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg was known as the most romantic in his approach to this method. Drama and passion are ever present in this mysterious and cryptic musical language. Berg’s muse for the work was Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, with whom he had a secret love affair.
Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartet
George Walker: String Quartet No. 1 “Lyric”
Alban Berg: Lyric Suite
A World on Edge