Tickets $20 for general audiences, $15 for students, children over age 12, IA Course participants & seniors 60+.  Children age 12 and under: free.  Tickets available by calling the Sondheim Center box office at 641-472-2787.  www.sondheimcenter.com

Maia Quartet returns to the Sondheim!

For those who missed their fabulous concert in October last year and everybody else, here’s good news: the Maia Quartet is coming back on Wednesday, April 15, 2009, 7:30 p.m. for another quartet recital at the Sondheim Center, courtesy of Chamber Music Society Fairfield.

This ensemble’s infectious enthusiasm and precision create a true doorway to the appreciation of the art of chamber music!  Their program is as follows:  Beethoven’s string quartet in A Major, Op. 18 #5; Shostakovich’s string quartet No. 7 in F sharp minor, and string quartet Op. 51 in c minor by Brahms.

As to the future, we can look forward to seeing them again in January of 2010 when they’ll be performing a couple celebrated piano quintets with a guest pianist.  But for now, we're going to enjoy their vivacious playing in the spring!

    PROGRAM

String Quartet in A Major, Op. 18 #5

                Beethoven

Allegro

Menuetto

Andante cantabile

Allegro

String Quartet No. 7 in F sharp minor

                Shostakovich

Allegretto

Lento

Allegro-Allegretto-Adagio

    INTERMISSION

String Quartet Op. 51 in c minor

                Brahms

Allegro

Romanze: Poco adagio

Allegretto molto moderato e comodo

Allegro

Listen to

Beethoven: String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6

http://www.maiaquartet.com/audio/beethoven.ram

http://www.uiowa.edu/~c025188/

   PROGRAM NOTES

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

String Quartet in A Major, Op. 18, No.5

            During the last decade of the 18th century, the string quartet was the favored medium of Viennese salons.   After the death of Mozart, Haydn was unchallenged as the supreme master of the quartet.  He usually composed his quartets in groups of six.  Mozart had written six quartets dedicated to Haydn.   Thus in 1798, when Beethoven felt ready to demonstrate that he could beat the old master at his own game, he began to work on a set of six string quartets.  This was the most ambitious single project of his early Vienna period.  The set of quartets was completed in 1799 and 1800, and published in 1801 as Opus 18, with a dedication to Prince Lobkowitz.  The A-major quartet bears a resemblance to one of Mozart’s so-called “Haydn Quartets” (K.464) in the same key.  It is known that Beethoven had made copies of the last two movements of the Mozart quartet in order to study the style and techniques of quartet composition.

            The Allegro’s opening theme and second subject have varied melodic material that takes harmonic turns as they are developed and recapitulated.  The movement is drawn to a close with a short coda.  The Menuetto is placed next instead of the usual slow movement of the sonata form, something that Mozart had also done.  The music is almost waltz-like.  The opening melody is played by the violins and repeated with variations.  The theme is picked up by the other instruments with their lower pitches while the violins provide a decorative accompaniment.  In the trio section there is an amusing off-beat accent to the dance theme that brings to mind the gasping sound of an accordion before the minuet returns.  The third movement (Andante cantabile) offers a set of variations over which Beethoven wrote the word “pastoral”.  The simple theme is subjected to five variations with the sharpest contrast between the fourth and fifth variations.  The fourth variation is presented in a rather hushed tone while the last variation is full-voiced with the lower-register instruments.  This provides much of the weight of the music, with embellishments by all, until the major theme is restated.  The last movement (Allegro) is considered the most Mozartean of the four.  The opening theme has a nervous, agitated character that is in sharp contrast to the stately second subject.  These are developed in a full-bodied manner with the four-note motto of the opening theme reappearing over and over.  The combination gives a sort of majestic air to the music.  The movement is brought to an end with a coda dominated by the four-note motto with which it had been opened.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

String Quartet No. 7 in F Sharp Minor, Op.108

            By the summer of 1959 when Shostakovich announced that his Cello Concerto was ready for release in the fall, he revealed that he had completed "a movement and a half" of a new quartet, his seventh.  He did not get back to the quartet until February 1960 when he was back in the hospital for treatment of his impaired right hand.  He took advantage of the enforced idle time by completing the String Quartet No. 7 which he dedicated to the memory of his first wife, Nina, who died in 1954.  Had she lived, she would have turned fifty in May 1959.  

            The Seventh Quartet is the shortest of all of Shostakovch's quartets, lasting about 13 minutes.  Consistent with the tendencies to attribute hidden meanings in the music of Shostakovich's works, there have been suggestions that the music of this quartet, too, conceals some autobiographical significance beyond that of a tribute to his first wife.  But what may be remains a mystery. 

            The quartet is in three compact movements that seem more expansive than its brevity would suggest. It is written in a cyclic form in which the final movement returns to the themes of the first after having provided a romp that is excitingly and unmistakably Shostakovich! The first movement (Allegretto) is opened by the violin, with a light chordal accompaniment frivolously tripping its way downward only to be met by a three-note- knocking-like sound by the lower strings that cuts into the frivolity. The two themes intertwine with augmentations of pizzicato and sharply contrasting notes.  The movement ends with the slow three-note knock.   The second moment (Lento) offers a lament that comes close to the keening sound of mourners.  The added sounds of the muted viola and cello glissandi lend a ghostly air to the movement which, just before it ends, is interrupted by the upwardly tripping brusque notes of third movement (Allegro).  This, the longest of the three movements, is in two sections. The first, played fortissimo on muted instruments, leads to a wildly intense fugue. Plucked cello notes introduce the second section which moves into in a waltz mingling with the fugue.  The fast-moving and intense sound gives us a raging stormy passage.  All blend into a reworking of the main theme of the first movement and the quartet ends with a final slow-motion knocking.

            This is a quartet that has to be seen in action as well as heard!

Johannes Brahms (1835-1897)

String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 5 , No. 1

            Brahms began work on a C minor quartet at the instigation of violinist Joseph Joachim in the early 1850s, and it is known that he spent at least 10 years revising and reworking the C minor quartet that was published as we know it today.   Whether this was the same piece he began in 1850 is not known.  The two quartets that make up Opus 51 were completed to his satisfaction in the summer of 1873 and were submitted for publication in September and October of that year.  The String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 51, No.1 seems spiritually related to, if not actually influenced by the “Rasumovsky” quartets of Beethoven.  It opens with a majestic theme in which the viola plays a prominent role.  The four separate voices of the quartet are in strong evidence, adding to the polyphonic but weighty texture of the music as it follows the sonata structure.  The second movement (Romanze: poco adagio) has been described as a song without words in which the melody progresses with an accompaniment. There are two major themes beautifully expressed with wistful contrasts in the melodies.  Again, the viola plays a prominent role in the development of the themes as it does throughout the quartet.  The third movement (Allegretto molto moderato e comodo) is the longest of the four.  It displays swaying rhythmical patterns by the violin with a counter-melody by the viola running throughout the first section.  The trio section (un poco più animato) features the pizzicato of the violin and cello in the background before the music returns to a repeat of the opening section.  The finale (Allegro) begins with a melodic theme derived from the opening of the first movement.  Schematically, the finale is like a rondo with the first subject reappearing again and again with secondary ideas interspersed.  The whole section is expressive of drama and passion with no letup of energy building to a climax at the end.

- Arthur Canter

Tricia Park, Violin, Zoran Jalovcic, Violin

Elizabeth Oakes, Viola, Hannah Holman, Cello

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