Saturday August 23
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Franz Joseph Haydn
String Quartet in B-flat major, Hob. III/78, op. 76, no. 4, “Sunrise”
When Haydn came to write the quartets of Opus 76, starting perhaps as early as 1797 and finishing them in 1799, he was sixty-seven and nearing the end of his career, which had been marked at the last by international renown. His earliest string quartets had been written for ensembles that played them privately at home, for the enjoyment largely of the performers themselves and perhaps a handful of guests. They were often intimate and introspective. But in the 1790s he became more aware of a public willing to pay for the experience of hearing professional musicians perform intricate music beyond the powers of most amateurs. His work during this later period began to make larger gestures, to pursue daring harmonic courses, and to be filled with delicious, humorous morsels. Speaking of the entire Opus 76 set of six quartets, Charles Burney, one of the most knowledgeable musical authorities of the eighteenth century, declared them to be full of a freshness that one would expect to have come not from an elderly composer but rather from a youthful one, fresh to the scene and with “unexpended fires.” Indeed, the fourth quartet of the Opus 76 set offers wonderful surprises—especially to audiences of Haydn’s day, who were delighted or moved by every departure from convention.
The opening of the first movement—with the wonderful rising line in the first violin over sustained notes in the lower parts—caused some unknown Englishman to label this the “Sunrise” quartet. The first violin line is far more than a picture of a sunrise; it provides the motivic materials of the movement, which Haydn develops with unflagging imagination.
The Adagio is filled with grief and dark sonorities, bringing the genre of the slow movement to a new level of pathos. By contrast, the Menuetto that follows is full of vigor and drive, dominated by the opening eighth-note figures. The trio comes almost as a shock, beginning with a hint of Balkan folk song that takes a sudden dark turn in which all four instruments descend in unison.
The Finale has an unusual shape. It begins with what sounds like a rondo, but the theme is stated in full and proves to be followed by contrasting passage in the minor. The opening material returns in the major, and we find that Haydn seems to be offering a simple A-B-A pattern, which is rare for a finale. But then comes an astonishing, extended coda that gets faster and faster, ending the quartet with one of Haydn’s famous formal tricks.
— © Steven Ledbetter
Creatures, 1926–29 (oil on canvas) by Hannah Höch. Germanisches Nationalmuseum/Wikimedia Commons.
Erwin Schulhoff
Five Pieces for String Quartet
Erwin Schulhoff is one of the many musicians whose careers, and sometimes lives, were brutally cut short by the rise of Nazism in Europe. Born in Prague and encouraged as a young student by Dvořák, Schulhoff served in World War I before resuming his career as a composer, pianist, and teacher. His avant-garde works, influenced by both Jazz and Dadaism, were eventually blacklisted due to his Jewish heritage and leftist politics. After Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, he was arrested and deported to the Wülzberg prison camp in Bavaria, where he died of tuberculosis in 1942.
Five Pieces for String Quartet, premiered in 1924 at the International Society for New Music festival in Salzburg, was dedicated to the French composer Darius Milhaud. These five short movements are an homage to a traditional Baroque dance suite, but each places a charming and creative twist on its nominal musical style.
In the style of a Viennese waltz, the first movement is actually in cut time, with the violins and cello strumming aggressive pizzicatos that provide the illusion of a waltz’s typical 3/4 time signature as the viola introduces the melody. (The score notes that, despite the time signature, the piece should always be played as if it is in measures of three beats.) Swirling motion and glissando slides accelerate into an ominous trill and stabbing chords before a grandioso end.
The second movement strays from the serenade’s origin as a light piece of music played as a kind of evening greeting. It is a serenade, perhaps, for the ghosts of dark and damp Roman catacombs. Muted strings, loud double-stopped dissonant chords, skittering col legno and whispering ponticello all provide a creepy effect, while bars in 5/8 time keep the rhythm off balance.
Schulhoff’s rhythmic deception continues in the third movement’s wild Czech dance. Although it is in 4/4 time, syncopated eighth notes in the viola and cello obscure the first beat of each bar. Driving yet playful, this brief movement accelerates into a sudden stop. By contrast, the fourth movement’s Tango milonga is the most lyrical, full of passion and melancholy, with the least rhythmic trickery.
The final movement, in 6/8 time and to be played con fuoco (with fire), is a fast tarantella, a style of folk dance from southern Italy. It is no coincidence that the spiccato chromatic eighth notes sound like scampering spiders—the etymology of tarantella and tarantula both stem from the Italian city of Taranto, where the species of Mediterranean wolf spider Lycosa tarantula can be found. Legend has it that the spider’s bite would result in tarantism, a kind of hysterical mania that could be fatal if not cured by frantic dancing that would sweat out the venom. (In reality, this spider poses no serious danger to humans.) Schulhoff’s Five Pieces concludes with the players rushing for their lives toward an energetic triple-forte conclusion. — © David Hoyt
Bohemian-Moravian highlands, from 16 Views of Czech Landscapes, c. 1902 (oil on cardboard) by Ferdinand Engelmüller. Österreichische Galerie Belvedere.
Antonín Dvořák
String Quartet No. 13 in G major, B. 192, op. 106
Antonín Dvořák was born, it seems, to compose chamber music. His own instrument was the viola, which many earlier composers (Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven among them) preferred to play when taking part in chamber music readings with friends in order to experience the score from the inside, surrounded by the primary melody and bass lines.
Dvořák returned to his native Bohemia in the fall of 1895 after a three-year stay in America. He expressed his joy at being home again in the rapid composition of two string quartets, published as Opuses 105 and 106. Despite the numbering, Opus 106 was finished first, composed in just a month from November 11 to December 9, and is therefore identified as Quartet 13.
Surprisingly, the last two quartets sound very little like the Twelfth Quartet in F, Opus 96, the widely performed “American” Quartet, which was composed just two and a half years earlier. Indeed, the A-flat quartet brings to mind the suspicion that Dvořák is anticipating the speech-melody of Janáček’s mature operas, the first of which, Jenůfa, Janáček had started composing in December 1893. As a close friend of Janáček since 1877, Dvořák may have been familiar with his work on Jenůfa, and he surely heard other music by his friend.
The opening movement begins with a slow introduction that could easily lead into a more traditional quartet movement. Marked Adagio ma non troppo, it begins with a long note in the cello followed by a rapid turn figure and a minor third rise. This is restated in turn by the viola, the second violin, and the first violin. A strong chord; silence; a new beginning with the dotted-note atom now moving downward from first violin to cello. This slow introduction has introduced the main element of the Allegro appassionato that follows. The first theme exhibits a lively texture built of various bits already heard, including the introduction (now faster) and a series of neighboring-note figures splayed all over the quartet texture. This brings us to E-flat for the second theme, a galloping figure in dotted notes accompanied by triplets that become gradually more lively. Throughout this movement, which forms a fairly straightforward sonata form, Dvořák builds his action without the kind of melody characteristic of so much of his music. He reshapes sections with the motivic figures presented at the outset, changing tempos flexibly.
The scherzo (Molto vivace) treats one of Dvořák’s favorite Czech dance forms, the furiant (with two-beat patterns spread over three-beat measures). But it is no ballroom dance. The music whirls through its rapid movements, then becomes more gentle—essentially a slow waltz—for the middle section, followed by a repetition of the furiant.
The extraordinary slow movement (Lento e molto cantabile), one of Dvořák’s finest achievements, took form in just three days. It is a richly elaborated set of variations of enormous poignancy heightened by the movement’s harmonic sweep and the unpredictable changes from major to minor and back. One feature to notice is the frequent reappearance of the sixteenth-note turn that was a constant part of the first movement, here in a slower tempo that nonetheless recalls the earlier passage. The middle section consists of lamenting figures in scalar motion, like the sighing of trees in a breeze. Several changes of mood occur, including a lighter moment with pizzicati and faster motion before the sighing returns and dies gently away.
The rondo finale is the most tuneful part of the quartet, though it again avoids closed melodies and runs cheerfully along as it features smiling figures, sudden changes of key, and lively energy. Contrasting sections are strikingly varied yet naturally linked, and references to the first movement (especially the sixteenth-note figures) practically take over before the end of the movement. The final statement of the rondo theme is the most vigorous and energetic of all. — © Steven Ledbetter
Winners of a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the fourteenth Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022, the New York City-based Isidore String Quartet was formed in 2019 with a vision to revisit, rediscover, and reinvigorate the repertory. The quartet—whose membership includes Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon, violins; Devin Moore, viola; and Joshua McClendon, cello—is heavily influenced by the Juilliard String Quartet and the idea of ‘approaching the established as if it were brand new, and the new as if it were firmly established.’ The quartet began as an ensemble at The Juilliard School, and has coached with Joel Krosnick, Joseph Lin, Astrid Schween, Laurie Smukler, Joseph Kalichstein, Roger Tapping, and Misha Amory, among others. Their 2025–26 season includes performances in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Calgary, Tulsa, Pasadena, Santa Barbara, New York, and Washington’s Library of Congress, plus return engagements in Montreal, Berkeley, Houston, La Jolla, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Paris, and London. Both on stage and outside the concert hall, the Isidore Quartet is deeply invested in connecting with youth and elderly populations, and with marginalized communities who otherwise have limited access to high-quality live music performance. The name Isidore recognizes the ensemble’s musical connection to the Juilliard Quartet: one of that group’s early members was legendary violinist Isidore Cohen. It also acknowledges a shared affection for a certain libation—legend has it a Greek monk named Isidore concocted the first genuine vodka recipe for the Grand Duchy of Moscow!
