PERFORMERS
TCCC artists: Magdalena Sas - cello, Evgeny Zvonnikov - violin, Natalia Korenchuk - violin, and Pedro Oveido, viola
Guest Artist: Jennifer Olson - soprano
PROGRAM
Duo for Violin and Cello (2015) - Jessie Montgomery
Three Lieder based on poems by Heinrich Heine (1840-41) - Clara Schumann
arranged for soprano and string quartet by Aribert Reimann in 2018
Intermission
String Quartet in D minor, op. 10 (1893) - Claude Debussy
I. Animé et très décidé
II. Assez vif et bien rythmé
III. Andantino, doucement expressif
IV. Très modéré – En animant peu à peu – Très mouvementé et avec passion
Duo for Violin and Cello - Jessie Montgomery
“This piece was written for my friend and cellist Adrienne Taylor. The piece is meant as an ode to friendship with movements characterizing laughter, compassion, adventure, and sometimes silliness.”
— Jessie Montgomery
Three Lieder - Clara Schumann
“Though it was always part of her education, Clara Schumann only started to compose in response to her husband’s urging, and then it was only possible when her household duties allowed it, and most of her compositions were presented to Robert as Christmas or birthday gifts. These pleased him enormously and he continued to encourage her. But it was difficult.
She wrote in her diary, ‘Whenever Robert went out, I spent my time in attempts to compose a song (which was always his wish).’ After his death, it simply was not possible for her to compose. With the burden of providing for her eight children, her concertizing took precedence. Her output includes a piano trio, piano pieces and 28 songs. With her husband as a supreme guide, her approach to songwriting was a very serious and thorough one. Some of the songs remained unpublished during Clara’s life and were admired by those fortunate enough to perform or hear them.
In these performances, three of Clara’s songs will be performed in a version for soprano and string quartet arranged by German composer and pianist Aribert Reimann. Volkslied or Folk Song is the second of three poems that make up Heinrich Heine’s Tragödie. The lyric was not actually written by Heine but quoted by him. He said that it was ‘a real folk song which I heard on the Rhine.’ It is attributed to the folklorist and composer Anton Wilhelm von Zuccamaglio. It is the only text to be set by both Clara and Robert. It is not certain which came first.
Though they were devoted to each other and very much in love, the Schumanns were destined to suffer through most of their marriage. Robert was mentally ill, suffering depression and was often in a state of melancholy. In 1854 he reported seeing visions, both angelic and demonic and feared he would harm his wife. After a failed suicide attempt, he requested that he be admitted to Franz Richarz’s sanitorium. Clara was not allowed to see him for two years. Clara’s 1842 song, written during a happier period, Sie Liebten Sich Beide, They Loved Each Other, in which the couple’s doomed love ends in loneliness and separation seems very prescient today.
The final song in this trio exists in two versions, the one presented here is Ihr Bildnis or Her Picture. It is a song filled with sadness and regret. Again written during a happy time in Schumann's life, it was also a time in which Clara expressed great sorrow over the estrangement from her father caused by her marriage. This conflict is apparent in the sadness expressed over a lost love, and especially the words:
And my tears flowed
Down my cheeks,
And ah, I cannot believe
That I have lost you!”
— Notes by the Veronika String Quartet
String Quartet in G minor - Claude Debussy
“The 1890s ranked among the most productive years of Debussy’s life. From this decade date the Suite Bergamasque for piano (home of the ever-popular Clair de Lune), the seductive orchestral Nocturnes, most of his work on the opera Pelléas et Mélisande, and the only string quartet he ever wrote. Debussy was 31 when the Quartet in G Minor appeared in 1893, a truly personal and original statement. His distinctive musical language would appear fully formed the following year with his quietly revolutionary Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.
It was perhaps the premiere of César Franck’s String Quartet in 1890 that encouraged Debussy to venture into the realm of chamber music. With an uncanny ear for attractive melodies and harmonies, he created an audaciously ultra-modern quartet with startlingly beautiful effects in lieu of sheer shock tactics. His fresh slant on musical architecture utilized the “cyclical” method advocated by Franz Liszt, and carried on by Franck and his disciples, a method characterized by the recurrence of certain themes or motifs throughout a work. Debussy combined this cyclical idea with a light-handed variation technique that carried his motto theme through subtle ongoing transformations — an approach that replaced the traditional contrast and development techniques, which had formed the crux of the Austro-Germanic thinking that had dominated European music since Haydn’s time.
The vigorous motto theme from which Debussy fashions the entire Quartet appears at the outset, cast in Phrygian mode. The lyrical second theme turns out to be a close relative to the principal theme itself. Then, a mosaic of miniature variations, based primarily on the second subject, replaces a true development section, while the recapitulation delivers further variations cloaked in a rich texture of shifting harmonies.
Repetitious phrases lend a flavor of precocious minimalism to the beginning of the sonically stunning scherzo movement. A dusky viola solo intones the motto theme, recast now in rhythm, mode, and tempo. The backdrop for this rhythmic whirlwind runs the gamut from pin-prickly pizzicatos to shimmering trills. In a brief central episode, the first violin offers a more lyrical view of the theme.
The motto theme appears most drastically altered in the contemplative Andantino, which features muted soliloquies by viola and cello, an exotically distant key signature of D-flat major, and a decadently sensuous climax with hints of Pelléas et Mélisande, on which Debussy was concurrently working.
Then, a pensive preamble reflects on various metamorphoses of the germinal theme before plunging into the mainstream of the finale. During the movement, Debussy makes concessions to tradition as the motto theme appears in inversion, imitation, and the slightest hint of fugato. The work concludes with a potent sample of the powerful, colorful string writing that sparked contemporary complaints that this vital quartet was “too orchestral.”
The piece made its debut on December 29, 1893 at the Salle Pleyel in Paris with the prestigious Ysaÿe Quartet, to whom the work is dedicated.”
— Kathy Henkel