Evnin Rising Stars I 2022

Deciding which string quartet of Joseph Haydn to include on a program can be a daunting task. He is commonly referred to as the “father of the string quartet” as he wrote 68 works over the span of more than four decades, firmly solidifying the genre in the process. All of the quartets offer a unique variation on Haydn’s characteristic wit and charm with varying amounts of intellectual rigor. As one traces his various sets of quartets from 1755 – 1803, it is fascinating to see how Haydn concocts different recipes in his compositional kitchen, balancing those two features via the manipulation of form and motives.

For most of Haydn’s life he served as the Kapellmeister in the Esterházy court. A stipulation in his initial contract of employment stated that all the music that he composed belonged to the court and he could not personally profit from his compositions. This increasingly became a sticking point for Haydn. Unauthorized copies of his music fueled his rise to fame across Europe, putting profits in the pockets of various publishers while Haydn saw no financial benefit. Fortunately, Haydn was able to renegotiate his contract in 1779, lining up with the beginning of his relationship with Artaria & Co., music publishers in Vienna.

Haydn’s Opus 33 quartets, written in 1781, served as a watershed moment in his creative and entrepreneurial life. His Opus 20 quartets were well regarded for their formal innovations and held special appeal for consumers of an intellectual bent. Haydn advertised his Opus 33 set being written in “a new, quite special way,” offering formal innovation in a way that used simpler textures and melodies that had a more popular appeal. Haydn succeeded in appealing to consumers of both learned and popular music, and these quartets inspired his friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to write a set of quartets from 1782 – 1785 that would eventually be dedicated to Haydn. The tone of Mozart’s dedication letter is famously obsequious:

A father who had resolved to send his children out into the great world took it to be his duty to confide them to the protection and guidance of a very celebrated Man, especially when the latter by good fortune was at the same time his best Friend. Here they are then, O great Man and dearest Friend, these six children of mine. They are, it is true, the fruit of a long and laborious endeavor …

Haydn and the Viennese musical public adored Mozart’s works. The innovations featured in them inspired a bit of one-upmanship in Haydn and in part led to the composition of the Opus 50 quartets, where the pendulum swings back towards a more learned compositional style; one can imagine that Haydn wanted the musical cognoscenti to once again view him as chief innovator. Marcy Rosen, Guest Artistic Director of Caramoor’s Evnin Rising Stars program, explains that she and her colleagues chose to feature Op. 50 No. 1 on today’s program mostly because “Opus 50 [quartets] are not heard all that often. It’s a nice thing to hear a Haydn quartet that you probably wouldn’t hear on a regular string quartet program.”

Violinist Claire Bourg, who is participating in Evnin Rising Stars for the second year, was excited to delve into this Haydn quartet during this residency period. “I think one of the interesting things for me when approaching Haydn is how many different stylistic ways you can approach it, and how drastically different it can sound from group to group, or from person to person. And you kind of have to commit to a sort of style that you want to play it. That’s what’s so wonderful when you really commit to a way of doing it as a group. It’s a testament to the music how, no matter what, still it’s incredibly inventive, it comes through in such a specific way that only Haydn could do with a quartet.”

The String Quintets of Johannes Brahms hold a special place in the hearts of violists everywhere. “The G Major is certainly more famous, and heard more often [but] the F Major is a very, very beautiful piece, and it’s good for people to get to know it,” says Rosen. “It’s good for younger people to get to know it early, so they have that with them for the rest of their careers, knowing that piece, and then thereby keeping it alive.”

The String Quintet No. 1 in F Major was completed in the spring of 1882 while Brahms was at Bad Ischl, a resort near Salzburg. This work is quirky in its number of movements. Brahms remarked to his publisher Simrock, “Of course the quintet has only three movements — you could cut the price down on that account — but in the trio there are variations, and in that line folks have an idea that I amount to something.” Brahms also told his publisher, “You have never before had such a beautiful work from me.” The pastoral setting in which it was composed seemingly affected the character of the music. The composer Hugo Wolf, not known to be a fan of the music of Brahms, remarked in a review of an 1844 performance of the work that “the chilly November fog that usually hangs over his compositions, stifling every warm utterance before it has a chance to be heard — of this not a trace here... An enchanting emerald green envelops this fairyland spring vision. Everything is verdant and budding. One actually hears the grass growing — all of nature so mysteriously still, so blissfully radiant.” The second movement of the work uses materials from pieces Brahms wrote in the 1850s influenced by Baroque dance movements of Bach and Handel, specifically an A-Major Gavotte and Sarabande. The third movement combines aspects of sonata form and fugue, an experiment that Haydn innovated in his Opus 20 and Opus 50 quartets (although not in the quartet being performed today).

Excited about the quintet, Bourg acknowledges the challenges that come with learning a piece by Brahms. “Sometimes with Brahms, it’s difficult to navigate the rhythmic intricacy of the way he writes music. It shouldn’t sound at all mathematical or anything like that despite the complexity. The kind of rubato and all of what he’s trying to get at with these rhythms, it’s a lot to make sense of. The F major quintet is especially intricate in that manner. What I love about playing Brahms is that when you hit that sweet spot of everybody coming together in that rhythmic and sound world of Brahms, there’s nothing like it. It just sparkles. And the warmth that you feel is unlike any other composer.”

Pianist Zhu Wang first discovered Antonin Dvořák’s quartet on today’s program while studying another piece of Dvořák’s: the Piano Quintet in A Major. “I was listening to recordings of the quintet on Spotify one day, and then there’s this one album that [pianist Menahem] Pressler recorded with the Emerson Quartet. One day I just started listening to the [E-flat Major Piano] quartet … On the first hearing of it I just fell in love with it immediately! It has such an immediate energy right from the beginning, and has probably the most beautiful, slow movement ever. It’s just such an exciting and exuberant piece, and I just could not wait to play it,” explains Wang. “It’s one of the great pieces of the piano quartet repertoire,” adds Rosen. “It’s good to balance out the program with a good, solid Dvořák piece that has wonderful and energized melodies and tunes.”

Dvořák wrote this piece in 1889 upon the urging of his publisher Simrock; Dvořák had written his first work in the genre in 1875 (D Major, Op. 23) and found inspiration to write another while at his country house in the village of Visoká. “I’ve now already finished three movements of a new piano quartet, and the Finale will be ready in a few days. As I expected, it came easily, and the melodies just surged upon me. Thank God!” he wrote to a friend.

“Dvořák’s music for me is about life … It’s about love. It’s about loss. He brought so many characters and elements characteristic to his music in that way … It’s just so joyful,” says Wang. “And there’s so much energy and so much love, and that is the key element that I love about music is telling your own story, and that you show and share the love of the music with the audience.”

— Daniel Doña