Evnin Rising Stars II 2022

While Joseph Haydn can be credited with solidifying the string quartet as a genre, there is no doubt that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart brought the string quintet to the fore as a vehicle for musical innovation. Some say that the added voice (in the case of Mozart’s quintet, a second viola) gave the composer greater flexibility in exploring the many different colors that his inspired melodies could offer. Mozart wrote six of these works from 1773 – 1791. Marcy Rosen, Guest Artistic Director of Caramoor’s Evnin Rising Stars program, has a particular fondness for the String Quintet in D Major, K 593. She says, “I love all of the quintets but there’s something so profound about the opening of the D Major. It’s just so beautiful and it just couldn’t be more joyful. It makes you happy to play it.”

The opening of the first movement at first glance seems like a slow introduction to a sonata form fast movement. Mozart takes a page from Haydn’s playbook (see the Op. 33 No. 2 “Joke” Quartet) and has this music return at the end of the movement. Not only are we glad that we can hear this beautiful music again, but it changes our perspective of the role that music plays in the grand scheme of things. Listen closely: there’s another little surprise you might notice. The String Quintet in D Major was the fifth he wrote and was completed in 1790. There is anecdotal evidence that it was played at an informal gathering alongside two other quintets soon after it was completed, with Mozart in his preferred seat as a violist and Haydn playing violin and viola. Mozart balances the abundant counterpoint in the work with beautiful melodies and motives.

Czech composer Leos Janáček was most known for his operas and vocal music, and most of his instrumental music also carries some sort of programmatic reference. Rosen explains, “It is all based on his prolific letter writing to this young woman, Kamila Stösslová, who he fell madly in love with. She really became his muse, even though she was not so taken with him until the end of his life. It’s a wonderful, historically interesting work to study, and also fun just to follow the program of the letters and how they work throughout the piece.”

Janáček and his wife Zdenka had lost their daughter Olga in 1903 and their marriage suffered as a result. Janáček’s increased fame as a result of his success, especially with his opera Jenufa, led him to encounter many women that he fell for easily. He was involved in a particularly passionate affair with Gabriela Horvátová, a singer playing a lead role in the opera and a staunch supporter of his music. In 1917 Janáček and Zdenka met Kamilla Stösslová and her husband, antiques dealer David Stössel. The two couples developed a fast friendship. Although Janáček fell for Kamilla, Zdenka saw her as a welcome foil and ally against Horvátová (who Janáček broke things off with in 1919). For a time, newfound stability was seemingly found, although the 700 or so letters written between Janáček and Kamilla over the span of a decade trace the evolution of their relationship from a one-sided yearning, to Janáček celebrating Kamilla finally returning his affections after he visited her in 1927.

Janáček’s ever-increasing passion for Kamilla after her confession of love spurred him to write his String Quartet No. 2 in a spurt of creativity from January 29 – February 19, 1928. In a letter sent to Kamilla in May of that year, Janáček told her that the quartet had been written in fire, unlike earlier works “written only in hot ash.” Rosen shares, “the underlying current of energy that you hear is like the blood racing through Janáček’s veins as he’s getting heated up thinking about this woman.” The musicologist Otakar Šourek provided the following explanation of the quartet’s “program:”

The first movement describes Janáček’s first impressions of Madame Stössl … and the second movement, the events occurring at the Luhačovice Spa, in Moravia in the summer of 1917 … It was during this time that love blossomed between Janáček and Madame Stössl. Janáček describes [the] third movement by saying, “It is bright and carefree, but dissolves into an apparition which resembles you.” According to Janáček, the fourth movement is “the sound of my fear for you, not exactly fear, but yearning — yearning which is fulfilled by you.”

Janáček’s music is influenced by his interest in eastern Moravian folk music, which is similar to the word- based music of Slovak, Hungarian, and Romanian folk music. “The phrases are often quite short, and a little bit choppy like speech,” says Rosen. “So it’s more of a spoken language than it is a singing language. The melodies you find in Janáček’s music aren’t like the melodies in Brahms or Dvořák.”

While Janáček and younger contemporaries like Béla Bartók were shifting their musical language to mirror their interest in folk music, Hungarian pianist and composer Ernst von Dohnányi kept the music he wrote firmly in the world of Brahms (although he championed the works of Bartók and others as a performer and conductor). Dohnányi attended the Budapest academy from 1894 – 1897 studying piano and composition. In 1895 he wrote his Piano Quintet No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 1. His composition teacher Hans Koessler was a close friend of Brahms, who when presented with the quintet, liked it so much that he arranged for a performance of it in Vienna. Dohnányi toured Europe and the U.S. championing neglected works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert and was one of the first concert pianists this century to perform chamber music regularly. This led to a friendship with violinist Joseph Joachim, who then offered him a position to teach piano and composition at the Hochschule in Berlin from 1905 –1915. It is there that he wrote his Piano Quintet No. 2 in E-flat Minor, Op. 26, a work that has lived in the shadow of its more extroverted C minor counterpart. “It’s a wonderful piece,” remarks Rosen. “I think it’s always good to hear more unknown works of composers that we are aware of.” Violinist Claire Bourg agrees. “Exploring a much lesser-known work is always exciting … because you feel like you’re really coming to it without any preconceived notions of how you know it should be played, or the usual kind of timing. You really get to have a blank slate, just looking at the score itself,” says Bourg.

“It’s a very unique piece,” adds pianist Zhu Wang. “It has a unique language that is filled with colors and soft dynamics. I think it is a very special kind of composition.”

— Daniel Doña