Bernhard Crusell (1775 - 1838) Divertimento in C Major, Op. 9 Clarinettist Bernhard Crusell was a Finnlander whose cosmopolitan pursuit of musical education lead him to become the first Finnish composer to have his music printed; Peters of Leipzig became his publisher. His Divertimento in C major, Op. 9, gives the solo oboe center stage in four short and structurally odd movements. The opening movement is really only an exposition, followed by an oboe cadenza which introduces the slow movement without pause. This movement in turn leads to the third movement allegro, which is actually a reprise of the beginning. There is a short finale, bringing the whole quintet in at under ten minutes. The Crusell Divertimento (scored for the same combination as both K370 and Bach) dates from 1822. It’s more of a concerto piece than the rest of the disc, requiring a virtuosic almost operatic personality from the soloist. Don’t underestimate it before you hear it! It’s beautifully crafted, and - as you might expect from an albeit minor contemporary of Weber, Schubert and Bellini - there’s an abundance of early-Romantic colouring, despite its obviously-Classical roots. Every commonplace idea is balanced by an agreeable surprise. Franz Schubert: Quartettsatz in C Minor, D.703, (1820) for 2 violins, viola, and cello Schubert’s Twelfth string quartet - the Quartettsatz (German for Quartet-Movement) remains, after "Death and the Maiden", the most popular and enduring of his fifteen quartets. As its name suggests, it is not a full blown four movement string quartet, but a single movement that was originally intended as the first movement of a multi-movement work. This is born out by the existence of forty-one measures of a projected second movement, Andante in 3/4 time. Like his most famous "Unfinished" work, the Symphony No. 8, and to a lesser degree the unfinished String Trio in B flat, the Quartettsatz has gained acceptance as a self-contained, aesthetically pleasing work, with, I might add, all of the attendant conjecture, speculation and nonsense as to why the proposed larger work was left incomplete. The Quartettsatz did mark a departure from his previously written quartets. All of the earlier works were written as "Hausmusik"(music performed in the home by amateur musicians) with Schubert’s brothers Ignaz and Ferdinand on violins, his father playing cello, and Franz himself on viola. Schubert was now clearly writing with professional musicians in mind. Indeed, his next quartet would be dedicated to Ignaz Schuppanzigh (Beethoven’s much maligned "Milord Falstaff", whose Quartet was entrusted with the premiere performances of most of Ludwig van’s own string quartets). Though composed in 1820, the Quartettsatz did not receive its premiere performance until March 1, 1867 in Vienna. Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) Interlude for Oboe and String Quartet, Op. 21 (1932-1936) For some people, the very notion of ‘English pastoral style’ music makes tongues stick to roofs of mouths. They might not choose to hear Gerald Finzi’s Interlude for Oboe and String Quartet after learning that this single-movement work of many moods can reasonably be classed in that genre. Missing it would be a mistake. This is no maudlin expression of bucolic nostalgia for a disappearing rural culture, but rather an intense tone painting of a deeply integrated but changeable world. Oboes are associated with ‘pastoral’ music because of their reedy timbre (think ‘shepherd’s pipe’), but the string quartet brings the picture indoors, where we can comfortably fall into it and imagine a contemplative glance out a farmhouse window at teatime that includes not only our appreciation of earthly beauty and productivity, but some stormy weather, and perhaps a hungry buzzard overhead. (A version for oboe and string orchestra, including string bass, intensifies its drama.) Introduced with a quiet Andante beginning with strings alone, a more animated section states the first theme of the work, with the oboe entry following. Free development of this angular quasi-‘English folk tune’ idea follows, with broad fervor. A central segment plays contrapuntally with a second theme, leading to a new version of the opening section, more warm intensity, an oboe cadenza, the final climax of the piece, and a gradual quieting down. Interlude lets a lot happen in a little time in a nicely augmented ABA structure: reliable, but also surprising. As was typical of Finzi, he took years to finish this piece, giving it all the attention he felt it needed before he was satisfied. Its premiere in March 1936 was well received (“met with spontaneous success,” one reviewer said), and oboist Leon Goossens, who first played it “to perfection,” (Musical Times, May 1936) asked Finzi to dedicate it to him, which the composer did. By Bonnie Jo Dopp, Left Bank Concert Society Anton Webern (1883-1945) Langsamer Satz for string quartet (1905) Anton Webern is known along with his teacher Arnold Schoenberg and colleague Alban Berg as one of the primary exponents of the Second Viennese School, and in particular for the singularly crystalline and concentrated character of his later works. Schoenberg commented, "One has to realize what restraint is needed to express oneself with such brevity." He also famously said that Webern had the gift of reducing a novel to a sigh. Webern wrote orchestral, chamber, vocal and piano works, yet his entire output can be played in just over three hours. Tonight we present Langsamer Satz (1905) which had to wait almost 60 years before receiving its first performance. The remarkably fertile year of 1905 importantly marks the commencement in 1904 of four years of intensive study as the first composition student of Schoenberg, who was only nine years older than Webern and himself also on the cusp of tonal and atonal harmonic exploration. Langsamer Satz was most likely an assignment piece for string quartet and almost certainly precedes the richer and more intricate String Quartet (1905), which you may remember from a Summer Music from Greensboro performance in 2006, but it already shows how beautifully he can develop a tightly constructed 8-bar opening phrase. From the opening minor 7th chord an intentionally ambiguous tonality of c minor/E flat major infuses the entire movement. While the work as a whole appears deceptively simple and is couched in a more romantic idiom than Webern's later and more minimalist pieces, it nonetheless conveys that concise sensibility that characterizes all of his compositions. Webern biographer Malcolm Hayes has described Langsamer Satz as "an excercise in late Romantic soulfulness; its underlying mood of sweet serenity looks back to the tranced, dreamlike mood of Im Sommerwind as well as forward to the new leaner style that Webern was already developing." Also significant are Webern's transcendent and intensely poetic impressions recorded in his journal of spring 1905 following days of hiking with his future wife along the valleys, forests and hills west of Vienna, in which he writes of two souls meeting and the light streaming through the forest trees. C.F. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135 The Quartet in F, Op. 135, composed in August-September 1826, was Beethoven’s last completed work. Only the new finale for the Quartet in B flat, Op. 130, followed it before his death on 26 March 1827. After the four large quartets that had been the composer’s exclusive preoccupation since 1823, Op. 135 may at first seem to be a regression or retreat to a simpler style. Nothing could be further from the truth. The F-major is certainly smaller and in some ways lighter than the other late quartets, but it could only have been written after the experience gained in those works. In this it exactly parallels the Eighth Symphony, also in F, with which the quartet shares a relaxed character and some reference to the styles of Haydn and Mozart. Both of these masterpieces close phases of Beethoven’s development; the symphony also points ahead to the future, but we do not know what the future might have been following the quartet. Joseph Kerman describes the first movement of Op. 135 as Beethoven’s “most successful evocation of the style of Haydn and Mozart.” The opening motive of this Allegretto is very much in the manner of Haydn, while the transition to the new key of the second theme recalls Mozart’s suavity, quite in contrast to the abrupt shifts in the other late quartets. The movement even includes a false recapitulation in Haydn’s manner. The relaxed good humor of the movement might also remind one of Haydn, though the details of harmony and motivic work stamp it indelibly as late Beethoven. Perhaps the dislocated rhythms of the Vivace (Beethoven does not label it Scherzo, though it has that character) could also suggest Haydn in a playful mood, but the E-flats that soon break in with no explanation are beyond Haydn’s practice, and the suppressed energy that erupts in the trio is very much part of the world of the other late quartets. The trio begins in F major, but rises to G and then to A, where the first violin plays a wild dance over the incessantly repeated ostinato in the other three instruments. The transition back to the opening is perhaps Beethoven’s weirdest. The energetic, even wild, character of this Vivace is a necessity between the gentle first movement and the utterly calm Lento assai. That movement is a set of four variations on a simple ten-measure theme, the second of them in minor. The marking cantante e tranquillo, “singing and tranquil,” is valid. University of Oregon School of Music Faculty Artist Series