February 2 and 4,
2007
Joseph Kreutzer (1780-1849)
Trio in A major, Op. 16, for flute,
clarinet, and guitar
Allegro risoluto
Adagio
Alla Polacca
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)
Concerto in D major, RV 93, for guitar,
violin, viola, and cello
Allegro giusto
Allegro
Heitor
Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)
Cantilena
from Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, for
flute and guitar
Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959)
Musique de chambre No. 1, for
clarinet, harp, violin, viola, cello, and piano
Allegro moderato
Andante moderato
Poco allegro
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44, for piano
and string quartet
Allegro brillante
In modo d'una marcia: Un
poco largamente
Scherzo: Molto vivace
Allegro, ma non troppo
Notes on the program:
Joseph Kreutzer
Trio in A major for flute, clarinet, and
guitar
Early nineteenth-century composer Joseph
Kreutzer wrote a substantial body of music for home consumption. Much of his work features either the flute or
the guitar, two favorite instruments among the amateur musicians of the day,
and this trio, composed about 1820, employs them both.
The cheerful
opening movement, Allegro risoluto, shows Kreutzer's solid musical
craftsmanship. The Adagio is in song
form, with a contrasting middle section.
The last movement uses one of the favorite dance rhythms of the time,
that of the polacca or polonaise.
Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto in D major for guitar, violin,
viola, and cello
Though this is one of Vivaldi's most
enjoyable and familiar works, it is not certain what performing ensemble he
intended for it, or indeed if he had a single possibility in mind. Most often today we hear it performed as a
concerto for guitar and string orchestra, but the plucked instrument was
originally some type of lute, and the title "Concerto" does not
necessarily indicate orchestral rather than solo performance of the other parts
(Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 6, for instance, was intended for solo
performers). In style the piece lies
between the concerto and the chamber sonata.
Though the three-movement design is more typical of concertos, all three
movements are laid out in two repeated sections, which is typical of the sonata--in
a concerto the first movement, at least, is normally a single continuous
span. On the other hand, the first
movement has the contrast between ensemble and solo sections that one expects
in a concerto. In short, there is no
reason to assume that an orchestral performance of the piece is more
appropriate than a chamber performance.
In any case,
the work is a charmer. The first
movement begins with a set of themes in the ensemble that recur later
interspersed with solo sections. In the
slow movement the lutenist/guitarist has the opportunity to ornament the melody
in the repetitions of the two halves.
The last movement is a carefree jig.
Heitor
Villa-Lobos
Cantilena
from Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5
Villa-Lobos
composed a total of nine Bachianas
Brasilieras, combining the material of Brazilian folk music with the
counterpoint of Bach. The fifth of
these, composed in 1938, consists of two songs for soprano and eight cellos
(the instrument Villa-Lobos himself played).
This is this first movement of the piece and possibly the best-known
work of Villa-Lobos; the vocalist is a girl singing a delicious melody at
moonrise on a beautiful evening. As the
first section of the original is a vocalise and the final section is hummed,
the words are hardly missed in a purely instrumental version. In this transcription the flute stands in for
the singer and the guitar takes the role of the cello ensemble.
Bohuslav Martinů
Musique de chambre no. 1
Born in a church bell tower in the town of
This Musique de chambre is one of Martinů's last works, composed in February, 1959, five months before
his death from cancer. Nothing of the
composer's situation appears in this cheerful sextet; in fact, he had
originally planned to call it Les fêtes nocturnes, "Night
parties." The title recalls the
second of Debussy's Nocturnes for
orchestra, Fêtes, and in fact the first movement is
reminiscent of the Debussy work in its cheerful, processional character and its
stretches of complex but static harmony.
If the slow movement is more pensive, perhaps more nocturnal than the
rest of the work, the finale returns to the festive atmosphere of the opening,
with a number of folkish-sounding tunes that grow more boisterous as the
movement unfolds.
Robert Schumann
Quintet in E-flat major for piano and string
quartet
Schumann was perhaps the most Romantic
composer of all. Certainly if
Romanticism is defined as the pursuit of extremes, it would be hard to find a
better example. Schumann showed enormous
bursts of creativity both as journalist and composer, alternating with periods
of inertia and depression. He was both a
shrewd businessman and what we would today call a New Age believer (homeopathy
and seances were considerably newer in 1840 than they are now). After some wild days in his youth he took part
in one of the great love affairs of musical history, marrying Clara Wieck, who
was one of the finest pianists of the nineteenth century as well as a composer
of some stature herself. Some of the
extremes may be explained as the result of bipolar disorder, an illness that
the medicine of his day could neither diagnose nor treat appropriately--but
that is, at best, only a part of the story.
This quintet
dates from a happy and productive time in Schumann's career. In 1840, the year of his marriage, he composed
many of his greatest songs. The
following year he wrote a series of orchestral works, including his First
Symphony. In 1842 he turned to chamber
music, composing his three string quartets, op. 41, this quintet, and his piano
quartet, op. 47. The other works were
for standard ensembles. On the other
hand, though the combination of string quartet and piano (the part was of
course written for Clara, who gave the first performance a month after it was
finished) would seem an obvious one, there was little literature of importance
for it prior to this work. This is the
piece that established the medium, as well as the tradition that composers
normally only write one piano quintet but make it a great one (Brahms and
Shostakovich are two who followed that pattern.) This quintet, in fact, is the best-known of
all Schumann's chamber works.
The quintet
makes a particularly interesting comparison with the one by Brahms. Though the two composers speak nearly the
same musical language, they use it in different ways. Brahms labored for years on his quintet,
producing a work of great craftsmanship and deep introspection. Schumann dashed his quintet off in five days
(with another two weeks to complete the score and a few subsequent alterations
to the inner movements at the suggestion of Mendelssohn), writing music of
white-hot inspiration but with noticeable seams between the ideas. One would hardly suspect that Schumann was
actually a year older when he wrote his quintet than Brahms was when he
finished his.
The Schumanns
had been studying Bach's Well-Tempered
Clavier when Robert wrote the quintet.
Not only is this reflected in the many contrapuntal passages in the
work, but some listeners have heard a similarity between the opening of the
piece and that of the Bach's E-flat major prelude from Book I. The resemblance is one of interval structure
rather than mood, however: in place of
Bach's elegant cheerfulness, Schumann begins his work in a mood of complete
jubilation. The opening idea completely
dominates the movement; only twice does a contrasting second theme emerge. Though the piano plays in almost every
measure, the musical substance of the movement is well distributed among the
five instruments.
After the
exuberance of the first movement, the somber tone of the second comes as a
shock. Before invoking a deep-seated
psychological explanation of this, however, one should recall that the key of
the quintet, E-flat major, is that of Beethoven's Eroica symphony, and that Beethoven's second movement is, like this
one, a funeral march in C minor. Two
episodes interrupt the march: the first
is a consoling section in the major mode, the second an agitated passage that
leads back to the consoling theme before the final return of the march.
The last two
movements return to the mood of the first.
The scherzo is full of rushing ascending scales. Like the slow movement, it has two
contrasting episodes, the first a lyrical one, the second one breathlessly
fast. The finale is based on another
march, this one a brisk and cheerful tune that Schumann takes through a series
of remote keys. As the movement proceeds
there is more and more counterpoint among the five instruments. As a climactic gesture, Schumann brings back
the opening theme of the quintet, combining it with the main theme of the
finale in a fugal passage that serves to round off the entire work.