Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791):
Quartet in G minor, KV 478 for violin, viola, cello, and piano
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897):
Quartet in G minor, Op. 25 for violin, viola, cello, and piano
Garth Newel Piano Quartet:
Teresa Ling, violin; Evelyn Grau, viola; Tobias Werner, cello; Peter Henderson, piano
Situated in the Allegheny Mountains, near Hot Springs, Virginia, the Garth Newel Music Center (founded 1973) is an exquisite sanctuary for the appreciation of classical music. With its comfortable guest rooms, gourmet cuisine, and tranquil country setting, the Center offers visitors a unique opportunity to experience chamber music of the highest caliber. Time spent at Garth Newel allows one to enjoy and learn about music in ways that illuminate the past and enrich the present.
Yearly activities presented by the Garth Newel Music Center include over seventy performances by the Garth Newel Piano Quartet and guest musicians, a ten-week Summer Festival, Music Holiday Weekends, Music Holidays Overseas, and educational programs.
Program Notes:
When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his First Piano Quartet in G minor, KV 478 in October 1785, he gave new direction to a nascent genre. While C.P.E. Bach had written an earlier Clavier-Sonate mit begleitenden Instrumenten and J.C. Bach had composed a quintet for assorted instruments with basso continuo as well as a posthumously published quartet for strings and harpsichord or piano, no chamber work for piano and three strings with a somewhat democratic relationship among the instrumental parts had been produced before Mozart's two efforts within this genre.
Despite its originality and earnest expressiveness, Mozart's G-minor Piano Quartet was not initially well-received by a Viennese public unaccustomed to encountering virtuosic demands upon amateur chamber instrumentalists; Franz Anton Hoffmeister, who had reportedly arranged to publish a series of three piano quartets by Mozart, canceled their agreement because the First Quartet was selling poorly owing to its difficulty (and perhaps also to its highly personal nature).
Today, we recognize that Mozart's G-minor Piano Quartet is a powerful work that demonstrates its composer's mastery of the Classical ideal in chamber music ("a conversation among equals") while exploiting the sonic contrast between the piano and the string trio in the music's texture. The first movement begins dramatically with all four instruments announcing a stern fanfare in unison. Though its second subject group is more relaxed, this movement is dominated by the darkly taut mood established at its outset; note in particular the masterful fugato in the development section, the theme of which is based upon the falling interval of a fourth between the first two notes in the opening, fanfare motive, now stretched to twice its original duration. Mozart closes the movement with a dramatic rhetorical stroke, reiterating its opening unison passage in the strings, intensified by its symphonic juxtaposition with an unusual, two-handed, Alberti bass figuration in the piano.
The second movement is a calm, lyrical invention featuring a transparent texture that contrasts nicely with the first movement's textural density. The piano is treated essentially as a melodic instrument throughout this movement, thus evoking the genre of the string quartet. Here, Mozart demonstrates his facility in creating a plethora of lovely melodies that fit naturally within the same movement. The finale, to which Mozart himself applied the French title, Rondeau, is no less melodically generous than the second movement; however, its genre of reference is the piano concerto. This recording reflects concerto tradition, as its finale performance features a cadenza newly composed by the pianist. Despite its overriding mood of cheerful geniality, the last movement is not entirely free of the first movement's storminess: witness the finale's central episode featuring an angular motive that is presented in unison first by the piano, and then by the strings alone. This motive recalls the rhythmic manner and expressive intensity of the fanfare that opens the Quartet.
From the time that Johannes Brahms was a child, he enjoyed scouring libraries and secondhand bookstores for old musical scores to study. It should therefore come as no surprise that he came to value the ideals of the Western musical tradition, especially the legacy of formal balance and logic from European music's Classical period. It is possible that his First Piano Quartet, Op. 25 (composed in 1861), which shares the key of Mozart's First Piano Quartet, refers specifically to Mozart's seminal work: Brahms opens his own G-minor Piano Quartet in unison, though with the keyboard alone; additionally,
the falling fourths and chromaticism in Brahms's initial subject may relate intentionally to the intervallic content of the opening fanfare motive from the first movement of
Mozart's G-minor Quartet. The first movement of Brahms's Op. 25 unfolds as a broadly scaled, highly dramatic structure. Brahms alludes to the symphonic genre in this movement with its great duration and with the density of sound that he conjures at its most climactic moments. The development section of this magnificent, tragic sonata allegro begins with a reiteration of the opening material in the tonic--this Classical-era device, borrowed from Beethoven, is a clever way of feigning the historically standard exposition repeat. Brahms's sense of structural play is further indulged within this movement when his recapitulation cleverly presents the two subjects of the first thematic group in reverse order.
The temperament of the second movement of Brahms's G-minor Quartet departs markedly from its most important precedents: Haydn's typically sunny disposition and Beethoven's roughly humorous attitude in scherzo movements. In this furtive, not overly fast movement, Brahms helps to develop a new kind of shadowy scherzo (exemplified later on by the pair of scherzos in Mahler's Seventh Symphony). The Quartet's third, broadly melodic slow movement in E-flat major (which, given the tempo marking Andante con moto, is not intended to be lugubrious) is notable for its delightful central section, a "march" in ¾ time. This central section's tonality, in the somewhat remote key of C major (adumbrated, perhaps, by the second movement's C-minor tonality), seems utterly natural in context, illustrating Brahms's formidable talent for effective musical transition.
While Brahms gleaned an insider's perspective on Hungarian gypsy musical styles through his association (as accompanying pianist) on an 1853 concert tour with a famed Hungarian violinist, Eduard Reményi (1828-1898), one must remember that the music they played together, as well as the czárdás and the alla zingarese style that he had earlier heard in Hamburg performed by refugees of the Austrian- and Russian-suppressed Hungarian revolution of 1848, was not simple folk music. Brahms's contact with the "cultivated" gypsy style of his time was important because it helped him to acquire a lasting flair for three-against-two and irregular phrase rhythms. The opening of the finale alla zingarese of his Quartet Op. 25 seems to hurtle forward because its three-measure phrases move breathlessly from one to the next. Perhaps inspired by Haydn's Rondo all'Ongarese from his Piano Trio in G Major, Hob. XV: 25, this movement's bold reference to a "pop" style of its time disguises a superbly calculated structure that alternately releases and restrains its urge for exhilarating speed before a brilliantly judged acceleration leads to a feverishly hectic coda that features one of the most exciting conclusions in all of chamber music.
(Peter Henderson)
The Artists:
Teresa Ling, violin, has been a member of the Mariposa Piano Trio, the Aurelian Trio, and first violinist with the Dakota String Quartet, while also performing as concertmaster of the South Dakota Symphony. She has served on the faculties of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; the University of South Dakota; and Augustana (SD), Northwestern (IA), and Dordt Colleges. Summer festivals at which she has recently performed and taught are the Adriatic Chamber Music Festival (Italy), the San Diego Chamber Music Workshop, and the Las Vegas Music Festival. Among her awards and prizes, Ms. Ling has won a $5,000 Artist Fellowship from the South Dakota Arts Council and the Winnifred Small Solo Prize in London. As a recipient of a Rotary Fellowship, she obtained the Advanced Diploma from London's Royal Academy of Music. She received a Master's Degree in Violin Performance from the Eastman School of Music and a Bachelor's Degree in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University. Her teachers have included Paul Kantor, Donald Weilerstein, and Carmel Kaine.
Evelyn Grau, viola, is an active performer of chamber music, having performed worldwide as a member of the Garth Newel Chamber Players, the Atlanta Virtuosi, the Colden String Quartet, and the Alexander String Trio. She has participated in such prestigious summer festivals as the Festival dei Due Mondi, Spoleto, Italy; the American Institute, Graz, Austria; and the Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood. Ms. Grau has served on the faculties of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. In 1983, Ms. Grau joined the Garth Newel Music Center as a summer artist-in-residence, and in 1992 she became a full-time musician and staff member at the Center. Additionally, she pursues an interest in baroque violin, and in this capacity has served as concertmaster of the Kansas City Early Music Consort as well as the Wisconsin-based ensemble "Les Favorites." Ms. Grau holds music degrees from Yale University and Peabody College at Vanderbilt, with further studies at the University of Michigan and Academia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy. Her teachers have included Raphael Hillyer, Bruno Giuranna, Paul Makanowitzky, Jean Dane, and Russell Gerhart.
Tobias Werner, Cello, has performed at Garth Newel Music Center since 1999 and is a member of the Contemporary Music Forum, ensemble-in-residence at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC. He has performed at the Cape and Islands Chamber Music Festival, Villa Musica Mainz, the San Diego Chamber Music Workshop, the Vail Valley Bravo! Colorado Music Festival, the Maui Classical Music Festival, in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Strathmore Hall, the Phillips Collection, the New York Society for Ethical Culture, and at Bargemusic. Tobias has appeared as soloist with orchestras in the US, France, Germany, and Romania, and recent performances have included the concertos of Dvorák, Elgar, Haydn, and Boccherini. He has recorded on the ECM, Darbringhaus & Grimm, Bayer Records, and Orfeo labels. Recent CD releases include Piano Quartets by Mozart, Brahms, Dvorák, and Martinu with the Garth Newel Piano Quartet, the Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by J.S. Bach, and the Sonatas for Piano and Cello by Beethoven with Victor Asuncion. Tobias studied at the Musikhochschule Freiburg in Germany, and at Boston University. His teachers have included Andrés Díaz, Christoph Henkel, and Xavier Gagnepain. He plays on an 1844 J.F. Pressenda cello.
Peter Henderson, piano, is a contemporary music enthusiast who has recently premiered and recorded works by several composers for solo piano, new chamber music for varied forces, and a Piano Concerto by Forrest Pierce. A native of Spokane, Washington, Mr. Henderson has performed throughout the United States; and he has participated in master classes or chamber music coachings with renowned musicians such as André Watts, Paul Katz, and Jacques Zoon. Honors and awards accorded Mr. Henderson include Second Prize in the 1994 Music Teachers' National Association Wurlitzer Collegiate Piano Competition, Grand Prize in the Indianapolis Matinee Musicale's 1996 Young Artist Competition, and a 1997 Teaching Excellence Recognition Award from the Indiana University School of Music for his service as an Associate Instructor of piano. He has been a faculty member at the University of Idaho's Lionel Hampton School of Music. In 1999, Mr. Henderson received the degree Doctor of Music in Piano from Indiana University-Bloomington. His major piano instructors have been Dr. Karen Shaw, Dr. Jay Mauchley, Linda Siverts, and Mary Toy.
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