Tobias Werner, cello, a native of Berlin, Germany, came to Garth Newel from the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra,
with which he has toured Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Greece, and the Czech Republic. Mr. Werner is a founding
member of the Florestan Piano Trio, with which he performed regularly on concert series and in festivals in Europe.
Mr. Werner has played recitals and chBohuslav Martinu (1890-1959):
Quartet No. 1 (1942) for violin, viola, cello, and piano
Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904):
Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 87 for violin, viola, cello, and piano
Garth Newel Piano Quartet:
Teresa Ling, violin; Evelyn Grau, viola; Tobias Werner, cello; Gideon Rubin, piano
The Garth Newel Music Center
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:
1889: The year Antonin Dvorak composed his Piano Quartet in E-flat major and the eve of the twentieth century. Most of the leading early and middle romantics, Beethoven, Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt and Wagner, were dead; and in 1889 Brahms had privately resolved to lay down his pen. But an even more adventurous generation had already taken over.
If we look at a musical map of Europe in 1889, here is what we see. In Prague, Dvorak had just finished his eighth symphony. In Germany, Richard Strauss had just completed the tone poems Don Juan and Death and Transfiguration. In Russia, Dvorak's friend Tchaikovsky had just written his Fifth Symphony and was at work on Sleeping Beauty. Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov attended four complete performances of Wagner's Ring cycle in St. Petersburg in 1889, after which Rimsky-Korsakov devoted nearly the rest of his career to writing operas. This was also the year of the World Exhibition in Paris where both Debussy and Ravel were first exposed to - and enthralled by - the Javanese gamelan.
All of these efforts by a new generation of composers, whose styles often differed radically from one another, involved at least one common element -an increasingly intense search to find fresh harmonic resources and new musical forms. Often this search involved attempts to expand the traditional resources handed down from Bach and Beethoven. But increasingly it involved the exploration of new harmonic resources found in folk and "exotic" music. For instance, composers as musically and culturally distinct from one another as Debussy and Rimsky-Korsakov both made significant use of the same folk-based eight-note scale (the "octatonic" scale later used extensively by Bartok and Stravinsky).
While it cannot be said that Dvorak was as revolutionary as some of his contemporaries, he nevertheless made extensive use of the harmonic and large-form techniques of both Wagner and Brahms. Certainly Dvorak was influenced by Brahms, his close friend and most important mentor. But as a violist at age 17 he played in Prague performances of Tannhäuser and Lohengrin in 1857; and in 1863 he had the experience of playing extracts from Die Walküre and the prelude to Tristan under the baton of Wagner himself. He abandoned his early Wagnerian inclinations around 1874 when Brahms became important to him, but in 1894, a year before his final trip home from his brief sojourn in America, he took a renewed interest in Wagner as he returned to his earlier ambitions in opera. As a result, it is virtually impossible to sort out the contemporary influences resulting in Dvorak's amazing skill as a craftsman - at times we hear a little Brahms, at times a little Wagner (and many are the experts that have been occasionally fooled); but in the end, always we know we are hearing Dvorak.
The first movement of the E flat-major Piano Quartet begins with a solemn, forceful four-note motto in unison from the string trio. With a slight change, this short one-measure motto is immediately repeated before the line continues - a balancing trick found frequently in eastern European folksongs and often employed by Dvorak. This initial thematic line is capped with a brief motto that seems to have cadenced the entire phrase on the dominant tone B-flat. One would think that the piece should continue in this ultra-serious, harmonically traditional vein, but the piano has something else in mind - a puckish, rhythmically lop-sided answer that enters a beat too soon, refuses the string trio's serioso gambit and destabilizes the tonality. All of this has happened in the first six measures. If we were to continue in this manner, note by note and phrase by phrase, we would discover that the entire first movement, even the wonderfully lyrical second theme, can be traced back to those first six measures. The primary key relationships creating the overall sonata form here, as well as many of the chord progressions, can all be traced to similar techniques found in Schubert, Brahms, Wagner, Tchaikovsky - that is, these relationships "flavored" the entire romantic era - but the constant dramatic tension between the serious and the playful - the tragic and the comic - is pure Dvorak.
Another quintessential feature of most of Dvorak's work - his varied and colorful scoring - is also present in this quartet. The second movement, marked Lento, has an almost absurdly simple form. There are five distinct themes presented one after another with no obvious development taking place. The technique for making this work is reminiscent of Brahms' method of "continuous variation." But once all five have been stated, they are simply stated again in the same order in which they originally appeared, with relatively negligible changes except to spin out the fifth theme to end the movement. We are tempted to ask: Isn't this cheating? And why isn't it boring? One answer is that Dvorak subtly changes the orchestration for the repeat. Here is how the five themes are assigned to the various instruments the first and then the second time:
I II III IV V
First time: cello, violin, piano, violin/cello, piano
Second time:cello, piano, violin/viola/cello, piano, piano
The third movement, a relaxed scherzo, gets its peasant flavor from several basic folk elements. The primary grazioso theme is often accompanied by figures reminiscent of the cimbalom (dulcimer) prevalent in folk bands. There are four distinct statements of this theme (the second and third are repeated), each with a different accompaniment reflecting different characteristic cimbalom techniques. The secondary theme, in contrasting minor, is characterized by another device Dvorak often uses to suggest an eastern European flavor - raising the seventh degree of the scale. This is accompanied by a drone in the cello, reminding us that the bagpipe is also an important instrument in any Czech folk band.
The most notable feature of the final movement, and what gives it the feeling of a horse race, is a technique called stretto. Historically associated with the baroque fugue, a stretto occurs when
themes begin to overlap - a little like an animated conversation with a friend who excitedly responds before you've finished your sentence. The result (in music) is a kind of controlled chaos that leaves the listener exhausted and happy - but sorry the race is over.
We now move the clock ahead to 1942, the year Bohuslav Martinu composed his First Piano Quartet. It would be nice if we could extend the line of tradition between Dvorak and Martinu - both came from peasant Czech origins; both studied in the organ school at the Prague Conservatory; Dvorak's student, Josef Suk, was one of Martinu's teachers. But Europe's musical map (let alone its socio-political map) had changed too much in the intervening years due in large part to the search for new harmonic resources and new forms begun in the romantic era. Stravinsky had already turned Europe upside down with The Rite of Spring, and Schoenberg had turned it inside out with his "method of composition with twelve tones related only to one another."
1942 found Schoenberg living in California in Hollywood (his regular tennis partner was George Gershwin). Stravinsky had moved to the United States as well; he lived less than a mile from Schoenberg, but they never spoke to one another. By now the world of music had begun to test its outermost boundaries: Aaron Copland, an ex-student of Nadia Boulanger, composed Rodeo in 1942, the same year an ex-pupil of Schoenberg, John Cage, composed Imaginary Landscapes 2 & 3 for percussion ensemble. But the American scene was no longer dominated by Europe. Ironically, both Copland and Cage could justifiably claim to be the heirs of the first certifiably all-American composer, Charles Ives. Copland especially demonstrated that music both radical and conservative, complex and simple, elitist and populist, could spill from the same pen. By 1942, Europe and the United States together represented the most diverse (some would say fragmented) musical culture ever known.
Blacklisted by the Nazis, Martinu moved to Jamaica, New York in 1941. The Piano Quartet was one of the first works he completed in his new home. Despite his admiration for the French tradition (he had studied with Albert Roussel and lived in Paris for nearly twenty years), and despite the proliferation of "atonal" experiments going on all around him, he remained a Czech nationalist with a deep feeling for his native musical roots. While his technique was deeply affected by Ravel and the Impressionists' innovations, his music still retained some unmistakable marks of his Czech predecessors and contemporaries.
The Piano Quartet begins with a terse three-note motive passed between the violin and the viola. This urgent, declamatory motive, which appears throughout the first movement in many guises, soon gives way to a more expansive and "sinuous" theme shared between the strings, an idea that will form the basis for the last movement. After this theme is established, the cello introduces a new idea below it that has traces of Moravian folksong - an idea that is developed into a broader version presented later by the violin.
Throughout the first movement the piano is of equal importance with the strings. In stark contrast, the adagio second movement begins with an extended passionate trio for the strings alone. This is followed by a mysterious middle section with the piano playing rapid roulade-like surfaces over muted strings. The piano again falls silent, and the movement ends the way it began, with unaccompanied strings. Simple and, in Martinu's hands, highly effective.
This entire quartet is full of common early twentieth-century harmonic techniques - parallel fourths, chords created from stacking thirds and fourths and so on - nothing that, taken alone, is difficult for our ears today. But perhaps the most striking thing about this piece - what generates its energy and holds it together formally - is its rhythmic structure at all levels. It is common in many European folk traditions for triple rhythms to alternate with duple to create interesting syncopations. (For a straightforward but superficial popular example of this technique, think of "Everything's Great in America" from Bernstein's West Side Story.) In this work Martinu, following the lead of Stravinsky, Bartok, and others, took this subtle folk practice many steps further, elevating it to a construction principle. The "sinuous [intricate, complex, winding] theme" noted above (the phrase is musicologist Ian Bent's) now forms the basis for the much more complex rhythmic formations that generate the final movement of the quartet.
The solo piano opens the movement softly. The overall effect is a gentle rocking feeling - not the sleep-inducing, regular rocking of a cradle, but the mesmerizing, irregular rocking of a rowboat tied to a pier. What is happening here (remember the duple-triple alternation idea) is that the right hand is playing with unexpected combinations of 2- and 3-beats:
2-2-2-3-2-3-2-3-2-2-...
while, at the same time, the left hand is playing a more regular pattern of 2's broken by an occasional 3:
3-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-3-2-...
Continuing with the rocking boat analogy, the entire movement can be heard as what happens to the boat as the water becomes agitated, calm, placid, churning.
For many reasons too technical to describe here, this amazing work as a whole only makes complete sense during the final movement. This is due in great part to the tendency here, as in so many twentieth-century works, toward "prefiguration." The romantic age developed the idea of "recall" (think of the introduction to the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony). By the twentieth century this idea was turned around such that seemingly irrelevant, out-of-place material introduced earlier in a work only becomes relevant near the end. This is one of the reasons correctly given that twentieth-century works still demand several hearings, even today, before they can be appreciated and assimilated. It is not so much the "dissonance" that confounds many listeners (motion picture soundtracks have made "dissonance" almost unnoticeable to us anymore), but rather the demand on the listener to connect musical events often separated by wide temporal distances. With this in mind, for the listener who remains perplexed after listening through the Martinu Piano Quartet the first time, it might be helpful to listen to the last movement three, four or five times - then return and listen to the entire work again from the beginning. This wonderful music is worth the effort.
Stephen Soderberg
Music Division
Library of Congress
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 the Pacific (CA); 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.
Gideon Rubin, piano, leads a multi-faceted career that encompasses performing as a soloist, as a chamber music pianist,and as a composer. As soloist he has performed twice with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston's
Symphony Hall, with the Boston Classical Orchestra, with the Mannes Orchestra, twice with the New World Symphony Orchestra with the New England Conservatory Youth Orchestra, with the Longy School Orchestra, and the Eastern Music Festival where he teaches and performs in the summers. Mr. Rubin is an active supporter of new music. He has performed with new music ensembles in New York, at Harvard University, at Boston University, and with the New World Symphony, and has performed many new works in premieres, including some of his own compositions. His own works include compositions for voice, string orchestra, piano, and electronic media. He has recorded both a solo CD of 20th century American music which is available on Amazon.com, and a CD of orchestral music by Steven Mackey on the RCA-BMG label as a member of the New World Symphony. He attended the Mannes School of Music, graduated with a Bachelors of Arts degree cum laude from Harvard, and then earned a Masters in Music from Boston University. From 1997-2000, Gideon Rubin was the pianist/keyboardist for the New World Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. Mr. Rubin is presently working towards a doctoral degree at the University of Souhtern California. His teachers include Edward Aldwell, Russell Sherman, Benjamin Pasternack, and Norman Krieger.
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