CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Takács Quartet
Jean-Yves Thibaudet

Zankel Hall
Saturday, April 26th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Takács Quartet
·· Edward Dusinberre, Violin
·· Károly Schranz, Violin
·· Geraldine Walther, Viola
·· András Fejér, Cello
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Piano

HAYDN Quartet in G Minor, Op. 74, No. 3, "Rider"
BRAHMS String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat Major, Op. 67
FRANCK Piano Quintet in F Minor

Program Notes:

JOSEPH HAYDN String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 74, No. 3, “Rider”
Born March 31, 1732, in Rohrau, Austria; died May 31, 1809, in Vienna.

Composed in 1793 and dedicated to Count Georg Apponyi, at whose Viennese residence the first private performance took place, Haydn’s String Quartet in G Minor was first publicly performed by the Solomon Quartet in 1794 in London. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere in Chamber Music Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on November 10, 1893, with the Kneisel Quartet: Franz Kneisel and Otto Roth, violins; Louis Sveèenski, viola; and Alwin Schroeder, cello.

Haydn’s Op. 64 quartets were a great success in London during the composer’s first stay there in 1791–92. In preparation for his return to England in 1794, Haydn wrote a new set of six quartets, eventually published in two groups of three works, each with the opus numbers 71 and 74. The Hungarian aristocrat Count Georg Apponyi received the dedication and at least some of the quartets may have been heard privately at his Viennese residence, but the cycle was certainly intended for the public concerts in London that had made such a strong impression on Haydn.
The G-Minor Quartet was clearly an audience favorite when it was first heard in London in early 1794, which is why it acquired a nickname, “Rider.” For an explanation of that sobriquet, you’ll have to wait for the last movement. Yet the high kinetic energy is there right from the first measure, with its powerful unison motif cut off by a general rest. A constant flow of triplets, which continues even during the lyrical, dance-like second theme, keeps the excitement high. The ending of the movement eases the dramatic atmosphere by modulating from the minor to the major mode.

The slow movement is the centerpiece of the work. Set in E major, a key extremely distant from the original G minor, this is music that leading Haydn specialist H. C. Robbins Landon has called “violently intense.” Opening with a simple and subdued melodic motif, the music reaches a fortissimo level before its first, irregular-length phrase is over. In the short middle section in E minor, the tensions openly continue to increase, thanks to a pulsating eighth-note accompaniment. After a beautifully embellished recapitulation, the Largo ends as softly as it began.

The third-movement minuet in G major is gentle and relaxed, even though the Trio section (in G minor) has its share of dark chromaticism and moments of turbulence. But the true emotional counterweight to the Largo comes in the remarkable finale, with its irresistible “riding” rhythms followed by a graceful dance melody, and enlivened by many extraordinary harmonic adventures along the way.


JOHANNES BRAHMS String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat Major, Op. 67Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg; died April 3, 1897, in Vienna.

Composed in 1875, Brahms’s String Quartet in B-flat Major was first performed on October 30, 1876, in Berlin by the Joachim Quartet. The first Carnegie Hall performance of this work in its entirety took place on December 14, 1929, with the Léner String Quartet: Jenö Léner and Joseph Smilovits, violins; Sandor Roth, viola; and Imre Hartman, cello.

Much ink has been spilled over whether Brahms was a “conservative” or a “progressive” composer—that is, whether he must be faulted for not going along with the radical ideas of his older contemporaries Liszt and Wagner, or whether he should be given more credit for his novel structural and harmonic solutions. A way out of this academic dispute would be to realize that the two adjectives in quotation marks are really two sides of the same coin: Brahms’s genius lay in the way he was able to innovate within an existing framework, and to reconcile his originality with the tradition that was sacred to him.

Few works show this duality better than the last string quartet, so daring in a lot of ways and still so comfortable in observing the Classical rules of the genre. After two turbulent and dramatic minor-key works, Brahms composed one that is mostly light and happy, though by no means simple, in tone—and Brahms once said that it was his favorite work of the three. Brahms dedicated the quartet to his friend Theodor Engelmann, whose wife, Emma, was an accomplished pianist. In a letter dated August 9, 1876, Brahms wrote to Engelmann, “This quartet resembles your wife a bit—very pretty—but ingenious!”

The opening theme of the first movement is a direct descendant of Mozart’s “Hunt” Quartet (they have similar motivic materials and share the same meter and the same key). Yet within a few measures, rhythmic complications arise, the likes of which were never seen in Mozart. Most unusually, the meter changes in the folksy second theme, and for a short while, two different meters are even heard simultaneously. The development section covers an enormous range of keys and characters. And yet, the end of the movement manages to settle happily back into the Classical world as if nothing had happened.

The second-movement Andante contains one of Brahms’s most glorious melodies: it has an unusually wide range and draws an extremely long musical arc. It is followed by a typical Brahmsian moment with powerful angular rhythms, played together by all four instruments. A beguilingly beautiful and rather adventurous development section leads back to a restatement of the opening melody, followed by an idyllic coda.

In the third movement, the viola plays “first fiddle”; the other three instruments accompany with their mutes on. An expressive melody in Brahms’s Liebeslieder-Walzer (“love-song waltz”) mode opens the movement which is in ABA form, but the central “B” presents little contrast: it is another sensuous waltz melody led, once again, by the viola.

The last movement is a Classical theme and variations, with many subtle surprises and irregularities. First of all, the melodious theme has a slight but very noticeable irregularity in that its second half is two measures shorter than the first. This asymmetry is maintained in the course of the variations, which at first follow the Classical pattern of introducing faster figurations and giving different instruments their turn in playing the melody. The later variations go farther and farther afield until we reach a point, in a fairly distant key, where the melody seems to dissolve in a series of chords accompanied by a pizzicato (plucked) bass line, itself alternating between the cello and the viola. It is a variation where timbre, or sound color, seems to take over as the most prominent musical parameter, more important than melody and rhythm!

After this magical moment, the opening melody of the first movement unexpectedly returns, and we realize that its melodic outline is related to that of the variation theme. The two themes are brilliantly combined in the final section, but once again, after so many complicated compositional maneuvers, the work ends in a simple and straightforward manner.


CÉSAR FRANCK Piano Quintet in F Minor
Born December 10, 1822, in Liège; died November 8, 1890, in Paris.

Composed in 1879, Frank’s Piano Quintet in F Minor was first performed on January 17, 1880, at the Société Nationale in Paris. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere on April 1, 1934, with Harry Kaufman, piano, and the Musical Art Quartet: Sascha Jacobsen and Paul Bernard, violins; Louis Kaufman, viola; and Marie Romaet-Rosanoff, cello. The program honored Albert Einstein, who spoke at the performance.

Throughout his life, César Franck had a rather difficult relationship with the world surrounding him. He had been a resident of Paris since his teens, yet the French were reluctant to accept him as one of their own because he was born just beyond the border, in the Walloon district of what was still part of the Netherlands but in 1830 became the Kingdom of Belgium. (He was a French speaker of partially German descent.) His father’s attempts to turn him into a child prodigy failed, and the young Franck had to endure considerable hardship before he found his niche in the musical life of the French capital. That niche was, and remained, that of an organist; Franck was much admired at the console of the Church of Sainte-Clotilde and as a professor of organ at the Conservatory—but few people took him seriously as a composer until shortly before his death. Yet he had a small but devoted circle of students and followers who included some of the greatest talents of the new generation, including Henri Duparc, Vincent d’Indy, and Ernest Chausson. It was during the last decade of his life that Franck wrote the series of masterworks for which he is mostly remembered today: the Violin Sonata, the String Quartet, the Symphony in D Minor—and the Piano Quintet, which marks the beginning of Franck’s golden years.

Franck was 57 when he completed his Piano Quintet. It was the first piece of chamber music he had written in 30 years, and its tempestuous, hyper-romantic mood contrasted markedly with Franck’s earlier work, which had been mostly sacred. The choice of medium is explained by the recent launching of the Société Nationale de Musique, which set as its goal to promote chamber music, long neglected in France. As for the mood, the likely explanation is Franck’s infatuation with his student Augusta Holmès, a beautiful and gifted woman 25 years his junior.

The novelties of the work were not lost on the audience of the first performance. “The lovers of the classics [were] shocked by the expressive force and violence of the Quintet,” writes Léon Vallas in his 1951 biography. Others, on the contrary, appreciated “the glowing beauty of the new score,” sensitive to the “unexpected and overwhelming display of a musical passion hitherto unsuspected.” The premiere left some unpleasant memories: the piano part was played by Camille Saint-Saëns, who was Franck’s rival and had little affinity for the emotional intensity of the piece. When the performance was finished, Saint-Saëns left the stage rather abruptly, leaving the manuscript (which had been dedicated to him) on the piano with a gesture everyone interpreted as very ill-mannered. Another person who was appalled by the new work was Franck’s wife, Félicité, who had no doubts about the inspiration behind it.

Franck based nearly all of his mature works on musical ideas that recur in all the movements—a technique he had learned primarily from Franz Liszt, though he developed it in an entirely personal manner. In the Quintet, the recurrent theme is first heard as the secondary subject of the first movement; there, it is played tenero ma con passione (“tenderly but with passion”). At the end of the movement, this theme becomes much more animated. Halfway through the second movement, the piano plays it in a dreamy, lyrical fashion. Finally, it plays a crucial role in the third movement, just before the end.

In each of the three movements, this motto is preceded by other, contrasting materials. The slow introduction to the first movement presents two opposite characters: a powerful dramatic statement in the strings, and a gently undulating melody in the piano. When the tempo increases to Allegro, all five players begin to share the same music, a passionate motif in dotted rhythm derived from the earlier string theme. The first appearance of what will be the recurrent melody is a response to that motif—a resolution of the conflict, as it were. One of the most striking features of this melody is its extensive use of chromatic half-steps, and Franck develops this aspect thoroughly. The pervasive chromaticism undermines tonal stability and creates a great deal of additional tension that is present even in the subdued final measures of the Allegro.

The second movement is intimately lyrical throughout. The appearance of the motto theme in the middle functions as a bridge between the two main sections of the movement. The second of these sections contains a triple-fortissimo outburst that, however, quickly dissipates into the extremely tender music of the final measures.

The main melody of the fiery finale emerges only gradually from the background of an excited accompaniment figure. The four string instruments play this melody in unison, rising from piano to fortissimo. A second and later a third theme are added and developed as sonata form requires. The defining moment, however, arrives when the motto returns one final time to crown the entire composition, ushering in the vigorous and extremely tense concluding measures.



Copyright © 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Peter Laki writes frequently about classical music and is the program annotator of The Cleveland Orchestra.

Takács Quartet
·· Edward Dusinberre, Violin
·· Károly Schranz, Violin
·· Geraldine Walther, Viola
·· András Fejér, Cello
Recognized as one of the world’s premiere string quartets, the Takács Quartet is renowned for the ability to fuse four distinct, expressive musical personalities into gripping, unified interpretations. Based in Boulder at the University of Colorado, the Takács Quartet performs 80 concerts a year worldwide, performing throughout Europe as well as in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Korea. The members of the quartet are Associate Artists at the South Bank Centre in London, performing several concerts there each year. The 2007–08 season highlights include four concerts at Carnegie Hall: “Everyman,” inspired by Philip Roth’s novel of that name, in which they will perform with the Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a three-concert series focusing on Haydn and Brahms. In North America, they will perform in over 30 cities, and European tours include performances in Vienna, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Frankfurt, and Brussels. In May 2008 the quartet will perform a new piece by James Macmillan, commissioned by the South Bank.

The Quartet’s multi-award winning recordings include the late quartets by Beethoven, which in 2005 won Disc of the Year and Chamber Award from BBC Music Magazine, a Gramophone Award, and a Japanese Record Academy Award. Their recordings of the early and middle Beethoven quartets collected a Grammy, another Gramophone Award, a Chamber Music of America Award, and two further awards from the Japanese Recording Academy.

In 2005 the Takács Quartet signed a contract with Hyperion Records; a disc featuring Brahms’ Piano Quintet with Stephen Hough will be released in November 2007. The Quartet has also made 16 recordings for the Decca label since 1988 of works by Beethoven, Bartok, Borodin, Brahms, Chausson, Dvořák, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Smetana. The ensemble’s recording of the six Bartok string quartets received the 1998 Gramophone Award for chamber music and, in 1999, was nominated for a Grammy.

The quartet is known for innovative programming. The group collaborates regularly with the Hungarian folk ensemble Muzsikas, performing a program that explores the folk sources of Bartok’s music. The Takács performed a music and poetry program on a 14-city US tour with the poet Robert Pinsky. This season they will perform the program “Everyman” with actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Upcoming commissions include works by James Macmillan, Wolfgang Rihm and Daniel Kellogg.

At the University of Colorado, the Takács Quartet has helped to develop a string program with a special emphasis on chamber music. The Quartet’s commitment to teaching is enhanced by summer residencies at the Aspen Festival and at the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara. The Takács is a Visiting Quartet at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London.

The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai, and András Fejér, while all four were students. It first received international attention in 1977, winning first prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The Quartet also won the Gold Medal at the 1978 Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions and first prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet Competition in 1978 and the Bratislava Competition in 1981. The Quartet made its North American debut tour in 1982. Violinist Edward Dusinberre joined the Quartet in 1993 and violist Roger Tapping in 1995. Violist Geraldine Walther replaced Mr. Tapping in summer, 2005. Of the original ensemble, Károly Schranz and András Fejér remain. In 2001 the Takács Quartet was awarded the Order of Merit of the Knight’s Cross of the Republic of Merit.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Piano
Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet continues to bring joy to audiences around the globe with his elegant style, depth of color, and brilliant technique. The 2007–08 season takes him to 16 countries spanning five continents, with appearances including tours with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, as well as concerts with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and the NHK and Singapore symphony orchestras, among others. Also in 2007–08, Mr. Thibaudet gives recitals in Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Chicago’s Symphony Hall, and Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall. Mr. Thibaudet is the recipient of the 2007 Victoire d’Honneur, a lifetime career achievement award and the highest honor given by France’s Victoire de la Musique, and is a past Young Concert Artists audition winner.

Mr. Thibaudet is an exclusive recording artist for Decca, which has released over 30 of his albums, earning the Schallplattenpreis, the Diapason d’Or, Choc de la Musique, a Gramophone Award, two Echo awards, and the Edison Prize. His latest recording, featuring Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 5 with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, released in early fall 2007, follows the disc Aria—Opera Without Words, released in February 2007. The disc features transcriptions of opera arias by Saint-Saëns, Richard Strauss, Gluck, Korngold, Bellini, Johann Strauss II, and Puccini; some of the transcriptions are by Mikhashoff, Sgambati, and Brassin, while others are by Mr. Thibaudet himself. Mr. Thibaudet was the soloist on the 2005 Oscar-nominated soundtrack for Universal Pictures’s Pride and Prejudice, and in 2005 recorded Strauss’s Burleske with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Among other recordings are Satie: The Complete Solo Piano Music, and the jazz albums Reflections on Duke: Jean-Yves Thibaudet Plays the Music of Duke Ellington and Conversations with Bill Evans, his tribute to two of jazz history’s greats.