Willy Sucre and Friends

play

String Quartets

violist Willy Sucre will be joined by

violinists LP How and Kerri Lay, and cellist Joan Zucker

The program should include:

String Quartet  in D Minor

"Death and the Maiden" ~ D. 810

by Franz Schubert

I.  Allegro.

 II. Andante con mow

III. Scherzo: Allegro molto

IV. Presto

Schubert was born in Vienna on January 31, 1797.  He composed the “Death and the Maiden” Quartet in March 1824.  This D minor quartet is subtitled so because Schubert borrowed the theme for the second movement from his 1817 song, “Der Tod und das Mädchen “(“Death and the Maiden”). The short, simple tale tells of death gently coming to claim the life of a young girl who urges him, “Go on, oh go on past me!” The melody that Schubert uses in the quartet is actually the piano introduction that represents the approach of death. The central role of this quotation in the quartet has led several commentators to regard the entire work as an exposition of Schubert’s views on death, and the climax it reaches in the finale as a frenetic Dance of Death. More likely, Schubert borrowed the melody for musical rather than pro­grammatic reasons; according to some evidence, the idea for basing the quartet on the song came from some friends who loved the mel­ody. Its first performance, actually an unrehearsed reading, was on January 29, 1826, at the Vienna home of Karl and Franz Hacker, two amateur musicians. Schubert, who enjoyed playing viola in chamber music ensembles, could not participate since he was busy copying out the parts and making last-minute corrections. The quartet was not published until July 1831, nearly three years after Schubert’s death in Vienna of typhoid fever on November 19, 1828. 

Notes adapted from Melvin Berger's Guide to Chamber Music.

I N T E R M IS S I O N 

Shostakovich was born on September 25, 1906, in Saint Petersburg (Leningrad). He was a product of the Soviet system, and all of his music was affected by the official interpretation of Lenin’s famous dictum, “Art belongs to the people.”  His first major piece was written when he graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1926.  

Shostakovich rarely changed or revised his works, but the Ninth Quartet is one of the rare exceptions. In Elizabeth Wilson's biography entitled "Shostakovich: A Life Remembered" she states: "Shostakovich finished the first version of the Ninth Quartet in the autumn of 1961. In a fit of depression, or, to quote his own words, 'in an attack of healthy self-criticism, I burnt it in the stove. This is the second such case in my creative practice. I once did a similar trick of burning my manuscripts, in 1926'."  

It took Shostakovich three years to complete the "new" Ninth Quartet, which was completed on May 28, 1964, and premiered by the Beethoven Quartet in Moscow on November 20, 1964. Dimitri Tsyganov, the leader of the Beethoven Quartet, recalled that Shostakovich told him that the first Ninth Quartet was based on the "themes from childhood", and the newer Ninth Quartet was "completely different". This piece was dedicated to his third wife, Irina Antonovna Shostakovich, a young musicologist whom he had married in 1962.  Shostakovich died on August 9, 1975, in Moscow.  

Notes adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia website.

Time, date, and program subject to change.