Willy Sucre and Friends play String Quartets

violist Willy Sucre will be joined by

violinists Cármelo de los Santos & Anthony Templeton,

and cellist Joan Zucker. 

The program should include:

String Quartet No. 11 
by Heitor Villa Lobos

I. Allegro non troppo
II. Scherzo Vivace
III. Adagio
IV. Poco andantino(quasi allegro)

Villa-Lobos was born  on March 5, 1887 in Rio de Janeiro and died there on November 17, 1959.  

A primary source of  Villa-Lobos's inspiration is the rich and diverse musical folklore of Brazil, which the composer discovered between the ages of 18 and 25, when he traveled extensively through the Northeast, the Amazon basin and the South with touring theatrical companies. Even earlier he had come to know the lundu, the chôro, the maxixe and other forms of "urban folklore," better described as the popular music of the times.

In the spring of 1958 in Paris, Pierre Vidal quotes Villa-Lobos as saying “I love to write quartets. One could say that it is a mania." It is usual to think of Villa-Lobos's prodigious output in orchestral terms, and it may come as a surprise that chamber music forms a substantial part of his work. Of that chamber music string quartets are by far the major constituent, and within the broader context of the twentieth-century string quartet, Villa-Lobos' seventeen quartets must be considered a significant, though poorly acknowledged, contribution.

This string quartet was written in 1948

Notes adapted from www.naxos.com

I.  Allegro con moto
II.  Presto
III.  Andante
IV.  Allegro

César Guerra-Peixe, the son of Portuguese immigrants of cigana origin, was born March 18, 1914 in Petrópolis and died November 26, 1993 in Rio de Janeiro.  He was a Brazilian violinist and composer who drew on Brazilian traditions. Guerra-Peixe traveled the interior of Brazil and the northeast, collecting and studying folkloric music. He was influential in establishing a Brazilian nationalist tradition. As an ethnomusicologist, he wrote an important book "Os Maracatus do Recife" on Maracatu, a term common to two distinct performance genres found in Pernambuco state in northeastern Brazil: maracatu nação and maracatu rural.

He studied composition with Newton Padua at the Conservatorio Brasileiro in Rio de Janeiro from1938 to 1943 and also with H.J. Koellreuther.  He played violin in theater orchestras and in the National Symphony Orchestra.  He also arranged music for radio.  As a composer, he plunged headlong into the torrent of dodecaphony, but about 1949 changed his orientation and returned to his Brazilian roots, nurtured by melorhythmic folk-song resources. He wrote two symphonies (1946,1960); Nonet (1945); two string quartets (1947,1958); a Violin Sonata (1950);  a Piano Trio (1960); a Guitar Sonata (1969); a Duo for Clarinet and Bassoon (1970); and several pieces for the guitar. His music can be heard in many Brazilian films.

Notes adapted from Wendy Rolfe's Images of Brazil, the University of Akron’s Brazilian Music Collection website, and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia web site

I N T E R M IS S I O N 

String Quartet in C Major 
 "Dissonance"  K 465 

by Wolfgang.Amadeus Mozart

I. Adagio-Allegro
II. Andante cantabile
III. Menuetto- Allegro
IV. Molto allegro

Mozart was born January 27,1756, in Salzburg, Austria.  He died December 5, 1791, in Vienna. 

As is so often the case, the subtitle of this cheerful and generally consonant quartet is not only inappropriate but actually misleading. Music lovers in the 1780s, though, gave it the appellation “Dissonance” because they thought they heard “wrong” notes in the twenty-two-measure introduction. Some did even more: performers in Italy returned the parts to the publisher for corrections. When Prince Grassalkovics heard the music, he considered it a personal in­sult and ripped up the parts. Even Haydn expressed some shock, although he finally defended the music by saying, “Well, if Mozart wrote it, he must have meant it.”  The “Dissonance” Quartet is the last of the set of six that Mozart dedicated to Haydn and is a fitting climax to the series. Mozart finished it on January 14, 1785, four days after completing the A major quartet, K 464.

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

Time, date, and program subject to change.