Sunday, September 20, 2009 ~  3:00pm

Sponsored by Lucy Noyes, Dick Hopkins & La Puerta Real Estate Services, LLC

Willy Sucre and Friends play String Quartets

violist Willy Sucre will be joined by

violinists Krzysztof Zimowski &

Justin Pollak,

and cellist James Holland. 

The music playing is an excerpt from the first movement of Haydn's “String Quartet in D Major, op. 64, No. 5” recorded at the March 5, 2006 Willy Sucre and Friends concert with violinists Krzysztof Zimowski & Kerri Lay, and cellist Joanna de Keyser.  If the music is not loading, click the play button (►). Recorded by Leland H. Bowen.

The program should include:

String Quartet in D Major, op. 64, No. 5
“The Lark”
By Franz Joseph Haydn

I.  Allegro moderato
II. Adagio cantabile
III. Menuetto: Allegretto
IV. Finale: Vivace

Haydn was born on March 31, 1732 in Robrau, Austria and died on May 31, 1809 in Vienna. The op. 64 quartets, known as the “Tost Quartets,” were among the last pieces that Haydn wrote while still in the employ of the Esterhazy family. He worked on them during the spring and summer of 1790. In September of that year Prince Nicholas Esterhazy died, and his family dismissed the music staff, thus relieving Haydn of his duties as KapelImeister after nearly thirty years of service. At the same time Haydn was given a handsome pension, in return for which he only had to supply music for a few ceremonial occasions. Now free to pursue his musical career in his own way, Haydn embarked on a trip to London at year’s end for the first of two highly successful concert tours.

It was while Haydn was in London that the six quartets of Op. 64 were published with a dedication to Johann Tost, a former violinist in Haydn’s orchestra who by then was known as a successful wholesale cloth merchant. One group of scholars holds that the set was dedi­cated to Tost because his wife, Maria Anna von Jerlischek, who had been housekeeper to Prince Esterhazy, commissioned it and Haydn chose this way of showing his appreciation. Some cynics believe that, in Haydn’s absence, Tost lied to the publisher and named himself the dedicatee. Still others maintain that Haydn simply inscribed them to Tost out of admiration for his skill as a violinist.

Probably the most familiar of these,  No. 5, bears two nicknames, neither of which was suggested by the composer. Most often it is known as “The Lark,” from the general association of the opening violin melody. The other subtitle, “Hornpipe,” refers to the Finale.

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

~<^>~ 

Crisantemi

(Chrysanthemums), Elegy for String Quartet
by Giacomo Puccini

Puccini was born Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini on December 22, 1858 in Lucca, Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Descended from a family of musicians, Puccini was the most important Italian opera composer in the generation after Verdi. He was educated in Lucca, later studying under Ponchielli at the Milan Conservatory.  He died in Brussels, Belgium on Nov. 29, 1924.

Puccini himself acknowledged that his true talent lay "only in the theater," and so his non-operatic works are understandably few. But there are more of them than the average concertgoer might imagine. The string quartet was a medium for which Puccini had a certain undeniable affinity, and over the years he composed some five works or groups of pieces for it. All of these string quartet pieces have been virtually forgotten except for the elegy, Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums, a flower associated with funerals and remembrance rites in Italy), that Puccini wrote in 1890 - in a single night, he said - as a response to the death of the Duke of Savoy.  Puccini later reused this work in his opera Manon Lescaut. 

Notes adapted from various web sites including answers.com, musicforstrings.com, and naxos.com.

I N T E R M I S S I O N

String Quartet in E Flat Major, op. 51
by Antonín Dvorák

I. Allegro ma non troppo
II. Dumka: Andante con moto; Vivace
III. Romanze: Andante con moto
IV. Finale: Allegro assai

Dvořák was born on September 8, 1841, in Nelabozeves, near Prague and died May 1, 1904 in Prague.

The year 1878 was particularly auspicious for him, both personally and musically. The birth of a daughter in June, following the earlier losses of two children, was truly a blessed event. His career was flourishing as his three Slavonic Rhapsodies, the first set of Slavonic Dances, and the string sextet scored great artistic successes. Dvorák was also lauded for capturing the directness, warmth, simplicity, and infectious merriment of native Czech folk music, without resorting to overt borrowing of national melodies. On the basis of his growing fame, Jean Becker of the Florentine Quartet asked Dvorák to write a quartet in the Slavic style. The result was the very charming and beautiful Op. 51, in which Dvorák integrates elements of Czech national music with his basically Classical approach to composition.

Although dedicated to Jean Becker of the Florentine Quarter, the premiere was given by the Joachim Quartet in Berlin on July 29, 1879.

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

Time, date, and program subject to change.