PREVIEW
NOTES Dover String Quartet w/ Jarrett Ott, baritone Wednesday, December 4 – 8:00 PM Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center Program
Quartet [Philadelphia Premiere] Eric Sessler Born: 1969 in Dover, NJ Composed: 2012‐2013 First PCMS performance Duration: 30 minutes This work was commissioned by the Dover Quartet and premiered in October of this year. Curtis faculty member Sessler’s compositions have been performed around the world and are described by Peter Dobrin as approaching the “Francophile beauty of Samuel Barber.” Quartet in F Major, Op. 135 Ludwig van Beethoven Born: December 16, 1770 in Bonn, Germany Died: March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria Composed: 1826 Last PCMS performance: Juilliard Quartet, 2013 Duration: 23 minutes Beethoven wrote the bulk of this, his final quartet, in a two‐month burst of activity amid health problems. The quartet is surprisingly small‐scaled, finding inspiration in the quartets of Beethoven's one‐time teacher Haydn. The first movement’s principle theme in 2/4 hints at a march, and Beethoven's reliance on very short phrases gives the movement a playful nature that is emphasized by abrupt melodic and harmonic shifts and frequent interruptions in mid‐phrase. The second movement’s format is traditional but abounds in rhythmic asymmetry disrupting the basic 3/4 meter, as well as suddenly modulating chromatic harmonies. The third movement is a theme with four variations. In the finale, Beethoven casts the introduction, Grave ma non troppo tratto, in F minor. At the head of the score Beethoven has written, in German, "The difficult decision," and next to the tempo indication are the words "Muss es sein?" (Must it be?). Those three syllables form the rhythmic basis of the main theme and seem to be inspired by an exchange between Beethoven and a friend regarding payment of money. Dover Beach, Op. 3 Samuel Barber Born: March 9, 1910 in West Chester, PA Died: January 23, 1981 New York, NY Composed: 1931 Last PCMS performance: American Quartet w/ Randall Scarlata, 2003 Duration: 8 minutes This brooding song for baritone and string quartet was written shortly before the composer’s 20th birthday. Originally a poem by English poet Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach takes as its subject the shore of the English ferry port of Dover, Kent. The poem focuses on aspects of scenery and the soundscapes before turning towards an appeal to love, closing with the famous lines: Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. Barber wrote the work while a student at the Curtis Institute, and he would ultimately sing on a recording done with the Curtis String Quartet in March of 1935. Written in D Minor, the work has a very programmatic opening and closing with the sound of waves crashing on the shore. Quartet, Op. 11 Samuel Barber Composed: 1936 Last PCMS performance: Tokyo Quartet, 2010 Duration: 22 minutes Samuel Barber's first and only string quartet didn't end up the way he intended it to, for the second movement eventually overshadowed the entire opus when he transcribed it for string orchestra as the Adagio for Strings. The first movement shows Barber experimenting with a style somewhat removed from his usual hyper‐melodic idiom. Barber composed the piece in the summer of 1936 at St. Wolfgang, Austria, a small mountain town near Salzburg, where he and Gian Carlo Menotti had rented a cottage.