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First Unitarian Church
June 4, 2006
"With Op.20 the historical development of Haydn's quartets reaches its goal; and further progress is not progress in any historical sense, but simply the difference between one masterpiece and the next."
The words are those of Sir Donald Tovey, one of the most formidable minds in musical history. And when one takes into account that Haydn wrote some 50 quartets after Op.20, the fact that Tovey is right on the mark makes Haydn's achievement all the more remarkable.
On Sunday afternoon the 19th Eine Kleine Summer Music season kicked of with the second of the six Op.20 quartets. Or, to be precise, No.2 as they are numbered today; during Haydn's own lifetime they were published in three different sequences (and Haydn's own catalogue introduced a fourth).
Nancy DiNovo, Christi Meyers, Mieka Kohut and Paula Kiffner gave a fine performance of this early masterpiece. There was mystery during the first movement, eloquence in the slow, elegance in the minuet and, even at the slightly measured tempo of the finale, an ultimate exuberance that was hard to resist.
Ralph Vaughan Williams's first mature string quartet was composed in 1908, the year he went to Paris to study with Ravel. "After three months I came home with a bad attack of French fever and wrote a string quartet which caused a friend to say that I must have been having tea with Debussy" (Well, the quartet was in g minor).
The String Quartet No.2 was composed some 35 years later, immediately after his Fifth Symphony and immediately before his Sixth. This, as Michael Kennedy has pointed out, was a key juncture for composer: the Fifth can be seen as a summing up (of what has sometimes been described as Vaughan Williams's "cow staring over a gate" period), whereas the Sixth ushered in his final, questing, mystical period.
The quartet is dedicated to a viola-playing friend: "To Jean, on her birthday" although by her 29th, in February 1943, the composer was only able to deliver the opening two movements: "the scherzo refuses to materialise".
The work was eventually premiered at a National Gallery Concert by the Menges Quartet (Jean Stewart was their viola player) in October 1944.
Sunday's performance - by Mariana Cuervo Lorens, Julian Vitek, Kenji Fusé and Laura Backstrom - was a genuine rarity (was it a Victoria first?) and must have been something of a surprise for anyone in the audience whose experience of Vaughan Williams is limited to The Lark Ascending and the Tallis Fantasia.
Vaughan Williams gives his violist the principal themes of each movement (the instrument seems to have been a particular favourite) and Fusé made the most of his eloquent, yet technically challenging music.
Indeed, all four players seemed to have penetrated and assimilated RVW's idiom in short order: this was in no sense a mere reading of the work, but an interpretation - and a first-rate one at that.
The disturbed, often troubled nature of the first three movements was excellently conveyed, before the final Epilogue brought with it a sense of earned tranquility.
I can think of no higher praise than to remark that the performance inspired me to listen to a recording of the quartet (twice) after I arrived home: I think I feel a Vaughan Williams phase coming on.
"The whole piece is to be played staccato and pianissimi, the tremolandos coming in now and then, the trills passing away with the quickness of lightning; everything new and strange, and at the same time most insinuating, one feels so near the world of spirits, carried away in the air, half inclined to snatch up a broomstick and follow the aerial procession. At the end the first violin takes flight with a feather-like lightness and - all is vanished."
Fanny Mendelssohn was writing of the scherzo of her brother's Octet, that unequalled work of youthful prodigy. The final phrase - "Und alles ist zerstoben" - is a quotation from the Walpurgisnacht scene of Goethe's Faust, which had been Felix's inspiration for the movement.
Sunday's concert ended with all eight musicians combining for a joyful performance of the octet. The opening movement, for once, obeyed the composer's marking to the letter: Allegro moderato, ma con fuoco. Too many ensembles tend to ignore either the moderato or the con fuoco.
Special praise is also due to violinist DiNovo for refusing to turn the opening movement into a violin concerto: to be sure, there are concertante elements in the music, but had Mendelssohn wanted to compose a concerto he would have done so (as indeed he did over twenty years later).
The andante was lyrical and dramatic by turns; the ineffably great scherzo deftly handled and the finale, while perhaps not as presto as some others I have heard, had plenty of energy and drive and led to an almost ecstatic final coda.
As an encore the ensemble repeated the scherzo - but with a difference. This time (a party trick they had apparently been playing with at rehearsal) each player stood as he or she had a leading line and then sat down again.
In addition to providing a quite hilarious visual experience, it also served to clarify the lines and textures of the music.
Which leaves just one question: can this season's Eine Kleine possibly top its opening?
Only time will tell.
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