Debut of the Rosamunde Quartet 

MARCH 4, 2024

ROSAMUNDE STRING QUARTET

Noah Bendix-Balgley, violin

Shanshan Yao, violin

Teng Li, viola

Nathan Vickery, cello

This dream quartet includes young stars from three of the world’s greatest orchestras: the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. The program contrasts the playfulness of Haydn and the trepidation of Beethoven at the end of his life. Also featured is an inspirational work by Kevin Puts.

Program Notes

Joseph Haydn  (1732 – 1809)
String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2

The six string quartets that comprise Op. 20 were composed in 1772 while Haydn served the court composer to Prince Esterhazy in Hungary. Published as a set, the collection became known as “the sun quartets” because of a drawing of a rising sun on the collection’s cover. This nickname has managed to stick because it provides a fertile metaphor for musicologists with a sense of whimsy. In this collection we can see the dawning of a new era in Haydn’s approach to composing string quartets, and his influence would help shape the future of the genre as a whole. The 22 string quartets Haydn composed prior to the Op. 20 set were designed more for entertainment than serious artistic expression. Following the style of the time, these earlier quartets largely revolved around the first violin with the other three musicians serving more subordinate roles. In Op. 20, Haydn more evenly distributed themes across all four musicians, achieving a more robust tone than his earlier quartets, and allowing the full quartet to develop a seriousness of texture and tone that demands dedicated listening rather than serving as background music. With Op. 20, Haydn moved into the era of serious concert quartets, and his innovations helped drive the genre from that point forward. 

In a bold assertion of Haydn’s new style, the quartet opens with the cello singing out the main theme in its upper register while the first violin remains silent for the first six measures and the viola takes on the cello’s traditional role of providing a bassline. The cello remains a key voice– matching the first violin in a duet during the development and adding a new richness to the movement’s texture throughout. Haydn’s focus on a truly ensemble-driven quartet develops even further in the dramatic Adagio. The four instruments announce the main theme in unison before breaking it into segments for free variation. Even as the first violin assumes a leading role in the contrasting middle section, Haydn’s writes the accompaniment with an unusual assortment of tone colors. 

The cello once again takes a featured part throughout the minuet which arrives without pause from the Adagio’s closing chords. Hesitant and syncopated, the movement serves as a capable palate cleanser between the dramatic sections that surround it before giving way to the final fugue that can be considered the fullest realization of Haydn’s dedication to an equal ensemble. In the manuscript for this movement Haydn scribbled “Sic fugit amicus amicum” (Thus one friend flees another). This sentiment can, indeed, be felt throughout the fugue’s four simultaneous themes as the ensemble often takes on the sound of one part pursuing another only to divert in a new direction. Full of complex counterpoint and rich texture, the finale serves as a final, triumphant nod to the composer’s new approach to the genre.

Kevin Puts  (1972 – )
Credo

When Daniel Ching of the Mirò Quartet asked me to write a quartet for a program he was planning exploring ‘the lighter side of America’, I wasn’t sure I could deliver. It was hard to find things to sing about. The government continued to pour young lives and billions of dollars into a war in the Middle East, one to whose protest millions at home and abroad marched with what E.L Doctorow described as “the appalled understanding that America was ceding its role as the best of hope of mankind,” that “the classic archetype of democracy was morphing itself into a rogue nation.” Also around this time, a disturbed loner finally enacted his plan to gun down a record-breaking number of his fellow students at Virginia Tech and—amazingly—this failed to prompt any heightened talks over gun control.

One day on my weekly commute from New York to teach at the Peabody Conservatory, I noticed as the train pulled into Baltimore the word believe emblazoned across a building. I later learned this was part of a campaign by the city of Baltimore to do something about the fact that ten percent of its population is addicted to either heroin or cocaine. As one who relies little if at all on blind faith, I found this to be a rather alarming approach. On the other hand, sometimes it seems all you can do is believe. For example, many of us believe we’ll find our way out of the mess. In the meantime, I have found solace in the strangest places:

…in the workshop of a stringed instrument specialist in Katonah, New York, you can believe nothing in the world matters but the fragile art of violins and violas hanging serenely from the ceiling. He listens chin in hand as his clients play excerpts for him, then goes to work on their instruments with sage-like assuredness…

…on the jogging path along the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, you encounter above and below you the steel girders, asphalt and railroad ties of infrastructure, an immovable network of towering bridges and highways engineered by some deific intelligence…

…from my apartment, I watched in a window across 106th Street a mother teaching her daughter how to dance.

I would like to thank Amy Anderson of Chamber Music Monterey Bay for commissioning this piece and for her belief in my work. Credo is dedicated by Lowell Figan to the memory of Janie Figan, tireless environmentalist and devoted lover of chamber music

–Kevin Puts

Ludwig van Beethoven  (1770 – 1827)
Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132

As Haydn’s Op. 20 quartets represent a new beginning for the composer, Beethoven’s late quartets serve as a triumphant ending. By the time Op. 132 was composed in 1825, Beethoven had already closed the book on his symphonies, concertos, and sonatas and instead spent the final years of his life composing only for string quartet. These late quartets represent Beethoven’s most far-reaching and experimental compositions, as the master – now completely deaf and in failing health – truly stretched his approach to a genre in which he had already composed 11 works. Op. 132 was the second of the late quartets to be written. Originally intended to be a four-movement work, the quartet’s composition was interrupted by a bout of debilitating illness, and when he was able to return to his work, Beethoven wrote a new “thanksgiving” movement that became the centerpiece of the revised five-movement quartet.

The opening movement is a world unto itself. Beethoven expands on the traditional sonata form in virtually every direction to create a movement filled with thematic contrasts and rich harmonic interplay. The second movement plays out as a scherzo in everything but name. At times jarring and at others uncommonly wistful, the movement nevertheless presents Beethoven’s humor as the playful themes set out against odd harmonic textures.

The third movement comprises nearly half of the entire quartet. This late addition to the work remains one of Beethoven’s most famous and deeply personal movements. Inscribed with the words “Hymn of Thanksgiving to the Divinity from a convalescent, in the Lydian mode,” the movement presents a sublime chorale. A brief moment of celebratory vigor interrupts the reverie before the chorale theme returns with new accompaniment to close the movement on a note of sheer serenity that reflects the composer’s newfound vigor at the restoration of his health.

A rowdy march snaps the quartet back into the character established in the first two movements. Again, playful and fractured, the fourth movement sounds as both a second scherzo, and an introduction to the quartet’s finale. The instrumental recitative of the fourth movement sets up the themes of the imposing finale. Quick and passionate, the songlike finale provides ample opportunity for Beethoven to play with rhythm and meter. Filled with bold transitions, challenging digressions, and a nearly frantic counterpoint drive the finale to a coda that ends on a tone of surprising triumph and joy.