Tour de Force for Four

OCTOBER 20, 2024

ESPRESSIVO! QUARTET

Anna Polonsky, piano

Jaime Laredo, violin

Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt, viola

Sharon Robinson, cello

The Espressivo Piano Quartet performs a program featuring the music of Mozart, known to be the father of the piano quartet, and a work by Brahms famous for its folk-inspired, tour de force finale. Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s music has garnered national acclaim and great enthusiasm from Linton audiences. The world premiere of her newest work serves as a highlight of these opening concerts.

This concert is approximately 1.75 hours, including intermission.

Program Notes

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 493

The history of the piano quartet as a genre essentially begins with Mozart. At the time he composed his first pair of quartets—the G minor K. 478 and today’s work— the piano had only just advanced enough to hold its own in an ensemble without being overpowered by other instruments. Although other composers before him did write for piano quartets, Mozart’s quartets are remembered as the first great examples of the genre. When he composed them, Mozart had already mastered chamber music and was at the height of his fame as a concert pianist. The result is a pair of quartets that are not only superbly balanced chamber works, but which truly showcase the piano’s potential.

The quartet opens with a tutti statement that establishes the bright and genial tone permeating the entire work. Mozart quickly splits the texture into two ensembles—piano and string trio—which makes the entire work reminiscent of a chamber concerto with an echoing call and response between the two groups. The movement’s first theme is dramatic, but ultimately functions as a fanfare for the second theme. Here, Mozart introduces a motif in the piano that defines the rest of the movement. The gesture is repeated 37 times throughout the Allegro and grows into the third theme presented by the violin. In the development, Mozart restates the motif in unison before spinning it into a canon with overlapping entrances and transforming it again into a fugal subject for the closing coda.

Mozart opens the Larghetto movement with a gentle theme in the piano, which then elaborates and expands as it passes between the piano and strings. The contrasting middle section is functionally just an expansion of this melody through expressive piano passages, which helps cement the sense of tenderness that defines the movement. The final Allegretto is a rondo, with the refrain first stated in the piano before being taken up by the violin. The intervening episodes each have their own character—the first a true dialog between the strings and piano, and the second a minor-mode passage marked by challenging triplet passages in the piano. It is in the concluding coda that Mozart’s skill with this genre is truly on display, as he ingeniously combines the refrain and first episode for a satisfyingly rounded conclusion.

Nokuthula Ngwenyama (b. 1976)

Joy Steppin’ world premiere

When Sharon Robinson of the fabulous piano quartet Espressivo! kindly invited me to write a piece for the ensemble, she offered this prompt: Embrace the joy that is all around us! I was honored to accept.

“Happiness” skirts around the edges, while “joy” settles deep and carries us beyond the abyss. Joy can be a challenge to cultivate, but it remains one of our great human gifts. Joy—on both a personal and universal level—draws from the same deep wellspring as grief, celebrating our capacity for love, compassion and generosity. It is ever hopeful, drawing us forward, embracing and nourishing the human capacity to make things better.

Joy Steppin’ anxiously begins walking along the shallow side of happy. It then settles and reflects, through the più lento, adagio and più andante, before toetapping into its G minor dance theme of the title. And then, just before the final section brings the work to a close, the cello and piano take a deep breath, create a sliding, reverberating tone, a deep spiritual sound that begins low and gradually rises—like a meditational “Om ॐ”—providing a unifying moment to allow us to feel our interconnectedness.

***

As I was composing, I was uplifted reading The Book of Joy, by the 14th Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams, and moved by the words of Dr. Brittney Cooper: Joy is an invitation to make new worlds rather than being held hostage to the old ones.¹

To which I add this wish: May all beings know love, compassion, peace and the experience of stepping into joy. Thanks very much to Espressivo!—Anna Polonsky, Jaime Laredo, Milena Pájaro van de Stadt and Sharon Robinson—for including me in this blessing. Thanks also very much to the International Arts Foundation, Inc. for supporting the creation of this work and to the commissioners: Linton Chamber Music, generously supported by Ann and Harry Santen (world premiere); Apex Concerts; Arizona Friends of Chamber Music; Brattleboro Music Center; Chamber Music Albuquerque; Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland; Denver Friends of Chamber Music; El Paso Pro Musica; Emory Chamber Music Society; Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival; Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle; International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and Ensemble Music Society of Indianapolis; Kansas City Friends of Music; Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival; Peoples’ Symphony Concerts; Phoenix Chamber Music Society; Portland Ovations; Schubert Club; Seattle Chamber Music Society; and Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music.

—Nokuthula Ngwenyama

^{1. Smith College. “Reflecting Joy and Justice.” Last modified November 26, 2023. Accessed October 11, https://www.smith.edu/news-events/news/reflecting-joy-and-justice. (Dr. Cooper is an awardwinning author, commentator and professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University.)}

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)

Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25

In 1862 a 29-year-old Brahms introduced himself to Vienna’s musical elite with his G minor piano quartet. Members of the Hellmesberger Quartet, one of Vienna’s leading chamber ensembles, read the work with the composer at the piano; at its conclusion, the violinist Joseph Hellmesberger leapt from his chair, enthusiastically proclaiming, “This is the heir of Beethoven!” The triumph of the quartet represents the composer’s early maturity as a musician who had fully assimilated the influences of Bach, Beethoven and Schubert into a unique compositional voice before his 30th birthday. Opus 25 is best known for its rousing finale, the Hungarian-inflected Rondo alla Zingarese (“Gypsy Rondo”), but the entire work stands as a testament to the composer’s extraordinary craft.

The opening Allegro is built around a four-note motif that Brahms inverts, transposes and transforms throughout the first theme. Even as the exposition and development are expanded to extremes with an ever-growing sense of tension, the return of this theme keeps the music grounded to its central premise. The second movement stands as one of the earliest examples of the type of gentle Scherzo Brahms would make his own throughout his later career. Here, Brahms employs Robert Schumann’s “Clara-motif”—music he would return to throughout this career for his own private symbolism—to develop a subdued but expressive interlude.

Brahms begins the Andante con moto with a full-hearted song that develops into a strutting march. The movement effectively resolves the expressive tensions that have overshadowed the work up to this point, making room for the sheer animal vitality of the concluding rondo. Reflective of Brahms’ lifelong fascination with Hungarian folk music, the rondo’s irresistible refrain reveals the hand of a master tunesmith. The finale proceeds with devil-may-care abandon as an extravagant piano cadenza forestalls a whirlwind coda that brings the quartet to a brilliant conclusion.