September 29, 2024: Edward Arron, Carter Brey, Rafael Figueroa, and Zvi Plesser, cellos Georg Goltermann (1824-1898) Serenade Op. 119, No. 2 for four cellos September 29, 2024: Edward Arron, Carter Brey, Rafael Figueroa, and Zvi Plesser, cellos Following cello studies in Hanover with August Christian Prell (student of Romberg), Georg Goltermann studied in Munich with Joseph Menter and soon embarked on a short career as a touring virtuoso. Having also studied composition with Ignaz Lachner, Goltermann began receiving recognition for his compositions such as his Symphony in A and his First Cello Concerto. He stopped touring in 1852 to become music director in Würzburg, but he left just one year later for Frankfurt where he served briefly as assistant music director before rising to principal music director in 1874. Goltermann’s prolific body of work went on to include further orchestral pieces, seven more cello concertos, myriad songs—many with cello and piano accompaniment—and dozens of character pieces for cello and piano. He is best remembered for his cello concertos (No. 4 in particular), which continue to be valued as effective teaching tools, and—owing to the huge popularity of ensemble music for multiple cellos—his Deux morceaux (Romance and Serenade) for four cellos, op. 119. The work was first published in 1895 and dedicated to cellist Ferdinand Forino, professor at the newly founded Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. Of the two lush, lyrical pieces—Romance and Serenade—we hear the second, a luxurious A-B-A form in which the contrasting center section explores some colorful harmonic inflections before settling back into the opening music. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

November 19, 2017: Los Angeles Guitar Quartet MUSIC FROM THE TIME OF CERVANTES, ARRANGED FOR FOUR GUITARS Music from the Time of Cervantes (arr. W. Kanengiser) November 19, 2017: Los Angeles Guitar Quartet Jácaras – Anonymous (17th century) El Villano – Antonio Martín y Coll Diferéncias Sobre Las Folias – Antonio Martín y Coll Chacona (“La Vida Bona”) – Juan Arañéz Oy Comamos – Juan de Encina In March 2009, LAGQ debuted the theatrical production “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote” with British actor/comedian John Cleese. Interweaving tales from the classic novel with arrangements of pieces that Cervantes could have heard in his lifetime, it melded music and storytelling. Tonight’s recital includes selections from this production. Jácaras is an anonymous canción (“No hay que decir primor”) from the 17th century. With raucous strumming and castanets imitating horses’ hooves, it accompanies Don Quixote’s departure from his farm to become an adventuring knight. El Villano (“The Rustic”) is a country dance from the anthology “Flores de Música” collected by Antonio Martín y Coll. It introduces Sancho Panza, Quixote’s trusty squire. Diferéncias Sobre Las Folias is a set of variations contrasting on the famous harmonic progression, Folias de Espana. It tells of the famous argument between knight and squire, and of their reconciliation. Chacona (“La Vida Bona”), from the Libro Segunda de Tonos y Villancicos (1624) by Juan Arañes, is one of the most celebrated early examples of the form. The chacona, which by Bach’s time had become one of the most noble and profound of all dance forms, was a suggestive and prohibited danza in 1500s Spain, almost their version of our macarena. It features the lines, “here’s to the good life, good little life: let’s do the Chacona”). Oy comamos y bebamos is a four-voice villancico from the Cancionero Palacio, written by Juan de Encina. The opening stanza is “Hoy comamos y bebamos, y cantemos y holguemos, que mañana ayunaremos” (Today we eat and drink, and sing and make merry, for tomorrow we must fast”). It serves as a fitting epilogue for Don Quixote’s quixotic character. Return to Parlance Program Notes

April 13, 2025; Quartetto Di Cremona Claude Debussy (1862-1918) String Quartet April 13, 2025; Quartetto Di Cremona Debussy composed his only String Quartet in 1893 amid work on his orchestral Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune . The chamber work marks the transition between Debussy’s youthful and mature styles—bridging the academic world of his Paris Conservatory training with the dreamy, coloristic world of the Faune . In a larger sense it both glances back to the nineteenth-century heritage of Wagner and Franck and looks to the future with original and imaginative ideas that would influence the course of music. The Quartet is Debussy’s only work that bears an opus number and names a key, as if he were thinking of the weighty history of the genre. The work’s tonal center may be G, but “minor” tells little about Debussy’s harmonic scheme. The first movement relies heavily upon the centuries-old Phrygian mode on G and on D. The second movement alternates and combines G major pizzicato chords with an accelerated and chromatically altered version of the first movement’s opening motive, further blurring distinctions between major and minor. The slow movement, placed third in the order of movements, centers around D-flat, the remotest possible key from “home.” Completed in February 1893, the Quartet was premiered December 29 by the Ysaÿe Quartet on a concert that brought Debussy’s music to the notice of many for the first time. Critics initially seemed somewhat baffled—some were uncomfortable with the Quartet’s original ideas, others felt the allure of its new sounds and suspected their importance for the future. The Quartet exhibits a certain cyclicism or the reuse of themes across movements—not as distinctly unmistakable entities in the manner of his conservatory teacher Franck but as alterations of previous ideas. This creation of new possibilities contributes to the music’s fluid quality. Variants of the first movement’s main theme appear throughout the Quartet, some more obviously related than others. Debussy relied more on the motive’s rhythmic characteristics and general contours than on its harmonic scheme and exact melodic details. In the scherzo, the texture and timbre immediately strike the ear even as the thematic ideas clearly derive from the first movement’s main motive, beginning with the viola’s quickened and obsessively repeated version. The murmuring accompaniment in the next section, over which the first violin plays an elongated version of the motive, provide a coloristic effect that Debussy was to employ frequently, particularly in his orchestral works. The often noted Russian character of the slow movement probably has its roots in Debussy’s sojourn in Russia as part of a piano trio employed by Madame Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky’s patroness. Whereas the movement indulges in a kind of Romantic-period expression, it also foreshadows the new style of Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune . The finale bridges the preceding movement by opening in the same remote key and quiet mood. Recitative-like musings from cello and first violin alternate with all four parts echoing chromatic and rhythmic variants of the main motive. The bridging continues in an animated passage that harks back to the textures and rhythms of the scherzo. Debussy then launches the finale proper with an agitated theme above shifting open-fifth chords. He recalls passages of all the movements, but in altered form so they seem to evolve rather than reprise. Tempo and textural changes abound, which apparently unsettled some of the early critics. The final exciting coda offers yet another look at the germinal motive. Debussy optimistically called the work “Premier quatuor ” as if he expected more to follow. He began a second quartet the following year, primarily to please his friend, composer Ernest Chausson, who had been surprisingly disappointed with the “First.” The two had a falling out, however, and Debussy never returned to the project. The Premier quatuor also contributed to the professional animosity between Debussy and Ravel. When Ravel’s Quartet in F appeared in 1902, the parallels with Debussy’s work were obvious—such as the shadowy accompanimental sixteenth-note figures in the first movement and the pizzicatos in the scherzo—igniting a firestorm in the press about the quartets’ rival virtues. Debussy is said to have written to the younger, harassed composer urging him not to change a note of his work, but this letter has never come to light. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

September 29, 2024: Zvi Plesser, cello; Jeewon Park, piano Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Andante from Sonata in G minor, Op. 19 for cello and piano September 29, 2024: Zvi Plesser, cello; Jeewon Park, piano Rachmaninoff had sunk into a depression after the failure of his First Symphony in 1897, and it took the hypnotic treatment—or the sympathetic conversations—with Dr. Nicolai Dahl to bring him out of it. The spectacular result of his “cure,” for which the composer remained eternally grateful to Dr. Dahl, was his famous Second Piano Concerto in 1900, followed by the Cello Sonata in 1901. Rachmaninoff wrote the Sonata for cellist Anatoly Brandukov, with whom he gave the first performance in Moscow on December 2, 1901. Though much of the piece had been composed that summer, Rachmaninoff dated the manuscript December 12, 1901, after the premiere, indicating that he had some second thoughts that he incorporated in the final version. With its sweeping passion and melodic appeal, much in the same vein as the Second Piano Concerto, the Cello Sonata has enjoyed immense popularity. Its virtuoso piano part makes it an especially attractive vehicle for the pianist, but cellists, too, revel in its luxurious melodies. Regrettably it was Rachmaninoff’s last piece of chamber music. The slow movement basks in Rachmaninoff’s rich, songful style, initiated by the piano. The central section in the minor mode comes to a dramatic climax before the varied return of the main theme. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

October 4, 2015 – Richard Goode, piano JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897) Sechs Klavierstücke (Six Piano Pieces), op. 118 October 4, 2015 – Richard Goode, piano In the four sets of piano pieces that appeared in 1892–93, opp. 116–119, Brahms took up the writing of “miniatures” that he had begun with the Ballades, op. 10, and the Piano Pieces, op. 76. The later pieces, particularly the intermezzos, which make up fourteen of the twenty pieces in these four sets, tend generally toward the introspective, though flashes of youthful exuberance flare up occasionally—in the outer sections of both the Ballade, op. 118, no. 3, and the Capriccio, op. 116, no. 7, for example. No precise chronology can be determined for these pieces, yet the structural economy and tendency toward harmonic and textural “impressionism” all point to Brahms’s late style. Four of the six pieces in Opus 118 are labeled “intermezzo,” Brahms’s nonspecific designation that covers a fairly wide range, from the opening passionate, stormy Intermezzo (op. 118, no. 1) to the desolate, haunting tone picture of the last (no. 6). The first of these, laid out in two sections, each repeated, presents a recurring feature in Brahms’s works, namely a descending melodic shape. Many have associated the descending line, which recurs particularly in the late works, with resignation on the part of the composer. The closing Intermezzo in E-flat minor casts its tragic spell from the opening single-voice theme, fashioned from only three neighboring pitches. Its inward aspect gives no hint of the intensity of the climax in the middle section. Similar in nature to the “cradle-song” intermezzos, op. 117, the serene, beautiful A major Intermezzo (no. 2), lies within the grasp of good amateur players, and hence is one of the best known of these pieces. Its more restless middle section, full of Brahms’s beloved three-against two rhythms, contains several well-integrated contrapuntal devices. Imitation between the two hands is also important in the quietly agitated F minor Intermezzo (no. 4), both in the opening section and in the chordal textures of the middle section. The G minor Ballade (no. 3) provides contrast to all the other pieces in the set with its bold and lively spirit. One of its playful aspects is the brief recall of the opening theme in the “wrong” key (D-sharp minor) in the middle of the central section. The fifth piece, which Brahms labeled “Romanze,” again suggests a cradle song with its melodic directness and rocking chordal accompaniment; the impression continues in the middle section with its melodic decorations over a rocking repeated pattern in the bass. Brahms’s masterful variation techniques are apparent not only here, but in the elaborations of the basic material in the outer sections. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

DAVID GOULD, BASSET HORN David Gould is the bass clarinetist with the American Ballet Theatre Orchestra in New York City. He has performed with The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, National Symphony, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, New York City Ballet, New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic, L’Orchestre National de France, and Philadelphia Orchestra. Gould has given master classes, concerts, and lectures at many prestigious schools such as the Boston Conservatory, Colburn School, Eastman School of Music, Indiana University, Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory, and the University of Michigan. He has edited and corrected etudes by Alessio, Labanchi, and Stark and pieces by Paul Jeanjean and Rene de Boisdeffre for International Music Diffusion (IMD). He has recorded for Naxos, Mode Records, and MSR Classics. David Gould is a graduate of the Juilliard School and was awarded the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship, to study music in France. He is a unanimous first prize winner from the Conservatoire National de Region de Versailles in France. He studied with Michel Arrignon, Philippe Cuper, Stanley Drucker, Jacques Lancelot, and David Weber. David Gould is a performing artist and clinician for Buffet Crampon and Vandoren Paris.

THE CALIDORE STRING QUARTET The Calidore String Quartet has been praised by the New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” and by the Los Angeles Times for its balance of “intellect and expression.” After their Kennedy Center debut the Washington Post proclaimed that “Four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one…The grateful audience left enriched and, I suspect, a little more human than it arrived.” The Calidore String Quartet has enjoyed an impressive number of accolades, including their most recent award of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award. The Calidore made international headlines as the winner of the $100,000 Grand-Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition, the largest prize for chamber music in the world. Also in 2016, the quartet became the first North American ensemble to win the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and was named BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists, an honor that brings with it recordings, international radio broadcasts and appearances in Britain’s most prominent venues and festivals. Formed in 2010 at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, the quartet has also received top prizes in the ARD Munich, Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake and Hamburg competitions. The Calidore String Quartet regularly performs in prestigious venues throughout North America, Europe and Asia such as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, Berlin Konzerthaus, Brussels BOZAR, Cologne Philharmonie, Seoul’s Kumho Arts Hall and at many significant festivals, including the BBC Proms, Verbier, Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, Music@Menlo, Rheingau, East Neuk and Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The Calidore have given world-premieres of works by Caroline Shaw, Hannah Lash and Benjamin Dean Taylor. The Calidore has collaborated with many esteemed artists and ensembles, including Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Joshua Bell, David Shifrin, Inon Barnatan, Paul Coletti, David Finckel, Wu Han, Paul Neubauer, Ronald Leonard, Paul Watkins, and the Emerson and Ebéne Quartets, among others. The Calidore has studied closely with such luminaries as the Emerson Quartet, David Finckel, Andre Roy, Arnold Steinhardt, Günther Pichler, Guillaume Sutre, Paul Coletti, Ronald Leonard and the Quatuor Ebène. The Calidore String Quartet’s debut album for Signum Records, including quartets by Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Janáček and Golijov, will be released in October 2018. The Calidore String Quartet’s other three commercial recordings include quartets by Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn, recorded live in concert at the 2016 Music@Menlo Festival; Serenade: Music from the Great War, featuring music for String Quartet by Hindemith, Milhaud and Stravinsky, Ernst Toch and Jacques de la Presle on the French label Editions Hortus; and the quartet’s February 2015 debut recording of quartets by Mendelssohn and Haydn for which Gramophone dubbed the Calidore String Quartet “the epitome of confidence and finesse.” The Calidore were featured as Young Artists-in-Residence on American Public Media’s Performance Today and their performances have been broadcast on National Public Radio, BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, SiriusXM Satellite Radio, Korean Broadcasting Corporation, Bayerischer Rundfunk (Munich), Norddeutscher Rundfunk (Hamburg), and were featured on German national television as part of a documentary produced by ARD public broadcasting. As a passionate supporter of music education, the Calidore String Quartet is committed to mentoring and educating young musicians, students and audiences. The Calidore serves as visiting guest artists at the University of Delaware School of Music and has conducted master classes and residencies at Princeton, Stanford, the University of Michigan, Stony Brook University and UCLA. Using an amalgamation of “California” and “doré” (French for “golden”), the ensemble’s name represents a reverence for the diversity of culture and the strong support it received from its home of origin, Los Angeles, California, the “golden state.”

March 29, 2015 – Matthew Polenzani, tenor; Ken Noda, piano LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Adelaide, Op. 46 March 29, 2015 – Matthew Polenzani, tenor; Ken Noda, piano Having moved from Bonn in 1792, Beethoven, in his twenties, was in the process of making a name for himself as a composer and pianist in Vienna. Greatly enamored of Friedrich von Matthison’s poetry, he was especially captivated by Adelaide, which must have resonated with his own yearnings for romantic involvement with women who proved unattainable. In fact, he may have conceived his “cantata,” as he called it, for the beautiful singer Magdalena Willmann—a Bonn acquaintance who arrived in Vienna in 1794 and to whom he proposed unsuccessfully. Making many sketches, Beethoven set the poem in 1794–95 in a style that shows an Italianate-Romantic fervor, but also possibly the Classic influence of “O Tuneful Voice” by Haydn, with whom he had just been studying. Marriage proposal aside, Willman did give the first performance on April 7, 1797, and Beethoven published the song that year with a dedication to Matthison—unbeknownst to the poet. Three years later Beethoven wrote humbly to Matthison saying, “I cannot explain why I dedicated a work to you which came directly from my heart, but never acquainted you with its existence,” except that “at first I did not know where you lived” (a flimsy excuse), and also “from diffidence” (likely), and that even now he was sending the song “with a feeling of timidity.” As it turned out, Matthison greatly appreciated the song, as we know from his introduction to an 1825 edition of his collected poems: “Several composers have animated this little lyric fantasy through music; none of them, however, according to my deepest conviction, cast the text into deeper shade with his melody than the genius Ludwig van Beethoven in Vienna.” “Adelaide” became one of Beethoven’s most popular songs—a favorite especially in salons and in numerous arrangements by other composers. Beethoven’s setting is through-composed—every stanza fit with new music, even the refrain “Adelaide”—and divided into two parts, the first three stanzas at a slow tempo followed by a fast section comprising the last stanza. The dreamlike opening section suggests the beloved’s wandering with triplet motion and many key changes—influenced by Haydn’s song, perhaps?—and the rapturous closing section suggests the poet’s reuniting in death with the beloved who was unattainable in life. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

May 8, 2022: Arnaud Sussmann, violin; Anna Polonsky, piano; Paul Neubauer, viola; Fred Sherry, cello; Michael Parloff, lecturer WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Violin Sonata in G major, K. 373a (K. 379) May 8, 2022: Arnaud Sussmann, violin; Anna Polonsky, piano; Paul Neubauer, viola; Fred Sherry, cello; Michael Parloff, lecturer Mozart wrote from Vienna to his father Leopold in Salzburg on April 8, 1781: Today (for I am writing at eleven o’clock at night) we had a concert, where three of my compositions were performed—new ones, of course; a rondo for a concerto for Brunetti; a sonata with violin accompaniment for myself, which I composed last night between eleven and twelve (but in order to be able to finish it, I wrote out only the accompaniment for Brunetti and retained my own part in my head); and then a rondo for Ceccarelli, which he had to repeat. The three pieces were his Rondo for violin and orchestra (K. 373), the present G major Sonata, and the aria in rondo form “Or che il ciel” (K. 374). The occasion for this chamber concert was a command performance for the archbishop of Salzburg, who was visiting Vienna and had summoned a group of Salzburg musicians to perform for him and his father, Prince Rudolf Joseph Colloredo. Mozart had brought little music with him, and hence had to compose with haste. Clearly for him it went without saying how quickly the participants—among them violinist Antonio Brunetti and male soprano Francesco Ceccarelli—had to learn their parts, but it’s still astounding! The letter is informative in so many ways. First, we note how quickly Mozart was able to compose music of enduring substance, and, second, how for him the mechanical process of writing down the composition was something that could be taken care of later, for the creative part had already been accomplished in his mind. Further, we are reminded how Mozart viewed the present Sonata—and his others in this genre—as keyboard sonatas, with violin accompaniment. Mozart’s manuscript of the G major Violin Sonata gives testimony to the haste of the work’s genesis, but nothing in the listening experience betrays anything other than thoughtfulness having been lavished upon the piece. The first movement is remarkable for its serene, extended opening section in the major mode, which is almost a movement in itself. The suspenseful open ending (on the dominant) unleashes a stormy G minor fast section in sonata form, in which the two instruments unleash pelting rain, lightning bolts, and sighing figures with equal passion. The second and final movement is a graceful theme with five charming variations, followed by a return to the theme with a decorative coda. Of special interest is Mozart’s dramatic use of minor-mode harmonies at the outset of the second half in variations 1, 2, 3, and 5. What is so remarkable is that this striking feature is not present in the original theme. The entire course of the fourth variation unfolds in the minor mode except for a brief hint of major at the analogous spot. Variation 5 returns to the major mode with its sweetly ornamented melody supported by pizzicato broken chords in the manner of a serenader’s guitar. The “minor-mode switch” makes its most theatrical impression in this final variation. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

DAVID J. GROSSMAN, DOUBLE BASS Double bassist and composer David J. Grossman enjoys a multifaceted musical career on both the East and West Coasts — as a bassist in the New York Philharmonic (having joined in spring 2000 as its youngest member) and as newly appointed principal bass of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. As a soloist and clinician, Mr. Grossman has given recitals and master classes at prestigious venues and music schools across the country, including the Boston Conservatory, Yale School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, The Hartt School, Penn State University, and the New York Summer Music Festival. He has released two albums — one classical and one jazz — titled The Bass of Both Worlds, available at davidjgrossman.com. Mr. Grossman is also an ardent educator. He is as a member of the double bass faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, and he joined the Mannes School of Music faculty in fall 2017. Also a passionate chamber musician, he performs in the New York Philharmonic Ensembles series at Merkin Concert Hall and has appeared at 92nd Street Y and with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In the field of jazz, Mr. Grossman was a member of the Marcus Roberts Trio and has performed with Wynton Marsalis, among many others. As a composer, David J. Grossman’s compositions include Mood Swings for trombone and double bass, written for New York Philharmonic Principal Trombone Joseph Alessi; Fantasy on “Shall We Gather at the River?”, available on former New York Philharmonic English Horn Thomas Stacy’s recording Plaintive Melody; and two early compositions, Swing Quartet and String Quintet No. 1, which were premiered by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

October 30, 2022: EMERSON STRING QUARTET JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809) String Quartet in G, Op. 33, No. 5 October 30, 2022: EMERSON STRING QUARTET Haydn composed his six Opus 33 Quartets in 1781, nine years after his previous set of six, op. 20. A debate has raged for over a century about whether Haydn marked the attainment of perfect Classic Viennese style with these new quartets when he noted to possible buyers they were written “in a new and special way.” The latest thinking is that “new and special” was a phrase designed to sell works rather than a statement about arriving at the perfection of Classical style, since that would ignore the merits of the Opus 20 Quartets, the symphonies written around 1772, or, as scholar Robbins Landon suggests, the opera L’infideltà delusa or the Missa Cellensis of 1782. What scholars and listeners do agree on is that there is something different about the Opus 33 Quartets, chiefly a tendency toward popular, folklike expression and outwardly simple structures that hide an inner complexity—and, yes, they include a remarkable profusion of Classic stylistic elements whether or not they represent a turning point. Commentators have speculated, with the usual cautionary asides about art and life circumstances, that the lightness and humor of these Quartets were linked to Haydn’s personal happiness at this time—the beginning of his affair with singer Luigia Polzelli, hired by Prince Esterházy in 1779. Both were in unhappy marriages at the time and she became Haydn’s mistress by 1781. Over a decade later he was writing her from London: “Perhaps I shall never again regain the good humor that I used to have when I was with you.” Some of Haydn’s greatest wit and lightheartedness lies in the Opus 33 finales, which move away from sonata form or the contrapuntal complexity of fugues in favor of rondos or variation forms. On the other hand, and no doubt for balance, these works show more profundity in their slow movements. As to his “Scherzo” and “Scherzando” movements, though they are the first in his quartets to be so-designated instead of “Minuet,” they actually differ little from his previous minuets. Thus the aptness of the sometime nickname “Gli scherzi” (with scherzos) for the Opus 33 Quartets applies not so much to these movements as to the entire set’s many “jokes”—the literal Italian meaning of scherzi. Haydn first published the Opus 33 Quartets in 1782 with no dedication, but added one to Grand Duke Paul of Russia with the second edition of 1796, which led to their most common nickname “Russian.” This belated dedication had to do with the fact that most, if not all, received their first performance at the Vienna home of the Duke’s wife, Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna, on Christmas Day, 1781. The Opus 33 Quartets gained instant popularity, so much so that fraud was immediately detected when a composer from Mainz tried to pass them off as his own. Haydn begins the G major Quartet—likely the first in order of composition—with a quiet, graceful “curtsey” or “bow” in a rhythm that prompted the English mid-nineteenth-century nickname “How do you do.” Many commentators have seen its cadential gesture as a supreme example of his wit—an ending as a beginning. The immediate contrast of the rhythmic main theme with its bold, repeating bass notes sets the stage for an almost symphonic movement in which Haydn often thickens the texture with double stops. Unlike the monothematic tendencies in many of the other sonata-form movements of the Russian Quartets, Haydn’s second theme introduces a lyrical idea over a cello pedal. In his development section he takes apart and recombines his thematic fragments with creative resolve, and his recapitulation expands into what approaches a second development. The slow movement unfolds in a tragic mood with the first violin “singing” an aria-like lament over individualistic accompaniment lines by the other three instruments. Many commentators have noted that Haydn may have been influenced by Orfeo’s “Che puro ciel” from Gluck’s opera Orfeo e Euridice, which he had directed at Esterhazá in 1776. The four instruments finally come together at the end in a forceful unison phrase, capped by a unison pizzicato that has elicited much speculation about whether it can fit the somber mood or should be heard as Haydenesque humor. Haydn certainly makes jokes in the third movement, taking the Italian term “scherzo” in its literal meaning. He teases the listener with meter-busting displacements and shows supreme comic timing when, just after seeming to get on track, he inserts a bar of rest. The graceful regularity of the trio provides tongue-in-cheek foil. The Finale, marked Allegretto, unfolds as an easy-going siciliano theme with three variations. The decoration increases in the third variation, first for the viola then the cello, and Haydn caps the movement with a presto coda that gallops toward the finish—but not without some final soft-loud playfulness. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

September 24, 2017: Rafael Figueroa, cello GASPAR CASSADÓ (1897-1966) Sardana and Jota from Suite for Solo Cello September 24, 2017: Rafael Figueroa, cello Young prodigy Gaspar Cassadó began his music training early with his organist-composer father. The family moved to Paris to insure the best teachers—the great Jacques Thibaud for his violinist brother and Casals for him. Casals’s playing and mentoring left an indelible impression on the young Gaspar, who became acquainted with all the leading musicians in Paris—he also studied composition with Ravel and Falla. Influenced by his mentor’s legendary performances of the Bach solo cello suites, Cassadó composed one of his own in 1926, successfully transferring the idea of Bach’s stylized Baroque dances to dance forms of his own Spanish heritage. The Sardana, reflecting the national Catalonian circle dance, unfolds in two parts: slow and stately (dancer holding hands with arms down) and fast and exuberant (arms up). The final movement alternates an introspective Intermezzo with a lively triple-meter Jota, which evokes the guitars and castanets of the dance’s northern Spanish roots. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes