Programmes
The Intimate Letters of Leos Janacek
The “Intimate Letters” quartet was the second to be composed by Janáček. The nickname was given by the composer, as it was inspired by his long and spiritual friendship with Kamila Stösslová, a married woman 38 years his junior. The composition was intended to reflect the character of their relationship as revealed in more than 700 letters they exchanged with each other:
“You stand behind every note, you, living, forceful, loving. The fragrance of your body, the glow of your kisses – no, really of mine. Those notes of mine kiss all of you. They call for you passionately…”
Each programme will feature the Second Quartet with extracts from the letters to be read inbetween each movement. Being a fellow Czech composer Janáček knew Dvorak well and felt a real affiliation with him. The Smetana- Janáček combination highlights the programmatic style of both composers and both have a personal and dramatic tension that links them and distinguishes them from most other quartets
Programme 1:
DVORAK “American” Quartet
JANÁČEK “Intimate Letters” (with extracts from the letters)
Programme 2:
DVORAK Piano Quintet (with David Owen Norris)
JANÁČEK “Intimate Letters” (with extracts from the letters)
Programme 3:
SMETANA Quartet No. 1 “From my Life”
JANÁČEK “Intimate Letters” (with extracts from the letters)
War and Humanity in the String Quartet
The String Quartets of Britten, Shostakovich and Schubert
This series of chamber music concerts explores the influence on Shostakovich by the first Viennese school of composition, and in turn the influence of Shostakovich on Benjamin Britten’s compositions. Both Shostakovich and Britten have a purity and openness in their use of harmony that lends itself to a comparison with Schubert. All three composers used the string quartet form as an intimate means of expression; whether in meditation on the human condition or the contemplation of their own mortality.
Programme 1:
In our first programme, the theme of war and the tragedy of its human aftermath are combined with the melancholy of Schubert’s A minor quartet, ‘Rosamunde’. Britten’s quartet number 2 was completed after a tour of Germany as accompanist to Yehudi Menuhin, playing to the survivors of the concentration camps. Themes of war and the human cost are also apparent in Shostakovich’s quartet number 8, composed in post-war Dresden and dedicated “to the victims of fascism and war.”
BRITTEN String Quartet No.2 Op.36
SCHUNERT String Quartet No. 13 in A minor (Rosamunde), D. 804, Op. 29
Interval
SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No.8 in C Minor Op. 110
Programme 2:
Our second programme combines the first works for string quartet by Britten and Shostakovich with Schubert’s final work, written in the last two months of his life and posthumously published. Schubert gives the impression of making his peace with death in the slow movement of the quintet. Britten’s work is the most classical in approach of his quartets; this is also apparent in Shostakovich’s first foray into the genre,which could be described as neo-classical.
BRITTEN String Quartet No.1 Op.25
SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No.1 in C Op.49
Interval
SCHUBERT String Quintet
Programme 3:
Our third programme has death as its central theme. Schubert’s Quartet was written just after the composer became aware of his ruined health. The popular title ‘Death and the Maiden’ is from the poem of that name by Matthias Claudius. The poem describes the exchange between the character of Death and a maiden. Death’s response to her obvious reluctance is almost that of a lover and surprising in its tenderness. Schostakovich’s quartet is an introspective work, focusing on his mortality and featuring a funeral march. Britten’s 3rd quartet was written in remarkably similar conditions to that of the Schubert. Britten was in very ill health and the quartet was in fact his final completed work, finished on holiday in Venice. It is remarkably close in atmosphere to Shostakovich’s final 3 quartets and may have been directlyinfluenced, if not by those works, then by the 14th symphony which was dedicated to Britten.
BRITTEN String Quartet No.3 Op.94
SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No.15 in E flat minor Op.144
Interval
SCHUBERT String Quartet No. 14 (Death and the Maiden) D. 810
Masters of Cinema
Bernard Herrmann (1911 – 1975)
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the great film composer’s birth in 1911, the Tippett Quartet presents a programme featuring music by Bernard Herrmann alongside works by fellow composers Korngold, Rózsa and Piazzolla, Vaughan Williams and Arnell. Hungarian-born film composer Miklós Rózsa, like Herrmann, was closely associated with Alfred Hitchcock and MGM Studios and they became extremely close friends. Rózsa thought that Bernard Herrmann was the greatest American-born film composer. Herrmann and Hitchcock went on to become one of the defining filmmaker/composer partnerships in cinema. The Argentinean composer Astor Piazzolla was also a fan of Herrmann’s music and pays homage to his music in Four For Tango by imitating the violin effects from Psycho’s famous shower scene.
In 1930’s Hollywood, the Viennese post-romantic musical language became popular for film scores with Erich Wolfgang Korngold being a leading composer to contribute to this field. He was one of several Jewish Europeans to escape Hitler’s Europe, with Max Steiner (Casablanca), Franz Waxman (Rebecca ) and Bernard Herrmann forming a quorum of unprecedented talent. Over the next fifty or so years, the Hollywood sound progressed almost unchanged, thanks to the heroic style of composers such as John Williams (who had worked with Herrmann and Waxman) and most recently with Danny Elfman, who has expressed admiration for Korngold and Herrmann’s work.
MIKLÓS RÓZSA String Quartet No. 2 Op. 38 [20’]
BERNARD HERRMANN ‘Echoes’ for string quartet [20’]
ASTOR PIAZZOLLA ‘Four For Tango’ [7’]
Interval
BERNARD HERRMANN Psycho Suite for String Quartet arr. Richard Birchall [10’]
ERICH KORNGOLD String Quartet No. 3 Op. 34 [26’]
Nino Rota (1911 – 1979)
“The most precious collaborator I have ever had, I say it straightaway and don’t even have to hesitate, was Nino Rota — between us, immediately, a complete, total, harmony … He had a geometric imagination, a musical approach worthy of celestial spheres. He thus had no need to see images from my movies. When I asked him about the melodies he had in mind to comment one sequence or another, I clearly realized he was not concerned with images at all. His world was inner, inside himself, and reality had no way to enter it.” (Federico Fellini) Celebrating the 100th birthday of the great film composer Nino Rota, career-long collaborator of Federico Fellini and composer of the music to the first two Godfather films, this programme brings together the music of Rota and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. In 1930’s Hollywood, the Viennese post-romantic musical language became popular for film scores with Erich Wolfgang Korngold being a leading composer to contribute to this field. This programme can be extended with the addition of readings. Please contact Ikon Arts Management for more details.
For Tippett Quartet with soprano:
NINO ROTA Invenzioni per quartetto d’archi (1932) [10’]
NINO ROTA Il Richiamo Quintetto d’Archi con voce [10’] (song)
NINO ROTA Quartetto per archi (1948-54) [15’]
Interval
NINO ROTA Il Presepio [10’] (song)
ERICH KORNGOLD String Quartet No. 3 [30’]
Exploring Arnell
Having been stranded in New York at the onset of the second world war, Arnell became a great friend of Bernard Herrmann who, with the Columbia Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra, went on to conduct Arnell’s First Symphony, the cantata The War God and the Piano Concerto. Later, back in England Arnell became one of Herrmann’s sponsors (the other being Malcolm Arnold) at the Savile Club in London, where other composers such as William Alwyn were also members. In this programme, the Tippett Quartet will explore the work of Richard Arnell and his British contemporaries William Alwyn and John Ireland. Arnell studied composition under Ireland at the Royal College of Music in 1935. Ireland is of course also linked with Alwyn as it has often been recognised that many of Alwyn’s works tend to embrace the sound world of John Ireland. In this programme, the Ireland and Alwyn works are sandwiched by two of Arnell’s String Quartets.
RICHARD ARNELL String Quartet No. 2, Op. 14
IRELAND Sextet for String Quartet, Horn and Clarinet
Interval
ALWYN String Quartet No. 3
RICHARD ARNELL String Quartet No.3, Op. 41
Irish Connections
This programme features compositions of three men who shared a deep love for Ireland, its literature and folk traditions, and found inspiration in its landscape and people.
Ernest John MOERAN String Quartet No.1 in A minor (1921)
Allegro 8’16
Andante con moto 5’28
Rondo 6’38
Aloys FLEISCHMANN Piano Quintet (1938)
Allegretto 7’23
Andante tranquillo 7’03
Allegro scherzando 3’52
Allegro molto 5’44
Interval
Sir Arnold BAX Piano Quintet in G minor (1915)
Tempo moderato con passione 20’40
Lento serioso 11’38
Tempo moderato – Allegro vivace – Lento con
gran’espressione 13’48
Ernest John Moeran, the son of an Irish clergyman, was born in Hounslow in 1894. His interest in his Irish roots came after the death of his close friend Peter Warlock, when he began to spend much of his time in Kenmare, co. Kerry. His String Quartet No.1 is influenced by the compositional style of French impressionist, Ravel, while remaining evocative of the majesty of the mountain ranges in Kerry and the beauty of the surrounding countryside. Moeran and Sir Arnold Bax were very good friends; they would travel to Glencolmcille in Donegal in the west of Ireland to compose. In 1936, they were both there together – Bax was composing his last quartet and Moeran his Symphony in G Minor. Moeran’s String Quartet No.1 stands in this programme with Aloys Fleischmann’s Piano Quintet, a piece which is coloured by the influence traditional Irish music had on the composer. Fleischmann, born in Munich to Irishbased German parents, was a composer and musicologist. He spent much of his life in Cork where the evidence and effect of his contribution to the standard of classical music and the documentation of traditional music and dance are visible to this day. The Fleischmann family, notably Aloys and his mother, Tilly, met Arnold Bax on his first visit to Ireland as a young man. This visit marked the beginning of a long-standing friendship between Bax and the Fleischmann family. Although the strongest influence on Bax’s music was Irish and Celtic folklore, a fling with a young Ukranian woman, Natalia Skarginska, and subsequent journeys to St. Petersburg, Moscow and Lubny led to a fascination for Russian and Slavonic themes. The relationship’s end caused Bax greatemotional pain from which he never quite recovered. It was five years later when Bax composed his Piano Quintet. The combination of these Irish and Slavonic influences results in a work which is engagingly sincere and scales a vast range of human emotion.
James MacMillan Programmes
James MacMillan has said that he loves chamber music, but sees it as a challenge, as a
composer is at his most exposed when writing it. This set of programmes looks at the medium of the string quartet and how composers have often seen it as the most demanding and special of media.
Programme 1:
A British Programme
In this programme we can see the approach of three great British composers to the genre; for all of these composers it is a personal emotional expression while Tippett’s third quartet is also an exploration of structural forms.
TIPPETT String Quartet No. 3 [32’]
JAMES MACMILLAN String Quartet No. 3 2007 [26’]
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS String Quartet No. 2 [22’]
Programme 2:
HAYDN String Quartet Op. 20 No. 1 [18’]
JAMES MACMILLAN Why is this night different? (String Quartet No.2) [22’]
BEETHOVEN String Quartet Op. 132 [40’]
Programme 3:
HAYDN String Quartet Op. 76 No. 2 ‘Sunrise’ [25’]
JAMES MACMILLAN Visions of a November Spring (String Quartet No.1) [22’]
SIMON HOLT 2 Movements for String Quartet [13’]
BEETHOVEN Grosse Fuga [17’]
Concertos for String Quartet and Orchestra
Proposed Concertos:
MARTINŮ Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra (1931)
2.2.2.2 2.2.2.0 timps perc (1 player) strings. This is a piece that the Tippett quartet has wanted to do for a while. This year the quartet has played a few of Martinů’s quartets and piano quintets and has a real interest to continue their exploration of his works. (18 mins)
SCHOENBERG concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra [after Handel] (1933)
2.2.2.2 2.2.1.0 perc hp pf strings. This astonishingly inventive and rarely heard work is one of Schoenberg’s most accessible pieces, being based on Handel’s Concerto Grosso Op.6 No.7. The piece was written in 1933 and given its first performance in Prague the following year. (23 mins)
SCHULHOFF Concerto for String Quartet and Wind Orchestra, WV97 (1930)
Piccolo, flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, double bassoon, 2 trumpets, 2 horns, 2 trombones, tuba and string quartet. Schulhoff was another talented composer whose life was prematurely terminated by the rise of the Nazis.
(21 mins)
There are a few interesting links between these pieces: all are written within a few years of each other; both the Martinů and the Schoenberg were written in France; and the Martinů and the Schoenberg also have a Czech connection (with the Schoenberg having been premiered in Prague). They could work in a number of ways in a programme:
For a Czech theme:
HANDEL Concert Grosso Op.6 No.7
SCHOENBERG Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra
Interval
MARTINŮ Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra
MOZART Prague Symphony
Or for a baroque theme the second half could be Pulcinella.
For the Schulhoff (or indeed the Schoenberg) a wartime themed programme could perhaps work:
STRAUSS Metamorphosen
SCHULHOFF Concerto for String Quartet and Wind Orchestra (or Schoenberg)
Interval
SHOSTAKOVICH Chamber Symphony (or indeed one of the other larger symphonies)
Nina Rota (1911 – 1979)
“The most precious collaborator I have ever had, I say it straightaway and don’t even
have to hesitate, was Nino Rota — between us, immediately, a complete, total,
harmony … He had a geometric imagination, a musical approach worthy of celestial
spheres. He thus had no need to see images from my movies. When I asked him about
the melodies he had in mind to comment one sequence or another, I clearly realized
he was not concerned with images at all. His world was inner, inside himself, and reality had no way to enter it .” Federico Fellini
Programme 1:
Celebrating the 100th birthday of the great film composer Nino Rota, career-long collaborator of Federico Fellini and composer of the music to the first two Godfather films, this programme brings together the music of Rota, William Walton, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and the writing of William Shakespeare. In this programme, we hear the music of Rota and Walton interspersed readings from the Shakespeare plays.
Rota composed the music for Franco Zeffirelli’s Shakespeare adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, and The Taming of the Shrew. Walton composed music for the film Henry V. In 1930’s Hollywood, the Viennese post-romantic musical language became popular for film scores with Erich Wolfgang Korngold being a leading composer to
contribute to this field.
ROTA Invenzioni per quartetto d’archi(1932) [?]
SHAKESPEARE Henry V
WALTON Henry V Suite II. Passacaglia: Death of Falstaff [3’15]
SHAKESPEARE Romeo and Juliet
WALTON Henry V Suite IV. Touch her soft lips and part [2’15
SHAKESPEARE The Taming of the Shrew
ROTA Quartetto per archi (1948-54) [15’]
Interval
KORNGOLD String Quartet No. 3 [30’]
Programme 2:
This programme combines the works by Nino Rota for String Quartet and Soprano with works by his countryman and contemporary, Ottorino Respighi. This programme is particularly unique as it showcases works that are scored for String Quartet and Soprano, a scoring that is not often used often by composers. Respighi’s Il tramonto
(The Sunset) is a stunning setting of Shelley. Rota’s Il Presepio (The Crib) is scored for soprano and string quartet with traditional Italian words.
RESPIGHI Il Tramonto [15’]
ROTA Il Presepio: Quartetto d’archi con voce (1929) [?]
Interval
ROTA Il Richiamo: Quintetto d’archi con voce (1923) [?]
RESPIGHI Quartetto in Re Maggiore [30’]