SoNoKLECT '06- '07 A Concert Series of Modern Music

TERRY VosBEIN, DIRECTOR

Juilliard String Quartet

The Complete Bart6k Quartets

WILSON HALL

LENFEST CENTER FOR 'IHE ARTS

WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY

25 & 26 MAY 2007 8:30 P.M.

FRIDAY NI GHT

First String Quartet , Op. 7, Sz . 40 (1908) Lento Allegretto Int rod uzione: allegro Allegro vivace pr esto

Third String Quartet , Sz . 85 (1927) Prim a parte- Moderat o Second a par te- Allegro Recapitul az ione della prim a part e: Mode rato-a ttacca Cod a: Allegro molto

- INTERMISSION -

Fifth String Quartet, Sz. 102 (1934) Allegro Ad agio rnolto Scherzo: Alla bulga rese- Vivace And ante Finale: Allegro vivace

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SATURDAY NIGHT

Second String Quartet, Op . 17, Sz. 67 (1915-17) Moderato Allegro molto capriccioso Lento

Fourth String Quartet, Sz. 91 (1928) Allegro Prestissimo, con sordino Non troppo lento Allegretto pizzicato Allegro molto

- INTERMISSION -

Sixth String Quartet (1939) Mesto: Piu mosso, pesante-Vivace Mes to-Marcia Mesto: Burletta-Moderato Mesto

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Bart6k: A Juilliard Quartet Legacy

Celebrati ng its sixtieth ann iversary, the Juilli ard String Qu artet re-crea tes a se minal moment in its histo ry: the first cycle of the six Bart6k quart ets to be perfo rmed in the Unite d States. Seven performances of the compl ete set across the coun try and in Japan dur ing the anni versary seas on, 2006-07, wi ll recall the landmark 1948 premiere a t Tanglewoo d .

The Bart6k cycle is one of wha t violist Samu el Rhodes, the ensembl e's senio r member, d escribes as "common th read s that have been supr emely imp ortant to the Juilliard Strin g Qu artet." These long-standing interes ts also include the Bee thoven quar tets; commiss ioning imp ortant contemp orary compo ser s, mo stly

Ameri can, to extend the quart et repert oire and tradition ; and a stron g commitm ent to teachin g, both chamb er mu sic and the players' ind ividual instrum ents.

Composed between 1908 and 1939, the Bart6k quart ets wer e not well known in the United States in the yea rs ju st after World War 2. The Juill iard pla yers had to learn the Sixth Quart et from part s copied by hand from the manu scrip t, and the first cycle met with little national attention . Today the six work s are part of the stand ard repertoir e, standin g beside the qu artets of Haydn , Mozart, Beethoven and Schub ert and played even by stud ent ensemb les. The Emerson, Tokyo, Brentano, Saint Lawr ence, Lark, and Colorado Qu artet s are among the many tha t, either as

a grou p or through ind ividu al memb ers' studi es, learned their Bart6ks at the knee of the grou p that laun ched them in to general circulation .

There had been sporad ic performa nces of ind ividua l qu ar tets in the Unit ed States before 1948. The Librar y of Congress, for instance, prese nted a 1934 performanc e of the First Quartet by the Roth Quart et of Budapest , a 1935 Fifth Qua rtet by the Kolisch Qu artet of Vienn a, and , in 1936, a repeat of the First by the Roth Quart et and a Fourth by the Pro Arte Quartet of Brusse ls. Significantly, these were ensemb les from Europe, wh ere Bart6k was better establish ed . Over the next decade four quart ets based in the United States- the Coolidge, Bud apes t, Univ ersity of Wiscon sin Pro Arte, and Gordon-p erform ed sing le quar tets a t the

Library. The Juilliard began a series of Bart6k perfo rmances there in December 1948 with the Fifth Qu artet.

Brought togeth er by Robert Man n, the Juilliard at its bir th consisted of Mann as first violinist, Robert Koff as second violinist, Raph ae l Hillyer as violist, and Art hur Winog rad as cellist. It was Eugene Lehne r, then a violist in the Boston Symph ony Or ches tra, who in trodu ced the four young men to Bart6k's masterworks . As a member of the celebrated Kolisch Qu artet, he had known and champi oned Bart6k, Schoenber g, Berg, and Webern in prewa r Vienn a. Now an emig re and older man, he refused an invitation to become the new ensembl e's foundin g violist. He offered instead to coach the players in the Bart6k quartets.

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Many year s later Hillyer, whom Lehner recomm end ed for the violis t's job, recalled tha t the group thought , apropos Bartek : "' People are not going to like th is.' An d it turned ou t that they didn 't, very much . But we had such faith in him [Lehner]

and the mu sic itself, after we'd played it a lot, that we just didn 't care abou t the reaction . ' We did it and it's good for you, listen to it,' we thought. And peopl e began to see w hat's in it."

By 1948, a t the invitation of Tanglewood 's found er, Serge Kou ssev itzky, the two ­yea r-o ld Juilliar d was ready to sp ring the cycle on the un suspecting world . The premiere took pla ce on July 10 and 17. But it wasn't until the repeat of the set in New York, in two concert s in March and Apri l 1949, that the world took notic e. In a lengthy commenta ry in the Herald Tribun e the prescient Virgil Thomson declared the six works " the cream of Bartek 's repertor y, the essence of hi s deep est thought and fee ling, his most powerful and hum ane communi cation . They are also, in a centur y that has produ ced richly in that medium , a handfu l of chamb er mu sic nu ggets that are pure gold by any standard s."

Chamb er musi c in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s was largely the pro vince of Europ ean emigres, epitomi zed by the Bu dap est Quart et, which stood as an embl em of the genteel, Old World values embodi ed in the genr e. Encour aged to be darin g by William Schuman, then presid ent of the Juilliard Schoo l, its first resid ent quartet brok e w ith the tradition . But new mu sic was a hard se ll. Hillyer recalled

that, to get Bartek onto a prestigi ous chamber mu sic series in Buffalo, New York, where the Budap est was a main stay, the Juilli ard had to agree to play the Barte k first on the progr am. That way, listeners could arr ive late if they chose.

The Juill iard was not to be det erred . Su bsequen t cycles followed at Harvard and Princeton (1949), the Ojai Festival (1950), in Berlin (1951, in 12 concerts includin g Bee thoven and Bart6k cycles), New York (1952), San Franci sco and Berkeley (1953), Vienna (1955), and at the Edinbu rgh Fes tival (1958). Oth er per formances of Bart6k , as well as other twenti eth-centur y compo sers, were salted in am ong these

program s. Now that someone was actuall y pla ying twentieth -centur y quart ets, scores arri ved at the Juilli ard 's doorstep by the dozen .

The first of thr ee Juilliard recordin gs of the cycle, in 1949, onl y four years after Bart6k's death , helped to spre ad the wo rd . Characteristically, the grou p did it the hard way. Becau se magneti c tape was still new and unreli able, the whol e job wa s don e without the editin g and splicin g that make most recordings compo sites of man y takes. Subsequ ent cycles wer e relea sed in 1963 and 1983. Reviewin g the third se t in the New York Times, Bernard Hollan d wrote, "Those who still own tho se scratchy, muffled first recordin gs from the 1940s will rejoice in the new version's revela tion of detail, but perhaps they will miss the incredibl e white heat of the early performanc es. No th ing since seems to hav e matched thi s dem onic dr iving power ."

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Th anks to this missionary wo rk, the Bartoks we re comin g into general acceptan ce by the 1960s and 1970s. Durin g those yea rs the Juilli ard played cycles not only in New York and Chicago but also at the University of Texas, Vassar College and in Guelph , Ontario . Ther e was not a single year durin g the same period in which the Juilliard did not car ry at leas t one Bartok-a nd often car ried as many as five--on its pr og ram s. At the Library of Cong ress th e Juilli ard remained the dr iving Bartok force.

Toda y's Ju illiard String Qu artet goes out into the world not as the bra sh yo un g

men of the 1940s, but as consumm ate masters . Over the cour se of the 2006-07 season they will perform the Bartok cycle in Dallas, Ne w York, El Paso, Houston, Lexingt on (Virginia), and Tokyo and at the Ravinia Festival. Extensive tours will

take the Bartok s to other cities and campu ses across the United States, Europe , and the Far East.

The count less ensembl es pl aying the Bartok quart ets alongside the Beethov ens toda y are benefi ciarie s of a tradition that four Juilliard up starts es tablished fifty­eight years ago. The Juilliard , in turn , carri es on a traditi on that goes back to the Kalisch Qu artet and , before that , the Schuppa nzigh Qu arte t, which insisted on playing the Beethoven quart ets when they were new and misund erstood.

Looking back, Samu el Rhod es says, "The inh erent vitalit y, orig inali ty, folk-like accessibility, and intellectual sub stanc e have graduall y caused the Bartok s to be assimilated as part of the standard rep er toire. Now, an y strin g qu artet worth y of the name mu st have them as par t of its repertoire. We are proud that our convicti on as to the valu e of the Bartoks and our persistence in performing and

teachin g them have played some role in causing them to be repert oire pieces. Our belief in their imp ortan ce continu es as we fea ture them to repr esent us during our sixtieth anni versary seaso n."

- .9vufrew L . Pincus

Andrew L. Pincus is the author of Musicians with a Mission: Keeping the Classical Tradition Alive, from which part of this article is adapted.

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]ulliard String Quartet

The Juilliard String Quartet is internationall y renowned and admired for performances characterized by a clarity of structur e, beauty of sound , purity of line and an extraordinar y unanimity of purpose. Celebrated for its performanc es of works by compo sers as diverse as Beethov en, Schubert, Bartok and Elliott Car ter, it has long been recognized as the quinte ssential Ameri can strin g quart et.

October 11, 2006 marked the Juilliard Quartet 's 60th anniversary , wh en a day of na tionwide public radio programming was devot ed to in terviews with the Juilliard s and their discography. A year long celebration is following , landmark s of which are the Quartet's performanc e of seven complete Bartok cycles (The Juilliard Quartet played the American premi ere of the Bartoks at Tang lewood in 1948) in major cities throughout the U.S. and Japan , which began with a two concert cycle at Alice Tully Hall in New York in Novemb er. In honor of both the Ju illiard s' 60th birthda y and the Shostakovich centennial , Sony BMG Masterworks released a 2-CD set of the Juill iard Quartet's recording s of Shostakovich qu artet s No s. 3, 14, 15 and the Piano Quintet with Yefim Bronfman . In addition , the Juilliard Quartet is celebratin g Mozart' s 250th birthday by performing quart ets k. 421, k. 428 and k. 465, new ly informed by first-edition manuscripts which were donat ed to the Juilliard School last season . Further tourin g in America includes con certs in Philadelphia , Mas sachus etts, Conn ecticut, Californi a, Florida , Tennessee, Indiana , North Caro lina, Virginia , Ohio , and stop s throu ghout Texas . Abroad , the Juilliard Quartet app ear s in London at Wigmo re Hall , Turkey , The Netherland s, Germany , Russia, Finland , the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona , Spain , and returns to Japan for a two-wee k tour at the end of the season.

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The Ju illiard Qua rtet launched their 2005/06 season with a pairof concert s p rese nted by the Los Angele s Phi lharmon ic in Disney Hall. The Quar tet return ed to Lincoln Cen ter in New York to play the world premiere of Ezequ iel Vinao's Quartet II, ''The Loss and the Silence," commi ssioned for them by the Juilliard School in honor

of its 2006 centennial. ln Europe , the qu artet made stops in Salzbu rg, Vienn a, Italy, Holland , Warsaw, an d Paris where they perfor med a pai r of conce rts featur ing their ow n arrangeme nt of Bach's "Art of the Fugu e." While in Salzburg, the Quar tet was showca sed on Nat ional Publi c Radio's classical mus ic show, "Perfo rmance Today," hos ted by Fred Child . A highligh t of the Juilli ard Qu artet's Eu ropea n tour includ ed their visit to Madr id, where they played for Queen Sofia of Spa in on her matched set of inl aid Stradivari instrum ents at the Palacio Real. Last Spring, they we re featu red ar tists in a "Live From Linco ln Cen ter'" telecast at the Ju illiard School's centenn ial ga la progra m.

Specia l events of recent seaso ns includ ed a week of concerts and maste rclasse s at the University of Southern Californ ia, and an Art of the Fugue marathon at the Univers ity of Arizona in Tucson, wh ere they perfo rmed the Bach maste rwork three times in two days . The Qua rtet marked the celebr ation of its 40th anni versary in

2003 as Quar tet in Residence at the Library of Congress in Washington with a twelve-concert comp lete Beet hoven cycle interspersed with work s by American comp osers whose works the Qu artet has champio ned thr ougho u t its existence. Succeeding the Budape st Quar tet in 1962, the Juilli ard Qua rtet acquir ed a devo ted followi ng in Washin gton where they performed on a set of pr iceless Stradivari instrum ents which were donated to the Library in 1936 by Mrs. Gertru de Clarke Whittall. At Carnegie Ha ll, the Juilli ard Quartet appea red in the Hall's 100th anni versary gala, and in Maur izio Pollini's "Perspective s" series with pianist Mar tha Argerich . The Juillia rds played the opening concert in the Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewoo d, and ar e the lead -off artis ts in the recen t 10th annive rsary recording celeb rating Ozawa Hall where they appea r annua lly. They have been freque nt guests a t the Miya zaki Festiva l in Japa n, and at festiva ls in Europe includin g the Lucerne Festiva l and the Schu bertiade in Feldkirch . The Ju illiard Qu ar tet has played comp lete seve n-concert Beethoven cycles at Alice Tully Hall in New York, Casa ls Hall in Tokyo, a t Mich igan State University, and mo st recently, a t the lnternationa l Beet hoven Festival in Bonn and at the Tonh alle in Di.isseldorf. In a departu re from the classical norm, the Juill iard Qua rtet has twice been the featur ed ensemble--co medic and musical-o n Ga rrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Comp an ion" rad io show.

As Quarte t in Residence a t New York City 's Juilliard School, the Juilliard Strin g Quartet is wide ly adm ired for its semina l influe nce on aspiring string player s aro und the wo rld. The Qua rtet cont inu es to pla y an impo rtant ro le in the forma tion of new American ensemb les, and was instrumen tal in the formation of the Alexande r, Ame rican, Concor d, Emerson, La Salle, New World, Mend elssohn , Tokyo, Brenta no, Lark, St. Lawrence, and Colorado str ing qu artets.

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In a momentous occasion at Tanglewood in 1997, the Juilliard String Quartet's founder and first violinist Robert Mann retired from the group after fifty years. Earlier that season , Musical America named the Quartet "Musicians of the Year," making it the first chamber music ensemble ever to appear on the cover of the publication's annual International Directory of the Performing Arts.

In its history, the Juilliard String Quartet has performed a comprehensive repertoire of some 500 works , ranging from the great classical composers to masters of the current century. It was the first ensemble to p lay all six Bartok quartets in the United States, and it was through the group 's performances that the quartets of Arno ld Schoenberg were rescued from obscurity. An ardent champio n of contemporary American music, the Quartet has premiered more than 60 compositions of American composers, including works by some of America's finest jazz musicians. The Quartet has become a persuasive advocate for the complex and visionary string quartets of Elliott Carter, and a landmar k recording of those works was issued in 1991 by Sony Classical.

The ensemble has been associated with Sony Classical, in its various incarnations, since 1949. ln celebration of the Quartet's 50th anniversary, Sony released seven

CDs containing previously unreleased material as well as notable performances from the Quartet's award-winning discography . With more than 100 releases to its

credit, the ensemble is one of the most wide ly recorded string quartets of our time; and its recordings of the comp lete Beethoven quartets, the complete Schoenberg quartets, and the Debussy and Rave l string quartets have all received Grammy Awards. Inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Academy for Recording Arts and Sciences in 1986 for its recording of the complete Bartok string quartets, the Juilliard Quartet was awarded the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik Prize in 1993 for Lifetime Achievem ent in the recording industry. In 1994, its recording of quartets by Ravel, Debussy, and Dutilleux was chosen by the Times of London as one of the 100 best classical CDs ever recorded.

The members of the Juilliard String Quartet are all American-born and trained. Violinist Joel Smirnoff is a native of New York City and has been a member of the Quartet since 1986, and the ensemble 's leader since 1997. Form erly the group's second violinist, Mr . Smirnoff attended the University of Chicago and the Jui lliard School and was a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for six years. Second Prize winner in the Interna tional American Music Competition in 1983, he made his New York recital debut in 1985 at Carnegie's Weill Recital Ha ll. Mr. Smirnoff has participated in the world premiere of numerous contemporary works, many of which were composed for him. He is chair of the Violin Department at the Juilliard School, and pursues an active career as a conductor, both in the U.S. and abroad.

In 1997 violinist Ronald Copes joined the ensemb le as second violinist and was appointed to the violin faculty at the Juilliard School. Formerly a member of the

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Dunsmuir Piano Quartet, the Los Angeles Piano Quartet and the Audubon String Quartet, he served on the faculties of the University of California at Santa Barbara and Michigan State Universities. During the summers , he performs and teaches as the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival in Blue Hill, Maine and has been a participant at the Bermuda, Cheltenham, Colorado, Marlboro and Olympic music festivals. He has also appeared in solo recitals across the United States and in Eu rope . Born in Arkansas, Mr. Copes studied at the Oberlin Conservatory with David Cerone, and at the University of Michigan with Paul Makanowitzky.

Violist Samuel Rhodes, also a New York native, appears in recitals and as orchestral

soloist in addition to his activities as a composer and teacher. Celebrating his 36th season as violist of the Juilliard String Quartet and faculty member and chair of viola at the Juilliard School, he is also associated with the Marlboro Festival and Tanglewood . Mr. Rhodes' solo appearances have included recitals at the Library of Congress, Carnegie's Weill Recita l Hall, the Juilliard School, and Columbia University's Miller Theater. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Queens College and an MFA from Princeton University where he studied composition with Roger Sessions and Earl Kim. Other teachers include Sydney Beck and

Walter Trampler.

Born in Connecticu t to a family of enthusiastic amateur musicians, Joel Krosnick has been cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet since 1974. With pianist Gilbert Kalish, his sonata partner of over 20 years, he performs annual recitals at the Merkin and Weill Halls in New York, and has recorded much of the sonata

repertoire including the complete Beethoven Sonatas and Variations and works by Poulenc, Prokofiev, Carter, Debuss y, Janacek, Shapey, Cowell, and Hindemith. Mr. Krosnick 's principa l teachers were William D'Amato, Luigi Silva, Jens Nygaard and Claus Adam, whom he succeeded in the Juilliard Quartet. Whi le at Columbia University, he began his lifelong commitment to contemporary music and has performed and premiered many new works including Donald Martino's Cello Concerto, Richa rd Wernick's Cello Concerto No. 2, and several works by Ralph Sh apey. Appointed to the faculty of the Juilliard School in 1974, Mr. Krosnick has been Chair of the Cello Department since 1994. He has been associa ted with the Aspen and Marlboro music festivals, the Tanglewood Music Center, Yellow Barn,

and Kneisel Hall in Maine.

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Bela Bart6k

Bela Bartok was born in Nagyszentmiklos, Hungary-now S'innicolau Mare, Ru mania-on March 25, 1881 and died in New York City on September 26, 1945.

Hungarians revere Bela Bartok as their nation's greatest 20th-century composer, and rightly so. But today any Hungarian who shou ld decide to make a pilgrimage to pay respects at the site where Bartok was born would have to leave the country. He was indeed born in Hungary (or properly put, in the Greater Hungarian sector of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), in the small town of Nagyszentmiklos. The town hasn't moved, of course, but political boundaries in that part of the world have proved fluid over the years . So it was that the Treaty of Trianon, drafted in 1920 to divvy up the spoils of World War One, turned what had been Nagyszentmiklos, at the northern end of the southern Hungarian province of Torontal, into Sinnicolau Mare, in the state of Timi~ in western Romania, just a few miles in from the border of modern Hungary.

Such a political shift would have been almost "life as usual" for Bartok if he had been living there at the time . After his father died in 1888, Bartok's mother, Paula (a schoolteacher), swept the family off to Nagyazollos, Hungary, which would later tum into Vinogradov, Ukraine. Many moves would ensue in quick succession, to Nagyvarad, Hungary (now Oradea, Romania); to Pozsony, Hungary (now Bratislava, Slovakia); to Beszterce, Hungary (now Bistrita, Romania), where young Bela attended a German-language school; then, in 1894, back to Pozsony.

Bartok grew up understanding that, in his part of Europe, cultures were local and national borders capricious (a situation that maintained through the 20th century and grew obvious in the most painful way during the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s). He had just recently graduated from the Budapest Academy of Music when he grew fascinated by the folk music of his region-as opposed to folk influences filtered through the prisms of late-19th-century nationalist composers. While spending six months of 1904 in the resort village of Gerlice Puszta in northern Hungary (now Ratk6, Slovakia), he became entranced by the songs he overheard being sung by a Transylvanian housemaid. He notated some of her songs, and several months later, in December 1904, wrote to his sister, "Now I have a new plan: to collect the finest Hungarian folksongs and to raise them, adding the best possib le piano accompaniment, to the level or art-song."

Within a couple of months he published his first such effort, a group of Transyl­vanian and Hungarian pieces, and after that there was no turning back. Over time Bartok's investigations would range far afield, doubt less reflecting his early contact with the various ethnic minorities inhabiting the Hungarian Emp ire. By 1906 he began to collect Slovak folk music and two years later plunged into the repertoire of Rumania. Later research trips would bring him into direct con tact with the folk music of Ruthenia, Serb ia, Croatia, and Bulgaria, and would even take him as far away as Turkey and Nor th Africa. Most of these excursions left their mark on Bartok 's own compositions , sometimes in an obvious way, as in his

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many pieces that consist of harmonizations of intact melodies, somet imes more profoundly absorbed into his distinctive brand of modernism .

An awareness of Barto k's involvement with folk music is essential to the appreciation of his original compositions; it is central to what made his voice unique. But just as folk-inflected sounds waft through his music , so do echoes of important strand s of the "high-art" musical avant-garde of his time (including very prominently the harmonic "Impressionism" of Debussy and the breaking-po int post-Romanticism of Schoenberg) or of past generations (such as the contrapuntal proclivities of Bach or the formal ba lance and dramatic pacing of Beethoven and Brahms). When all is said and done, Bartok was one of music's great or iginals . But, as with all great creators, he stood on the shoulders of those who came before; in his case, these could include anonymous village musicians quite as easily as acknowledged masters of composition.

Bartok 's six sanctioned string quartets span most of his career as a composer, and they may be taken as a sort of running commentary of his evolution as a man and an artist. His First-not counting a student work from 1899, which he disowned ­dates from 1908-09 and includes a direct quotation from a Hungarian folk song, a field he was then exp loring as an ethnomusicologist. The Second followed in 1914-17, a slowly birthed work of the First World War years . The Third (1927) reflected his evolving interest in neo-Baroque techniques, and the Fourth (1928) demonstrated the perfection of Bartok's forma l esthet ic. The Fifth (1934) showed the complete absorption of folk inspiration into the composer's personal "art ­music" style (building in this regard on another important aspect of the Fourth), and the Sixth (1939) suggested both Bartok's growing despair at the onset of another war and how he countered mortal concerns through the transcendence of art. In December 1944 the publishing firm of Boosey & Hawkes commissioned a Seventh String Quartet, which Bartok had said he was eager to write. The piece failed to take form in the nine months that remained of the composer's life, leaving his six qua rtets to stand as one of the most monumental and indispensab le achievements in the entire repertoire of chamber music .

It is easy to hear Bartok's First String Quartet as a child of its time, less obviously revolutionary than his later quartets wou ld be (or, for that matter, than Schoenberg's Quartet No. 2, its exact contemporary) but nonetheless a fine specimen of highly chromatic, tum-of-the-century, post-Wagnerian lyricism and yearning. The composer reported in a letter that its first movement was born of a depressive impulse following the dissolution of an incipient love affair, an event that also played a part in inspiring his First Violin Concerto. "I have begun a quartet," he wrote in his last letter to Stefl Geyer, the object of his affection. "The first theme is the theme of the [Violin Concerto's] 2nd movement: this is my funeral dirge ." The First Quartet's structure does bear evidence of an original mind, and in this regard it points clearly to the sort of formal experimentation that will mark Bartok's ensuing quartets. Here the piece unrolls in a sing le, uninterrupted span, although sections are demarcated within that expanse. Some performers (and commentators) think

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of this work as unrolling in four principal sections, while other s find three (the disagreement centering on wheth er the Allegretto is more attached to or separate from the ensuing lntroduzione Allegro). This is not a mere splitting of hair s as it can influence an ensemble' s approach to the work's interpretation in performance. The four-section approach may be helpful in that it invit es a view of this quartet as a pair of two-part structures , both of which comprise a slower movement leading to a faster one (that is, Lento to Allegretto, then Allegro to Allegro vivace). Such two -part, slow-fa st designs are common in Magyar folk mu sic, and Bart6k would use them often. In any case, the sections represent a general acceleration from beginning to end , and motifs, themes, and signature rhythmic patterns recur throughout this quartet, their contexts constantly transformed--or "regenerated," to use the term of his champion Halsey Steve ns- through their situation within the work 's count erpoint and texture. The First Quartet waited well over a year after it was completed before its premiere took place. The performance , on March 19, 1910, was entrusted to the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet, which would go on to premiere and champion his Second , Third, and Fourth Quartets by the time it disbanded in the 1930s. The group appeared under this name only in Hungary, by the way; in other countries it was billed as the Hungarian Quartet.

The Second String Quartet may be taken to reflect something of its composer's state of mind during World War One. Bart6k was deeply affected by the outbreak of the War in the summer of 1914. Severa l months later, on October 30, he wrote to his friend Rev. Samuel Bobal, a Slovak minister: "I also belong to the age-group which is to be called up for military service. There 's a good chance that I shall be rejected on health grounds. But nowadays there 's no knowing anything in advance ." In fact, he did receive a medical deferment, and instead was assigned by the state to collect folksongs from soldiers-a mission that agreed with him perfectly. Still, the cloud of war hung over everybody. To another friend, Janos Bu~ipa-Belenyes, he wrote on May 20, 1915: "My long silence has been due to the fact that every now and then I am thrown into a state of depression by the war-a condition which , in my case, alternates with a kind of devil-may-care attitude."

We may have that devil-may -care streak to thank for the fact that Bart6k's productivity did not grind to a halt during the War. On the contrary, these would prove to be relatively fertile years, and even under the straitened circumstances the composer continued to see some of his musical colleagues, including the violinist Imre Waldbauer and the cellist Jeno Kerpely. Bart6k's elder son, Bela Jr., spoke of his family's home life during the War in an interview published in 1976 in the New Hungarian Quarterly: "I knew quite certainly that the members of the Waldbauer String Quartet were here separately, and also together . I recall Waldbauer and Kerpely were here in uniform, being on war service. The Second String Quartet was completed on the occasion of a visit like this." The Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet was honored with the dedication of this work , which they unveiled in Budapest on March 3, 1918.

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In the Second Strin g Quartet we find Bartok wor king in a free ly chromatic and rhyt hm ically comp lex id iom , meticulous ly moldi ng his theme s and motives into tight and rigorous mu sical proceeding s. Bartok was utte rly or igin al as a struc tur alist. In the Second Qua rtet the relat ionshi ps of tempos among movem ent s are un orthodox compa red to the prog ressive acceleratio n of the First Quartet: a Moderato leading to an Allegro mo/to capriccioso and then to a concludi ng Lento. The spir it of the w ritin g in eve ry case mir rors what one might reaso nab ly expect as typica l of those tempos; in fact, Bartok 's respecte d colleag ue Zoltan Kodaly descri bed the three m ovements as : "1) A qu iet life; 2) Joy; 3) Sorrow ." Othe rwise pu t, it is a progress ion tha t may first evoke normality, then Bartok 's "devil-m ay­care" exhila ration (and , in the br ief mi ddle episode of the second movement , ou trigh t non chalance), and finally his lamen ting de pr ession over the sad sta te of things .

The Third and Fourth String Quartets stand as a pai r, the latter being com pleted exactly a year after the forme r. Thou gh not as "abst ract" as the Thir d, the athletically dissonant Fou rth shares its gene ra l musical voca bulary, to the ex tent tha t some comme nta tors have referred to it as cont inuing the conversatio n begu n in the Third. It is probab ly safe to say that of the six these are the least tra d itionally tona l in their harm on ic behavior, alth oug h the Thi rd is ancho red on the no te C-sharp , mu ch as the Fou rth is base d on C. Hav ing said this , we should also acknowledge that the centripetal force of C-shar p in the Th ird Quar tet is no t at all constan t; bu t sin ce tha t no te reigns ove r the beg innin g and the en d, it does seem to occu py a special pla ce in the ton al hierarchy. The interval of th e tritone fuels much of Bartok's stru ctu ral de velopment in this work, and the fact tha t it is the least stable of all note combina tions add s grea tly to the sens e of tona l amb iguity and infuses the work with an unr emitt in g sense of tension that can prove unn erving . It has been remark ed that thi s is the Bar tok quar tet tha t mo st ap pro ximat es the general feel of the Viennese Express ionists; the mu sic of Alban Berg doe s come par ticul arly to mind in ter ms of this pi ece's general effect, al thou gh the res ult springs from inh erently di fferent comp ositional techn iqu es.

In a coupl e of his qu artets, and in other pieces as we ll, Barto k was drawn to "arch" forms, lar ge symm etr ical struc tur es of w hich the five-move ment layou ts of the Fourth and Fifth Qu ar tets are exemp lars. In the Th ird Qua rtet we ha ve instead a ra ther sim ple layou t in an A-8-A'-B' patt ern, and searchin g for m irrored reflections in it seem s bes ide the point. Such two-p art (or four -pa rt) balance d form s sur face in oth er Bartok works from the 1920s, includi ng his Secon d Sonat a for Violin an d Piano and his Rhapso dies for Violin and Piano and for Cello and Piano. The four movement s -or pe rhap s we shou ld call them sec tions-are all conn ected into a single 15-min u te sp an, making this the shortest of Bartok's quar tets. The char acte r change s greatly along the way, offering typica lly Bartokian vistas : Magyar folk-scales and rhyth ms, mysterious "night musi c" of chirp ing insec ts, brilliant excu rsion s of har monically den se count erpoint , d ream like remini scence of vag uely remembered music (from the openin g par t) in the Ricapitulazione, mystical secretivenes s in the Coda .

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Among the early appreciators of thi s work was the philosopher-critic Theodor Adorno, who considered it the composer's best work to date. In a 1929 essay, he pointed out in detail how in the Third Quartet Bart6k returned to this favored genre enrich ed in spe cific ways by the musical experiments he conducted since completing his Second Quartet a decade earlier. He concluded his article with an insightful observation about the essential sound of this piece:

He has wrested from neo-classicism , which he has left behind , the thing one would least have expected: new color. Not only is the compact hardness of the Piano Quartet made use of in all parts of the Quartet; the counterpoint has unloosed all its colors and injected the wealth of nuances into the tension between black and white that had otherwise dictated Bart6k's sound . The remote possibilities of the instruments bend willingly to his hand , as do the broad spans of multivocal chords. In the Third Quartet , Bart6k made his actual discovery of the productivity of color. It not only guarantees this masterwork but opens a perspective on what will follow.

Bart6k composed his Third Quart et in Budapest in September 1927, completing it at the end of that month, and shortly thereafter emba rked on a ten-we ek American tour . Reliable reference sources reflect considerable disagreement about the ensuing chronology - extending to details of the premieres - but one credible explanation has Bart6k learning in the course of his trip, from Hungarian­Amer ican friend s, about a competition for new chamber works being sponsored by the august Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia. Following his return to Hungary he submitted his new quartet , which ended up sharing the first prize of $6000 with a largely forgotten work by Alfredo Casella, his Serenata for clarinet , bassoon , trumpet , vio lin, cello, and piano. (Among the 643 entries they edged out was Szymanowski's String Quartet No . 2.) In appreciation he dedicated this quartet to the Society.

We have already mentioned Bart6k 's signature "arch" forms, large symmet rical structures of which the five-movement layouts of the Fourth and Fifth Quartets are exemplars. The Fourth String Quartet, therefore, may be taken as a sort of palindrome (in a general sense), with the first and fifth movements (both being Allegros) bearing some kinship, the second and fourth similarly reflecting each other (both are scherzos), and the third standing as a fulcrum in the middle. That relaxed third movem ent, the central moment, is its elf structured in a symmetrical form, its ternary A-8-A layout serving as an exquisite turnabout for the overarching A-8-C-B' -A: structure of the entire quartet. These relationships are most immediately born out in the lengths of the movements and in their overall emotiona l castes. That the formal plan extends to the tonalitie s of the various movements may be less apparent to listener s in light of the work' s generally dis sonant character, but in fact the balance-if not precise symmetry-is maintained in this regard as well. The first and fifth movements define C as the overall tonal center. The second movem ent is cent ered a major third above (in E) and the fourth movement a major third be low (in A-flat). The slow mov ement, a fine specimen of Bart6k' s nervous

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"night music" style, is the most sinuous and equivocal in regard s to its tonality, which center s on A. 1n this middle movement the cello sing s out a long -spanning , highly ornamented me lody that musicologist s have identified (depending on their biases) as Bartok's original "take " on a folk lament of the Hungarian verbunkos variety or else on a Rumanian hora lunga . The themes of the paired movements (I and V, II and JV) display considerable kinship, further unifying this tightly structured composition.

Bartok was generally loath to provide commentary about his music but he did describe his Fourth Quartet briefly but cogently in an essay:

The work is in five movements; their character corresponds to Classical sonata form . The slow movement is the kernel of the work ; the other movements are, as it were , arranged in layers around it. Movement IV is a free variation of II, and I and V have the same themati c material; that is, around the kernel (Movement Ill), metaphorically speaking, I and V are the outer , II and IV the inner layers .

In the Fifth String Quartet we again encounter an arch form. Much as in the Fourth Quartet, the first and fifth movements mirror each other in their general impression, as do the second and fourth, leaving the third to stand as the fulcrum in the middle. In this work Bartok finds a balance between the harsh outbursts and unremitting intensity that can prove downright terrifying in some of his works and the melodic lyricism and glittering details that prove captivating in other scores. This balance between disparate Bartokian tendencies doubtless contributes to the fact that the Fifth is the most widely loved and most played of his quartets . Although it pre -dates Bartok's American years-all of the quartets do-its impetus came from the United States as it was commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation, was dedicated to that great American patroness of chamber music, and was premiered (on April 8, 1935) in Washington DC. The performers were the members of the Kolisch Quartet, which served as the mid wife for Barto k's last two quartets following the dissolution of the Walbauer-Kerpely Quartet. Bartok composed this work in a mere month, from August 6 to September 6, 1934- an astonishing achievement, but one that was not atypical of the concentrated bursts of creativity that he occasionally experienced during his years of maturity as a composer. It was, in fact, the only really original work he completed that entire year, which otherwise was given over to preparing orchestral transcriptions of folk-based arrangements he had previously made for piano or voice.

Where the Fifth Quartet has themes they are poured out generously , a contrast to the tersely telegraphed motivic statements of the preceding quartets . Nonetheless, the opening music consists of vehemently hammered notes that set into motion a vibrantly energized movement tha t is itself a sort of palindrom e: when its three principal themes return in the movement's recapitulation they appear in reverse order from how they were presented in the exposition , and two of them carry the "mirror image" idea further by becoming inverted in the recapitulation. In

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the second movement (Adagio mo/to) we en coun ter Barto k in his irresistible "night music " mode, providing a gentl e tone poem full of bird calls and insect chirp s (rat her tha n developed melod ies), not to mention wi sps of folk-song p hrases wafting in from a distance. In the Four th Qu artet the slow movement stood as the central keystone. Here the fulcrum is instead a scherzo-with-tr io (itse lf a symme tric al structure), and its com plex rh yth mic patterns , as we ll as its modal melody, deriv es from Bulga rian folk sty le. (Similar metric patte rn s a re to fou nd in the da nces in Bulgar ian rhy thms in Bartok 's Mikrokosmos.) In the trio of this middle movem ent - the quartet's exact mid-point -th e viola plays an una ssu ming melody tha t would seem to be a folk song, or an excellen t imitation of one. Havi ng rounded th e central point of the arch we return to an other slow move ment: more "nig ht music, " bu t the evening has progresse d and the a tmosp here has grown altoget her darker . The quar tet con clude s with a fascinating finale, its vivacity reflecting th at of the first move men t, th at runs th rough an array of sections that include a bizarre fugue and an amu sing depiction of an orga n-grinder who se inst rumen t is non e too we ll tuned , the latter being (to one's surp rise) a varia nt, simp lified to the point of banal ity, of the main theme of the who le m ovement.

On Au gu st 18, 1939, Bela Barto k wro te a char min g letter to his son Bela Jr. back in Hu ngary , con veying greetin gs on his bir thday . Bar tok was stay ing just then at Cha let Aellen, in Saanen, Switze rland, where he was the ap preciative guest of the mus ician and philan th ropist Pau l Sacher. Everyth ing about his situatio n was idyllic, h e reported, rig ht down to the rainless, clear skies:

How ever, I can't take adva ntage of the weather to ma ke excur sions: I have to work. And for Sacher himself- on a commissio n (somethi ng for a string orches tra); in this respect also my po sition is like tha t of th e old -time musicia n. Luckily the work [the Divertim en to] went well, and I finished it in 15 day s (a piece of about 25 minutes ), I fin ishe d it jus t yesterday. Now I have an other comm ission to ful fill, this time a strin g quartet for Z. Szekely (i.e. for the 'New Hun ga rian Quartet') . Since 1934 almos t every thin g I have done has been com missione d ."

He emb arked imme d iately on his Sixth String Quartet and comp leted it between Aug ust and November 1939, at Saanen and after his retu rn to Bu dapest. It end ed up being desti ned not for the New Hunga rian Quartet, but ra the r to Kolisch String Qua rtet, wh ich played the p remiere and wen t on to perform it on severa l occasio ns in conce r ts along wit h earl ier Bartok qua rtets.

Bartok 's life was increas ingly unea sy. The Second World War bega n whil e this qua rtet wa s in progres s, and al thoug h Hunga ry was not involved in the confli ct at the ou tset, the War stru ck an everlasting blow to the com poser 's ideal istic, huma nitaria n spiri t. As an ethnom usicologist, Bartok wa s of course closely sympa th etic with ethn ic minori ties -ju st the sorts of gro ups who se lives wou ld become untenab le du ring the War. What' s more , Bartok 's mother, with whom he felt an in ten se bond, was in rapidl y failin g health; she wou ld die on Decemb er 19, 1939, at the age of 82, just a mon th after he finished this piece . He gr ieved he r loss

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profoundly, but her death was also a liberation of sorts. With her passing, there was no longer a compelling reason for Bart6k to remain in his native Hungary. Before he had completed this quartet , with the death of his mother imminent, Bart6k decided to leave Hungary for the United States - "for an extended period," he wrote to another friend. Following a five-and-a-half-week concert-and-lecture tour in America, he would return briefly to Hungary before moving to the United States in October 1940 to spend the rest of his life, most of it unhappily. The Sixth Quartet is therefore sometimes interpreted as both bitter farewell to the European political tragedy and cathartic leave-taking of his mother.

By the time the work received its world prem iere in New York on January 20, 1941, Bart6k and his family had moved to America definitively and he was able to attend the Kalisch Quartet's concert in person . He cannot have been strongly encouraged, as the audience's response to this profoundly personal work was tepid. But the Kalisch Quartet was firm in its commitment and the second New York performance, in 1944, was more warmly received . The critic Marion Bauer, writing in Musical Leader about that second performance, offered a perspicacious summary: "If one is looking for a contemporary expression of a mental state produced on a sensitive person by conditions of recent years, it is to be found in this poignant , profoundly sad work."

The Sixth String Quartet deserts arch form in favor of a four -movement plan . It is far from classic in the specifics of its layout, consisting as it does of an opening sonata form, two movements of parody (Marcia and Burle/ta), and a closing slow moveme nt. We can count on Bart6k to come up with novel takes on standard forms, and in this case he does so by launching each movement with a slow introduction. The introductions are not merely slow; they're sad-literally, since he heads them with the marking Mesta ("sad"). Each of the Mesta introductions grows from the same material into something progressively longer, more complex, and more richly textured. By the last movement, the Mesta turns out not to be an introduction at all, instead consuming the entire finale. The theme of the Mesta sections - and, accordingly, of the finale as a whole - is a slow melod y originally offered by the unaccompanied viola, spanning 13 measures of swaying 6/8 meter, rhythmically asymmetrical, highly chromatic, covering two octaves, starting at a noncommittal mezzo-forte but ranging as loud as forte and as soft as pianissimo. Whether it is correct to consider this theme to be thrice rejected before it is allowed to flower, as the musicologist Gerald Abraham suggested shortly after the piece was written, is up for debate. One might prefer to view it as unfolding gradually over the course of the entire quartet, not rejected at all but rather hibernating between its appearances -and, for that matter, wielding a measure of influenc e over certain contours of the work's other material.

The first movement (following the Mesto introduction) unrolls as a Vivace sonata­form structure with two basic themes, both of which reveal some kinship to the Mesto theme itself; the rhythm of the second is especially inspired by Hungarian folk music . A swaggering verbunkos passage reminds the listener of how ingrained

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Hungarian traditional music had become in Bart6k's origina l vocabulary following many years of dedica ted collecting, notating, codifying, and publishing folk songs and dances. In the introduction to the second movement, the theme (played now by cello) is accompan ied by rapid ly beating notes that evoke the sounds of a Hungarian cimba lom. The tu ne of the Marcia proper derives from a phrase of the Mesta theme, but the notes now convey an entirely different effect. Both this and the Burletta are sardonic parodies, hard ly concealing the underly ing bitterness. Both movements are clearly structured as scherzos wi th cen tral tr ios. In the Marcia's trio, the cello offers a varian t on the Mesta theme in its highest register, bizarrely accompanied by a combination of tremolo chords (on the violins) and crude strummi ng (on the viola). The Burletta is a weird, drunke n movemen t. Following the Mesta section (which by now extends to a minu te and a hal f), it proceeds into a successio n of harsh, biting dissonant attacks and a swooning melody that veers hideously out of tu ne: Bart6k's score actu ally indicates th at one of th e violins is to play a quarter-tone flat. The fourt h movemen t, profou nd ly mournfu l and comp letely overtaken by the Mesta material, is said to be a sort of tombeau for the compose r 's mother, who was nea ring death as he worked on this sectio n. One senses tha t this is the most au thentic expression of Bart6 k's sorrow, which is elsewhere disguise d as sat ire or melancholy. Rarely in the histo ry of cham ber music does a movemen t com bine restra int and powerfu l exp ressio n to achieve an impact as profound as Bart6k does here, at the conclusio n of his last quartet.

- Janus M X!ffer

James M. Keller is Program Annotator of the New York Philharmon ic and the San Francisco Symphony, and is long-time Contributing Editor to Chamber Music magazine.

© James M. Keller, 2006

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