Every season, the Orion Quartet put on a series of four recitals at Mannes. This represents a unique opportunity for those who love classical music to hear one of the world's greatest string quartets give their interpretations of key pieces of the chamber repertoire. Yesterday evening, in a particularly memorable performance, the ensemble played seminal works by Haydn, often referred to as "the Father of the String Quartet," and Beethoven, who lifted this particular arrangement of instruments to its greatest heights.
The program opened with Haydn's Quartet in F minor, Op. 20 No. 5 (1772). There can be no doubt that the six works that make up the Op. 20 broke new ground in the development of the string quartet, most notably the No. 5 which made use of the F minor key to create a somber mood not previously associated with the genre and in which the influence of the highly emotional Sturm und Drang movement then prevalent in Europe can most clearly be seen. This pre-Romantic rejection of Rationalism had already led Haydn to a refutation of the popular Galante style in favor of a return to the earlier Baroque use of counterpoint. As the Wikipedia article states most emphatically:
"When Haydn published his opus 33 quartets, ten years after the opus 20, he wrote that they were composed in 'an entirely new and particular manner.' But, if the opus 33 was the culmination of a process, opus 20 was the proving ground. In this set of quartets, Haydn defined the nature of the string quartet — the special interplay of instruments that Goethe called 'four rational people conversing.' Many of the compositional techniques used by composers of string quartets to the present day were tried out and perfected in these works.
"'This cannot be overstated,' writes Ron Drummond. 'The six string quartets of Opus 20 are as important in the history of music, and had as radically a transforming effect on the very field of musical possibility itself, as Beethoven's Third Symphony would 33 years later.' And Sir Donald Tovey writes of the quartets, 'Every page of the six quartets of op. 20 is of historic and aesthetic importance... there is perhaps no single or sextuple opus in the history of instrumental music which has achieved so much.'"
The second work on the program, the Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 33 No. 2 (1781), was also by Haydn and taken from a later group of quartets that were, if anything, of even greater importance than those of the Op. 20. That Haydn himself considered them as such can be seen from the private subscription letters he wrote in which he referred to them, as noted above, as having been written "in an entirely new, special way." The Op. 33 pieces, known as the "Russian" after their dedicatee Grand Duke Paul, differ from those of the Op. 20 in that they are generally more lighthearted in character. This is especially true of the No. 2 which was nicknamed the "Joke" for the numerous false endings Haydn placed in the final movement to confuse his listeners. This should not be taken to imply, however, that these quartets were any less seriously constructed than those he had written nine years before. To the contrary, their complexity was to give inspiration to both Mozart and Beethoven in the composition of their own works and thus provide the basis for the classical string quartet as we now know it.
After intermission, the program concluded with Beethoven's Quartet in A minor, Op. 132 (1825). This was music on an entirely different plane than that performed in the first half and offered the audience the opportunity to witness the evolution of the string quartet in the half century that lay between Haydn's Op. 20 and Beethoven's late works. I have always considered Op. 132, together with its companion the Op. 131, to be the two greatest chamber pieces ever composed. Certainly there is no precedent for the long third movement, written in the Lydian mode, in which Beethoven gave thanks for his recovery from a near fatal illness. To me, it has an almost mystical quality that can be found nowhere else in his oeuvre. The work never fails to reward the attentive listener with profound insight into the mind of the composer as he triumphed over deafness and ill health to arrive at last at apotheosis. It is perhaps the most sublime achievement of Beethoven's late period, even greater in its celebration of the human spirit than the more famous Ninth Symphony.
Once again the Orion Quartet, in a flawless performance of these difficult works, proved itself to be foremost string quartet ensemble now active. Beyond the technical virtuosity of its members - Daniel Phillips and Todd Phillips, violin; Steven Tenenbom, viola; and Timothy Eddy, cello - these artists invariably display total empathy with the composers whose music they perform as well as deep respect for each work's meaning.
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