Juilliard Chamber Music: Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann

Juilliard's Sunday chamber music marathons at Morse Hall continued this weekend with four performances through the afternoon and early evening.  At the 3:00 p.m. session I attended, the program included major works by Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann.

The program opened with Mozart's String Quartet in G major, K. 387 (1782).  This is the first of the six "Haydn" quartets, so called for the composer's dedication of these works to his mentor.  It was very appropriately given, for the string quartet form was a relatively new genre and was still being developed by the older composer even as Mozart wrote these works.  The influence Haydn exerted upon Mozart, in this genre at least, was inestimable.  It must be remembered that at the time these quartets were written Mozart had only recently arrived in Vienna while Haydn had long been established as the capital's most revered master.  It is to Mozart's credit that he was willing to learn from the older man.  Even for a genius such as Mozart, the string quartet form posed challenges he needed to overcome before producing his own masterpieces.  In his dedication, he spoke of the "long and laborious endeavor" required of him.  In the end, he was supremely successful.  The andante cantabile is one of his finest slow movements and has rightfully been compared to an operatic aria for the manner in which the first violin soars and dips as it changes register.  The work was performed by Chener Yuan and Hiu Sing Fan, violins, Hannah Geisinger, viola, and Yifei Li, cello; their coach was Ronald Copes.

The next work was Beethoven's Piano Trio in D major, Op. 70, No. 1 (1808) nicknamed the "Ghost" for the strange scoring of the second movement largo.  Its unusual, almost "spooky" sound is made even more evident by the brightness of the two surrounding movements.  Certainly, this has made the work one of the best known of the composer's piano trios.  It was written at the height of Beethoven's Middle Period when he was constantly challenging himself to create radically new music that would be unlike anything that had preceded it.  The performers at this recital were Anna Han, piano, Matthew Chen, cello, and Ashley Park, violin.  They were coached by Astrid Schween and Hung-Kuan Chen.

The third and final work - there was no intermission - was Schumann's Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44 (1842).  I had just heard two weeks ago at another Juilliard recital the composer's Piano Quartet, written the same year and in the same key of E-flat major.  It was interesting to compare the two works.  In general, and to oversimplify, the Quintet has a bigger sound that is at times almost symphonic while the Quartet is a more intimate work.  The Quintet's opening movement, marked allegro brillante, is designed to impress the listener while the funeral march that follows is the very essence of Romanticism.  And at the end is the vibrant finale that is among the finest chamber movements Schumann composed during his short career.  In addition, this is the first major piece to pair the piano with string quartet, and Schumann deserves credit for having established with it a new musical genre.  It was Mendelssohn, filling in for an ailing Clara Schumann, who premiered the work at a private gathering and his suggestions led Schumann to make a number of revisions before the public premiere (at which Clara did play), but the honors are all due to Schumann himself.  The musicians who performed it here were Soo Yeon Kim and Kathy Chia Fu Weng, violins, Andrea Fortier, viola, Yu Yu Liu, cello, and Qi Kong, piano.  Their coaches were Joseph Kalichstein and Astrid Schween.