Yesterday, I went to Holy Trinity Church on Central Park West to hear the last of the four annual recitals the Juilliard415 stages at that venue. As theirs is a two-year graduate program, I imagine this was one of the final opportunities some members of the ensemble will have to perform together before graduation next month. They made the most of the occasion with a 90 minute performance that featured a number of works from the entire length of the eighteenth century.
The program opened with Haydn's Divertimento a sei in C major, Hob. II/11 (1765) subtitled Der Geburtstag ("The Birthday") for flute, oboe, two violins, cello and Viennese bass. For some reason, the otherwise excellent program notes failed to note the occasion for which this piece was given its sobriquet. Haydn had already taken up his position as Kapellmeister to the Esterházy family by the date of its composition, so it can be assumed the piece was written to commemorate the birthday of a family member if not of Prince Paul Anton himself. It's not an entirely original work - the theme of the finale is based on the second movement of Haydn's Symphony No.14 in A major, Hob. I:14 (1761-1763) - but it nonetheless affords the listener an opportunity to hear this great composer at a very early point in his career long before he had established himself as the father of both the symphony and the string quartet.
The next set of musicians to take the stage (there were 26 in all) performed two short works - the Trio Sonata in F major, Op. 9, No. 6 (1772) by Carl Friedrich Abel followed by yet another Trio Sonata in F major, this a much earlier work from 1718 by Georg Philipp Telemann. Both pieces were arranged for violin, cello and theorbo. The trio sonata, first developed by Corelli in the seventeenth century, was the defining genre of the Baroque era and in hearing these two pieces one was better able to understand how composers developed it in the eighteenth. Its use by Telemann, friend of both J.S. Bach and Handel and one of the best known composers of his time, was particularly instructive in its departure from the four-movement Corellian model. At the time he wrote it, Telemann was still living in Frankfurt and had recently married for the second time. He was extremely productive during his period and seems in works such as this to be deliberately striving to create an oeuvre of the broadest popular appeal.
Afterwards, another group of musicians performed the Divertimento in G minor by Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello here arranged for violin, bassoon and harpsichord. Brescianello was Italian by birth but held a number of positions in Germany. He is perhaps best remembered for his quarrel with Reinhard Keiser over the directorship of the Stuttgart Opera. Brescianello was never particularly successful as a composer and the present Divertimento was probably the weakest piece at yesterday's recital.
The program then returned to Telemann's music for a performance of the Quartet No. 1 in D major from Nouveaux quatuors (1738) for flute, violin, cello and harpsichord. This was one of what are now known as the Paris Quartets, written on the occasion of the composer's visit to that city at the invitation of several French musicians. Telemann was by now one of the most famous composers in Europe and at least part of his fame may have been due to the galant style of his compositions. Rather than the slow/fast/slow/fast four-movement style of Corelli, Telemann adopted a much looser structure marked by such directions as soave and tendrement and incorporating dance movements as well. Although the present performance made use of a cello, Telemann also produced an alternative score that employed a viola da gamba in its place. This is especially notable in that the cello at points was given an independent role rather than simply forming part of the continuo.
Next was the Sonata for Violin, Oboe, Bassoon and Continuo (i.e., bass, theorbo and harpsichord) by Johann Friedrich Fasch. Though highly esteemed by Bach, Fasch has been all but forgotten today. That is due largely to the fact that he never published any of his work during his lifetime while the greater part of it was subsequently lost. Written in Corelli's slow/fast/slow/fast four-movement style mentioned above, the present piece is notable for the unusual combination of instruments used in its composition.
The recital then ended with a performance of the first movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in G major, Op. 18, No. 2 (1799), certainly one of the last works to have been composed in the eighteenth century and not actually published until the nineteenth. With this piece, the program moved from the Baroque well into the Classical period. It provided a nice symmetry for the recital as a whole which opened with an early Divertimento by Haydn - who, until the composition of his Op. 20, also referred to his string quartets by the same term - to the first set of quartets composed by his most famous student. Though the Op. 18 pieces seem fairly tame compared to what Beethoven would later produce, these quartets belong to another world altogether than that in which Haydn composed his Divertimento only 34 years before. These works are also significant for giving, in the La malinconia section of the No. 6, the first indication of the direction the composer would take as he moved toward his middle period.
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