Juilliard Chamber Recital: Hadyn and Schubert

Yesterday afternoon, I attended my first Wednesdays at One recital of the season, this one featuring an hour of chamber music by Haydn and Schubert. The musicians were the Calliope Quartet - Tianyang Gao and Julia Glenn, violin; Molly Goldman, viola; and Hélène Werner, cello - whom I had heard perform at another Juilliard recital just last month.

The first piece on the program was Haydn's String Quartet in C major, Op. 74, No 1 (1793). The work was written in Vienna in the interval between the composer's London journeys of 1791-1792 and 1794-1795. The showpieces of these highly successful tours were the symphonies Haydn wrote for both occasions, but he was also pressed to compose chamber works by Johann Peter Salomon, the impresario who had arranged the trips and had produced the London concerts. Salomon was not only a canny showman (it was he who gave Mozart's 41st Symphony the nickname "Jupiter") but a superb violinist as well and wanted chamber pieces that he could perform himself in public recitals. This was at the time a fairly new phenomenon; previously, chamber music had been intended only for private performances, such as those held at the Esterházy court where Haydn had been vice-Kappelmeister, and the move to public venues was one sign that serious music was no longer the sole preserve of the aristocracy. Haydn responded to Salomon's request by producing the six quartets now known as the Opp. 71 and 74 dedicated to Count Anton Apponyi, who paid very well for the privilege.

Because Haydn's six quartets were intended for public performance he altered his method of composition while writing them. As a set of CMS Program Notes state:

"Haydn, who was always sensitive to accommodating his audiences, made the Quartets suitable for the concert hall by providing them with ample dramatic contrasts, basing them on easily memorable thematic material, allowing a certain virtuosity to the first violinist in the fast movements (to show off Salomon’s considerable skills), and giving them an almost symphonic breadth of expression."

When considering Haydn's quartets I think it's best to view them as a series that extended over the length of his career beginning with the Op, 1 in 1762 through the Op. 103 in 1803. Though most attention is paid to the Opp. 20 and 33 in which Haydn formalized the structure of the quartet, he was always innovating and proving his reputation as "the father of the string quartet." The Apponyi quartets are a good example of this constant refinement of expression. The same Program Notes quoted above find in Haydn's later works "stylistic elements that presaged the dawning Romantic age" and point out examples in the C major played here.

I've been fortunate enough over the past few seasons to have heard the Orion Quartet perform a number of Haydn's string quartets, and their interpretations have been as close to definitive as one can hope to come. The Calliope Quartet, while not yet quite at that level, gave yesterday a thoughtful and accomplished performance that I enjoyed a great deal.

The ensemble also gave a repeat of the piece they had played at last month's recital, Schubert's String Quartet in A minor, D. 804, Op. 29 (1824) nicknamed the "Rosamunde."  I've already posted my comments on that performance and have nothing new to add here.