About The Music

Adagio – Molto allegro
Andante
Vivo

Bacewicz wrote this Trio when she was in her mid-twenties. It was started during a stay in Paris (where she studied with Nadia Boulanger) and completed in November 1935. The first performance followed in March 1936 at a concert of contemporary chamber music which was also attended by Prokofiev. From a stylistic point of view, its Neoclassical language owes a good deal to Boulanger’s influence, and, by extension, to Boulanger’s friend Stravinsky. At the same time, there is a distinctly Polish colour to the introductory Adagio in which an improvisatory oboe melody unfolds over a drone. The Molto allegro that follows sounds firmly in the Neoclassical mainstream, but there is more individuality and character in the lyrical second theme. The central Andante is dominated by a mood of quiet anxiety, starting with a rather hesitant oboe theme heard over uneasy string undulations. A sense of disquiet pervades the movement, with moments of relief quickly extinguished until, in the very last bars, some kind of consolation is found. The short finale is a complete contrast: quick, witty and elegantly crafted, it brings the Trio to an ebullient conclusion.

The Partitas are very different in terms of their structures. While each is, broadly speaking, a suite of dances, Bach treats this idea with considerable freedom. The First Partita presents four dances – Allemanda, Corrente, Sarabande and Tempo di borea (i.e. Bourée) – but each of them is followed by a ‘Double’, a kind of variation which Bach uses either to create contrast (as in the Allemanda and Corrente) or to intensify a particular mood, something he does to memorable effect in the Sarabande and its ‘double’, or to create still greater musical momentum, as in the Tempo di borea and its double.

After Bach’s death, a few expert performers continued to play the Sonatas and Partitas from manuscript copies, notably Haydn’s friend Johann Peter Salomon. The whole collection was published for the first time in 1802. In the nineteenth century, Mendelssohn and Schumann both felt the need to ‘enhance’ Bach’s original by adding piano accompaniments. Joseph Joachim was perhaps the first great virtuoso since Salomon to present Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas in concerts, and even in the recording studio (some extraordinarily evocative records from 1903). Thanks to Joachim’s efforts and those of his successors such as Georges Enescu, the Sonatas and Partitas finally came to be recognised as creative pinnacles of the violin repertoire.

On Bach’s autograph fair copy of the Sonatas and Partitas he calls them ‘Six Solos for violin without bass accompaniment’. They were completed in 1720, the date Bach added beneath his signature on the title page, though it is likely that he had been working on them before then. These magnificent pieces stand as one of the greatest monuments of Baroque instrumental music, but it is worth considering some of the precursors that might have inspired him – all works with which Bach was almost certainly familiar. First, a suite for solo violin without bass and a set of six partitas by Johann Paul von Westhoff (1656–1705), the movements based on dance forms, making extensive use of ‘multiple-stops’ (playing more than one string at the same time) to create the illusion of a solo instrument in dialogue with itself. Westhoff spent his last few years as a violinist at the court in Weimar where Bach met him in 1703, and this encounter may well have given Bach the idea of trying something similar. The unaccompanied Passacaglia which Heinrich Biber (1644–1704) composed as an epilogue to his Rosary Sonatas in about 1676 could well have provided a model (particularly for the Chaconne of the D minor Partita), and Biber’s pupil Johann Joseph Vilsmaÿr (1663–1722) published a set of Six Partitas for solo violin in 1715. In 1717, Vivaldi’s pupil Johann Georg Pisendel (1687–1755) showed Bach his Sonata for solo violin without bass – and later performed Bach’s sonatas and partitas.

The overall design of Bach’s Six Solos alternates Sonatas with Partitas. Each Sonata is in four movements, with a slow opening movement followed by a faster fugue. The finales are characterised by fast, continuous writing full of the kind of kinetic energy that fuels so much of Bach’s music. The third movements are more varied – and each is in a different key from the rest of the sonata. In the First Sonata (in G minor), Bach’s third movement is a gently lilting Siciliano in B flat major. But some of Bach’s most innovative writing in this work is to be found in the fugue (second movement), a marvel of ingenuity which demands from the player a combination of virtuosity and musical insight: Bach was writing here for extremely skilled musicians and may have played the Sonata and Partitas himself (he was a fine violinist as well as a superb keyboard player). There’s a brilliant kind of musical conjuring trick involved in the fugue: the violin is essentially a melodic instrument intended to play a single line, but here, through the use of double-stops and incredibly ingenious part-writing, Bach presents two or more musical lines at once. The result is a compositional sleight of hand with the violin functioning as more than one part, sometimes supported by bass lines that it also supplies itself. The G minor Sonata demonstrates Bach’s ability to create music of the greatest imagination within quite a strict, formal structure: at its most expressive in the first and third movements (Adagio and Siciliana), at its most technically brilliant (and demanding) in the fugue, and at its most energetic and direct in the Presto finale.

Bach’s Cello Suites were probably composed in about 1720 during Bach’s time in Cöthen. It isn’t known for whom Bach wrote them, though there are at least two likely candidates working in Cöthen at the time: Christian Ferdinand Abel (1682–1761), a great friend of the composer for whom Bach wrote the three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027–9) and Carl Berhard Lienicke (d. 1751), the leading cellist of the Cöthen orchestra. Whether either of them was the player Bach had in mind is a matter of pure speculation since no documentary evidence has come to light. Equally uncertain is why Bach wrote them. The likeliest explanation is that they were intended – like much of his keyboard music – for private performance. Bach sets the tone of the First Suite with a Prelude made of undulating arpeggios. The Allemande meanders purposefully until it arrives at a strong final cadence in the home key. Downward leaps and rather playful decorations characterize the Courante. Using multiple stopping, the Sarabande is noble and understated. It is in two sections; the first ends on D (the dominant) and the second moves to E minor before returning to the tonic, G. The pair of graceful Minuets contrast major and minor and both are marked by flowing movement. The Gigue brings the suite to a joyful conclusion.

Nigel Simeone 2018

Cello Suite No.5 in C minor, BWV 1011

Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Gavotte I / II
Gigue

Cello Suite No.6 in D, BWV 1012

Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Gavotte I / II
Gigue

Bach’s Cello Suites were probably composed in about 1720 during Bach’s time in Cöthen. It isn’t known for whom Bach wrote them, though there are at least two likely candidates working in Cöthen at the time: Christian Ferdinand Abel (1682–1761), a great friend of the composer for whom Bach wrote the three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027–9), and Carl Berhard Lienicke (d. 1751), the leading cellist of the Cöthen orchestra. Whether either of them was the player Bach had in mind is a matter of pure speculation since no documentary evidence has come to light. Equally uncertain is why Bach wrote them. The likeliest explanation is that they were intended – like much of his keyboard music – for private performance.

Cello Suite No.2 in D minor, BWV 1008

Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Minuet I / II
Gigue

Cello Suite No.4 in E flat, BWV 1010

Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Bouree I / II
Gigue

Bach’s Cello Suites were probably composed in about 1720 during Bach’s time in Cöthen. It isn’t known for whom Bach wrote them, though there are at least two likely candidates working in Cöthen at the time: Christian Ferdinand Abel (1682–1761), a great friend of the composer for whom Bach wrote the three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027–9), and Carl Berhard Lienicke (d. 1751), the leading cellist of the Cöthen orchestra. Whether either of them was the player Bach had in mind is a matter of pure speculation since no documentary evidence has come to light. Equally uncertain is why Bach wrote them. The likeliest explanation is that they were intended – like much of his keyboard music – for private performance.

‘On one stave, for a small instrument, Bach writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.’ This is how Johannes Brahms described Bach’s gigantic Chaconne to his friend Clara Schumann. It is the last movement of Bach’s D minor Partita, composed in about 1720. Probably the greatest single movement ever written for unaccompanied violin, it is an extended set of variations on a short, four-bar idea announced at the start. Bach uses all his ingenuity to create a structure in which unity (the basic theme) and diversity (the astonishingly imaginative variations) are held in perfect balance over a long (256-bar) span. The outer sections are in D minor, while Bach provides tonal variety by modulating to D major for the central section. As Brahms suggested, the result is quite simply one of the marvels of Baroque music.

Nigel Simeone, 2022

Bach’s English Suites were completed by 1717 during his time in Weimar and Bach himself called them ‘Suites with Preludes’ but his early biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel stated that they were composed for ‘an Englishman of rank’. There’s no solid evidence for this, though a copy written by Bach’s son Johann Christian (then living in London) noted that they were ‘written for the English’. The English Suite No.2 in A minor begins with an extended prelude, fugue-like in texture, dominated by the leaping three-note figure heard at the start. What follows is a succession of contrasting dance movements: a measured Allemande, a lively Courante, a chordal Sarabande, a pair of Bourées (one in A major) and a lively Gigue.

Nigel Simeone

Bach originally wrote the Goldberg Variations for harpsichord, and this was one of the very few works published during the composer’s lifetime, by the firm of Baltasar Schmid at Nuremberg in 1741. The original title page describes the work as ‘Clavier-Übung [Keyboard Practice], consisting of an Aria, with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals, prepared to delight the souls of music-lovers by Johann Sebastian Bach.’ There was no irony here: Bach, as a devout Lutheran, was deeply conscious of the spiritual dimension of music, and its aspiration to enrich the soul as well as to divert and entertain. But the work was also an extraordinary feat: if we count each prelude and fugue of the Well-Tempered Clavier as self-contained pairs of works, then the Goldberg Variations is by far the largest piece of keyboard music published in the eighteenth century and it attracted international attention early on. Bach is often thought of as a composer whose music was rediscovered only in the nineteenth century (thanks in large part to Mendelssohn and Schumann), but his keyboard music was the exception to this. In his pioneering General History of the Science and Practice of Music published in 1776, Sir John Hawkins devotes several pages to Bach, thanking Johann Christian Bach (then in London) for supplying some of the information. But he then goes on to quote three full pages of music examples comprising the Aria (‘Air’), Variation 9 and Variation 10 from the Goldberg Variations, making this one of the first pieces of Bach to appear in print in England.

But where is Goldberg in all this, and who was he? In 1741, Bach stayed with Count Keyserlingk in Dresden, who employed a young musician called Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. According to Johann Nikolaus Forkel in his 1802 biography of Bach, the story goes as follows: ‘The Count was often unwell and had sleepless nights. On these occasions, Goldberg had to spend the night in an adjoining room so that he could play something to him during this sleeplessness. The Count remarked to Bach that he would like to have a few pieces for his musician Goldberg, pieces so gentle and somewhat merry that the Count could be cheered up by them during his sleepless nights. Bach thought he could best fulfil this wish with some variations … The Count henceforth referred to them only as his variations. He could not get enough of them, and for a long time, whenever sleepless nights came, he would say, Dear Goldberg, do play me one of my variations. Bach was perhaps never rewarded so well for one of his compositions. The Count bestowed on him a gold beaker filled with one hundred Louis d’or.’

It’s a fine tale – and the source for the famous legend of these variations as a cure for insomnia – but it’s mostly fictitious. As Peter Williams has demonstrated, Goldberg was only born in 1727 (and was thus in his early teens at the time of Bach’s visit to Keyserlingk), so it’s wildly improbable that Bach wrote the variations for him to play. Moreover, they had actually been published before Bach’s visit to Dresden, so the chances are that he presented the Count with a

copy having been asked about the possibility of composing some suitable music. This also explains the absence of either the Count’s name or Goldberg’s on the title page of the first edition of the score – and the presence of the Aria in Anna Magdalena’s Notebook, most of which was compiled years earlier. Williams has also speculated that the player Bach most probably had in mind for the variations was his son Wilhelm Friedmann, a brilliant performer and who had worked as organist of the Sophienkirche in Dresden since 1733.

The variations constitute a virtual encyclopaedia of what was possible in terms of imaginative harpsichord writing, and is even more remarkable for Bach’s brilliant manipulation of the theme. As a master of transcribing his own music for different instrumental combinations, the arrangement of the Goldberg Variations for string trio is an idea that would surely have appealed to Bach. Just as Mozart arranged some of the keyboard fugues for string quartet, and others have arranged The Art of Fugue for the same forces, so Sitkovetsky has taken up the challenge of re-thinking Bach’s music for entirely different instruments – as Bach himself had done not only with his own music but also with other composers such as Vivaldi. This arrangement was made in 1985 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach’s birth, and it is dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould, whose astonishing 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations became an instant bestseller and introduced a whole generation to this extraordinary music.

This prelude and fugue forms part of a quintet of works in a succession of keys C-D-E-F-G. It is unknown whether Bach wrote them for teaching or as part of a larger project similar to The Well Tempered Clavier but there is no manuscript with possible answers. The two-part work starts with a prelude filled with fugue elements. In just eighteen bars, Bach manages to squeeze in three sections, each closing with a string of fast notes. The fugue itself is less complex than you might expect from Bach, which may explain the term ‘fughetta’ – as the diminutive does not apply to the length of the piece. The theme builds up tension with surprising pauses, which are later filled in spiritedly by the counter theme. In its final entrance, the main theme itself is also ornamented, as the introduction to a powerful ending.

Composing 48 keyboard pieces in all 24 keys was the sort of challenge Bach enjoyed. In each of the two parts of The Well-Tempered Clavier he brought together the musical couple prelude and fugue 24 times; twelve in minor keys and twelve in major. In the preludes, he gave free rein to his imagination, and demonstrated mathematical tours de force in the fugues. In contrast to the iron discipline Bach had to apply to his church compositions, here he could abandon himself without worrying about deadlines. This Prelude and Fugue in F is from the first part of the work and dates from 1722, although it contains some music that was written in the preceding five years. Bach described the target group for this collection of pieces as follows: “For both the education of the industrious musical youngster and the enjoyment of those well-versed in this material”.

Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin were composed at Cöthen in 1720 (the date on Bach’s beautifully written fair copy of the set), at about the same time as his Cello Suites. The three Sonatas follow the pattern of the sonata da chiesa, with four movements, alternating slow and fast, while the three Partitas are suites of dances. Even though they were not published until 1802, Bach’s contemporaries recognized his superlative achievement in these pieces. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote that his father ‘understood to perfection the possibilities of all stringed instruments. This is evidenced by his solos for the violin and violoncello without bass. One of the greatest violinists once told me that he had seen nothing more perfect for learning to be a good violinist.’ Which violinist Bach may have had in mind when he first wrote the pieces remains unknown.

Präludium. Presto
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Bourrée
Gigue

There are four suites by Bach which in the 20^th century became commonly known as ‘Lute Suites’. They were adapted for classical guitar and popularised in best-selling recordings by Julian Bream and John Williams. But were they even written for the lute? Bach certainly knew Sylvius Leopold Weiss, the great German lutenist who once challenged him to an improvisation duel – Weiss at the lute, Bach at the organ. Bach also included beautiful continuo parts for lute in works like the St Matthew Passion and some of his cantatas. But four suites for solo lute? That seems increasingly unlikely, and modern scholarship demonstrates that Bach almost certainly composed these suites for the lautenwerck, a harpsichord with gut strings. Although none of those instruments has survived, there is evidence that Bach owned two at the time of his death.

Nevertheless, with some modification, they work wonderfully well on both lute and guitar, and the Suite in E minor is the earliest of the suites having been composed by at least 1712. Like so much of Bach’s keyboard music from the time, the six movements are in the French style, with many similarities to the Toccatas he was writing for harpsichord.

Bach specified no instrumentation for The Art of Fugue and ever since its publication in 1751, there has been a lively discussion about the scoring Bach might have had in mind. Some (including Gustav Leonhardt) has argued that it was intended for the keyboard (harpsichord or organ) while others have performed versions for instrumental ensembles (the very first recording, made in 1934, used a transcription for string quartet by the American composer Roy Harris). Donald Francis Tovey believed that such arrangements of The Art of Fugue ‘succeeded in demonstrating its beauty’. Hans-Eberhard Dentler is a medical doctor and also a cello pupil of Pierre Fournier. His fascination with The Art of Fugue goes back many years and his intention in this arrangement was to change as little as possible of what Bach left and to ensure transparent textures. His express intention has been to avoid any intervention by the arranger apart from selecting appropriate instruments.

Bach’s contrapuntal masterpiece The Art of Fugue is shrouded in mystery: no instrumentation is specified, and the last fugue – Contrapunctus XIV – was left unfinished. The structure is also highly unusual as the work is monothematic: each of its canons and fugues representing a different treatment of the same theme. The surviving autograph manuscript appears to date from the early 1740s, and the first edition of the score appeared in 1751, a year after the composer’s death. In spite of the uncertainty of how to play the work, or what forces Bach might have had in mind, the Bach scholar Christoph Wolff has summarised its importance as ‘an exploration in depth of the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in a single musical subject.’

The Well-Tempered Clavier follows the overall plan of a prelude and fugue in each of the 24 major and minor keys, starting in C major, then C minor, rising by semitones to finish in B major and B minor. It’s a structure that demonstrated the feasibility of the ‘well-tempered’ tuning method for the keyboard, which enabled music to change key without sounding out of tune, while showing the varying characteristics of the different keys. Nowadays we use ‘equal-temperament’, so the contrasting colours of the different keys are less apparent.

It took Bach most of his creative life to write the two Books, with the first Book of 24 preludes and fugues completed in 1722 and the second Book in 1742, combining to make ‘The 48’.

Despite its apparently formulaic structure, the expressive range of these pieces is astonishing, and was eloquently summarised by the harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick:

Much that is really idiomatic to the keyboard appears in many of the preludes and some of the fugues, but much is designed to stimulate the imagination to desert the confines of the keyboard for other media and for the larger dimensions of polyphonic orchestra and choir. Some pieces are sketches for jewelled miniatures; some for vast frescos. Some are intimate and lyrical; some quiver with the intensity of a passion that is just as intensely controlled; some fringe on the pedantic; and some are frankly sublime.

The stylistic differences between the two Books of The Well-Tempered Clavier are subtle but significant: in general the Preludes in Book II are conceived on a larger scale, with about half of them in binary form. As for the Fugues in Book II, they are all in either three or four parts but their variety is extraordinary. In part this is determined by the way in which Bach works out his ideas, but the most important factor is the different character of the fugue subjects themselves.

After Bach’s death, the two Books of ‘The 48’ circulated in manuscript copies and a few isolated pieces were published by Bach’s pupil Johann Kirnberger (who published the B minor Prelude from Book II in 1773 as a musical example in a harmony book), Johann Friedrich Reichardt (the F minor Fugue in 1782) and Augustus Friedric Christopher Kollmann, organist of the German Chapel in London, who published the C major Prelude and Fugue in his Essay on Practical Musical Composition (1799).

Kollmann was one of the first to recognise Bach’s lasting significance: in a ‘Sun’ diagram of composers, published in the ‘Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung’ in October 1799, Bach is at the centre, surrounded by the likes of Haydn, Handel, Mozart and Gluck. It was only in about 1801 that The Well-Tempered Clavier was finally published complete, in three different editions: Hofmeister in Vienna, Simrock in Bonn and Nägeli in Zurich. Others soon followed, including Carl Czerny’s edition (1837) purported to demonstrate his memories of how Beethoven played the preludes and fugues. However far-fetched its claims might have been, Czerny’s edition – which sold extremely well – did much to establish the work in the standard repertoire. Countless editions followed, some with distinguished editors including Busoni, Bartók and Donald Francis Tovey (whose edition also includes his insightful analyses of each prelude and fugue and which was the first to use the autograph manuscript acquired by the British Library in 1897).

Nigel Simeone

Allegro ma non troppo
Adagio
Allegro appassionato

Samuel Barber’s Cello Sonata is one of his first major works, composed as he was finishing his studies at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. The Sonata was started during an Italian holiday in the summer of 1932, while Barber was staying with fellow-composer Gian-Carlo Menotti near Lake Lugano. He returned to Curtis that Autumn and showed his unfinished Sonata to the cellist Orlando Cole (whose suggestions Barber gratefully accepted) and it was finished in December 1932. A month later, Barber and Cole gave a private performance in Philadelphia, and the public premiere took place on 5 March 1933, at a concert by the League of Composers in New York.

Barber shows himself to be a thoroughly individual composer in this work: happy to draw on the influence of earlier works such as Brahms’s cello sonatas, and by the music of composers such as Debussy. In short, even at the early stage in his career, it was clear that Barber was not going to sound like his American contemporaries. Instead there is a sureness of touch – and great technical command – of a musician whose language was entirely his own: reinvigorating tonal harmony with a sensitivity and character that was to mark out the works that followed. Fastidious and self-critical, Barber was a lyrical composer, and much of the Cello Sonata has a passionate, song-like eloquence that is ideal for the instrument.

In 1953, Samuel Barber was commissioned to write a new work for the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, the fee to be paid for not in the usual way but by contributions from the Detroit Symphony audience. Originally, he was asked for a septet (three wind, three strings and piano) but settled on the scoring for wind quintet after hearing performances and attending numerous rehearsals by the New York Wind Quintet who offered a great deal of technical advice about writing for this instrumental combination. In spite of this close collaboration, the first performance had been promised to Detroit and was given there by Detroit Symphony principals on 26 March 1956 when it was enthusiastically received, one local critic noting that the audience was delighted by ‘its mood of pastoral serenity.’ Following the premiere, Barber again worked with the New York Wind Quintet, making some cuts and putting Summer Music into its final shape. After performances in Boston and on a tour of South America, the New York ensemble played it at Carnegie Hall on 16 November 1956. Since then, the work has become established as cornerstone of the twentieth-century wind quintet repertoire. Cast in a single movement, the mood is mostly quiet and rhapsodic, and as for the title, Barber wrote that ‘it’s supposed to be evocative of summer – summer meaning languid, not killing mosquitoes.’

Written for the renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Hungarian composer Béla Bartók’s (1881-1945) Sonata for Solo Violin is widely considered one of the most challenging and expressive works for the instrument. It sits well in this programme, inspired, as it was, by Menhuin’s performance of Bach’s solo violin sonatas. Indeed, Bartók blends elements of the Baroque – the striking triple- and quadruple ‘stops’ of the opening, for example, in which the violinist plays three or four notes simultaneously – with the composer’s signature folk-inspired melodies; angular, sometimes discordant tunes drawn from the folk traditions of Eastern Europe, for which he is perhaps best known. The Sonata is in four movements: the intense and lyrical Tempo di ciaccona, the haunting Fuga, the delicate Melodia, and the virtuosic Presto. Each movement explores the violin’s capabilities, demanding both technical mastery and profound musicality.

Marion Bauer was born in Washington State, and in 1906 she became the first American to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, one of the last century’s greatest composition teachers. Boulanger struck a deal with Bauer: she’d teach her composition if Bauer would give her English lessons in return. Back in America, Bauer became one of the country’s most important musical figures, as both composer, teacher, and a mover-shaker behind the scenes.

Bauer often visited the Macdowell Colony, an artists’ residency in New Hampshire, which is where she composed this suite, inspired by the local landscape, in 1929.

Tempo molto moderato – Allegro moderato – Tempo primo
Lento espressivo
Allegro giocoso – Più lento – Vivace

Bax wrote his Oboe Quintet in 1922, just after completing the first of his seven symphonies. The inspiration for writing a work for oboe and strings was the playing of the great oboist Leon Goossens, to whom the work is dedicated. Bax’s biographer Lewis Foreman has drawn attention to the Irish elements in the music of this work: not only the jig-like final movement, but also in some of the atmospheric writing earlier in the work. The first movement begins with some richly harmonized string chords, and the oboe’s first entrance is rhapsodic, and rather melancholy. The main Allegro moderato has a strong, muscular drive and also demonstrates Bax’s brilliant instrumental technique, drawing a remarkable range of colours from the strings. A wistful recollection of the opening music brings the movement to a serene close. The slow movement opens with a beautiful first violin melody (again, suggestive of Irish folk music). The oboe enters with something rather different: a wistful, cadenza-like passage that is then developed with the strings. While there is plenty of veiled lyricism in this movement, Bax always remains a little questioning, and there’s a slightly uneasy calm at the close. The finale begins in overtly Irish high spirits, but this movement isn’t quite the romp that the opening might suggest. As Lewis Foreman put it, ‘all too soon clouds cover the sun and the spectres return’ in a passage that is slower and more reflective. The dance-like music returns but even at the close there is a brief moment of reflection before the final cadence.

This piece was commissioned by the Trio Gaspard to sit alongside Haydn’s piano trios. The sound of these wonderful players was in my head as I wrote. Haydn’s trios famously give a pretty subordinate role to the cello, so my first idea was to make the cello a soloist in my piece. My relationship with Haydn’s F sharp minor trio goes back to childhood, when my mother, violinist Ursula Snow, performed it many times with her trio. I must have heard hours of rehearsal. This led me to think of my mother, and how much I miss her, and feel I understand her better as I get older. This short piece is dedicated to her memory.

I took F sharp as my starting point, and threaded in occasional notes taken from Haydn’s Andante cantabile movement. The harmonies, which form a repeated chaconne-like pattern in the piano part, are also derived from the Haydn, but in my own way, and not necessarily audible to the listener. The music is like a series of fragmented memories; the violin at first ghost-like, while the cello has an improvisatory line; the violin then drawing the cello into its falling 5th motif, while the piano has the solo line. The three instruments become equal as the music comes to a head, before dissolving into a quiet final statement of the chord sequence.

The melancholic nature of Haydn’s trio affected my approach, combined with memories of my mother and her gradual disappearance into dementia. The title, Trance, indicates a meditative state, but also a ‘passageway’, or departure – the confusing journey of my relationship with my mother as her personality shifted, changed and faded.

Trance was commissioned by the Trio Gaspard, and first performed at the West Cork Festival on 28th June, 2023.

This beautiful quartet is known as ‘the harp’ because in the first part, all four musicians have sections where they pluck the strings their instruments rather than using the bow. Can you hear the difference?

Adagio sostenuto
Allegretto
Presto agitato

In 1801 Beethoven was preoccupied for two reasons. The first was the increasing problem he was having with his hearing. The second was altogether happier: “a dear, magical girl who loves me and whom I love”, as he told an old friend in a letter. In the same letter he even spoke of marriage: “this it is the first time that I have felt that marriage might make one happy.” The “magical girl” was Giulietta Guicciardi who had met Beethoven in 1800 when he started to give her piano lesson. Alas, the magic was not to last as Giulietta married a Count in 1803 – but the musical result is one of Beethoven’s most famous piano sonatas.

The second of his Op.27 sonatas subtitled “quasi una fantasia”, has become universally known as the “Moonlight” – a nickname that derived from a description in 1832 by the critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab who likened the first movement to moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne. The form is unusually free: after the dreamy, slow opening movement, the second is a moment of repose before the angry outburst of the finale – clearly it’s not a portrait of Giulietta, even if Beethoven’s “magical girl” had been the inspiration for this highly original masterpiece.

In 1796, the young Beethoven set out on a concert tour (the only one of his career) that took him to Prague, Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin. While in Berlin, he visited the court of the Friedrich Wilhelm II, the King of Prussia. During this visit, Beethoven composed several works for cello and piano, including the two Op. 5 Sonatas, and this set of variations on the famous tune ‘See the conqu’ring hero comes’ from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus. Beethoven once described Handel as ‘the greatest composer that ever lived’ and copied out Messiah in order ‘to unravel its complexities’. His choice of theme is therefore no surprise, and the words of the tune may have seemed an appropriate tribute to King Friedrich Wilhelm. The first performance was probably given by Beethoven and Jean–Louis Duport in Berlin in 1796, at the same time as the premiere of the Op. 5 cello sonatas. The theme is presented on the piano, modestly accompanied by the cello. The twelve variations that follow explore the tune with great wit and ingenuity, including a plaintive version of the theme in G minor (Variation 4), great dramaitc intensity in Variation 8 (the other variation in a minor key), presenting the theme in canon between the two instruments (Variation 10) and, following a rhapsodic Adagio, reworking it as an invigorating dance to end the work in suitably triumphant mood.

Nigel Simeone 2016

Beethoven’s Bagatelles,Op.33, were first published in 1803 and they serve as a wonderful demonstration of his mastery of small forms. The A major Bagatelle, the fourth of the set, is a quiet, tender piece, its mood of calm entirely unruffled by drama. Though eminently Beethovenian in terms of its musical language, the serene feeling of this Bagatelle certainly seems to point the way forward to some of the music Schubert was to write more than two decades later.

Nigel Simeone

Beethoven’s two cello sonatas Op.102 (in C major and D major) were composed in 1815 and dedicated to Beethoven’s friend, Countess Anna Maria Erdödy. They were published in Vienna (by Artaria) and Bonn (by Simrock) in 1817. The first of the two sonatas is one of Beethoven’s most unusual structures, consisting of two fast movements, each of them preceded by an extended slow introduction.

The first movement opens gently, with a lyrical melody in the upper register of the cello, to which the piano responds with an answering phrase, establishing the instrumental dialogue that is so often a feature of this sonata. After subsiding on to a C, the lowest note of the cello, there is an abrupt change of mood and tempo with the arrival of a stern idea in A minor, marked by dotted rhythms. The movement remains in A minor for most of the movement, ending tersely. The second movement begins with an elaborate slow introduction which gives way to a radiant recollection of the first movement – an unusual procedure that Beethoven was to use again in the finale of his Ninth Symphony. The main theme of the Allegro begins strangely, with a four-note rising fragment and a held note, but this idea quickly develops dramatic momentum, interrupted on several occasions by passages where the cello plays sustained notes and the piano is silent. The movement ends by appearing to fizzle out (using the four-note idea), before a triumphant closing flourish.

Cello Sonata No.1 in F, Op.5 No.1

Adagio sostenuto. Allegro

Rondo. Allegro vivace

Cello Sonata No.2 in G minor Op.5 No.2

Adagio sostenuto ed espressivo – Allegro molto più tosto presto

Rondo. Allegro

In 1796 Beethoven travelled from Vienna to Prague, Dresden and Berlin. In Berlin he heard the cellist Jean-Louis Duport at the court of Friedrich Wilhelm II. The King himself was also an enthusiastic amateur cellist to whom Mozart had dedicated his ‘Prussian’ Quartets, and though it was Duport who gave the first performance of the Op.5 sonatas, Beethoven was eager to attract aristocratic patronage and dedicated them to ‘His Majesty Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia’. He was rewarded handsomely, with a gold box full of gold coins, but no commissions followed, since the musical monarch died a year later. In his 1838 reminiscences of Beethoven, his pupil Ferdinand Ries wrote that ‘Beethoven played several times at the court of King Friedrich Wilhelm II, where he played the two grand sonatas with obbligato violoncello, Op.5 which he had composed for Duport, first violoncellist of the King, and himself. On his departure he received a gold snuffbox filled with Louis d’Or. Beethoven told me with pride that it was no ordinary snuffbox, but one of the kind that are presented to ambassadors.’

The two sonatas were published in 1797 and they were innovative in terms of the instrumentation – neither Haydn nor Mozart had written sonatas for cello and piano. But their significance goes far beyond the scoring, since some of Beethoven’s boldest early musical ideas are to be found here.

The 1st Sonata in F major opens with a slow introduction in which cello and piano creep in with a theme in octaves, but as the musical argument develops so does the distinctive role of each instrument. Billed – as was the custom of the time – as a ‘Sonata for Piano and Cello’, Beethoven establishes a sophisticated dialogue between the two musical partners. The main Allegro theme is introduced by the piano, with the cello providing the accompaniment, and the roles are then reversed for the second statement of the tune. The second (and last) movement begins with the cello and piano mirroring each other’s every gesture, and with only brief moments of respite, the music works towards a dramatic close.

The 2nd Sonata in G minor begins with a slow introduction that presents a dramatic dialogue between the instruments. A more lyrical melody is heard on the cello, echoed by the piano, and the ideas already introduced are woven into a texture dominated by the descending scale from the opening, but now mirrored by an ascending scale, in an impassioned interchange between cello and piano. The slow introduction sinks into uneasy silences before the main Allegro molto più tosto presto. Here the principal theme is introduced by the cello, quickly answered by the piano. There are moments of repose (including a dancing theme introduced in the development section), but for most of this movement, there’s a powerful feeling of energetic momentum. Beethoven already demonstrates in this early work an ability to create a startlingly vivid musical landscape with the greatest economy – something he was to do in so many later works – by developing a few terse ideas to the fullest possible extent. For the concluding Rondo, Beethoven moves to G major, in a movement with a certain formal elegance at the start, and interrupted with a few darker outbursts, but above this finale is an affirmative celebration of instrumental virtuosity.

The Scottish publisher and folksong collector George Thomson (1751–1851) – a friend of Robert Burns and Walter Scott – first approached Beethoven for some arrangements of Scottish songs as early as 1803, and eventually 25 of them (Beethoven’s Op. 108, for which the composer was well remunerated) were published by Thomson in 1818. Two years earlier, Thomson had written asking for some instrumental variations ‘in an agreeable style, not too difficult’. When he formally commissioned them in June 1818, Thomson also requested ad lib. flute parts, explaining that ‘we have a large number of flautists but alas, our violinists are few’, reminding Beethoven that the music should be ‘in a familiar, easy and slightly brilliant style.’

Thomson received the variations from Beethoven on 28 December 1818, and the National Airs with variations for the piano-forte and an accompaniment for the flute were published in July 1819, in a handsome edition that included a portrait of Beethoven on the title page. As musicologist and museum archivist Pamela Willetts has observed, they were not a commercial success. In 1820, Thomson wrote to Beethoven, grumbling that ‘the variations were not selling and that his outlay was a complete loss.’

Allegro
Andante
Minuet
Presto

The high opus number of Beethoven’s Octet for two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and two horns is misleading since it is one of the composer’s earliest pieces from his Vienna years: he started it while still in Bonn – and finished it in 1793, shortly after his arrival in the Austrian capital. It was reworked two years later as the String Quintet Op.4. Woodwind chamber music was all the rage in the late eighteenth century, nowhere more so than in Vienna, and it was usually written for performance outdoors. Like Haydn, Mozart and many others, the young Beethoven fulfilled the late eighteenth-century taste for Harmoniemusik (music for wind band) with cheerful, relatively undemanding works, of which his most substantial was this Octet.

Beethoven’s Octet was completed just when he started to take lessons from Haydn – and the wisdom and subtlety gained from those can be heard in his string quintet transcription (despite Beethoven’s far-fetched claim that he ‘learned nothing’ from his sessions with Haydn). But the Octet in its original version is one of Beethoven’s freshest early works. He clearly had good players in mind – the orchestras in Bonn and Vienna at the time evidently had wind sections with a taste for virtuosity, as can be heard especially in the delightful finale of this four-movement work. The first movement is engaging and straightforward, while the lyrical Andante has particularly prominent parts for oboe and bassoon. The Minuet is interesting: it’s already a long way from the courtly dance of its title, and an early example of what Beethoven would soon develop into the scherzos familiar from his symphonies.

Adagio sostenuto
Allegretto
Presto agitato
In 1801, Beethoven was preoccupied for two reasons. The first was the increasing problem he was having with his hearing. The second was altogether happier: “a dear, magical girl who loves me and whom I love”, as he told an old friend in a letter. In the same letter he even spoke of marriage: “this it is the first time that I have felt that marriage might make one happy.” The “magical girl” was Giulietta Guicciardi who had met Beethoven in 1800 when he started to give her piano lesson. Alas, the magic was not to last as Giulietta married a Count in 1803 – but the musical result is one of Beethoven’s most famous piano sonatas. The second of his Op.27 sonatas subtitled “quasi una fantasia”, has become universally known as the “Moonlight” – a nickname that derived from a description in 1832 by the critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab who likened the first movement to moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne. As with its companion piece Op.27 No.1, the form here is unusually free: after the dreamy, slow opening movement, the second is a moment of repose before the angry outburst of the finale – clearly it’s not a portrait of Guilietta even if Beethoven’s “magical girl” had been the inspiration for this highly original masterpiece.

Vivace ma non troppo – Adagio espressivo
Prestissimo
Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung. Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo

In February 1820, Beethoven’s friend Friedrich Starke asked him for a ‘little piece’ for a piano tutor he was writing, with contributions from leading composers. Beethoven wrote the piece, but then received a commission from the Berlin publisher Schlesinger for a set of three sonatas – and Beethoven conceived the last three sonatas as a trilogy. He quickly decided that his ‘little piece’ would work very well as the first movement of the E major Sonata (and Starke was instead given five of the Bagatelles Op.119). The structure is certainly unconventional for the first movement of a sonata, alternating between fast and slow sections, in different time signatures and with sharply contrasted moods. In a way, this procedure recalls Mozart’s keyboard fantasias, except that the three sections of fast music in this movement could run continuously were they not interrupted by the Adagios, explaining why some Beethoven scholars have described the form as ‘parenthetical’. The second movement, in E minor, is fast and stormy, while the finale is a spacious and exalted set of variations on a theme in triple time that has been likened to a Sarabande – indeed Carl Czerny wrote that ‘the whole movement [is] in the style of Handel and Seb. Bach.’ At the end of June 1820 Beethoven told Schlesinger that the new work was ‘ready’, though in September he was still making revisions, and wrote again to say it was ‘almost ready’. It was completed soon afterwards and published by Schlesinger in 1821, with a dedication to Maximiliane Brentano. In a letter to her dated 6 December 1821, Beethoven wrote to her: ‘A dedication!!! – and not one that is misused as so often’. He recalled his love and admiration for her family, noting that ‘While I am thinking of the excellent qualities of your parents, there are no doubts in my mind that you have been striving to emulate these noble people. … May heaven always bless you in everything you do. Sincerely, and always your friend, Beethoven.’

Moderato cantabile molto espressivo
Allegro molto
Adagio ma non troppo – Arioso dolente – Fuga: Allegro ma non troppo

During the first few months of 1821, Beethoven was laid low by illness, and was unable to do any composing for weeks on end. It was not until September that he was able to make a serious start on the Piano Sonata Op.110, and even in November he was grumbling to friends that he was still suffering from constant bouts of illness. However, the work was finished on Christmas Day 1821, and quickly sent to Schlesinger. The firm published it in 1822 and unusually, it appeared without dedication, though Thayer speculated that Beethoven intended to dedicate it to Antonie Brentano.

George Bernard Shaw considered Op.110 the most beautiful of all Beethoven’s piano sonatas. The first movement is moderate and elegantly proportioned, leading Charles Rosen to describe it as ‘Haydnesque’. The pithy Scherzo (in F minor) has a slightly folksy roughness – it actually uses a couple of folk tunes – while the Trio is in D flat major and marked by an idea that seems to cascade down the instrument. The reprise of the Scherzo ends in F major and leads straight into the Adagio ma non troppo – initially a recitative that leads to a deeply profoundly expressive Arioso dolente. For many musicians, it is the concluding Fugue (based on a subject built on rising fourths) that places it at or near the summit of Beethoven’s achievements. A sudden interruption of the fugue brings a poignant and tender recollection of the Arioso before the Fugue begins again, the subject now inverted, working towards a climax that is both sublime and majestic. Tovey wrote that ‘this fugue absorbs and transcends the world’, while Stravinsky considered it ‘the climax of this sonata … its great miracle lies in the substance of the counterpoint and it escapes all description.’

Maestoso – Allegro con brio ed appassionato
Arietta: Adagio molto, semplice e cantabile

The final sonata in Beethoven’s late trilogy was composed in 1821–2, straight after Op.110, and it was dedicated to his pupil and patron Archduke Rudolph, familiar as the dedicatee of the ‘Archduke’ Trio, and also the person to whom Beethoven inscribed the Missa solemnis, work on which was interrupted to compose the three late piano sonatas. Op.111 is in two movements, the first a turbulent and tempestuous Allegro preceded by a dramatic introduction notable for its extensive use of diminished seventh chords. The driving intensity of the main Allegro finds a moment of repose with the arrival of the second theme, in A flat major. At the end of the movement it is as if all rage has been spent as the music works towards a serene pianissimo conclusion in C major. The second movement is based on a hymn-like theme heard at the start of the movement and treated to an astoundingly diverse series of variations and a coda drenched in trills that seem to take the music to a strange and wonderful expressive world. Alfred Brendel has said of this movement that ‘perhaps nowhere else in piano literature does mystical experience feel so immediately close at hand’.

Allegro
Adagio cantabile
Scherzo. Allegro assai
Finale. Presto

Beethoven’s first piano trio – his Op.1 No.1 – was composed at almost exactly the same time as Haydn’s A major Trio. It was first performed at a private concert in Vienna in 1794 at the house of Prince Karl von Lichnowsky, to whom the whole set of three trios Op.1 was dedicated. This private concert turned out to be an extremely important event in Beethoven’s early career: the audience included many of the great and good of Viennese musical life, including Beethoven’s teacher Haydn. According the Ferdinand Ries, in his biographical sketch of Beethoven published in 1838, ‘The three trios by Beethoven were to be played to the artistic world for the first time at a soirée held at Prince Lichnowksy’s. Most artists and music lovers had been invited, in particular Haydn, whose pronouncement was eagerly awaited by all. The trios were played and caused a great stir. Even Haydn said many nice things about them.’ A year later the Viennese publisher Artaria put out an announcement for the first publication of the set: ‘Subscription for Ludwig van Beethoven’s Three Grand Trios for Pianoforte, Violin and Bass, which Artaria will engrave and publish within the next 6 weeks, and which, if previously indicated, can be purchased from the composer on handing back the [subscription] bill. The price of a complete copy is 1 ducat. The subscribers’ names will be printed at the beginning and they will have the advantage that this work is only available to others two months later, maybe even at a higher price. In Vienna subscriptions can be bought from the composer … in Kreuzgasse no. 35 behind the Minoriten Church on the first floor.’ The list of subscribers reads like a Who’s Who of Viennese patrons – and many of them were to play a crucial role in Beethoven’s subsequent career, including Count Appony (who first suggested to Beethoven that he should write a string quartet) Countess Anna Maria Erdödy (dedicatee of the two piano trios Op.70 and the cello sonatas Op.102), Prince Lobkowitz (dedicatee of both the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies), Count Rasumovsky (the Russian Ambassador in Vienna and dedicatee of the three String Quartets Op.59) and Prince Lichnowsky, to whom Beethoven dedicated his Op.1 and in whose home the pieces had first been played. The subscribers’ list shows that he ordered no fewer than 20 copies of the Op.1 Trios, a remarkable vote of confidence for the young composer.

Allegro
Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando
Adagio molto e mesto –
Thème Russe. Allegro
The first of Beethoven’s three quartets written for Prince Rasumovsky was composed in 1806 and performed the next year. It marks a departure from the Op.18 set in several respects, one of which is its sheer scale: like the “Eroica” Symphony (1804–5) it shows Beethoven expanding the possibilities of the form to produce something on an epic scale while retaining the essential intimacy of a string quartet.
The first movement is introduced by a cello theme which Lewis Lockwood describes as “opening up a musical space of seemingly unbounded lyricism and breadth.” The Scherzo, in B flat major, is an unsual movement: while it has no distinct Trio section, it is also Beethoven’s longest Scherzo to date, even though Beethoven removed a large repeat while revising the work. The slow movement has the unusual marking mesto – “mournful” – and is cast in the tragic key of F minor. It ends on a trill that leads seamlessly into the finale. This is based on a Russian theme – a charming and appropriate choice since Rasumovsky was the Russian Ambassador to Vienna at the time.

Grave. Allegro ma non troppo
Andante cantabile
Rondo. Allegro ma non troppo

Beethoven completed his Quintet for Piano and Wind in 1797, five years after his arrival in Vienna, taking Mozart’s quintet for the same instrumental combination as his model. It’s probably no coincidence that one of Beethoven’s closest friends – Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz – owned the autograph manuscript of Mozart’s work at the time. Yet despite some obvious parallels in terms of structure and even some of the thematic material, the Beethoven Quintet sounds very individual. As the Canadian musicologist Cliff Eisen has written: ‘Beethoven [remained] true to his own voice, some obvious modellings of his quintet on Mozart’s notwithstanding: their keys and unusual scoring are identical, and both begin with elaborate slow introductions. At 416 bars, however, the first movement of Beethoven’s quintet far exceeds Mozart’s in scale: as in so many of his chamber and solo works, Beethoven aspires to the symphonic, something that is alien to Mozart’s greater intimacy and concision.’

Adagio – Allegro con brio
Adagio cantabile
Tempo di menuetto
Tema con variazioni. Andante
Scherzo. Allegro molto e vivace
Andante con moto alla marcia – Presto

Beethoven’s Septet was written in 1799. It was first performed at a concert given by Beethoven at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 2 April 1800 and was published – after a typically querulous exchange between Beethoven and his publisher – in 1802. Aiming for the top in terms of potential supporters, Beethoven dedicated it to Maria Theresa – the last Holy Roman Empress and the first Empress of Austria. The Septet’s success was enduring, something Beethoven came to resent since he felt the public should take more interest in his later music.

The first movement is a genial sonata form Allegro with a slow introduction. The Adagio cantabile opens with a clarinet melody that is taken over by the violin, while clarinet and bassoon play a counter-melody, all supported by a gentle accompaniment on the lower strings. The bucolic Minuet demonstrates Beethoven the recycler, using the same theme as the Piano Sonata Op.49 No.2. The relaxed mood is maintained in the charming theme and variations. The Scherzo is launched by a horn call from which much of what follows is derived. Even the start of the Trio has thematic links with this tune, but a cello theme provides an effective contrast. The finale begins with one of the few significant uses of a minor key in the Septet: a stern march that quickly gives way to a rollicking Presto, its mood unclouded and its themes deliciously memorable.

Adagio. Allegro
Adagio
Menuetto. Quasi Allegretto
Rondo. Allegro

When Beethoven sent the score of his Sextet to the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel in 1809, he was modest about it: ‘The Sextet is from my early days and, moreover, it was written in a single night. There is really no other way to say that it written by a composer who produced some better works.’

Scored for pairs of clarinets, bassoons and horns, it was composed in 1796 (the high opus number is misleading). The Sextet is an elegantly crafted piece in which the young Beethoven also explores some unusual sonorities, not least the rich lower registers of all six instruments in the Adagio where the bassoon presents the main theme. The vigorous Minuet and Trio is launched by the sound of hunting horns, while the Rondo is a spirited movement, bringing this little-known work to a cheerful close.

Allegro con brio
Adagio con molto sentimento d’affetto
Allegro – Allegro fugato

Beethoven’s last two cello sonatas were composed in 1815 dedicated to the Countess Anna Maria Erdödy. The initial critical response was one of bewilderment, one critic declaring that “these two sonatas are definitely among the strangest and most unusual works … ever written for the pianoforte. Everything about them is completely different from anything else we have heard, even by this composer.” Indeed, the D major Cello Sonata Op.102 No.2 is a work that points forward to some of Beethoven’s final instrumental works – the late piano sonatas and quartets – in significant ways. The Beethoven scholar William Kinderman has suggested that the solemnity and austerity of the slow movement (in D minor) has pre-echoes of the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’ from the Quartet Op.132, while fugal finale is the one of a series of such movements in Beethoven’s late instrumental pieces (followed by the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata and the Grosse Fuge among others). The whole sonata, from the brusque opening of its first movement, to the extraordinary culmination of the fugue, is characterized by wild emotional contrasts: the stern, profoundly serious Adagio is flanked by two faster movements that are dominated by a fiery, even angry, dialogue between the two instruments.

Allegro
Andante con moto
Allegro
Presto

The Quartet Op.18 No.3 is a landmark in Beethoven’s career: it’s his first string quartet. He began it in the Autumn of 1798, finishing it early the following year, and eventually placed it as the third of the Op.18 set. As a preparation, Beethoven immersed himself in quartets by other composers, especially Mozart and his teacher Haydn – he copied out two of Mozart’s Haydn quartets just as he was beginning work on his Op.18.

The first movement opens with an arching theme (characterised by a leap of a minor seventh between the first two notes). The slow movement, in B flat major, begins with a luxuriant presentation of the main theme, but the texture soon becomes more spare and fragmented, with numerous dramatic contrasts. The Scherzo-like third movement has a minor key Trio section, while the final Presto is notable for its unquenchable energy. Composer Robert Simpson wrote that this music ‘flies at once into the sky, alighting when and where it wishes’ – from the stormy development section to the unexpectedly quiet ending.

Maestoso–Allegro teneramente
Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile
Scherzando vivace
Finale. Alla breve

Beethoven had not written a string quartet for well over ten years when the Russian Prince Nicholas Galitzin – a talented amateur cellist – asked Beethoven to write three new quartets. That commission came at the end of 1822, but Beethoven was unable to make any serious progress as he needed to complete the Ninth Symphony first. This he did in February 1824, and after the score of the symphony had been sent to the Philharmonic Society in London (who performed it in March 1825), Beethoven was able to get down to his new commission for Prince Galitzin. The Quartet Op.127 was started in April 1824 and finished by February 1825, swiftly followed by Op.132 in July and Op.130 in November. The first performance of Op.127 was given on 6 March by the Schuppanzigh Quartet and was not a success, partly because Beethoven had only given the parts to Schuppanzigh two weeks before. Still, the composer was angry and for the next performance he asked Joseph Böhm (who was later to teach Joseph Joachim) to lead the quartet. It didn’t fare much better. At a concert on 23 March, where Böhm performed the work twice in the same concert, while there were passionate enthusiasts, others we unconvinced and one critic described the work as ‘an incomprehensible, incoherent, vague, over-extended series of fantasias – chaos, from which flashes of genius emerged from time to time like lightning bolts from a black thunder cloud.’

This may seem a bizarre judgement almost two centuries later, but from the very start, this is music of extraordinary boldness. The quartet opens with six bars of loud, sonorous chords that return twice more in the movement, each time in a different key (in E flat major at the beginning, then in G major, and finally in C major). What follows is in quick triple time, as is the music after each subsequent statement of the stirring chords, but Beethoven takes the music in different directions each time, inserting unexpected silent bars, fragmenting ideas, and producing effects that must have seemed beyond strange in the 1820s, since their sheer daring is still just as palpable now. The French composer Vincent d’Indy (a pupil of César Franck) described the theme on which the variations of the slow movement are based as ‘so radiant in splendour that on reading it one feels … at once transported with joy and bewildered with admiration.’ The Scherzo opens, like the first movement, with loud tonic–dominant–tonic chords, but what follows is a thematic idea in dotted rhythms that is passed from player to player until all four instruments play it together in a fortissimo climax, before the dotted rhythm and the trills which accompany it are further developed, fragmented, and transformed. The central section of the movement is quick and spooky, beginning in the key of E flat minor, growing through a series of long crescendos before leading back to a brilliantly varied reprise of the opening material. About the lilting but idiosyncratic tune that dominates the finale, d’Indy wrote that it ‘would reawake the pastoral impressions of [the Sixth Symphony] did not the development of the dream which ends it, elevating the almost trivial phrase of the beginning to incommensurable heights, remind us that this is … altogether in the poet’s soul.’

Allegro
Molto Adagio. Si tratta questo pezzo con molto di sentimento
Allegretto. Maggiore (Thème russe)
Finale. Presto

“Demanding but dignified” was how the Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung described Beethoven’s new quartets dedicated to Count Rasumovsky when they were first heard in 1807. Composed in 1806, and including Russian melodies from a collection of folk tunes edited by Ivan Prach (published in 1790), these quartets were a major development in the quartet form. But though they were longer and more challenging than any earlier quartets, they were an immediate success. Before the Rasumovsky Quartets were played, Beethoven offered them to publisher Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig – in a job lot with the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Fourth Symphony and Fidelio, but the deal fell through and the quartets were first published in Vienna by the Bureau des Arts et d’Industrie and in London by Clementi.

While the first of the Rasumovsky Quartets is unusually expansive, the second is more concentrated. From the opening two-chord gesture establishing E minor as the home key, the first movement is tense and full of rhythmic ambiguity. The hymn-like slow movement has a combination of richness and apparent simplicity that blossoms into a kind of ecstatic aria: Beethoven himself is reported to have likened it to “a meditative contemplation of the stars”. The uneasy rhythms of the Scherzo are contrasted by a major-key Trio section in which Beethoven quotes a Russian tune that famously reappeared in the Coronation Scene of Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov. The finale begins with a surprise: a strong emphasis on the note C that is tantalising and unexpected in a movement that moves firmly towards E minor.

Allegro con brio
Allegretto ma non troppo, attacca subito
Allegro assai vivace ma serioso. Più allegro
Larghetto espressivo. Allegretto agitato. Allegro

‘The Quartet is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public.’ Thus wrote Beethoven to Sir George Smart in October 1816. The kind of public concerts he had in mind – mixed programmes of vocal and instrumental music – would indeed make an odd setting for a work of such concentrated intensity. Composed in 1810 and revised for publication in 1815, Beethoven dedicated it to his friend, Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovetz, a talented amateur cellist who worked as Hungarian Court Secretary in Vienna.

One of Beethoven’s shortest and most tautly argued quartets, it was the composer himself who called it Quartetto serioso on the autograph manuscript. The Beethoven expert William Kinderman sums up its character as ‘dark, introspective, and vehement’, and it’s no surprise that Beethoven takes a similarly pithy approach to form: a much-shortened recapitulation in the first movement, a slow movement that eschews lyricism in favour of a chromatic fugal section, and a prickly Scherzo (more of an anti-Scherzo really, since it is not only completely lacking in any kind of humour, but is even marked ‘serioso’). The finale sustains this tension and agitation until the last moment – then something extraordinary happens: the music takes a sudden turn to F major, and there’s a dash to the finish. The American composer Randall Thompson commented that ‘no bottle of champagne was ever uncorked at a better time.’

Allegretto
Vivace
Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo
Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß [The difficult decision]. Grave, ma non troppo tanto (Muss es sein? [Must it be?]) – Allegro (Es muss sein! [It must be!]) – Grave, ma non troppo tratto – Allegro

Beethoven’s final string quartet (only the replacement finale of Op.130 is later) was completed in October 1826. After an awful summer during which his nephew Karl had attempted suicide and been imprisoned, Beethoven was able to escape to the tranquillity of Gneixendorf, a village near Krems about fifty miles from Vienna. He arrived at the end of September and his last masterpiece was finished in the following month, much of it composed outdoors (the locals were amused to observe Beethoven singing and waving his arms as he worked). It is dedicated to his friend and supporter Johann Nepomuk Wolfmayer, who was originally to have been the dedicatee of the C sharp minor Quartet Op.131. The F major Quartet Op.135 is much the shortest of the late quartets, and there’s a conciseness and simplicity that perhaps point forward to the direction Beethoven might have pursued in his music had he lived longer. Its less serious mood can also be explained by the circumstances in which it was written: at the end of his tether after his nephew’s problems in the summer, the composer could at last be refreshed. Op.135 seems to be imbued with this new sense of well-being, and within a relatively conventional movement structure (unlike several of the other late quartets), Beethoven expresses both humour and the deepest seriousness with amazing brevity. The expressive heart of the work was probably the first part to be composed: the Lento assai, barely fifty bars long, was originally intended for the Op.131 Quartet. The finale has the famous superscription “The difficult decision”, based on a question-and-answer motif: “Must it be? – It must be!” The origins of this are a canon jotted down at the end of July 1826, “half-humorous, half-philosophical” as Barry Cooper puts it, providing the ideal theme for a movement that seems to encapsulate the “difficult decisions” that marked out Beethoven as a timeless genius.

Allegro
Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando
Adagio molto e mesto – attacca
Thème Russe. Allegro

The first of Beethoven’s three quartets written for Prince Razumovsky was composed in 1806 and performed the next year. Like the ‘Eroica’ Symphony (1804–5) it shows Beethoven expanding the possibilities of the form to produce something on an epic scale while retaining the essential intimacy of a string quartet. The first movement is introduced by a cello theme which musicologist Lewis Lockwood describes as ‘opening up a musical space of seemingly unbounded lyricism and breadth.’ The Scherzo, in B flat major, is an unusual movement: while it has no distinct Trio section, it is also Beethoven’s longest Scherzo to date, even though Beethoven removed a large repeat while revising the work. The slow movement has the unusual marking mesto – ‘mournful’ – and is cast in the tragic key of F minor. It ends on a trill that leads seamlessly into the finale. This is based on a Russian theme – a charming and appropriate choice since Razumovsky was the Russian Ambassador to Vienna at the time.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Variations on God Save the King were written in 1803 for the Scottish music publisher George Thomson. The composer sent them with a note that they were not too difficult and hoping that they would be a success. He also hoped to show the English ‘what a blessing they have’ with the tune, one which certainly seems to have fired his musical imagination.

(C) Nigel Simeone

Adagio – Allegro con brio
Adagio cantabile
Tempo di menuetto
Tema con variazioni. Andante
Scherzo. Allegro molto e vivace
Andante con moto alla marcia – Presto

Beethoven’s Septet was written in 1799. It was first performed at a concert given by Beethoven at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 2 April 1800 and was published – after a typically querulous exchange between Beethoven and his publisher – in 1802. Aiming for the top in terms of potential supporters, Beethoven dedicated it to Maria Theresa – the last Holy Roman Empress and the first Empress of Austria. The Septet’s success was enduring, something Beethoven came to resent since he felt the public should take more interest in his later music. The first movement is a genial sonata form Allegro with a slow introduction. The Adagio cantabile opens with a clarinet melody that is taken over by the violin, while clarinet and bassoon play a counter-melody, all supported by a gentle accompaniment on the lower strings. The bucolic Minuet demonstrates Beethoven the recycler, using the same theme as the Piano Sonata Op.49 No.2. The relaxed mood is maintained in the charming theme and variations. The Scherzo is launched by a horn call from which much of what follows is derived. Even the start of the Trio has thematic links with this tune, but a cello theme provides an effective contrast. The finale begins with one of the few significant uses of a minor key in the Septet: a stern march that quickly gives way to a rollicking Presto, its mood unclouded and its themes deliciously memorable.

Nigel Simeone 2014

And we end where we began, another ‘scherzo’ or musical joke this time from the monumental Ludwig Van Beethoven! Seven instruments all working together to bounce us out of the concert and into a world filled with music.

i. Allegro
ii. Adagio molto espressivo
iii. Scherzo. Allegro molto
iv. Rondo. Allegro ma non troppo

The ‘Spring’ Sonata was written in 1800 and first published the following year, originally as the second of a pair of sonatas. Both are dedicated to Moritz von Fries, a banker with an expensive lifestyle (leading to his eventual bankruptcy) and excellent taste in music and art. Beethoven was a regular guest at Fries’s home and as well as the Op. 23 and Op. 24 Violin Sonatas, Fries was also the dedicatee of the Seventh Symphony. The origins of the nickname are obscure, but ‘Spring’ is a very apt choice for this genial work. After the lyrical first movement, the Adagio molto espressivo is a deeply felt song without words, including some elaborate decorations. The Scherzo lives up to its name: a clever and tricky rhythmic joke that plays with the audience’s expectations – and it is also one of Beethoven’s shortest sonata movements. The Rondo is one of Beethoven’s most gentle and unhurried finales, bringing this most radiant of his violin sonatas to an amiable close. The ‘Spring’ Sonata is the first of Beethoven’s violin sonatas to be in four movements (its four predecessors are all in three movements) and it is a work of effortless ingenuity as well as boundless charm.

New Dance
Lady Day
The Mulberry Garden
Nobody’s Jig

Richard Rodney Bennett’s Four Country Dances for saxophone and piano are part of larger series of pieces inspired by tunes found in John Playford’s The English Dancing Master first published in 1651, with numerous later editions which changed the title to The Dancing Master and added new tunes. Bennett has taken these folk-like melodies and added piano accompaniments of his own to create pieces that have a very individual character. This is particularly apparent in the last dance, where the piano part is at first spiky, then enters into a dialogue with the saxophone with fragments of the melody. The results are fresh, spirited and charming.

Sigurd Berge (1929-2002) was a Norwegian composer known for his contributions to music education and his interest in Norwegian folk music. His works span a variety of styles, from traditional tonal music to electronic music and multi-media compositions.

Berge’s Horn-lokk is an unaccompanied horn solo composed in 1972 for fellow Norwegian Frøydis Ree Wekre. It consists of four sections and incorporates melodies inspired by Norwegian folk music. The piece showcases the horn as an instrument and is challenging for the performer due to its tessitura and required techniques.

The Horn-lokk contains traits reminiscent of traditional horn calls but with more complex tonality and dissonant intervals. The piece lacks the heroic quality of popular horn call melodies and instead presents a haunting and repetitive melody that grieves, with a cathartic outburst of fury at the climax.

Adagio
Allegro molto
Poco adagio
Prestissimo
Poco adagio
Finale: Allegro con spirito

The influence and popularity of Beethoven’s Septet spread across Europe and the work was regularly performed in Berwald’s native city of Stockholm. Now widely regarded as the most important Swedish composer of the nineteenth century, during his lifetime Berwald was seldom able to earn a living from his music, working instead as a successful physiotherapist and, later, manager of a glass works. None of this should lead us to underestimate either Berwald’s creative talent or his imaginative handling of musical form. Both are apparent in this Septet. Completed in 1828, it may have been a reworking of an earlier piece for the same forces. Even so, it is a relatively early work, composed two decades before his best-known pieces such as the Symphonie sérieuse and Symphonie singulière. The musical language is consistently appealing, owing something to contemporary opera and to composers such as Spohr, but the melodies and harmonies have an idiosyncratic character that is entirely Berwald’s own (as at the start of the Allegro molto in the first movement, or the opening of the finale). In terms of the Septet’s design, the most striking innovation comes in the second movement which has a very quick Scherzo embedded within a seemingly conventional slow movement.

D’un matin de printemps is dated 1917–18 and it demonstrates the more adventurous and astringent style that Boulanger had previously developed with her settings of Psalms. In spite of a meteoric rise (winning the Prix de Rome in 1912), Boulanger had been troubled by ill health since childhood, and she died on 15 March 1918 at the age of twenty-four. Her surviving works are all the more poignant for their hints of what might have been, particularly in this work which seems to suggest a fascinating point of departure.

The phenomenal gifts of Lili Boulanger were recognised when she was in her teens, and in 1913 she became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome for composition with her cantata Faust et Hélène. She was nineteen at the time, but her musical language was already distinctive. D’un soir triste (‘Of a sad evening’) was one of her last compositions, finished in 1918 and it demonstrates the more harmonically adventurous and austere style that Boulanger had developed in works such as her Psalm settings made in 1914–17. D’un soir triste exists in an orchestral version, but the original scoring for violin, cello and piano is the only one for which an autograph manuscript survives (the orchestral version is in the hand of Lili’s sister Nadia). Subtitled ‘pièces en trio’, the opening melody (first on cello, then violin) unfurls over solemn piano chords and the harmonies darken as the musical argument becomes more complex and works towards an intense climax and an anguished central section. Though the later part of the work seems to be seeking some kind of repose, it never really comes until settling on the final open fifths. Lili Boulanger died on 15 March 1918 at the age of twenty-four: a brilliant musician whose surviving works are all the more poignant for their hints of what might have been.

This is one of Lili Boulanger’s first pieces, written in 1911, two years before her victory in the Prix de Rome for composition. Her early death at the age of twenty-four robbed the world of a composer whose mature music – from the last five years of her short life – is notable for its startling originality and stark beauty. That mixture of sensuousness and austerity can be heard even in this early work with its hints of Debussy and of the elegant restraint of her teacher, Fauré.

The phenomenal gifts of Lili Boulanger (1893–1918) were recognised when she was in her teens, and in 1913 she became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome for composition at the Paris Conservatoire with her cantata Faust et Hélène. She was nineteen at the time, but her musical language was already distinctive. The Nocturne was one of her earlier pieces, originally entitled ‘pièce courte pour flûte et piano’, the manuscript dated 27 October 1911. It was subsequently reworked for violin and piano and is here arranged for trumpet. The Cortège, which is often paired with it, dates from June 1914 when it began as a piano solo which was then arranged for violin and piano and later transcribed for trumpet.

Lili Boulanger was the sister of the famous teacher Nadia Boulanger who taught Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter and Philip Glass amongst others. She was a composer for the last 10 years of her tragically short life – she died at 25 – and her music stands in the main line of French music exemplified by Faure, somewhat tinged with the influence of Debussy’s Impressionism. It is generally beautiful, delicately coloured, and touching. These challenging ‘Two Pieces for Violin and Piano’ exemplify these qualities.

The Nocturne begins sparsely, with bare octave figures wound about with a theme built from a repetitive rise-and-fall figure. As the texture becomes thicker the violin becomes more virtuosic and begins to climb. There is no harmonic resolution until the final ppp note in the top register, which is answered by an low octave from the piano.

The Cortege is more lively without being fast. Shifting rhythmic accents, tricky runs and contrasting dynamics make this an exciting piece.

From Boosey.com

Moderato
Sans vitesse et à l’aise
Vite et nerveusement rythmé

Nadia Boulanger, teacher, conductor, early music pioneer and trusted adviser to the likes of Stravinsky and Poulenc, was also a gifted composer. Fiercely self-critical, she always claimed her own music was nothing like as significant as that of her brilliant younger sister, Lili, but with the rediscovery of Nadia’s music it has become clear that she was a remarkable talent in her own right. She entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of nine and subsequently studied composition with Fauré. Most of her music dates from between 1904 and 1918 (the year Lili died), including the Three Pieces for cello and piano, composed in 1914 and first published the following year. The first, in E flat minor, presents a song-like melody on the cello over a hushed piano part marked doux et vague. After a brief climactic central section, the opening music returns for a serene close in E flat major. The second piece, in A minor, treats a deceptively simple tune – almost a folksong – in an ingenious canon between the cello and the piano. The last piece, in C sharp minor, is quick, with a middle section that provides a contrast in both rhythm and texture to the playful but muscular mood of the rest.

As flute players, our creative life is forever bound in the air we breathe and blow – this wonderful invisible resource that is the foundation of our Art. I first performed …And The Wind Whispered… in Botswana and Zimbabwe in February 2009, but it took until 2011 before it was written down. Taking its inspiration from the wind, …And The Wind Whispered… seeks to make a statement about our fractured world… I have always been very weary of organized nationalism, religion and politics because they fragment and diminish our Humanity. At one point in my piece, the flute player says “and the wind never shows its passport, when it crosses the border.” Sit back and let the wind take you on a journey of its own choosing. This piece carries a wish with it – that humanity can one day rid itself from its self-imposed spiritual prisons.

This piece sees the string players joined by a clarinet. This woodwind instrument takes us on a lovely journey. What do you think of as you hear the flowing tune; a river winding through a beautiful scene, a song being sung by a wonderful singer… or something else?

Allegro
Adagio
Andantino. Presto non assai, ma con sentimento
Con moto

In 1890, while only in his late fifties, Brahms declared that he was retiring: the String Quintet Op. 111 was to be his farewell from composition. A few months later he heard Richard Mühlfeld, clarinettist of the Meiningen Orchestra, and wrote to Clara Schumann that ‘the clarinet cannot be better played’. It inspired him to carry on composing. In the summer of 1891 Brahms went to stay at Bad Ischl in the Salzkammergut where he wrote the Clarinet Trio and Clarinet Quintet. Mühlfeld gave the premieres of both works on 12 December 1891 in Berlin. On hearing a performance in London the following year, George Bernard Shaw wrote that ‘it surpassed my utmost expectations’, and when the conductor Arthur Nikisch heard the Quintet, he fell to his knees in front of Brahms.

It has a rare and hypnotic beauty, thanks to its pervasive mood of melancholy, occasionally interrupted by quiet rapture, or by fiery gypsy figurations. The opening is played by the strings alone (like Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet), from which the clarinet emerges as if through the mists. Ideas gradually become more fully formed, and Brahms uses the tension between the home key (B minor) and its relative major (D major) to great expressive effect. The slow movement is a song-like Adagio, interrupted by a clarinet outburst in which Brahms evokes the improvisations of gypsy players. The third movement is a gentle interlude, with a more animated central section, and the finale is a theme and variations in which music from the opening movement is recalled at the end, to magical effect.

Allegro
Adagio
Andantino grazioso – Trio
Allegro

When Brahms first heard the playing of Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinettist of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, he had not written any chamber music involving the clarinet. But after a meeting in March 1891 he was inspired – following more than a year of creative silence – to write two major works for his new-found muse. On 24 November 1891, Mühlfeld, the Joachim Quartet and Brahms himself played both the Trio and the Clarinet Quintet at a private concert for the Duke of Meiningen. The first public performances followed on 12 December 1891, in the Berlin Singakademie. For the Trio Mühlfeld was again joined by the cellist Robert Hausmann and Brahms.

The four movements of the Trio are concise and clear in design, without quite the mystery or the rapturous spirit that pervades the Quintet. However, the writing for the three instruments is unusually closely integrated, intertwined even – prompting Brahms’s friend Eusebius Mandyczewski to write in a letter to the composer that ‘it was as if the instruments were in love with one another.’ Brahms’s technical prowess can also be seen at its most ingenious: the second theme of the first movement is introduced as a canon in inversion, a procedure that can also be found in Haydn, and perhaps this was a nod from Brahms to one of the composers of the past he most admired. As well as the Trio and Quintet, Brahms went on to write the two Clarinet Sonatas Op.120 for Mühlfeld – all late masterpieces inspired by this great clarinettist.

Brahms wrote his first two books of Hungarian Dances in autumn 1868 for piano four hands, and followed this with two more books in March 1880. In 1874 he orchestrated three of the 1868 dances for symphony orchestra (the others were later orchestrated by Dvořák and others). The idea of using Hungarian gypsy themes came after Brahms heard his friend Joseph Joachim’s Violin Concerto ‘in the Hungarian style’ – completed in 1860, and dedicated to Brahms. The present arrangement for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, two violins, viola, cello, double bass and piano is very much in the spirit of Brahms: this was music he arranged for violin and piano and for solo piano as well as the original piano duet and orchestral versions. Brahms always enjoyed playing these pieces, and the Hungarian Dance No.1 was the work he played on his one and only recording: an Edison cylinder made on 2 December 1889 – he was one of the very first composers to make a recording of his own music.

The idea of arranging dances based on Hungarian gypsy themes probably came after Brahms heard his friend Joseph Joachim’s Violin Concerto, “in the Hungarian style”, published in 1861 and dedicated to Brahms. Though this was a style Brahms already knew well from his earliest concert tours as a pianist with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi in the early 1850s. Although later arranged for various combinations of instruments (including full orchestra), Brahms originally wrote these short pieces for piano four hands. The first two books (Nos.1–10) were finished in Autumn 1868, and the third and fourth books (Nos.11–21) in March 1880. The first performances were all given at private concerts, first in Oldenburg on 1 November 1868 (Nos.1–10) and then in the Bonn suburb of Mehlem on 3 May 1880 (Nos.11–21). On both occasions the players were the dream-worthy piano duet partnership of Clara Schumann and Brahms himself.

Allegro non troppo
Andante, un poco adagio
Scherzo. Allegro
Poco sostenuto – Allegro non troppo – Presto non troppo

In 1862, Brahms sent Clara Schumann the incomplete manuscript of a quintet for two violins, viola and two cellos. He must have been delighted by her reaction: ‘What richness in the first movement … I can’t tell you how moved I am by it, and how powerfully gripped. And what an Adagio – it sings and sounds blissful right up to the last note!’ A few months later, he asked the great violinist Joseph Joachim for his opinion. He was very positive about the work, but mentioned that ‘the instrumentation is not energetic enough to my ears to convey the powerful rhythmic convulsions.’ Brahms rewrote the piece as a Sonata for Two Pianos (and destroyed the manuscript of the string quintet version). Clara Schumann gave the first performance with the conductor Hermann Levi. She felt something was missing in the two-piano version: ‘Please, dear Johannes, do agree just this time, and rework the piece once more.’ So he did, producing a version that combined the best of both earlier versions. The result is one of Brahms’s greatest chamber works.

But while it was immediately recognised as an important new piece, there was hardly a stampede to play it in public. It was performed privately (with Clara Schumann) in November 1864, and published in December 1865, but a Viennese première in February 1866 was abandoned at the last moment. There were early performances in Leipzig (22 June 1866), and Paris (24 March 1868). It had to wait until 1875 for a public hearing in Vienna. It subsequently enjoyed considerable success, notably when Clara Schumann, Joachim and others played it in London on 3 April 1876.

The first movement opens with a dark-hued theme in octaves that soon develops into a turbulent drama – the music remaining in a minor key for the second theme. The slow movement has a radiance that provides a complete contrast with what has gone before. The Scherzo begins uneasily, full of suppressed energy and tense syncopations, but then bursts out into C major, and its central Trio section is one of Brahms’s most rapturous themes. The finale begins slowly, brooding and mysterious, until the main fast theme emerges. This movement’s coda hurtles towards an intense, uncompromising finish.

Brahms composed the first movement of the C major Piano Trio at Bad Ischl in Austria’s Salzkammergut region in June 1880. It was always one of the composer’s favourite spots, where he was able to compose in peace. The other works to emerge from the 1880 visit were Brahms’s two concert overtures: the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture, and when he returned in 1882, his summer produced not only the rest of the C major Trio, but also the String Quintet Op.88 and the Song of the Fates Op.89 for chorus and orchestra.

Brahms’s earlier piano trio (in B major, Op.8) was a large-scale and rhapsodic work from his early years (to which he returned in 1889, making extensive revisions), but the C major Trio shows the composer in a much more concise frame of mind. The striding opening theme – first heard in octaves on the violin and cello – has a strong sense of rhythmic energy that is used to propel much of the first movement. The ‘Andante con moto’ similarly opens with a theme in octaves on the strings, but this time it’s a plangent melody in the minor which becomes almost defiant at the movement’s climax. The ghostly ‘Scherzo’ is complemented by a radiant swaying theme in the central Trio section. The main theme of the finale is marked by the use of a sharpened fourth note of the scale (F sharp in C major) that gives it a particular character, and this memorable tune drives the movement to a thrilling conclusion.

The first performances were given in Cologne and Frankfurt am Main in December 1882, with Brahms himself at the piano in the Frankfurt concert.

Allegro Molto
Scherzo: Allegro non troppo
Adagio non troppo
Minuet
Scherzo: Allegro
Rondo: Allegro

Brahms’s D major Serenade is well known as his first orchestral work – but, like the D minor Piano Concerto from the same period, it had a complicated genesis. It was first conceived in 1857 as a Serenade for eight instruments in three or four movements, and a year later it had become a work in six movements, now scored for nine instruments. By 1860, it had been rewritten for full orchestra – the version that survives today (though Brahms even considered developing that into his first symphony, but decided to leave well alone). The nonet version was performed in public on 28 March 1859 at a concert in Hamburg, and a year later the orchestral version was given its premiere in Hannover. Whether Brahms destroyed the chamber version, or whether the material simply vanished is not known, but a skilful reconstruction reveals something of Brahms’s original conception: a work much closer in spirit to the serenades and divertimentos of Mozart than the reworked orchestral version.

Allegro
Romanze. Poco adagio
Allegretto molto moderato e comodo
Allegro

The string quartet was a form that gave Brahms a great deal of trouble and the masterpieces of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven meant that Brahms was especially critical of his efforts at quartet writing. The C minor Quartet was finished in the mid-1860s, but Brahms revised it extensively over the next decade and re-wrote it during the summer of 1873. The first performance took place in Vienna in December 1873 by the Hellmesberger Quartet. The work is dedicated to Brahms’s friend Theodor Billroth, one of the most innovative surgeons of his time and a keen amateur musician. There’s a very close relationship between the main themes in each of the four movements, each of which grow from the same basic idea, and the overall structure sees two intimate miniatures framed by the more symphonic outer movements.

Andante moderato
Andante non troppo e con molto espressione
Andante con moto

These three short pieces were composed at the Austrian spa town Bad Ischl in 1892 and first performed in Berlin on 6 January 1893 by the pianist Heinrich Barth. Like the first of the Ballades Op.10, the first Intermezzo is based on a Scottish poem printed in Herder’s collection, this time a lullaby (and, informally, Brahms sometimes called the whole set ‘Lullabies’). Clara Schumann was enchanted by these pieces when she first saw them, telling Brahms that ‘In these pieces I at last feel musical life stir once again in my soul’. When Brahms’s publisher Simrock suggested using Lullabies instead of Intermezzi as the official title, Brahms’s response was endearingly curmudgeonly: ‘It should then say, lullaby of an unhappy mother or of a disconsolate bachelor’.

Allegro appassionato
Andante un poco adagio
Allegretto grazioso
Vivace

When Brahms wrote his two clarinet sonatas for his muse Richard Mühlfeld during a summer at Ischl in 1894, he always conceived alternative versions of them with a viola in place of the clarinet. He made careful alterations to create idiomatic viola parts and when the two sonatas were published in June 1895 they were issued with both clarinet and viola parts (Brahms also made versions for violin as well).

The viola is certainly ideally suited to the darker hues of the F minor Sonata. The differences in the viola version are mostly to do with passages taken down an octave, the occasional addition of appoggiaturas and double stoppings as well as changes to expression and dynamic markings, while the piano part remains completely unchanged. The viola versions present the same music in subtly different instrumental colours and in both works this provides a distinctive alternative view.

The F minor Sonata is in four movements: the first is often stern and dramatic, though there are some heart-stoppingly beautiful moments of repose. The movement ends quietly in F major. The Andante un poco adagio that follows (in A flat major) has a restrained eloquence that makes a profound but extremely poetic impact. With the Allegretto grazioso the mood genial – a scherzo substitute that serves as a kind of lyrical intermezzo. Robust and forthright, the finale opens in F major – its expressive intentions made clear from the three repeated notes that begin the main theme – and brings the work to an impassioned conclusion.

One of Bridge’s most characterful early works, this Piano Quartet from 1910 was played at the 1948 Aldeburgh Festival with Bridge’s most famous pupil, Benjamin Britten at the piano. Britten also supplied a note on the piece: ‘Finished in June 1910, this work is written in Bridge’s early style – sonorous yet lucid, with clear, clean lines, grateful to listen to and to play. It is the music of a practical musician, brought up in German orthodoxy, but who loved French romanticism and conception of sound – Brahms happily tempered with Fauré.’

The work is in three continuous sections: a Barcarolle, a Scherzo and Trio, and a recitative leading to a reprise of the opening. Writing about the short coda, Britten says that it ‘suggests the deep red afterglow of a sunset.’

Nigel Simeone 2014

Andante con moto – Allegro vivace – Andante con moto

Bridge had already been successful in Walter Wilson Cobbett’s competition to write a ‘Phantasy’ – Cobbett’s reinvention of the Elizabeth Fantasy as new single-movement chamber works – and in 1910 he (along with Vaughan Williams and others) was commissioned by Cobbett to compose a Phantasy Piano Quartet. It’s a work in a satisfying arch form based on free-flowing musical ideas all of which derive from the powerful opening gesture. Bridge’s most famous pupil, Benjamin Britten, wrote in a programme note for the Aldeburgh Festival about this piece. He described the music as ‘Sonorous yet lucid, with clear, clean lines, grateful to listen to and to play. It is the music of a practical musician, brought up in German orthodoxy, but who loved French romanticism and conception of sound—Brahms happily tempered with Fauré.’

Nigel Simeone 2013

1. Poco presto ed agitato
2. Variations: Andante lento
3. Tarantella: Presto vivace

Britten was already a very prolific composer by the time he gave this work its designation as his official Opus One. Dedicated to his teacher, Frank Bridge, it was written when Britten was 18 years old, and it already demonstrates his extraordinary imagination. The influence of Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony is apparent in places, and the instrumental writing in all three movements has a fluency and flamboyance that quickly became hallmarks of the young Britten’s music. The first public performance was given on 31 January 1933 at the Mercury Theatre, London, in one of the Macnaghten-Lemare concerts played by the English Wind Players and the Macnaghten String Quartet, conducted by Iris Lemare. Britten’s music has always been more enthusiastically received abroad, and on 7 August 1933, the Sinfonietta was broadcast on Radio Strasbourg, conducted by the great Hermann Scherchen. The first British broadcast was a month later, by members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Clark.

Allegro calmo, senza rigore
Vivace
Chacony: sostenuto

Britten composed his String Quartet No. 2 in September and October 1945 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Purcell’s death. It was given its premiere by the Zorian Quartet at the Wigmore Hall on 21 November 1945 in one of a pair of concerts where music by Purcell was performed alongside two new works by Britten (this quartet and the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, first performed the following evening). Though the first movement is, broadly, in sonata form, as Michael Kennedy has pointed out, ‘there seems to be more of the free fantasia about it than adherence to classical precepts.’ The opening presents three ideas, all based on the wide interval of a 10th, and what follows is an almost continuous development of these ideas, until, at last, C major is established in the coda. The second movement is a strange and rather disturbing Scherzo, the strings muted throughout. The Chacony (its title a clear homage to Purcell) is much the longest of the three movements. A grandly-conceived set of variations (interspersed with solo cadenzas), it reaches a triumphant climax with repeated C major chords.

Britten planned these movements as part of a five-movement Quartetto serioso with a subtitle from Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale: “Go play, boy, play!” An earlier version of the opening March was written for a suite inspired by the film Emil and the Detectives (the children’s novel by Erich Kästner was a great favourite of Britten’s), but this was never completed. Eventually he settled on a work in three movements, and the first performance was given by the Stratton Quartet at the Wigmore Hall on 25 February 1936. The audience response was chilly and a hurt Britten withdrew the Three Divertimenti, which were only published after his death. His brilliant gift for idiomatic quartet writing is already apparent in this early work – from the arresting rhythms and textures of the March to the beguiling central Waltz, and the driving energy of the closing Burlesque.

Bruch composed these pieces in 1908 for his son, Max Felix, who was a clarinettist. Three of the pieces were originally written with an additional harp part, but by the time the work was published in 1910, Bruch had settled on a trio of clarinet, viola and piano. Discussing publication with Simrock in February 1910, Bruch wrote that the pieces had been ‘met with great approval where they were played from the manuscript’ and it’s easy to see why. Bruch always intended separate performances of individual pieces (indeed, he advised against playing all of them together), and selections can be used to make an effective suite.

Henry (Harry) Burleigh was born in Pennsylvania in 1866 – his grandfather had been emancipated from slavery in the 1830s and his father fought for the Union Navy during the American Civil War. As a child, Burleigh’s grandfather taught him the melodies that were commonly sung by enslaved African-Americans. In his teenage years he developed into a fine classical singer, making regular solo appearances at churches and synagogues.

At the age of 26 he moved to New York to study at the National Conservatory of Music, which coincided with the arrival of the Conservatory’s new director, Antonín Dvořák, who’d been brought to America with the specific role of laying the foundations of an authentic national musical style. Dvořák was thrilled by Burleigh’s voice, and there’s some evidence to suggest that it was Burleigh who introduced certain melodies to Dvořák which would find their way into the ‘New World’ Symphony and ‘American’ String Quartet.

Burleigh’s long career was centred around performing and publishing his arrangements, helping to popularise Swing Low, Deep River and Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen. He died at the age of 82 and his body is interred in Erie, the town where he was born and which celebrates his music and wider legacy with a week-long annual festival.

This is a traditional song created by enslaved Africans in America. The composer and singer Harry Burleigh was the grandchild of slaves who became a famous musician and helped share music by black people with the rest of the world. This simple song looks forward to a better time when injustices like slavery and racism will end. Perhaps you can hear both the sadness and the hope in this beautiful music.

After starting to learn the trumpet at the age of ten, Britta Byström soon started to compose her own music. Most of her output is for orchestra, but her quest for new and surprising sonorities can also be heard in chamber works including a string quartet (Letter in April), and a piano trio (Symphony in Yellow) as well as the present horn trio. Byström’s Kinderszenen borrows its title from Schumann’s famous piano work and its scoring from Brahms’s Horn Trio, but the music is entirely original in colour and substance. Bystöm says that before starting a composition she always has a clear picture in her mind of the musical world she wants to create, and this is apparent from the first notes of Kinderszenen where fragmentary themes on violin and horn are set against repeated notes on the piano, suggesting perhaps that Byström’s childhood scenes are those of a Swedish winter. The form of this single movement and its contrasting episodes seem to evolve naturally: a fast section is notable for its rhythmic energy but fizzles out on a sustained horn note, giving way to a passage of eerie calm with the violin playing pizzicato against piano trills. A brief return to the vigour of the fast music leads to a recollection of the opening before Kinderszenen dissolves into silence.

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About The Music

About The Music: B

BACEWICZ Grazyna, Trio for Oboe, Violin and Cello

BACH J.S., Partita No.1 for solo violin, BWV 1002

BACH J.S., Sonata No.1 for solo violin, BWV 1001

BACH Johann Sebastian, Cello Suites

BACH Johann Sebastian, Cello Suites 5 & 6

BACH Johann Sebastian, Cello Suites No.2 & No.4

BACH Johann Sebastian, Chaconne from Partita No.2 in D minor BWV1004

BACH Johann Sebastian, English Suite No.2 in A minor BWV 807

BACH Johann Sebastian, Goldberg Variations (arranged for String Trio by Dmitri Sitkovetsky)

BACH Johann Sebastian, Prelude & Fugue in E minor BWV900

BACH Johann Sebastian, Prelude & Fugue in F BWV880

BACH Johann Sebastian, Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin

BACH Johann Sebastian, Suite in E minor BWV 996

BACH Johann Sebastian, The Art of Fugue Contrapunctus 14

BACH Johann Sebastian, The Art of Fugue, Contrapunctus 14 arr. for string quartet

BACH Johann Sebastian, The Well-Tempered Clavier

BARBER Samuel, Cello Sonata Op.6

BARBER Samuel, Summer Music

BARTÓK Béla, Sonata for solo violin

BAUER Marion, From the New Hampshire Woods, Op.12 No.1 ‘White Birches’

BAX Arnold, Oboe Quintet

BEAMISH Sally, Trance

BEETHOVEN ‘The Harp’ Quartet (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)

BEETHOVEN Ludwig Van, ‘Moonlight’ Sonata: Piano Sonata in C sharp minor, Op.27 No.2

BEETHOVEN Ludwig Van, 12 Variations on ‘See the conqu’ring hero comes’ from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus

BEETHOVEN Ludwig Van, Bagatelle in A Op.33 No.4

BEETHOVEN Ludwig Van, Cello Sonata Op.102 No.1

BEETHOVEN Ludwig Van, Cello Sonatas Op.5 No.1 & No.2

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, National Airs for flute and piano Op.105 & Op.107

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, Octet in E flat Op.103

BEETHOVEN Ludwig Van, Piano Sonata No.14 in C sharp minor Op.27 No.2 (Moonlight)

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, Piano Sonata No.30 in E Op.109

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, Piano Sonata No.31 in A flat Op.110

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, Piano Sonata No.32 in C minor Op.111

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, Piano Trio in E flat Op.1 No.1

BEETHOVEN Ludwig Van, Quartet in F, Op.59 No.1

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, Quintet for wind and piano in E flat Op.16

BEETHOVEN Ludwig Van, Septet in E flat Op.20

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, Sextet in E flat Op.71

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, Sonata for Cello and Piano in D Op.102 No.2

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, String Quartet in D Op.18 No.3

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, String Quartet in E flat Op.127

BEETHOVEN Ludwig Van, String Quartet in E minor Op.59 No.2 Razumovsky

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, String Quartet in F minor Op.95 Serioso

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, String Quartet in F Op.135

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, String Quartet in F Op.59 No.1 Razumovsky

BEETHOVEN Ludwig Van, Variations on ‘God Save the King’

BEETHOVEN Ludwig, Septet in E flat Op.20

BEETHOVEN Septet (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)

BEETHOVEN, Ludwig van Violin Sonata in F, Op.24 ‘Spring’

BENNETT Richard Rodney, Four Country Dances

BERGE Sigurd, Horn-lokk

BERWALD Franz, Grand Septet in B flat

BOULANGER Lili, D’un matin de printemps

BOULANGER Lili, D’un soir triste, d’un matin de printemps

BOULANGER Lili, Nocturne

BOULANGER Lili, Nocturne et Cortège

BOULANGER Lili, Two Pieces for Violin & Piano

BOULANGER Nadia, Three pieces for cello and piano

BOUSTANY Wissam, …And the Wind Whispered…

BRAHMS Clarinet Quintet (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)

BRAHMS Johannes, Clarinet Quintet Op.115

BRAHMS Johannes, Clarinet Trio in A minor Op.114

BRAHMS Johannes, Hungarian Dances

BRAHMS Johannes, Hungarian Dances for piano four hands

BRAHMS Johannes, Piano Quintet in F minor Op.34

BRAHMS Johannes, Piano Trio No.2

BRAHMS Johannes, Serenade No. 1 in D Op. 11, nonet version reconstructed by David Walter

BRAHMS Johannes, String Quartet in C minor Op.51 No.1

BRAHMS Johannes, Three Intermezzos Op.117

BRAHMS Johannes, Viola Sonata in F minor Op.120 No.1

BRIDGE Frank, Phantasy Piano Quartet in F sharp minor H.94

BRITTEN Benjamin, Phantasy Quartet in F sharp minor

BRITTEN Benjamin, Sinfonietta Op.1

BRITTEN Benjamin, String Quartet No. 2, Op. 36

BRITTEN Benjamin, Three Divertimenti for String Quartet

BRUCH Max, Eight Pieces Op.83 for clarinet, viola and piano (extracts)

BURLEIGH Henry Thacker, I’ve been in the storm & Oh Lord, what a morning