I wrote Many Many Cadences for Spektral Quartet and this recording is from their Grammy-nominated 2016 album Serious Business. We first met at The Walden School when they were ensemble-in-residence and we soon found that we were all pondering approaches to musical humor. In this piece I stretch the listeners’ perception of cadences by recontextualizing these predictable chord progressions in very fast cells that are constantly changing key and register. These lonely, disjunct ends-of-phrases eventually congeal and transform into new kinds of phrases and sound objects.

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‘Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft’ is from the Rückert-Lieder by Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), composed in the summer of 1901 and evoking the gentle fragrance of a lime tree which the poet associated with his love.

Nigel Simeone © 2024 

Hasta Alicia Baila (Until Alicia Dances), a Cuban rumba (guaguancó), was written by Eduardo Martín for Alicia, a friend of the composer’s, in an attempt to get her up and dancing! The guaguancó is a traditional ‘call and response’ form of the rumba, featuring percussive effects from instruments such as the tumba, llamador, and quinto. The guitars imitate these drums throughout the piece, giving it its rhythmic drive and authentic flavour.

Prologue. Allegretto 
Tango. Lento  
Charleston. Poco a poco allegro 
Finale. Tempo di marcia 
 

Martinů’s jazz ballet La Revue de Cuisine was composed in 1927 for an ensemble of six instruments: clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, violin, cello and piano. Based on a deliciously absurd scenario by Jarmila Kröschlová, it tells the story of the precarious love life of some kitchen utensils: The marriage of the Pot and the Lid is in danger of being broken up by the smooth-talking Twirling Stick. The pot succumbs to his charms, while the Dishcloth makes eyes at Lid but is challenged to a duel by the Broom. Eventually the Pot and the Lid kiss and make up while the Twirling Stick goes off with the Dishcloth. The premiere of the ballet in Prague (1927) was given under the title of The Temptation of the Saintly Cooking Pot and subsequently Martinů derived a four-movement suite from his score, gave it a new title and achieved his first international success: after a performance given in Paris on 5 January 1930 at a concert put on by the great French pianist Alfred Cortot, the publisher Alphonse Leduc immediately signed up Martinů and quickly published the score and parts.  

The first movement begins with a jaunty trumpet fanfare, followed by a lop-sided piano vamp and the gradual entrance of the rest of the ensemble for a high-spirited movement that reaches a climax with the return of the opening fanfare. The second movement is a moody Tango, and the third an entertaining Charleston. For the finale, Martinů recalls the opening fanfare (this time on the bassoon) before launching into a joyous March that avoids rhythmic symmetry and has some syncopations that recall Martinů’s interest in jazz. In fact, throughout this delightful work the sound of the small ensemble chosen by Martinů intentionally reflects the sound of dance bands from the time.  

Nigel Simeone © 2011 

Poco allegro
Andante
Allegretto

This work dates from the last year of Martinů’s life and he wrote it with a specific ensemble in mind: the Czech Nonet. This Nonet is one of Martinů’s most fluent and skilful chamber works and in the outer movements his music suggests something akin to the joyful music-making of a group of Czech folk musicians. The heart of the work is the lyrical central Andante.

Martinů was far from home (he spent his last years in Switzerland) and in this movement he seems to bid a fond farewell to the Czech homeland that he knew he would never see again. The first performance was given by the Czech Nonet at the Salzburg Festival on 27 July 1959 and Martinů died a month later, on 28 August.

Nigel Simeone © 2011

Moderato poco allegro
Adagio – Andante poco moderato – Poco allegro

Martinů composed this unusually scored quartet in New York during autumn 1947 and it was first performed in November that year. The dedicatee was Leopold Mannes, a fascinating character in American musical life who invented Kodachrome colour film in his spare time. In 1936, Mannes became President of Mannes College in succession to his father. He attracted an impressive roster of musicians to the faculty, including the conductor George Szell, the theorist Heinrich Schenker, and Martinů for composition. The quartet is a diverting and charming work in two movements, the second of which combines a more serious slow movement with a jolly and affirmative finale which is full of Martinů’s typical rhythmic drive and strong sense of harmonic direction, ending firmly in C major.

Nigel Simeone © 2011

Poco allegro
Poco andante
Allegro

It was hearing a performance of Mozart’s Duo in B flat played by Josef and Lillian Fuchs (brother and sister) that inspired Martinů to compose his Three Madrigals in February–March 1947, with the subtitle ‘Duo No. 1’ on the autograph manuscript. Martinů wrote to his friend Miloš Šafránek on 16 May 1947: ‘I have written Three Madrigals for violin and viola … for J. Fuchs and Lillian (his sister) who is a great and unique viola player. I heard them at a concert and was amazed by their artistic quality, so I wrote the Duo for them, and it seems to be good. They are both excited and will put it in their Carnegie recital.’ This was given on 22 December 1947 and in the next day’s New York Times, the venerated critic Virgil Thomson gave a warm welcome to the new work: ‘a delight for musical fantasy, for ingenious figuration [and] for Renaissance-style evocation.’ Josef and Lillian Fuchs performed the Madrigals on many more occasions and when their recording of the work was issued in 1950, it was coupled, appropriately, with the Mozart Duo in B flat.

© Nigel Simeone

Edmund Meisel was born in Vienna but moved to Berlin as a child. Little is known about his musical education, but he was working as a violinst in Berlin orchestras while still in his teens. The vibrant theatrical life of Berlin in the Weimar years provided his first work as a composer, writing incidental music for the agitprop stage productions by Erwin Piscator and including at least one project with Bertolt Brecht (a radio adaptation of Mann ist Mann). It was thanks to his association with Piscator that Meisel became involved with composing the score for the silent film Battleship Potemkin. In 1925, the Soviet Central Committee asked Mosfilm to make a new film to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first Russian Revolution in 1905. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, the film is based on a real historical event. It is set in 1905 aboard the Imperial Navy battleship Potemkin in the Black Sea port of Odessa. Sailing out of port with the red Socialist flag, the other Imperialist ships refuse to open fire and cheer the defiant sailors of the Potemkin. On its release, Battleship Potemkin was a great success in the Soviet Union and it was quickly distributed to other European countries. In Britain its central themes of promoting revolution and social change worried the film censors, but in Germany it was a huge success, distributed by Prometheus Films.

Prometheus decided that for the film to make its fullest impact, it needed a musical score to accompany the silent images. Meisel was asked to compose the score and was given less than two weeks to write it, as the German release date was already announced. Eisenstein was enthusiastic about the idea of adding music, and even made specific suggestions to Meisel, asking for the inclusion of some revolutionary songs (from Russia, France and elsewhere) and also to produce music of ‘deafening fury and stark rhythms’ for moments of the greatest dramatic power.

So it was that a Viennese-born Berliner composed the score for Eisenstein’s Russian classic. He did so without any of the synchronisation tools used by more recent film composers, and a tight budget meant that as well as time pressure, he was also limited to an orchestra of 16 players. Meisel’s remarkable achievement in Battleship Potemkin has been well summarised by the film music critic Craig Lysy: ‘In every way [Meisel] succeeded in empowering Eisenstein’s narrative with inspired music which helped earn the film the accolade as one of the greatest films in cinematic history.’

Meisel’s pioneering score started a trend for new large-scale film scores in the final years of the silent era. In 1927, Eisenstein asked Meisel to provide a score for his film October: Ten Days that Shook the World, and Gottfried Huppertz composed his score for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Major figures in European symphonic music also became involved in writing for epic film dramas: Arthur Honegger composed a score for Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927) and Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his music for New Babylon, a Soviet film set at the time of the 1871 Paris Commune.

In other words, Meisel should be considered one of the great innovators in film music history, producing a specially-composed score for a full-length film in which images and sound were integrated to create – together – a vastly richer dramatic effect. Previous scores had usually been pot-pourris of existing music, strung together to be an approximate match for the on-screen action. Meisel broke with that tradition, creating a score whose architecture (and detail) matched Eisenstein’s montage-like construction. In 1934, the commentator Ernest Borneman wrote about Meisel’s technique in an article for Sight and Sound: ‘Meisel analysed the montage of some famous silent films in regard to rhythm, emphasis, emotional climax and mood. To each separate shot he assigned a certain musical theme. Then he directly combined the separate themes, using the rhythms, emphasis and climaxes of the visual montage for the organisation of his music. He wished to prove by this experiment that the montage of a good film is based on the same rules and develops in the same way as music … By far the best result was from Eisenstein’s Potemkin.’ Meisel’s own career as a ground-breaking composer of film music lasted barely five years: he died in 1930 at the age of 36.

Mendelssohn wrote this Capriccio for string quartet in 1843 and it was published posthumously as one of his Four Pieces for String Quartet, Op. 81. It opens as a kind of cradle song, the tempo Andante con moto and the violin melody unfolding over a rocking accompaniment. Mendelssohn then springs a surprise: after a kind of mini-cadenza for the first violin, the music gives way to a rapid fugue, marked Allegro fugato, assai vivace. What follows is a dramatic demonstration of Mendelssohn’s ability to fuse the discipline of fugal writing with an acute sense of musical drama, leading to a splendidly abrupt close with three brusque chords. 

Nigel Simeone 2024 

The high opus number of Mendelssohn’s Fugue in E flat major is misleading. The four pieces were published after the composer’s death and he never intended them to be grouped together, not least because they were written twenty years apart. The Fugue is the earliest, composed in 1827, when Mendelssohn was 18 years old. It opens with the subject on the viola, answered in turn by the second violin, then the first and finally the cello. Mendelssohn’s astonishing gifts were already fully apparent from even earlier works (above all in the Octet), but this Fugue is a remarkable demonstration of his effortless handling of counterpoint and fugal technique. It is also an important reminder of the impact which the late Beethoven quartets had on the younger man: understandably, he was awe-struck by Beethoven’s reinvention of fugal writing in these works and became obsessed with them. While Mendelssohn’s fugue is less overtly dramatic than any of Beethoven’s – in fact it is rather elegant – the idea of this piece being a kind of homage to Mendelssohn’s musical gods of Bach and Beethoven is surely not far-fetched. 

Nigel Simeone 2024

One of the marvels of nineteenth-century chamber music, Mendelssohn’s Octet was originally finished in October 1825, when the composer was 16 years old. He later revised it before publication. The miracle of this work is not the youthfulness of its creator but the astonishing individuality of its music – regardless of how old its composer was at the time. The arching opening theme of the first movement, underpinned by syncopated chords, reveals the originality of Mendelssohn’s creative voice as never before. The way in which he generates a constant stream of musical ideas is all his own, but this was a composer who knew how to draw on the refinement of Mozart, the power of Beethoven and the contrapuntal intricacy of Bach for his own expressive purposes. The slow movement begins gently but becomes increasingly uneasy, while the dizzying Scherzo was inspired by the ‘Walpurgisnacht’ scene from Goethe’s Faust. The Presto finale follows naturally from this, beginning with an energetic fugal subject that generates unstoppable momentum and inspired elation.  

Nigel Simeone © 2015

i. Allegro energico e fuoco

ii. Andante espressivo

iii. Scherzo. Molto Allegro quasi Presto

iv. Allegro appassionato

The C minor Piano Trio was started in February 1845 and finished in Frankfurt on 30 April. Mendelssohn gave the manuscript to his sister Fanny on her birthday, 14 May, and the published score has a dedication to Louis Spohr. The first performance was given in the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 20 December 1845, performed by Ferdinand David, Carl Wittmann and Mendelssohn himself. Mendelssohn’s own view of the work was equivocal: he told Spohr that ‘nothing seems good enough to me, and in fact neither does this trio.’ But this is to underestimate the power and intensity of the work. While it may not have the melodic exuberance of its predecessor (the better-known Piano Trio in D minor), it is dramatic and serious.

In the first movement, the darkly energetic opening theme on the piano accompanied by sustained strings sets the tone for much of what follows, and as a contrast it, Mendelssohn produces a gloriously ardent second theme in E flat major which provides most of the material for the development section, while the close of the movement has a vehemence that recalls Beethoven. The slow movement is a kind of Barcarolle (a favourite Mendelssohn form in solo piano works: there are several ‘Venetian Gondola Songs’ among his Songs without Words). The Scherzo is one of Mendelssohn’s distinctive and very fast duple-time movements, similar to the scherzo in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (composed in 1843). For the finale, Mendelssohn took his inspiration from J.S. Bach whose music he had done so much to revive. It begins as a kind of titanic Gigue, but it’s at the centre of the movement that the Bachian parallels are most striking. Mendelssohn introduces a chorale-like idea on the piano, its second phrase resembling the second line of the chorale known in English-speaking world as ‘All people that on earth do dwell’ (‘Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice’). As a composer with thoroughly Romantic sensibilities, Mendelssohn uses this to drive towards an exultant climax in C major.

© Nigel Simeone

Molto allegro ed agitato
Andante con moto tranquillo
Scherzo. Leggiero e vivace
Finale. Allegro assai appassionato

Mendelssohn’s First Piano Trio was started in February 1839, but it was not until the summer that he got down to serious work (on the autograph manuscript the first movement is dated ‘6 June 1839’ and the last ’18 July 1839’), and he put the finishing touches to it in September. It was a busy year for Mendelssohn, not only as a composer but also as a conductor: on 21 March he conducted the world première of Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major Symphony.

The first performance of Mendelssohn’s D minor Trio took place in the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 1 February 1840, played by Mendelssohn himself with the violinist Ferdinand David and cellist Carl Wittmann. Robert Schumann’s review in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik was ecstatic: he hailed Mendelssohn as ‘the Mozart of the nineteenth century’ and ‘the most brilliant of modern musicians.’ High praise indeed, but fully justified by a work that has a brooding passion that is at once very much of its time but also harks back to the Mozart of the Don Giovanni Overture and to the D minor Piano Concerto (K466) – a work which Mendelssohn performed on a number of occasions and for which he composed cadenzas. The Mendelssohn scholar Larry Todd has echoed Schumann’s view, describing the work as ‘a masterful trio with subtle relationships between the movements, and a psychological curve that incorporates the agitated brooding of the first, subdued introspection of the second and the playful frivolity of the third. The finale combines all three moods, before reconciling them in the celebratory D-major ending.’

© Nigel Simeone

The four pieces for string quartet published in 1850 as Mendelssohn’s Op. 81 were assembled from music written over a twenty-year period: the earliest dates from 1827 while the Scherzo was composed in 1847, the year of Mendelssohn’s death. The gossamer lightness of his scherzos was already apparent in the early Octet, and perhaps the most celebrated example was composed in 1842 for the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Marked Allegro leggiero, the same inspired lightness of touch and dazzling flair for the most delicate instrumental writing are both apparent in this late example of a stand-alone Scherzo for string quartet. 

Nigel Simeone © 2024 

Molto allegro vivace
Menuetto. Un poco Allegretto
Andante espressivo ma con moto
Presto con brio

Mendelssohn married Cécile Jeanrenaud in 1837 and it was under the influence of this blissfully happy time in his life that he returned to the string quartet for the first time in almost ten years. During their honeymoon he composed the Quartet in E minor published as Op.44 No.2, to which two companion pieces were added in 1838: the Quartet in E flat Op.44 No.3 and the present Quartet in D major – published as the first of the set, but actually the last of the three to be completed, started in April 1838, but not finished until 24 July. It is a work that recaptures something of the untroubled rapture of the much earlier Octet, but almost as soon as the ink was dry on the new quartet, Mendelssohn and his wife succumbed to the measles epidemic that was sweeping through Leipzig at the time. As a result of this illness, Mendelssohn was unable to conduct his scheduled concerts in September, and it was not until October that he was able to resume his duties as conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts.

The first movement of the D major Quartet opens with a soaring, joyful theme that seems reminiscent of the Octet, though within a more restrained and consciously Classical framework. For the only time in his quartets Mendelssohn wrote a Minuet as the second movement. This elegantly-crafted piece is perhaps an indication of the more refined but less progressive approach of his music at the time, something that the Mendelssohn biographer Eric Werner attributed to the composer’s domestic bliss, and his ‘wish to please and impress Cécile.’ Werner went so far as to suggest that this ‘weakened his artistic integrity’, a claim that seems to be firmly contradicted by the effectiveness of the D major Quartet. The Andante espressivo is a gentle interlude before the exciting finale: launched with a tremendous energy that is sustained almost throughout and which brings the work to a rousing conclusion. The first performance was given from the composer’s manuscript on 16 February 1839 in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, played by a quartet led by Ferdinand David. Schumann described the character of his friend Mendelssohn’s music of this period with typical perceptiveness: ‘A smile hovers round his mouth, but it is that of delight in his art, of quiet self-sufficiency in an intimate circle.’

Nigel Simeone © 2011

Mendelssohn was fourteen years old when he composed his E flat major String Quartet in 1823 – two years before Beethoven completed the first of his ‘late’ quartets, and two years before Mendelssohn himself wrote the first version of his Octet. It was published posthumously (in 1879) but is much less well-known than Mendelssohn’s mature quartets. Prodigiously gifted though he was, Mendelssohn was still finding his way stylistically so this work owes much to the models of Haydn and Mozart and, in the finale, to Bach. The Mendelssohn authority R. Larry Todd wrote that the music of the composer’s earliest attempt at writing a full-length string quartet was ‘firmly grounded in the classical tradition’ – but Todd also noted that it was completed in just eleven days: the first page of the autograph manuscript is dated 25 March 1823 and the last page 5 April. The opening Allegro moderato is an elegant, rather Mozartian movement in sonata form, but the Adagio non troppo, in C minor, is darker, with more adventurous chromatic harmony. The Minuet and Trio has distinct echoes of Haydn while the finale is a contrapuntal tour de force: a double fugue which was probably modelled on the fugal finales in three of Haydn’s Op. 20 quartets. 

Nigel Simeone © 2024 

Adagio non troppo – Allegro non tardante
Canzonetta: Allegretto
Andante espressivo
Molto allegro e vivace

Mendelssohn completed this string quartet on the first of his many visits to London (where he went to conduct the Philharmonic Society). Though it was the first to be published during his lifetime, he wrote an earlier one in the same key when he was 14 and the A minor quartet Op.13 was actually finished in 1827. By the time he composed the Quartet Op.12, Mendelssohn had also written the Octet (1825) and the String Quintet in A major – and it has much the same kind of inspired fluency. The first movement begins with a slow introduction that soon gives way to a closely-argued Allegro. The main influence is Beethoven and particularly late Beethoven – music that was very novel and only recently published. This can be seen in the unusual structure of the second movement (in place of a conventional Scherzo), and in the most unusual way in which the second theme of the first movement returns to striking effect in the finale. The main theme of the slow movement is one of Mendelssohn’s most inspired. In the Finale, Mendelssohn combines something of the urgency of Beethoven with a character that is entirely his own.

Nigel Simeone ©2014

The last of Felix Mendelssohn’s string quartets was composed in August–September 1847 at Interlaken, a few months after the death of his sister, Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn. Written as an instrumental Requiem in her memory, it was completed shortly before Mendelssohn’s own death. The first movement is defiant and agitated, while the Scherzo is most unlike Mendelssohn’s usual Scherzo style: this is earnest, dark and intense music. The deeply-felt Adagio is the emotional heart of the work, and the movement that is most obviously elegiac in character. The uneasy start of the finale, marked by syncopations and trills, finds moments of lyricism (including some self-quotations) as well as outbursts of anger. Few works in Mendelssohn’s output are so personal, and so overtly emotional. Though Mendelssohn heard the work played privately, the first public performance took place after his death. It was given in Leipzig by a quartet led by Joseph Joachim at a memorial concert on 4 November 1848 – the first anniversary of Mendelssohn’s death.  

© Nigel Simeone 

Adagio – Allegro vivace

Adagio non lento

Intermezzo. Allegretto con moto – Allegro di molto

Presto – Adagio non lento

Mendelssohn composed this quartet in 1827, while he was still in his teens but two years after the Octet. Written just months after the death of Beethoven, the work heavily influenced by Beethoven’s late quartets which so fascinated the young Mendelssohn at the same time as they shocked and appalled many of his older contemporaries. The A minor Quartet opens with a slow introduction that quotes from a Mendelssohn song (“Ist es wahr?” – “Is it true?” – an echo of Beethoven’s “Muss es sein?” in Op.135). The three-note motif that Mendelssohn derives from his song reappears in all four movements. After the drama of the first movement and the Adagio with its stern central fugal section, the Intermezzo brings us closer to the world of the Octet’s Scherzo or the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream that dates from the same period. The finale is modelled directly on the finale of Beethoven’s Op.132 Quartet, also in A minor. After an unusual violin cadenza over a tremolo accompaniment, the main part of the movement is driving and passionate, its main themes owing much to Beethoven’s example, until Mendelssohn – in a daring move – dissolves the musical action before a brief concluding Adagio where the “Ist es wahr?” music from the start makes a poignant return.

Nigel Simeone © 2012

1. Allegro con moto
2. Intermezzo: Andante sostenuto
3. Scherzo: Allegro di molto
4. Allegro vivace

 Another remarkable product of Mendelssohn’s prodigious teenage years, his String Quintet in A major was completed in 1826, just after he had written the Octet, though in 1832 he substituted the original Minuet second movement for the slow intermezzo, written in memory of his violinist friend Eduard Rietz. The scoring is the ‘Mozart’ ensemble, of two violins, two violas and cello. The Allegro con moto, in triple time, opens with an elegant violin theme, but the texture soon becomes more animated as livelier ideas emerge. Mendelssohn uses all five instruments with typical ingenuity to create a rich texture. The Intermezzo, marked Andante sostenuto, is a warmly expressive song-like movement, full of tenderness and reflecting the deep affection Mendelssohn had for Rietz who died of consumption in 1832 (his younger brother Julius was a lifelong friend of Mendelssohn’s). The Scherzo (in 2/4 time) is a fine early example of a type of movement Mendelssohn was to make his own, something he succeeded in doing without ever repeating himself. This one is beautifully scored for the five string instruments, with many delicate and imaginative touches, and an enchanting pianissimo close. The finale is the movement which most clearly reflects the influence of Beethoven on the young Mendelssohn – not the late masterpieces this time, but Beethoven’s earlier works such as the Op. 18 quartets. Even so, Mendelssohn never merely imitated, and his unmistakable stylistic fingerprints are on every page as this work heads to its very satisfying conclusion. 

Nigel Simeone 2024 

Mendelssohn wrote the Variations concertantes for cello and piano when he was twenty years old. It is one of two pieces that Mendelssohn devoted to his brother Paul, who played cello as a hobby, rather than as a profession like his better-known siblings. Consisting of a theme and 8 following variations, the entire set is lyrical and elegant and showcases a clever thematic dialogue between the cello and the piano. The shifting attention between the two instruments is subtle, with the final variation bringing the piece to a close with an understated ending. 

Felix Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses were completed on 4 June 1841 and had been written to encourage contributions for a statue of Beethoven in Bonn. The work was published along with pieces by Liszt, Chopin, Moscheles and Henselt (among others) in a fund-raising ‘Beethoven-Album’. The piece was much admired at the time by Ignaz Moscheles, Mendelssohn’s friend and fellow-contributor to the album, who often included it in his recital programme. It comprises an original theme followed by 17 sharply contrasted variations, the first group gradually building momentum, a solemn chorale (Variation 14), and the brilliant virtuosity of the closing pages. 

Nigel Simeone

In Robert Schumann’s retrospective of concerts in Leipzig during 1837–8, he wrote that concerts of string quartets in the small hall of the Gewandhaus “gave us many artistic treasures this winter.” These innovative chamber music concerts were established by Ferdinand David, a close friend of Mendelssohn’s and leader of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Schumann singled out Mendelssohn and his two newest string quartets (Op.44 Nos.2 and 3) as works that “wandered through a finely human sphere … in such a sphere we must award the palm to him among all his contemporaries, and only Franz Schubert, had he lived, would have been worthy to award Mendelssohn that palm without disputing it.” The E flat major Quartet Op.44 No.3 was completed in February 1848. The first movement opens with a terse five-note motif and a dotted rhythm. Both these ideas – and the way Mendelssohn uses them to propel the musical argument – show the influence of Beethoven, and they are contrasted with a more lyrical theme. The energy of this movement, and the elegance of its construction, continue into the second movement: a typical Mendelssohn Scherzo, full of dramatic contrasts between loud and soft. After E flat major in the first movement, and the darker C minor in the Scherzo, the rapt, lyrical Adagio is in A flat major. The finale, back in the home key of E flat, is dazzling, full of rapid semiquavers – a virtuoso display written for some of the most gifted quartet players of the time.  

Nigel Simeone © 2012 

Menotti is best known for his operas, ranging from the chilling drama of The Consul to the seasonal delights of Amahl and the Night Visitors. But his lyric gifts have also been directed towards purely instrumental works, including the Cantilena e scherzo, completed in 1977 and first performed on 15 March 1977 at the Alice Tully Hall in New York’s Lincoln Center by an ensemble led by the great Welsh harpist, Ossian Ellis. Menotti’s musical language was in no sense progressive by the 1970s, but the work remains a lovely one. Reviewing the premiere in the New York Times, Donal Henahan wrote that it ‘caressed the ear … lovely on its own terms, a haunting visit to old musical ruins, so to speak.’ The Cantilena opens with a long-breathed melody on the strings, supported by the harp. Chords on the harp introduce the Scherzo. An extended harp cadenza is followed by a varied reprise of the Cantilena.  

© Nigel Simeone

 Anna Meredith wrote this very short string quartet in 2013 for the Maxwell Quartet, who gave the first performance at Inverness Town House on 26 September 2013. According to her own note on the work, ‘it was written as a partner piece to Songs for the M8 [a quartet from 2005] and when I was thinking about writing it, I found myself looking back to the same (grungy, teenagery 1990s) time.’ Founded in 1989, Teenage Fanclub are a Scottish alternative rock band and Meredith was an enthusiastic fan in the 1990s. A Short Tribute does not involve any quotation but as Meredith explains: ‘I didn’t want to take any material directly from the band but have worked with layering scaley step lines and rotating chords, and keeping the texture pizzicato throughout.’ 

© Nigel Simeone

Anna Meredith is another musician writing music today. She makes music for her band as well as for classical musicians, often mixing up instruments usually seen in an orchestra with rock and pop instruments. This piece combines the two and is a tribute to one of her favourite bands performed by string quartet who don’t use their bows at all but pluck their instruments in a technique called ‘pizzicato’.

Starting in 1897, the French Ministry of Education commissioned a new solo de concours for the annual competition at the Paris Conservatoire. Within a few years, these included works by Charles-Marie Widor, André Messager, Augusta Holmès, Reynaldo Hahn and Debussy (the Première rhapsodie). Messager’s piece was written for the competition in 1899. By this time, he had become an extremely successful theatre composer, with works such as the ballet Les deux pigeons and the comic opera Véronique, but in 1898 he agreed to become conductor of the Opéra-comique in Paris and for several years had much less time for composing. He conducted the first performances in France of Puccini’s Tosca and Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel as well as the world premieres of Charpentier’s Louise and, most importantly, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, a performance which prompted Debussy to describe Messager as ‘the ideal conductor’. A lifelong friend of Fauré, Messager was an astonishingly versatile musician and his Solo de concours is an attractive demonstration of his ability to test virtuosity at the same time as producing memorable melodies. An Allegro non troppo gives way to a central Andante before a return of the opening material and a brief, brilliant coda.  

© Nigel Simeone 

On 9 March 1971, Messiaen’s former pupil Jean-Pierre Guézec died at the age of thirty-six. At the Royan Festival a few weeks later, a musical ‘Tombeau’ was dedicated to his memory comprising pieces for solo instruments by composers such as Gilbert Amy, Betsy Jolas, Marius Constant and Iannis Xenakis. Messiaen’s piece was for solo horn and it was written within a few days of Guézec’s death (he noted its completion on 20 March). At the Royan concert it was played by Daniel Bourgue under the title found on the earliest manuscript: ‘Piece for horn, in memory of Jean-Pierre Guézec’. Three years later, with the new title Appel interstellaire, it became the sixth movement of Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux étoiles, first performed in New York on 20 November 1974. While Messiaen subsequently insisted that he wanted the movement performed only as part of the larger work, its origins were as an independent solo. It makes extreme demands on the performer, requiring the use of extended techniques such as glissandos, strange, swirling oscillations, and howling sounds. The result is an astonishing piece of virtuoso writing, composed as a highly personal response to the tragedy of Guézec’s early death.   

© Nigel Simeone 

Liturgie de Crystal

Vocalise pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps

Abîme des oiseaux

Intermède

Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus

Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes

Fouillis d’arc-en-ciel, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps

Louange à l’Immortalité de Jésus

Messiaen composed his Quartet for the End of Time during his captivity as a Prisoner of War at Stalag VIII-A in the autumn of 1940. With three fellow-prisoners to write for – a violinist, cellist and clarinetist – he began by composing a short movement for them to play without piano – the ‘Intermède’. Once the camp authorities had found Messiaen a piano, he set to work on a piece that explores the possibilities of the unusual ensemble in typically inventive ways, using the four instruments together on only a few occasions. The clarinet plays a long solo (‘Abîme des oiseaux’) while the cello and violin each have a slow movement with piano – the two ‘Louanges’, both of which Messiaen recycled from works he’d composed in the 1930s: the Fête des Belles Eaux for the 1937 Paris Exposition and the Diptypque for organ. The first performance of the Quartet took place on 15 January 1941 in one of the camp huts, to an audience of a few hundred prisoners. The audience was either entranced or baffled by what they heard on that extraordinary night. A review in the camp newspaper likened the occasion to the premiere of The Rite of Spring, noting that “it’s often a mark of a work’s greatness that it has provoked conflict on the occasion of its birth.”

Nigel Simeone © 2012

Thème – Modéré 
Variation 1 – Modéré 
Variation 2 – Un peu moins Modére 
Variation 3 – Modéré, avec éclat 
Variation 4 – Vif et passionné 
Variation 5 – Tres modéré 
 

Messian wrote his Theme and variations as a wedding present for his first wife, violinist Claire Delbos in 1932. The first performance of the piece was held at the Cercle Musical de Paris on 22nd November (which also happened to be Delbos’ birthday). Although this was Messiaen’s first piece of chamber music, it is as equally characteristic and emotionally accessible as his most well-known chamber piece, the Quartet for the End of Time. Structurally, Theme and variations is one of more straightforward works, with a tender and lyrical theme that is followed by increasingly animated variations. The use of a classical theme and variation form is unusual in Messiaen’s writing, but the intense slow burn created by the very slow tempo markings creates a fantastical world entirely within keeping of the rapturous individualism that he is known for. 

This ‘interlude’ was the first part that Olivier Messiaen wrote of his spectacular piece, ‘A Quartet for the End of Time’ which he wrote while a prisoner in Germany during the Second World War. It’s a piece full of angels, birds, heavenly creatures, battles, rainbows and more. This is a quieter space in the middle of the almighty hubbub where three instruments, a violin, a cello and the clarinet come together.

Milhaud grew up in Aix-en-Provence, and was always proud of his Provençal heritage. It was also in Aix that “Le bon Roi René” (René of Anjou, 1409–1480) spent the last years of his life, a he’s celebrated with a handsome statue in the Place Forbin. La Cheminée du Roi René is a suite for wind quintet drawn from the music Milhaud composed for a film score. Each of the short movements is a charming depiction of Good King René’s court as they make their way to favourite spots in Provence. It includes stately dances (the Cortège, and ‘La Maousinglade’, a Sarabande), jugglers, jousting on the River Arc and hunting at Valabre. By the time Milhaud reworked the music he had fled France, occupied by the Nazis from June 1940, and settled at Mills College at Oakland. The first performance of this quintessentially French piece was thus given in California, by the San Francisco Woodwind Quintet, on 5 March 1941.

Nigel Simeone ©

Vif 
Modéré 
Brasileira 
 

In May 1937 Milhaud wrote the incidental music for a production of Charles Vildrac’s play Le médecin volant (after Molière’s play of the same name), which opened at the Théâtre Scaramouche. He quickly repurposed pieces from it to create part of a suite – Scaramouche – for two pianos. As for the title, Milhaud almost certainly took it from the Scaramouche theatre and it was a particularly apt choice: in the traditional commedia dell’arte, Scaramouche is the clown, and the mood of the work is decidedly jovial, particularly the riotous Brazilian-inspired finale. 

Milhaud also made an arrangement of Scaramouche for saxophone (an instrument he had already used to great effect in La création du monde) which he dedicated to Marcel Mule, who first played it in public. Both versions were published by Raymond Deiss, famous for only printing pieces he liked. During the French Occupation, when Milhaud was exiled in America, Deiss used his presses to produce Resistance literature, paying for this with his life when he was executed by the Nazis in 1943. 

© Nigel Simeone

This string quartet is an expansion of a solo work for viola (of the same name) which was commissioned by philanthropist Daniel Cooper for violist Pemi Paull. It’s a piece about process, about Pemi’s musicality, about Bach of course, and in the end, about the Quatuor Bozzini. 

I first took a recording of a short phrase (the first phrase in major) of the famous Chaconne from Bach’s Partita no. 2, performed live by Pemi. I then meticulously transcribed the recording with the help of some software — this is a process I’ve developed over some years to apprehend the exact rhythmic musicality of a performance, capturing as well various artifacts such as the viola’s upper partials as they change within each bow-stroke.   

The opening of the piece is simply this transcribed phrase of Bach, with a harmony of my own making, which turns the phrase into a gently jaunty chorale. From there the phrase goes through a somewhat inaudible process that is simply let to run, until it runs itself out. It’s a constant meandering, a non-developmental piece in an extreme sense. My interest (and freedom) in exploring such a simple form comes directly from working with the Quatuor Bozzini, and this string quartet version is a souvenir of gratitude for years of great inspiration.  

© Cassandra Miller 

Over the course of her career, Cassandra Miller, a Canadian composer currently living in London, has developed her own idiosyncratic way of composing that she calls “transformative mimicry.” Her music is usually rooted in other music that already exists; she listens to it, sings back a version of the parts, and then either sketches them using musical notation, or, in the case of Thanksong, creates an aural score out of her recordings. In a performance of Thanksong, each member of the ensemble listens to their own part on headphones, and plays by ear. 

For this piece, her source material was the third movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 Op. 132 in A minor, known as the Heiliger Dankgesang, after the thankful message Beethoven put at the heading of this movement. He had recently recovered from an intense intestinal illness, and described the third, a slow movement, as a “Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity.” 

Miller’s piece is one to get lost in. It has few grand milestones, preferring instead a more intimate language of blurred, burbling lines, encoding the feeling of players feeling their way through the piece into the composition. It’s delicate, and personal. 

Hugh Morris 2024 

Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk is a composer, singer, director/choreographer and creator of new opera, music-theater works, films and installations. Recognized as one of the most unique and influential artists of our time, she is a pioneer in what is now called “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance.” Monk creates works that thrive at the intersection of music and movement, image and object, light and sound, discovering and weaving together new modes of perception. Her groundbreaking exploration of the voice as an instrument, as an eloquent language in and of itself, expands the boundaries of musical composition, creating landscapes of sound that unearth feelings, energies, and memories for which there are no words.

Celebrated internationally, Ms. Monk’s work has been presented at major venues throughout the world. Over the last six decades, she has been hailed as “a magician of the voice” and “one of America’s coolest composers.” In conjunction with her 50th Season of creating and performing, she was appointed the 2014-15 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall. Recently Monk received three of the highest honors bestowed to a living artist in the United States: induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2019), the 2017 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and a 2015 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.

After graduating Sarah Lawrence College in 1964, Monk moved to New York City and began creating work in galleries, churches, and mostly non-traditional performance spaces. In 1968 she founded The House, a company dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to performance. As a pioneer in site-specific work, she was the first artist to create a piece in the rotunda of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (Juice, 1969), later reconstructing portions of the work for a new piece (Ascension Variations, 2009). Other site-specific pieces include American Archeology #1: Roosevelt Island (1994) and Songs of Ascension (2008) for visual artist Ann Hamilton’s tower. As a filmmaker, Monk has created several award-winning films including Ellis Island (1981) and her first feature, Book of Days (1988), which have screened at numerous film festivals worldwide and on PBS. The restored film of her seminal work, Quarry: An Opera in Three Movements (1976), is now available for streaming. Her films, installations and drawings have been shown in museums and galleries including Exit Art, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, in two Whitney Biennials, and at the Walker Art Center. Monk’s short films and several of her drawings are also included in the collection at MoMA.

In 1965, Monk began her innovative exploration of the voice as a multifaceted instrument, composing solo pieces for unaccompanied voice and voice and keyboard. In 1978 Monk founded Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble to expand her musical textures and forms. She has made more than a dozen recordings, most of which are on the ECM New Series label, including the 2008 Grammy-nominated impermanence and the highly acclaimed On Behalf of Nature (2016). Selected scores of her work are available through Boosey & Hawkes. In addition to her numerous vocal pieces, music-theater works and operas, Monk has created vital new repertoire for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments, with commissions from Carnegie Hall, Michael Tilson Thomas/San Francisco Symphony and New World Symphony, Kronos Quartet, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Master Chorale, among others. In 2019 a new production of her work, ATLAS: an opera in three parts (1991), was directed by Yuval Sharon and presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Her music can also be heard in films by such directors as Terrence Malick, Jean-Luc Godard, David Byrne, and the Coen Brothers.

Monk’s numerous honors and awards include the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, three “Obies” (including an award for Sustained Achievement), and two “Bessie” awards for Sustained Creative Achievement. More recently Ms. Monk was named one of National Public Radio’s 50 Great Voices, the 2012 Composer of the Year by Musical America, and an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Republic of France. She also received a 2020 John Cage Award, 2012 Doris Duke Artist Award, a 2011 Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts, and an inaugural USA Prudential Fellow award in 2006. Monk holds honorary Doctor of Arts degrees from Bard College, Boston Conservatory, Concordia University, Cornish College of the Arts, The Juilliard School, Lafayette College, Mount Holyoke College, San Francisco Art Institute, University of the Arts, and University of Hartford.

Among the many highlights of Monk’s performances from the last twenty-five years is her Vocal Offering for His Holiness the Dalai Lama as part of the World Festival of Sacred Music in Los Angeles in October, 1999. Several marathon performances of her work have taken place in New York at the World Financial Center (1991), Lincoln Center Music Festival (2000), Carnegie’s Zankel Hall (2005 and 2015), Symphony Space (2008) and the Whitney Museum (2009). In February 2012, MONK MIX, a cd of remixes and interpretations featuring 25 artists from the jazz, pop, dj and new music worlds was released. She is the subject of two books of interviews, Conversations with Meredith Monk, by arts critic and Performing Arts Journal editor Bonnie Marranca, and Une voix mystique, by French author Jean-Louis Tallon. Currently Monk is developing Indra’s Net, the third part of a trilogy of music-theater works exploring our interdependent relationship with nature, following the highly acclaimed On Behalf of Nature (2013) and Cellular Songs (2018).

© www.meredithmonk.org

Double Fiesta (1986)

I originally composed “Double Fiesta” in 1986 for solo voice and two pianos. In the piece, I explored a variety of vocal qualities and quick shifts of persona or character within the underlying relaxed but buoyant atmosphere created by the two pianos. “Double Fiesta” was originally part of Acts from Under and Above, a chamber piece presenting images of solitude and friendship.

© Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk was born in New York into a line of musicians on her maternal side: her mother was a well-known singer who performed under the stage name of Audrey Marsh. Even from a young age, Monk had always integrated music with dance, and in the 1960s she formed the avant-garde ensemble The House, dedicated to multi-disciplinary performance. Monk began to experiment with remarkable vocal techniques, and her recordings and live events have been of huge importance to successive generations of experimental musicians, performance artists and film makers.

Monk has also composed many miniatures for piano and has cited the jazz pianist Thelonius Monk as a major inspiration. Railroad (Travel Song) dates from 1981

© Music in the Round

Meredith Monk’s string quartet Stringsongs was written in 2004, and premiered at the Barbican in 2005 by the Kronos Quartet. Her first creation for these forces represented yet another strand for an artist whose uninhibited creating has seen her touch disciplines as varied as singing, composing, dance, choreography, visual art and playwriting. 

In creating this extremely coherent yet slightly strange quartet, Monk got to know the players of the Kronos Quartet intimately. “The music came to life in surprising ways, colored by the distinctive ‘voice’ of each musician,” she wrote in a programme note. Perhaps the best example of this is Tendrils, the beautifully drawn-out, delicately crafted second movement which serves as the piece’s emotional core. Each player plays a wistful monologue, woven into an ensemble texture that spins forward for nine unbroken minutes. 

Tendrils follows Cliff Edge; Monk’s straightforward harmonic and melodic building blocks never quite move as you expect, creating dissonances that are unexpectedly raw, while further intensifying the austere double-stopped chords that become a theme of the movement. The third movement, Obsidian Chorale, is the most ostensibly vocal of the four movements—after the unbroken polyphony of Tendrils, the quartet moves through a sequence of dark, quiet chords in unison, for barely two minutes. Phantom Strings, a fast final movement based on a chugging, uneven ostinato, doesn’t so much conclude as stop, ending this enigmatic piece with more questions than answers. 

Hugh Morris 2024

Harmoniemusik – music for wind ensemble – was something that delighted Mozart, both as a composer (producing what are perhaps the finest serenades for woodwind ever written) and as someone who was willingly entertained by the arrangements that were often made of favourite numbers from operas of the day. Mozart himself alludes to this in a delightful way with the musical entertainment during the banquet in Act Two of Don Giovanni when a wind band plays tunes from operas by Soler, Sarti and also the aria ‘Non più andrai’ from Mozart’s own Nozze di Figaro.

Contemporary wind arrangements of Mozart’s music proliferated, including extracts from Figaro, Don Giovanni and Die Entführung aus dem Serail, while a selection of Harmonie arrangements from Die Zauberflöte was advertised in the Wiener Zeitung in January 1792. All provide delightful music for entertainment and sometimes include interesting clues about performance practice (giving an oboist, for example, an ornamented vocal line that included decorations as performed by singers but not included in the printed score of the opera itself). The identity of early arrangers is sometimes hard to determine, though the oboist Johann Wendt was particularly important as chief arranger for the Harmonie established by Emperor Joseph II in 1782. The best Harmonie arrangements, by Wendt and others, remain a charming way to experience operatic music in a new guise.

© Nigel Simeone

In Act Two of Die Zauberflöte, The Magic Flute, Tamino’s flute has summoned Pamina, but he has taken a vow of silence so cannot talk to her. Fearing that he no longer loves her, Pamina sings this aria in which she wonders if her happiness has gone forever and that she will only find peace in death. Mozart sets these lamentations in a deceptively straightforward style, but also in a key – G minor – which he often reserved for expressing the deepest sadness and tragedy: in parts of the G minor String Quintet and the Symphony No. 40, and in this aria. 

© Nigel Simeone 

Mozart completed his Fantasia in C minor on 20 May 1785 and it was published in December 1785 (in tandem with the Piano Sonata in C minor K457) with a dedication to Therese von Trattner (1758–96), one of Mozart’s favourite pupils. The Fantasia shows Mozart at his most audacious and the Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein wrote that the work ‘gives us the truest picture of Mozart’s mighty powers of improvisation – his ability to indulge in the greatest freedom and boldness of imagination, the most extreme contrast of ideas, the most uninhibited variety of lyric and virtuoso elements.’ This extraordinary work combines tragic grandeur with a relish for extreme chromaticism and bravura, alongside moments of great tenderness.

© Nigel Simeone

1. Allegretto
2. Menuetto and Trio. Allegretto
3. Adagio
4. Allegro

Like Haydn before him, Mozart habitually published his string quartets in groups of six (the ‘Haydn’ Quartets) or three (the ‘Prussian’ Quartets). Between these two sets there is a single work, entered in Mozart’s manuscript catalogue of his own works on 19 August 1786 as ‘a quartet for 2 violins, viola and violoncello’. The autograph manuscript (in the British Library) is simply titled ‘Quartetto’. It was published in 1788 by the Viennese firm founded by Mozart’s friend Franz Anton Hoffmeister and it has come to be known as the ‘Hoffmeister’ Quartet as a result. The first movement opens with a theme in octaves that outlines a descending D major arpeggio – an idea that dominates much of the movement despite some startling harmonic excursions along the way. The development section is marked by almost continuous quaver movement that gives way magically to the opening theme at the start of the recapitulation. The Minuet has an easy-going charm that contrasts with the sterner mood (and minor key) of the Trio section. The great Mozart biographer Alfred Einstein thought the Adagio spoke ‘of past sorrow, with a heretofore unheard-of-depth’. It is not only a deeply touching movement but also an extremely ingenious one, not least when the initial idea heard on two violins returns on viola and cello, investing the same music with a darker, richer texture. The finale is fast and playful, but there’s also astonishing inventiveness in the flow of ideas, from the opening triplets with their chromatic twists to a contrasting theme which scampers up and down the scale. A few sudden and surprising dynamic contrasts keep the listener guessing right to the end.

Nigel Simeone

1. Allegro
2. Menuetto: Allegretto
3. Adagio ma non troppo
4. Adagio – Allegro

Mozart’s string quintets are all for the combination of two violins, two violas and cellos, with the two violas allowing for particularly rich inner parts. The Quintet in G minor K516 was completed on 16 May 1787, four weeks after his C major Quintet – and during the final illness of his father Leopold, who on 28 May. Though Mozart and his father had a strained relationship by this time, the composer was alarmed at Leopold’s illness and reacted with the now famous letter written on April 1787 in which he declared that ‘death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling!’

The G minor Quintet – written by an estranged son who knew that his father was dying – is probably the most tragic of all Mozart’s chamber works. W.W. Cobbett described it as a ‘struggle with destiny’ and found it ‘filled with the resignation of despair’ – though this is rather to overlook the major-key ebullience of the finale. The first movement is full of restrained pathos, both themes melancholy and understated – and all the more wrenching for that. The minuet is sombre and reflective while the slow movement was, for the great Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein, the desolate core of the work. He likened it to ‘the prayer of a lonely one surrounded on all sides by the walls of a deep chasm.’ The element of tragedy is still very apparent in the slow introduction to the finale; but finally Mozart unleashes a more joyous spirit. The French poet Henri Ghéon found an eloquent description for this turning point: ‘Mozart has had enough. He knew how to cry but he did not like to cry or to suffer for too long.’

NIGEL SIMEONE 2010

Andante
Menuetto
Rondo. Allegretto

This is Mozart’s only trio for his three favourite instruments: clarinet, viola and piano. The nickname ‘Kegelstatt’ means ‘skittle alley’, and legend has it that Mozart wrote the work during a game of skittles. This may be far-fetched, especially given the rather noble character of the music, but what is certain is that he wrote the trio in Vienna, and entered it in his own thematic catalogue on 5 August 1786. The first movement is a marvellous example of Mozart’s invention at its most concentrated and unforced: every element in this sonata-form movement derives from the ornamental turn that is such a distinctive feature of the opening. The Minuet surprises by its almost grand character – no mere courtly dance, but something more imposing – and this is followed by an unhurried Rondo that brings this radiant work to a lyrical conclusion.

© Nigel Simeone

This beautiful tune is almost like a lullaby and shows how gentle the sound of the strings can be. Listen to the way the first violin plays a tune and the other three instruments rock gently back and forth underneath, creating a warm blanket of sound. This is music to wrap up warm within. How does it make you feel?

Originally thought to have been written in about 1776, more recent research on the manuscript of these delightful variations has led to a dating of 1781–2, during Mozart’s first year in Vienna, possibly written for some of his more advanced piano pupils. The earliest published edition (issued by the Viennese firm of Torricella in 1785) has a dedication to Josepha Barbara Auerhammer (1758–1820) about whom Mozart had mixed feelings, writing to his father that ‘the girl is a fright! But she plays charmingly.’ Clearly Mozart admired his pupil’s gifts as a player since they gave concerts together in Vienna. The anonymous tune and text of ‘Ah, vous dirai-je maman’ first appeared in song collections in the 1760s. In English-speaking countries, the melody eventually came to be associated with Jane Taylor’s nursery rhyme ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’ though that was originally set to a different tune (the earliest appearance of words and music together was in 1838). 

Following a straightforward presentation of the theme, Mozart embarks on a series of variations, ingenious and playful in mood until Variation VIII when the key changes into the minor for a rather sterner reworking of the tune. A return to the major for Variation IX marks the start of the later variations in which Mozart becomes more creative with his treatment of the theme, particularly in Variation XI – a lyrical Adagio – and the final Variation XII, marked Allegro, in which the tune is transformed into triple time to bring the work to a brilliant close. 

Nigel Simeone © 2024

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his Variations on a Minuet by Duport in 1789: an entry in his thematic catalogue dated Potsdam, 29 April 1789, lists ‘6 Variations for piano’ but in fact there were 9 of them. The cellist and composer Jean-Pierre Duport had been recruited by Frederick the Great in 1773 and after his nephew Friedrich Wilhelm II was crowned King of Prussia in 1786, Duport was made responsible for the chamber music at court. The theme is taken from one of Duport’s cello sonatas and its buoyant mood sets the tone for much of what follows, although the sixth variation is slow and dream-like. 

(C) Nigel Simeone

Allegro 
Larghetto 
Menuetto 
Allegretto con variazioni  

The Clarinet Quintet was completed on 29 September 1789 and written for Mozart’s friend Anton Stadler (1753–1812). The first performance took place a few months later at a concert in Vienna’s Burgtheater on 22 December 1789, with Stadler as the soloist in a programme where the premiere of the Clarinet Quintet was a musical interlude, sandwiched between the two parts of Vincenzo Righini’s cantata The Birth of Apollo, performed by “more than 180 persons.” 

From the start, Mozart is at his most daringly beautiful: the luxuriant voicing of the opening string chords provides a sensuously atmospheric musical springboard for the clarinet’s opening flourish. The rich sonority of the Clarinet Quintet is quite unlike that of any other chamber music by Mozart, but it does have something in common with his opera Così fan tutte (premièred in January 1790), on which he was working at the same time. In particular, the slow movement of the quintet, with muted strings supporting the clarinet, has a quiet rapture that recalls the trio ‘Soave sia il vento’ (with muted strings, and prominent clarinet parts as well as voices) in Così. The finale of the Quintet is a Theme and Variations which begins with folk-like charm, then turns to more melancholy reflection before ending in a spirit of bucolic delight. 

Nigel Simeone © 2012 

Allegro
Adagio
Rondo

Mozart’s Paris visit in 1778 was essentially a job-hunting exercise, and an opportunity to find new patrons and supporters. It wasn’t a success, partly because Paris was not especially enthusiastic about his music at the time. Immediately before that trip, he had been in Mannheim where he met a Dutch surgeon and amateur flautist, Ferdinand De Jean, who commissioned some new pieces from him. The Flute Quartet in D K285, completed on Christmas Day 1777, is a beautifully crafted and often sparkling work: whatever Mozart’s well-known reservations about the flute, they certainly aren’t reflected in the quality of the music he composed here.

Nigel Simeone © 2012

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Rondo: Allegro

The inspiration for Mozart’s famous horn concertos and the Horn Quintet was the Austrian virtuoso Joseph Ignaz Leutgeb (1732–1811). Though sometimes remembered as the victim of some of Mozart’s cruder practical jokes, Leutgeb was by all accounts a magnificent player, and had known the Mozart family ever since joining the Salzburg court orchestra in the early 1760s. When he moved back to Vienna, Leutgeb supplemented his income as a musician by running a cheese and wine shop – but he never stopped performing, and Mozart produced several major works for him to play. The Quintet is in many ways like a horn concerto in miniature. The musicologist Sarah Adams has pointed out that – given Leutgeb’s involvement – it is ‘not surprising that the horn plays a soloistic role, especially in the first movement [which] heightens the impact of the horn’s lyrical entrance by preceding it with tutti fanfares in the strings, a gesture evocative of a concerto’s preparation for the soloist’s entrance.’ This solo role is rather less apparent in the central movement of the Quintet, though it did require Leutgeb’s use of hand-stopping to obtain particular notes on the natural horn of the time (with no valves) – a technique that had attracted praise from critics all over Europe. Scored for horn, violin, two violas and cello, the Quintet was written in Vienna in 1782 – the composer’s first year in the city after his move from Salzburg.

NIGEL SIMEONE 2010

Adagio 
Menuetto I, Menuetto II 
Allegro 
 

Mozart composed his first set of six solo piano sonatas in 1774 and 1775. The 18-year-old composer spent three months in Munich working on his opera La finta giardinera (first performed on 13 January 1775) and the last of the set (K.284) was written for Baron von Dürnitz in Munich. The other five (including K.282) were composed either in Salzburg during 1774, or in Munich on Mozart’s arrival in the city. Each of the sonatas in this set is in three movements, but K.282 is the only one to begin with a slow movement. This is an expansive Adagio based on two themes and incorporating a development of the first theme as part of the second half of the movement, after which this theme is only heard again in the coda. This is followed by a Minuet, in B flat major with a contrasting second Minuet at the centre of the movement in the work’s home key of E flat. The main theme of the finale is notable for its leaping octaves and a mood of high spirits.   

Largo – Allegro moderato
Larghetto
Allegretto

In a letter to his father on 10 April 1784, Mozart described his new Quintet for Piano and Wind as ‘the best piece I have ever written’. Completed on 30 March 1784 it was given its première just two days later on 1 April, at a ‘grand musical concert’ for the benefit of the National Court Theatre in Vienna. The extraordinary programme consisted of two Mozart Symphonies (almost certainly the ‘Haffner’ and the ‘Linz’), an ‘entirely new concerto’ played by Mozart (either K450 or K451, both recently finished), a solo improvisation, three opera arias and the first performance of an ‘entirely new grand quintet’. It was probably the presence of wind players for the symphonies that prompted Mozart to write one of his most original chamber works for this occasion.

While the first movement is designed on almost symphonic lines (complete with substantial slow introduction), it has a gentler sensibility and textures that recall the kind of dialogue between piano and wind that are such a feature of Mozart’s mature piano concertos. After a slow movement that makes the most of the song-like expressiveness of wind instruments, the finale is a sonata rondo – in essence a theme that returns repeatedly within a developing context – that was also much favoured in the piano concertos. The Quintet is highly original in terms of how it is put together, and the daring with which Mozart explores unusual sonorities.

Nigel Simeone © 2011

Largo – Allegro moderato

Larghetto

Allegretto

In a letter to his father on 10 April 1784, Mozart described his new Quintet for Piano and Wind as ‘the best piece I have ever written’. However, the Quintet is not only a magnificent work but a most unusual one: the scoring for piano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn which later inspired Beethoven to produce his quintet for the same combination of instruments was extremely unconventional for the 1780s, but is perhaps explained by the circumstances for which the piece was written. Completed on 30 March 1784 and given its première just two days later on 1 April, the programme was a ‘grand musical concert’ by ‘Herr Kapellmeister Mozart’ for the benefit of the National Court Theatre in Vienna (one of three Mozart concerts given in close succession). The extraordinary programme consisted of two Mozart Symphonies (almost certainly the ‘Haffner’ and the ‘Linz’), an ‘entirely new concerto’ played by Mozart on the fortepiano (either K450 or K451, both recently finished), a solo improvisation on the piano by Mozart, three opera arias (the only music on the programme not by Mozart himself), and the first performance of an ‘entirely new grand quintet’. It was probably the presence of wind players for the symphonies that prompted Mozart to write one of his most original chamber works for the same occasion.

In terms of form, this is an equally original work – drawing on elements of the symphony, solo sonata and concerto. While the first movement is designed on almost symphonic dimensions (complete with substantial slow introduction), it has a gentler sensibility and often uses textures that recall the kind of dialogue between piano and wind instruments that are such a feature of Mozart’s mature piano concertos. After a slow movement that makes the most of the song-like expressive range of wind instruments, the finale uses the form of the sonata rondo – in essence a theme that returns repeatedly within a developing context – that was also much favoured in the piano concertos. The result is a work of immense originality – in terms of how it is put together and the daring with which Mozart uses unusual instrumental sonorities to present his rich and memorable melodic ideas.

Nigel Simeone © 2010

Harmoniemusik or wind band music was extremely popular in the last twenty-five years of the eighteenth century, a time when the Austrian Empire found it fashionable to keep a private wind band, called a Harmonie, and when Emperor Joseph II added a Harmonie to the royal court, the success of this kind of musical organisation was assured. The function of such ensembles was to provide music for social, not military occasions, and the bulk of the music they played were arrangements of popular songs, operas, symphonies and ballets, though there were original compositions too, for outdoor or indoor entertainment, more often than not of a divertimento or serenade-like character. Nearly all of Mozart’s music for wind band dates from this period, when there was a seemingly insatiable demand for such music in Vienna

Apart from the ever-popular Septet, Beethoven’s chamber music with wind scarcely approaches the grandeur and splendour of Mozart’s Serenade in C minor, K.388 or the Serenade in B flat, K.361, possibly the most influential work for wind instruments ever composed.

It has been suggested that this ‘Gran Partita’, as it is called on Mozart’s autograph manuscript – although this title was added at a later date and was probably nothing to do with Mozart – may have been his wedding present to his wife Constanza in 1782. If so, with Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll it must be one of the greatest gifts of music a composer has ever made to his wife. Anton Stadler, the player for whom Mozart wrote his Clarinet Concerto and Clarinet Quintet was one of the two clarinettists in Emperor Joseph’s Harmonie and in 1784 he organised a private concert for his own benefit, which included the first public performance of sections from the Serenade, K.361 which was described in the Wienerblättchen advertisement for the concert as a “great wind piece of a very special kind”.

“A master sat at every instrument – and oh, what an effect! – magnificent and grand. Mozart. That’s a life here, like the land of the blessed, the land of music…” wrote one critic who was present at the concert.

The Serenade in B flat is a seven-movement work scored for six pairs of wind instruments: oboes, clarinets, basset horns, bassoons, horns in F and horns in B flat. To this group of twelve players Mozart adds a string bass to double the second bassoon at the octave as well as having an independent part. For many years before Mozart’s autograph manuscript was consulted, this part was usually performed on a contrabassoon, giving rise to its other nickname, the Serenade for thirteen wind instruments. However, the autograph specifically identifies the instrument as “contrabasso” and the performance instructions “arco” and “pizzicato” also appear in the score.

In K.361 – and of course in the two other wind band serenades he wrote around the same time, those in E flat, K.375 and C minor, K.388 – Mozart shows that he has assimilated perfectly the language and mastered the problems of writing for wind band. This is particularly true of the brooding slow movements of K.361, with their undulating inner lines showing an extraordinary sense of what groups of wind instruments can create in the way of smooth, legato sound. Indeed, this work displays an almost luxuriant character which is missing in K.388 and very much refined in K.375.

The opening movement of K.361 begins with an extensive slow introduction which leads to a festive Molto allegro, typically serenade-like in character. The following minuet has two contrasting trio sections and the Adagio third movement, in E flat major, is an operatic ensemble of passionate feeling and sensuous warmth.

The fourth movement is a second minuet and once again it has two trio sections, after which the Romanze returns to the same key and slow tempo of the third movement, but with a contrasting Allegretto central section in C minor. The sixth movement is a set of six variations on an Allegretto theme in B flat major, and Mozart rounds off this extraordinary work with a high-spirited rondo.

© Jeremy Hayes 2010

Allegro
Tempo di Menuetto

Mozart’s visit to Paris in 1778 – fifteen years after his dazzling first appearance in the city as a child prodigy – was not a success, and the composer was irritated by the apparent indifference of both the musical public and the aristocracy. The highlight of his stay was probably the first performance of the ‘Paris’ Symphony K297 on 18 June. Among the works he composed in Paris was the Violin Sonata in E minor (a key seldom used by Mozart). It has been suggested that the desolate mood of this work – headed “Sonata IV à Paris” in Mozart’s hand on the manuscript – may reflect the tragic illness and death (on 3 July) of Mozart’s mother, who was with him in Paris. While this may be an unduly Romantic interpretation, it is certainly one of Mozart’s bleakest works from this period, and also one of remarkable concentration – in just two movements, the second of which is a melancholy, restrained Minuet in which both players are directed to play sotto voce at several points in the score.

Nigel Simeone © 2012

Allegretto con spirito 

Allegro 
The G Major Sonata for Violin and Piano is the first of a group of six for piano and violin composed in Mannheim and Paris during the course of the tour undertaken by Mozart and his mother during 1777 and 1778. Mozart seems to have been inspired to write these works after a chance discovery. On October 6, 1777, he wrote a letter to his father about a set of sonatas by the Dresden musician Joseph Schuster (1748–1812): “I send my sister herewith six duets for harpsichord and violin by Schuster, which I have often played here. They are not bad. If I stay on I shall write six myself in the same style, as they are very popular here.” What seems to have struck Mozart about Schuster’s sonatas is the independence of the two instrumental parts – with much more prominent writing for violin than in Mozart’s earlier sonatas for this combination. These six sonatas were published in Paris in as Mozart’s “Opus 1”, dedicated to Maria Elisabeth, Electress of the Palatinate. The first movement is a variant of sonata form (without a significant development of the ideas), and the second suggests a bucolic dance, with a minor-key episode at its centre providing a contrast to the sunnier outer sections. 

Nigel Simeone 2013 

i. Allegro di molto
ii. Andante grazioso 

Sonata in A was inspired by Joseph Schuster’s piano and violin duets, which Mozart first played whilst looking for jobs in Mannheim, Germany. The sonata is made of 2 movements. The first is in sonata form, which follows the structure of introducing a musical idea or ideas, exploring it and then returning to the main themes at the end. It is one of Mozart’s most joyous melodies of all his violin sonatas. The second movement is a theme–and–variation form and completely contrasts with the tone of the first. It has a slower tempo and a much more subdued melody and is followed by six variations on the main theme. Typical of theme-and-variation pieces of the time, the penultimate variation is very stark, and in a minor mode. The set ends with an up-tempo dance and is the only piece of the lot that is in triple metre instead of duple. 

i. Allegro 
ii. Menuetto and Trio 
iii. Andante (theme with variations) 
iv. Allegro non troppo 
 

Mozart wrote this String Quartet in A major in 1785, and it was the fifth of his six quartets that he dedicated to contemporary composer Joseph Haydn. Haydn and Mozart held each other’s work in high regard, even sitting down together to play the last three ‘Haydn’ quartets, with Haydn on first violin and Mozart playing viola. String Quartet in A major is much more frugal in its makeup than many of Mozart’s other works, with only a couple of short musical themes being established and explored in each piece. Ironically though, it is one of his longest quartets. It is sometimes known as the Drum because in the sixth variation of the Andante, the cello part has a repeated staccato section that has been likened to a drumbeat. The coda in the Allegro non troppo picks up on Haydn’s practice of ‘joke’ endings, bringing the set to a playful conclusion. 

Allegro non troppo 
Andante con moto 
Menuetto and Trio. Allegro 
Allegro vivace 

In 1785 the Viennese publisher Artaria issued a set of six string quartets by Mozart, the title page of which reads: “Six Quartets for two violins, viola and violoncello. Composed and dedicated to Signor Joseph Haydn, Master of Music for the Prince of Esterhazy, by his friend W.A. Mozart.” This was a most unusual dedication for the time: composers nearly always dedicated works to the aristocrats who supported them financially, not to fellow musicians. The long dedicatory epistle is headed “To my dear friend Haydn”. Mozart explains why he dedicated these quartets to Haydn, wanting to confide them “to the protection and guidance of a very celebrated man, especially when the latter by good fortune was at the same time his best friend.” The quartets, he writes, are “the fruit of a long and laborious study,” but that Haydn himself had told Mozart of his “satisfaction with them during your last visit to this capital. It is this above all which urges me to commend them to you … and to be their father, guide and friend!” 

After hearing these quartets, Haydn declared to Mozart’s father that “Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.” Mozart’s “long and laborious study” included a detailed examination of Haydn’s Quartets Op.33 (composed in 1781), but while he had studied Haydn’s magnificent model, the results were no pastiche, but six works of extraordinary originality. 

The Quartet in E flat, K428, is the third of the “Haydn” Quartets and it was completed in 1783. It opens with a spacious theme in octaves that already reveals some of the chromatic colouring that gives this work its strikingly individual character. This harmonic daring is continued in the extraordinary slow movement – rich and intense – which seems to hint at the music of later composers, especially Brahms (the persistent drooping figure) and even Wagner. The Minuet is bracing but never predictable, while the central Trio is again more sinuous and chromatic. The delectable Rondo finale is a brilliant example of Mozart’s quartet writing at its most witty and inventive: a dazzling homage that captures the very essence of Haydn.  

© Nigel Simeone  

Misha Mullov-Abbado

Award-winning, London-based jazz bass player, composer and arranger Misha Mullov-Abbado is a musician who combines great imagination with raw talent and a clear vision. A BBC New Generation Artist and with three critically acclaimed albums on Edition Records under his name, his most recent offering Dream Circus showcases his ‘melodic gift’ (John Fordham, The Guardian) and ability to masterfully combine beautifully-crafted compositions with free-spirited improvisation. Written over a three-year period the album, produced by fellow Edition Records bassist and bandleader Jasper Høiby (Phronesis), marks the arrival of an artist who has been on a voyage of self-discovery.

His aforementioned collective features some of the most exhilarating and sought-after young musicians in London and was formed during Misha’s final year at Royal Academy of Music. An experienced band-leader and versatile sideman, Misha regularly performs all over the UK and around the world, including at top London venues such as Ronnie Scott’s, the Vortex, King’s Place and Royal Albert Hall. His vast musical travels have led him to work alongside inspiring musicians

such as Alice Zawadzki, Dave O’Higgins, Tim Garland, Viktoria Mullova, Enzo Zirilli, Sam Lee, Rob Luft, Paul Clarvis, Stan Sulzmann and Nessi Gomes.

A prolific composer and arranger in his own right, Misha embraces his jazz, classical, pop and folk influences and writes for a variety of jazz groups, as well as various classical soloists and ensembles. Commissions include work with the Hermes Experiment, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, LSSO, Hill Quartet, Pelleas Ensemble, NW Live Arts and BBC Radio 3, the latter of which commissioned his cello concerto which was premiered at London’s Southbank Centre by Matthew Barley and the BBC Concert Orchestra.

It’s only a matter of time before Misha seals his place on the international scene at the forefront of a new generation of European creative Jazz musicians.

© www.mishamullovabbado.com

The Linden Tree (2015)

Misha Mullov-Abbado’s The Linden Tree retains the familiar folksong-like lyrics but crafts a new melody and accompaniment. The flowing tune stays true to the bittersweet melancholy of the original, but the score also introduces a range of jazz and swing elements into the instrumental accompaniment, from a strolling pizzicato bass to the occasional quasiimprovisatory solo from the clarinet.

© Kate Wakeling (written for the Hermes Experiment’s album Here we are)

Niobe, written in July and November 1987, was commissioned by the Park Lane Group for Ian Hardwick. The Tape was made in the Chiens Interdits Studios in New York; recording engineer, Jonathan Mann.

In Greek mythology, Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus and wife of Amphion, King of Thebes. She unwisely boasted to Leto about her many sons and daughters. Leto, who only had two children, Apollo and Artemis, was angered.

As punishment Apollo slew all of Niobe’s sons and Artemis all her daughters.

Out of pity for Niobe’s inconsolable grief, the Gods changed her into a rock, in which form she continued to weep.

In this short work for solo oboe and Tape, the solo oboe takes the part of Niobe bitterly lamenting her murdered children. The tape with the distant high voices and the slow tolling bells, and later gong, is intended to provide an evocative and descriptive accompaniment.

Thea Musgrave ©

Like Pictures at an Exhibition and his opera Khovanshchina, Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death number among the many works that required finishing or orchestrating by his composer friends. Today, they exist in many orchestrated versions, even serving as a jump-off point for Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony, but the first version to exist was completed by Alexander Glazunov and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, published in 1882, a year after Mussorgsky’s death. 

Each of the four songs—Lullaby, Serenade, Trepak, and Field Marshal—are a poetic snapshot of a specific death; respectively, of a child, a girl, a drunken peasant, and a soldier. Mussorgsky set texts by Arseniy Golenishchev-Kutuzov, a younger friend of the composer, who lodged with Mussorgsky in the mid 1870s. 

In some ways the collection is a tale of Mussorgsky’s domestic situation, setting words by one housemate, and later having it orchestrated by another, in Rimsky-Korsakov. It also tells of Mussorgsky’s preoccupations. Death was firmly on his mind, having experienced the loss of friends—the death of painter Victor Hartmann inspired him to write Pictures at an Exhibition—as well as suffering from frequent alcohol-induced health problems himself.  

This cycle is certainly shadowed by death, but it’s interesting to note how death becomes an inevitable, inescapable fact, and in that way, a figure approaching the benign. (In this way, it bears a resemblance to Schubert’s calm, consoling figure who appears in the second stanza of Death and the Maiden.) In the first setting, Death appears at the door of a mother, then as a mysteriously seductive knight in the second, an enticing figure to a drunken figure in the third, and finally, the inevitable consequence of battle. 

© Hugh Morris 2025

Originally published in two series, The Nursey song cycle was written between 1868 and 1872. Made up of seven songs, Mussorgsky wrote both the music and the words. The text is written musically exactly as it would be spoken, which leads to some unexpected melodies, and a fluid rhythm in an irregular time signature. Mussorgsky was one of the first composers to make music from speech patterns in this way. The style of each song is varied, but Mussorgsky’s appreciation for humour is clear. Although written to express the feelings and ideas of a child, the music is not for children, as it is as advanced as any other work from that era, and offers a fresh but haunting insight into domestic life.