CONCERT OVERVIEW

       For this program, Franz Welser-Möst has chosen a pair of pieces reflecting the sensibilities of two very different centuries.

       First comes a work by Soviet-German composer Alfred Schnittke. His virtuosic and bravura piano concerto is performed by Yefim Bronfman, a Cleveland favorite, playing music filled with wry humor, intense beauty, rhythmic drive, and Shostakovich-like sarcasm.

       Next, Welser-Möst continues his collaboration and exploration with The Cleveland Orchestra’s string section, expanding Beethoven’s “Harp” Quartet to an orchestra of strings.  With Cleveland’s famous chamber music approach — of listening and breathing together — this offers to showcase the group’s extraordinary ensemblework and artistry.  (The “Harp” nickname comes from plucked pizzicato sections in the first movement, but only hint at the beautiful verse-like melodies throughout this piece.)
 

CONCERTO FOR PIANO AND STRINGS
by Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)

Composed:  1979

Scored for:  piano and string orchestra, in one movement

Duration:  nearly 25 minutes

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BORN IN SOVIET RUSSIA to German parents, Schnittke later claimed to be a Russian composer “without any Russian blood.” But he was much more than that, embracing a wide range of styles, many of which surface in any single work. He was inevitably influenced by Prokofiev and Shostakovich; he dabbled in twelve-tone music; he had a feeling for light music and jazz; he became a devout mystic who expressed a deep spirituality, especially in his later music. He eventually left the Soviet Union and settled in Hamburg, Germany.

       Schnittke composed concertos for cello and for violin, and three for the piano. The first, an early work, employs a full orchestra and is set in three movements. In the second, presented on this concert, the piano is supported by strings alone and is set in a single movement. It was written in 1979, in the middle of his career. His third piano concerto was for two players, duettists, together with a chamber orchestra.

       A notable feature of his piano concerto for string orchestra is the composer's fondness for “scrunch chords,” where dense groups of keys are played, sometimes with force, sometimes more delicately. In hearing, the listener’s sense is almost immediately that more than two hands are involved. At other times, the piano writing is thin and delicate, so that every detail is clearly audible. The opening is a good example, where notes are heard in isolated pairs, one immediately after the other. This quiet, bleak texture will return at the end.

       For a good while, the first section of the work, the tempo is marked a calm Andante, with simple textures for the pianist and occasional whirrings from the strings. Dissonances take many forms here, often with the two hands almost, but not quite, reproducing each other a great distance apart.

       Some shrieks from the strings usher in an Allegro section strongly reminiscent of Prokofiev, with pounding rhythms. This is followed, in contrast, by an improvisatory passage, with single lines appearing to trace out a fugue. Another stylistic surprise arrives in the form of a waltz, which builds to a climax, followed by a cadenza.  And then the isolated pairs of notes from the opening are brought back to guide a miraculous fade-out.

       The piano part has not been deliberately made difficult, as is so often the case with concertos that explore virtuosity for its own sake. The player here needs sensitivity, delicacy, and a grasp of dissonance when the fingers have to be configured, and even distorted, in unfamiliar ways.

—program note by Hugh Macdonald © 2020

STRING QUARTET NO. 10 ("HARP)
in E-flat major, Opus 74
by Ludwig van Beethoven (1879-1936)
(performed by string orchestra)

Composed:  1809

Nickname: the "Harp" nickname was assigned by the work's publisher for the pizzicato sections early in the piece that sound like the plucked strings of a harp

Scored for:  string quartet; performed here by string orchestra including basses selectively doubling the cello line

Duration:  nearly 35 minutes

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MOST OF THE MUSIC Beethoven wrote in 1809, the year of this string quartet, is for solo piano or for chamber groups. An exception is the “Emperor” Piano Concerto, No. 5, which shares the key of E-flat major with the quartet.

       Beethoven's first quartets were bundled as a set of six, designed as Opus 18, in emulation of the of Haydn’s and Mozart’s quartet sets, which were his models. The next set included only three, under Opus 59, and known as the “Rasumovsky” quartets after the Russian aristocrat to whom they were dedicated. These were much larger and more explorative works than the first set, with many familiar gestures that we now associate with the heroic middle-period Beethoven. 

       The next quartet, Opus 74, seems to disregard the great aspirations of the previous set and to opt instead for a more poised and classical mood. The scherzo is perhaps an exception, but the other three movements cross no new frontiers, working a now familiar idiom with ingenuity and the freshest imagination.

       And it is, perhaps, this transitional feeling, of a musical language undergoing a change — of extending new vocabulary while not leaving behind the familiar — which makes this work a particularly interesting one to play not as a quartet but with full string orchestra.  It is a neat feat for those symphony orchestras who can manage it, those attuned enough to play together, to listen and respond in a collaborative and undogged way.  And, thus, give weight to the emotional journey of this quartet.  It is a feat that The Cleveland Orchestra strings have clearly demonstrated in recent seasons, with several of the later Beethoven’s quartets, and excellent exercise — and showcase — for musicians who have this year had to do without playing together for too long a stretch.

THE MUSIC

       The slow introduction to the opening movement is evocative and mysterious, a mood dispersed by the straightforward Allegro that follows with a theme constituted of many elements, of which the first, a rising triad, is soon heard played pizzicato in the lower instruments. This is the origin of the nickname "The Harp," which this quartet rather misleadingly bears.

       The movement’s exposition is repeated, and the development moves to a fuller "harp" passage on the lower instruments before the returning to the recapitulation. The coda brings a surprise when the first violin (or violins as a group, in this concert's version for string orchestra) takes off in a great show of crazy bravura, like a study in arpeggios. The other players continue calmly on their way.

       The beautiful slow second movement, in A-flat major, hovers between the simpler slow movements of Beethoven’s early period and the transcendental hymns of his late quartets. Three appearances of the main section (beautifully varied at each return) enclose two contrasting episodes, the first in the tonic minor, the second in D-flat major, with a constant delicate murmurring in the inner parts while first violins and cellos discourse ecstatically. A coda recalls the first episode and lingers quietly to prolong the close.

       The scherzo third movement is marked "leggieramente," but nonetheless has a ferocious, dynamic force and some extreme contrasts. The movement’s Trio section goes even faster with a frantic fugal texture. Scherzo and Trio both return, and then the scherzo itself again, which subsides in necessary preparation for the finale fourth movement.  Here, the mood is now orderly and urbane. A relaxed and gentle theme, with a characteristic dotted phrase in almost every bar, is given six variations, easily followed, and a coda that quickens a little, not a lot, at the end.

       Adapting string quartets for string orchestra gives us a new perspective on these great works, taking them out of the chamber into a larger space, and giving double basses the chance to share in a repertory they sorely miss.

—program note by Hugh Macdonald © 2020