Quartetto di Cremona Cristiano Gualco, violin | Paolo Andreoli, violin - OurConcerts.live
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PRESENTS
Quartetto di Cremona
Cristiano Gualco, violin | Paolo Andreoli, violin
Simone Gramaglia, viola | Giovanni Scaglione, cello
ChamberMusicConcerts.org · 541-552-6154
QUARTETTO DI CREMONA
FRIDAY, MAY 21, 2021 – 7:30PM
Recorded in Italy for Chamber Music Concerts
Prokofiev (1891-1953)
String Quartet no.1 in B Minor, Op. 50
Allegro
Andante molto
Andante
Schubert (1797-1828)
String Quartet in A Minor, D. 804, Op. 29
“Rosamunde”
Allegro ma non troppo
Andante
Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio
Allegro moderato
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Quartetto di Cremona’s recordings are available on Audite, Ayriel Classical, Klanglogo, and Decca.
Quartetto di Cremona
Cristiano Gualco, violin | Paolo Andreoli, violin
Simone Gramaglia, viola | Giovanni Scaglione, cello
W inner of the 2019 Franco Buitoni Award, the Quartetto di Cremona is a preem-
inent quartet of its generation noted for its lustrous sound, refined musician-
ship, and stylistic versatility. Celebrating its 20th anniversary in the 2020-21 season,
the quartet was established in 2000 at the Accademia Walter Stauffer in Cremona,
Italy. Since then Quartetto di Cremona has toured extensively in Europe, the United
States, South America, and Asia, appeared at leading festivals, and performed regu-
larly on radio and television broadcasts, including RAI, BBC, Westdeutscher Rund-
funk, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Quartetto di Cremona’s
extensive repertoire encompasses key masterworks — Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven,
Schubert — and essential twentieth-century contemporary literature by Debussy,
Schoenberg, Webern, Bartók, and Shostakovich along with contemporary works by
Golijov, Lacheman, Fabio Vacchi, and Silvia Colasanti.
Quartetto di Cremona began the 2020-2021 season with debuts at the Ravello
Festival and at Prague’s Rudolfinum, alongside the Pavel Haas Quartet. Additional
performances this season include the quartet’s debut in Istanbul with clarinetist David Orlowsky as well as numerous dates throughout Italy. In November, the group releases its 14th album, Italian Postcards, featuring works by Hugo Wolf, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and the world-premiere recording of Nimrod Borenstein’s Cieli d’Italia, Op. 88 for string quartet, commissioned by the Cremona Quartet, as their debut for Avie Records. Quartetto di Cremona began its 2019-2020 season in Genoa — where all four mem- bers were born and currently reside — with a performance alongside pianist Anna Geniushene. They embarked on an ambitious tour of North America in Octo- ber which brought them to California, Idaho, New Jersey, New York, North Caro- lina, Texas, Toronto, and Washington, D.C. Highlights included a world premiere of Omaggio a Monteverdi by Byron Adams at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, a night of Klezmer music in Los Angeles’s Wallis Annenberg Center with clarinetist David Orlowsky, and two performances at Da Camera of Houston. Advancing their com- mitment to the Beethoven quartets, the ensemble began a three-year Beethoven cycle in L’Aquila, Italy along with complete cycle performances in Tirana, Albania, Kaohsiung, and Taipei, Taiwan. The quartet appeared in concert alongside the Emer- son String Quartet for the centennial celebration of the Associazione Scarlatti in Napoli. Additional highlights included a tour of the Netherlands, a recital with pia- nist Angela Hewitt in Leon, Spain, and numerous performances at leading Italian musical institutions throughout the season. In July 2018, the German label Audite issued Quartetto di Cremona’s complete cycle of the Beethoven quartets, recorded during the period 2013-2016 in a box set, which includes the String Quintet in C Major, Op. 29 with Lawrence Dutton, violist of the Emerson String Quartet. The first volume in the series received widespread and immediate recognition, including a five-star rating in BBC Music Magazine and selec- tion as album of the month by Fonoforum, the German journal. The seventh CD earned the Supersonic Award from the German magazine Pizzicato and the Echo Klassik 2017 prize. More recently, the Quartet was a winner of the International Classical Music Awards 2018 for the seventh and eighth discs of their Beethoven series. An all-Schubert disc was released in May 2019 on Audite featuring two of composer’s masterpieces, String Quartet “Death & the Maiden” and String Quintet in C Major, with cellist Eckart Runge. Quartetto di Cremona leads a renowned string program currently in its eighth year for professional and advanced string quartets at the Accademia Walter Stauffer, in addition to conducting masterclasses throughout Europe and tours of the United States. Awarded with the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2005, the Quartetto di Cremona is also the recipient of the second “Franco Buitoni Award” (2019), in rec- ognition of its contribution to promoting and encouraging chamber music in Italy and throughout the world. The quartet is supported by the Kulturfond Peter Eckes
which provides the musicians with four superb instruments: violin Giovanni Battista
Guadagnini (1767), violin Paolo Antonio Testore, viola Gioachino Torazzi, cello Dom
Nicola Amati. In 2015, the musicians were awarded honorary citizenship by the city
of Cremona.
“It’s a rare blend: breadth of sound and capriciousness combined with perfect tuning
and ensemble has the players sounding absolutely of one voice…Nothing less than
life-affirming.” Gramophone
“The Cremona Quartet completes its Beethoven series with a fine coupling, com-
bining exemplary technique and intonational purity with an interpretive acuity that
strips away 19th-century rhetoric while avoiding the pitfalls of sounding merely ‘his-
torically informed’.” The Strad
“The Quartetto di Cremona’s magnificent survey of Beethoven’s Complete String
Quartets moves securely and unquestionably into mastery...such warm playing;
such perfection on a silver disc; what a glory this is.” The Herald
CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERTS
Thanks our Digital Presentation UnderwritersQuartetto di Cremona
PROGRAM NOTES
PROKOFIEV
String Quartet no. 1 in B minor, Op. 50
M usicologist Nicholas Kenyon writes “Will the real Sergey Prokofiev please stand
up? Who is he? There is the wild innovator of the Second Symphony, the brazen
noise merchant of the Scythian Suite, the cool classicist of the Classical Symphony, the
cheerful satirist of the Love of Three Oranges, the gentle [children’s] educationist of
Peter and the Wolf, the historical pageant maker of Ivan the Terrible…Has a composer
ever turned so many different faces to the world as Prokofiev?”
Kenyon continues: “Several of his works are among the most popular pieces of classical
music written during the last hundred years. Romeo and Juliet has become more than a
ballet, the stuff of advertising soundtracks and sports theme tunes….Among the great
symphonies that conductors want to perform, Prokofiev’s Fifth rates very high.” Also
one of the great pianists of his day, his achievement, though uneven, was immense.
He wrote in most major genres of the early 20th century. By the time he wrote today’s
String Quartet no. 1 in 1930, he’d already written five operas (including Love of Three
Oranges, The Gambler, and The Fiery Angel), four symphonies, five piano sonatas and
the Visions Fugitives, four ballets (including Trapeze and The Prodigal Son), and many
songs. The great film scores (Lieutenant Kije and Alexander Nevsky) lay just ahead.
He did not write much chamber music for large ensembles, however. He wrote four
such works: the sextet Overture on Hebrew Themes (1919) and his Quintet (1924) for strings
and winds precede his two string quartets (1930 and 1942). While Stravinsky’s Pulcinella
ballet from 1920 often receives credit as the prominent early work in neo-classicism,
it was a style “Prokofiev had helped invent” (New Grove). His Classical Symphony (in
similar style and design) precedes Stravinsky by three years. Prokofiev applied similar
neo-classic formal structures to the folk tunes of the Karbada region of Russia in his
sparkling Second String Quartet, Op. 92. It remains our loss that this prolific composer
did not turn to chamber music more often.
String Quartet no. 1 also reflects a neo-classic emphasis, as Prokofiev stated that he
studied Beethoven’s quartets before writing it. However, its dominant style stems from
his earlier modernist works. While the work never completely abandons tonality (and
he sets it in the key of B Minor), its omnipresent dissonance recalls Scythian Suite and
Sarcasms far more than the Classical Symphony. He sets the first movement in a looseSonata-form structure, with an intense and fast-paced violin theme built on wide
leaps. After a full pause, a quieter, lyrical theme consisting primarily of quarter notes
provides the main contrast. Olla-Vogala writes that “The stormy development section
is brilliantly crafted in its intensity and subtle thematic elaborations. The reprise fea-
tures many imaginative changes in the material, and the movement ends in a sense of
urgency.”
With his celebrated humor, Prokofiev’s second movement captures the essence of
Scherzo: a musical joke. Opening with an extended and dramatic Andante molto, we
settle in for the expected slow movement. Instead, it’s merely an introduction to an
extensive, Beethovenian scherzo movement in typical ternary form (A B A). A lively
theme in 8th and 16th notes receives extensive elaboration before the brief ‘Trio’ sec-
tion, cast in legato triplets, opens with a lovely cello theme of great breadth. He con-
cludes with a short reprise of the quick opening section, a lighthearted moment in this
otherwise dramatic quartet.
Like his Russian predecessor Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, Prokofiev now closes with
a dramatic Andante, the slow movement merely hinted at before. Alan Missroon writes
that it is “an expressive, heartfelt, impassioned movement…with glimmers of sweet-
ness.” Prokofiev felt so highly of it that he wrote a version of it for string orchestra.
Soviet composer Nikolay Miaskovsky wrote that “there is true profundity in the sweep-
ing melodic line and intensity of the finale. The movement strikes deep…” Yet another
wondrous side of a composer with myriad faces in his works: “mocking reeds, mischie-
vous leaps in the melody, tart and disjointed harmonies, and the sudden fluctuation
from the naïve and simple to the unexpected and complex” (Victor and Marina Ledin).
SCHUBERT
String Quartet in A Minor, D. 804
“Rosamunde” (1824)
“Among 19th-century composers of the highest rank, Schubert is the only one whose
lifetime fame was significantly at odds with his later glory” writes Schubert biographer
Christopher Gibbs. Most of the great instrumental works of his maturity in the 1820s –
the final string quartets, piano trios, symphonies, piano sonatas and the C Major string
quintet – went unheard and undiscovered by his contemporaries, and this accounts for
the discrepancy. Ironically, with his Lieder and dances, Schubert became “one of the
most widely published and performed of all Viennese composers in the 1820s” (Gibbs).
Yet with so many of his operas and the larger, more prestigious instrumental genres
unknown when he died in 1828, “few people would have considered his life worthy of a
substantial [biography]” (Gibbs). Tonight’s A Minor string quartet was Schubert’s firstcomplete, mature chamber music masterpiece. The discovery of all these instrumental treasures finally prompted the first major biography of Schubert (by Heinrich Kreissle) in 1864 – almost 40 years after his death. Schubert grew up in a musical family playing and writing string quartets. Most of these eleven quartets are youthful and experimental works, and Schubert’s groundbreak- ing success with his Lieder soon turned him away from the genre. In early 1824, eight years after his last complete quartet, he finally returned to chamber music with the A Minor and D Minor string quartets and the Octet. This A Minor quartet is the first one Schubert deemed worthy of publication, and was the only quartet performed in its entirety and published during his lifetime. Now a mature composer with extraordinarily expressive power, “something entirely new and different from either Beethoven or Mozart makes its appearance” writes musicologist Leon Botstein. This wonderfully lyrical quartet opens with a gesture not seen in the quartets of Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven. As in the Lieder he was already so famous for, Schubert opens with two bars of accompaniment for the haunting eight- bar violin primary theme. Like the piano part in a song, this complex, multi-layered accompaniment continues in the lower strings for the next 20 bars. Quartets before Schubert almost always began immediately with the primary theme. This Sonata-form first movement also contains more substantial differences from Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. In revolutinary fashion Schubert enriched the harmonic and tonal language of those composers with a continuous, de-stablizing mix of major and minor modes simultaneously. After the opening minor-mode theme, Schubert jar- ringly presents it in major mode as well, and then returns to the minor mode before modulating to the secondary key – something earlier composers never attempted. He does it again with the balanced, five-bar statements of the C Major secondary theme, soon offering a C Minor version before new material closes the movement. Musicolo- gist Richard Tarsukin writes that «Schubert was the chief pioneer» of such harmoni- cally colorful techniques. He fashions a delightfully pastoral and tender Sonata-rondo second movement in C Major, which he borrows from his incidental music for the play “Rosamunde.” After the lyrical 16-bar theme in C Major, a gentle transition leads us to the repeated-pitch and trill of the violin for the secondary theme in G Major. Both themes are ultimately repeated in the tonic, framing a stormy but brief development section. Many commen- tators link this outburst to Schubert’s passionate grappling with the venereal disease which first appeared the previous year (and which ultimaetly claimed his life). Such passion often appears in the following movement as well, with the disruptive accents in the otherwise charming Allegretto Minuet and Trio. It opens with the dark hues of the cello that borrows a theme from Schubert’s song Die Gotter Griechenlands with its text «Fair world, where art thou?»
Despite the occasional outburst, this gentle, song-like quartet begins every movement
softly (pianissimo). Such is the case with the opening theme of this light-hearted Sona-
ta-Rondo finale, a lively take on Hungarian gypsy style with many lively accents on
weak, second beats. And listen once again for that characteristic and revolutionary
modal mixture, as Schubert offers a lyrical eight-bar primary theme in A Major – which
you›ll soon hear in A Minor. Such chromaticism in Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven would
signal the modulation toward the secondary key. But with Schubert it›s all color, as
he›s still in the home key. Furthermore, the dotted-rhythm secondary theme is all har-
monic instability, never settling into either C-sharp Minor or E Major for long in this
delightfully pastoral movement.
With such exmaples as these, the late musicologist Charles Rosen writes that “In spite
of Schubert’s enormous debt to Mozart and Beethoven, we can see that his forms are
no longer theirs.” All his late instrumental works contain such lyrical magic – “only
Beethoven had written a longer and more ambitious symphony before Schubert’s
9th” (Gibbs). WIth the publication of Kreissle’s 1864 biography, Schubert’s complete
acheivements finally recieved their due, and he’s been at the forefront of 19th-century
composition and performance ever since.
Program notes by Ed WightTHANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS
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