Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
String Quintet No. 6 in E-flat major, K. 614 (1791)
(January 27, 1756–December 5, 1791)
By mid-1788, Mozart had moved to the less-expensive suburb of Alsergrund, Vienna, and in a letter to Michael Puchberg, refers to “the poor response” to his string quintet subscription. K.614 stands as the last of his major chamber works, likely completed just before starting work in earnest on The Magic Flute. It does seem to navigate what Rudolf Gerber described as the “conflict between the freedom of the divertimento style and strict chamber-music form.”
The opening Allegro di molto is in a strict sonata form, but notably starts with the two violas, recalling for a brief moment Haydn’s use of middle voices in his Op.33, No. 3 (“The Bird”) quartet, but giving way to a fanfare-like figure. The second subject is in the expected dominant key of B-flat, but the sprightly and dance-like theme grows organically out of the first, rather than providing a strong contrast. Throughout the piece, but especially in the first and last movements, Mozart focuses upon only one or two motivic ideas that he then fully exploits in the quintet’s texture. The first violin is briefly in the driver’s seat to close out the exposition, and then in the development offers descending figurations against motoric sixteenth notes in the two violas and other violin before returning to a bird-like trill figure (again, comparisons to Haydn’s Op.33, No. 3, written a decade earlier, abound). The coda brings back the initial fanfare and combines the various expressions of the movement to end firmly in E-flat major.
The Andante in B-flat major is nominally a theme and variations with a bipartite theme, but seems to explore hints of rondo as well, given that the theme is almost always voiced in the same way, relying mostly upon countermelodies and contrapuntal texture for variation. Notable is the use of the theme in the second violin against fanciful figurations that then expand through the texture. This approach to variation requires each player in the quintet to be able to switch gears from accompaniment to leading player, sometimes in a matter of measures.
The skipping descent and cascading theme of the Menuetto is fairly conventional in attitude, but Mozart lends more of a waltz-like feel to the Trio. The violin (soon to be joined by the first viola) provides turning figures as the other strings provide the triple meter stability. Mozart gradually thickens the texture with multiple stops and different voice groupings.
The finale’s theme is closely married in spirit to the first and third movements, and again, Haydn comes to mind with playful and surprising rests as Mozart catapults the main motive through the different voices with contrapuntal ingenuity. Christoph Wolff notes that in this last significant chamber work, Mozart “more or less simultaneously pays equal attention to all three string genres: trio, quartet, and quintet.” Certainly this plays out in this final movement, as all players are asked for great technical skill and a variety of pairings and groupings.
Elena Ruehr
Bächlein Helle after Schubert: Quintet for Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, and Piano (2023) (BCMS commission / world premiere)
(Born 1963)
Elena Ruehr’s accolades and awards are many, including Guggenheim and Harvard Radcliffe fellowships, and residencies with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra. She studied with William Bolcom at University of Michigan, as well as with Vincent Persichetti and Bernard Rands at Juilliard. Her oeuvre includes many works for voice, including five operas (such as Toussaint Before the Spirits in collaboration with Opera Boston) and five cantatas, as well as pieces for orchestra, wind ensemble, dance, and silent film. She has been commissioned and recorded by numerous string quartets, including the Arneis, Cypress, Borromeo, Lark, Quartet Nouveau, and Shanghai String Quartets. In addition to composition, Ruehr has also studied modern dance and has played in Javanese and West African performing ensembles. She has taught at MIT since 1992, where she won the Baker Undergraduate Teaching Award. Ruehr has this to say about the new work:
“In the first line of Schubert’s song Die Forelle (The Trout) it states “In einem Bächlein helle” which translates into English as “In a clear little brook”. My work was directly inspired by both the song lyrics by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart and the song and subsequent quintet by Schubert, famously known as The Trout Quintet. I had two direct inspirations: first, Schubert’s Quintet starts in A major but then takes an unusual turn into F major. I decided to base my work on the set of notes from an A major chord and an F major chord (A C C# E F) in honor of Schubert’s Trout. The other source of inspiration was related to the text of the original song:
A young boy admires a fish swimming in a stream, then a fisherman catches the fish and the boy is rather disturbed.
Although Schubert and Schubart’s metaphor had a different meaning at the time, to me it is an interesting metaphor about modern life: we are all consumers, but we are conflicted about our consumption and how it challenges the natural world we live in. This conflict is expressed through the conflict of the harmonic source material I chose. The piece begins with conflict, but ends with acceptance.”
Johannes Brahms
Piano Trio No. 1 in B major, Op. 8 (1854; rev. 1891)
(May 7, 1833–April 3, 1897)
Revisions often come with more questions than answers as to the composer’s motivations. In the case of Op. 8, Brahms’s extensive revisions over thirty years later to the original piece reflect a general compositional maturation but may also reflect the composer’s own emotional maturity as well. Upon hearing the original, Clara wrote in her diary of her dislike of the first movement, noting, however, “I own the beginning of it is fine!” When Simrock bought the publication rights from Breitkopf and Härtel in 1889, Brahms undertook severe revisions of the piece, particularly in writing completely new secondary themes for three out of the four movements, and shortening the first movement’s development section and removing a fugato in the recapitulation. As has been well documented, allusions to other works played a significant role in the original opus, notably references to Schubert’s “Am Meer,” Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte and more recently, as revealed by Jacquelyn Sholes, a relationship to Scarlatti’s Sonata K. 159. In her book Allusion as Narrative Premise in Brahms’s Instrumental Music (Indiana University Press, 2018), Sholes convincingly argues that Brahms’s removal of all three of these allusions from the later version could support a secret program expressing the young composer’s “love for an unattainable woman” or, less poetically, a mature reconciliation of his “own position in history.” Whatever his reasons, Brahms wrote to Clara, “I have rewritten my B major Trio…it will not be so dreary as before.” The net result is a piece that still holds youthful ardor in its staves, but reflects the mature approach to form, style, and harmony so present in the composer’s later chamber works.
The first section of the Allegro con brio is similar in both versions. The work opens with a highly expressive melody first heard in the piano, then carried forward by the cello. The violin completes the emotive saturation, and Brahms uses this layering technique to great effect elsewhere in the piece. An almost eerie modulating transition with minor inflections of the theme blossoms into a vivacious celebration only to turn into a much more pensive secondary theme. The development, while shorter than the original, still boasts inventive phrasing from quiet meandering melodies to more forceful figurations as they spring forth from the piano and up through the strings. After a varied reprise, a “tranquilo” coda returns the movement to its original pathos, perhaps even more meditative, until a few final measures of flourish to end triumphantly in B major.
The scherzo in both versions is virtually the same (with small adjustments to the trio and coda), opening with a galloping staccato articulation. A series of climbing fourths in the violin offer a sense of a hunt interspersed with an eastern European folk dance. The trio is signaled by a sustained cello and violin over a gentle rising gesture in the piano. Here again Brahms exploits the expressive capacity of the strings to fully sound the theme, which becomes increasingly songlike in the violin and piano against gentle pizzicato in the cello. Brahms broadens the texture with high tremolandos in the violin while the theme issues forth from the cello and the piano with its fully voiced chords. His skills in thematic development and variety are on full display as he combines the staccato scherzo theme with sequential legato phrases, working out the possibilities for filling out the same third interval in different guises. Piano arpeggiations announce the coda, wherein calm seems to be restored.
The pensive chorale-like una corda piano chords that open the Adagio in B major elicit expressive duet responses in the violin and cello. Brahms’s capacity for emotionally charged melodic writing is clearly displayed with the sorrowful melody that enters in the cello. Most of the movement is quiet, intimate, and delicate, demanding the utmost technical and emotional concentration from the three performers.
Rather than a rhetorical major key finale, Brahms opens the B minor Allegro with an almost ominous chromatic wavering melody in the cello over soft arpeggiated triplets in the piano. The violin enters with the same idea, mezza voce, carrying some of the intimacy of the third movement into the fourth. This does not last long, however, as the motives expand upward to a fortissimo, wherein the violin fills out the melody with ascending triplet arpeggiations. The robust secondary theme in D major (new to the revision) enters in the piano. The more chromatic idea returns and is now decorated with descending triplet arpeggiations in the violin. Brahms moves the motive through the texture, highlighting the simple pathos of the appoggiatura-like figure. For a denouement the movement returns to B major, but a sustained cello over cadenza-like piano lines leads to an augmentation of the chromatic idea. Ultimately the galloping energy level of the scherzo seems to return to carry the piece to its finish.
© 2024 Rebecca G. Marchand
Sunday, February 25, 2024 at 3:00 p.m.
Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Cambridge
Mozart String Quintet No. 6 in E-flat major, K. 614
Allegro di molto
Andante
Menuetto: Allegretto
Allegro
Yura Lee, violin; David Bowlin, violin; Kim Kashkashian, viola; Marcus Thompson, viola; Raman Ramakrishnan, cello
Ruehr Bächlein Helle after Schubert: Quintet for Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, and Piano (2023)
(BCMS commission / world premiere)
♩ = 120
Senza misura – ♩ = 100
Joyous ♩ = 100
David Bowlin, violin; Marcus Thompson, viola; Raman Ramakrishnan, cello; Thomas Van Dyck, double bass; Max Levinson, piano
INTERMISSION
Brahms Piano Trio No. 1 in B major, Op. 8
Allegro con brio
Scherzo: Allegro molto
Adagio
Finale: Allegro
Yura Lee, violin; Raman Ramakrishnan, cello; Max Levinson, piano
Violinist David Bowlin is the Haim and Joan Eliachar Guest Artist for the concert
Recording Engineer: Antonio Oliart Ros
Videographer: Kathy Wittman, Ball Square Films
Marcus Thompson, violist and artistic director of Boston Chamber Music Society, has performed in chamber music series and recitals throughout the world. As a chamber musician, he has been a frequent guest of festivals and series in Amsterdam, Dubrovnik, Edmonton, Montreal, Santa Fe, Seattle, Sitka, Spoleto, Okinawa, and Rio de Janeiro. He appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall, on tour, and in a Live from Lincoln Center broadcast, and as a guest of the Cleveland, Emerson, Jupiter, Miami, Orion, Shanghai, and Vermeer String Quartets. Mr. Thompson has been a member musician of the Boston Chamber Music Society since 1984. In 2009 he was appointed its second artistic director. As a recitalist, he has performed in series throughout the Americas, including Carnegie Recital Hall and The Metropolitan Museum in New York, The National Gallery and Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Herbst Theater in San Francisco, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, Jordan Hall and Gardner Museum in Boston, and Teatro Nacional in the Dominican Republic. Mr. Thompson has appeared as viola and viola d’amore soloist with many of this country’s leading symphony orchestras, including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Chicago Sinfonietta. Mr. Thompson recorded the Bartók Concerto with the Slovenian Radio Orchestra, and works of Serly, Jongen, and Françaix with the Czech National Symphony. In 2012 Mr. Thompson appeared as soloist with the Rochester Philharmonic premiering Olly Wilson’s Viola Concerto which was commissioned for him in 1992. In 2018 he performed as soloist in works by Vivaldi, Morton Feldman, Elena Ruehr and Vaughan Williams at MIT in observance of the fiftieth anniversary of his Boston recital debut. In 2019 Mr. Thompson performed the John Harbison Viola Concerto with BMOP under Gil Rose and a Vivaldi Viola d’Amore Concerto at the Aston Magna Festival in Great Barrington, MA, and gave the Boston premiere of Harbison’s Sonata for Viola and Piano on the BCMS Series. Born and raised in the South Bronx, Mr. Thompson holds a doctorate in viola performance from The Juilliard School. He has been a member of the viola faculty at New England Conservatory for more than three decades, and professor of music at MIT for more than four decades. In June 2015 he was appointed to MIT’s highest faculty honor, becoming one of its thirteen Institute Professors.
David Bowlin, violinist, has led a wide-ranging career as a soloist and chamber musician, garnering critical acclaim for his performances of a broad repertoire. First prize winner of the Washington International Competition, he has performed as a soloist across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Among his dozens of premieres are violin concerti written for him by Marcos Balter, Alexandra Hermentin, and Donald Crockett, with performances at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and at the Aspen Music Festival. Bowlin is a member of the Oberlin Trio and the Bowlin-Cho Duo. He is also a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble and was formerly a member of the Naumburg award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players. Chamber music collaborations include performances as a guest with the Juilliard Quartet; with pianists Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, Robert McDonald, Jonathan Biss, and Jeremy Denk; and with members of the Emerson and Brentano quartets. He has made several tours with Musicians from Marlboro and has been a guest artist with organizations including ChamberFest Cleveland, the Banff Centre, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Ojai, SongFest, Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, and the Four Seasons festival. He has performed as guest concertmaster with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the IRIS Orchestra, the Marlboro Festival Orchestra, and as guest principal with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Bowlin’s solo and chamber music recordings can be found on the Naxos, Bridge, New Focus, Nonesuch, Arsis, Mode, Tundra, Austrian National Radio, and Oberlin Music labels. Bowlin joined the Oberlin Conservatory faculty in 2007 and currently serves as professor of violin and chair of string studies. In the summer he teaches on the faculties of the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival and has been on the faculty at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, ARIA, and at the Banff Centre. Bowlin is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the Juilliard School, and Stony Brook University, where he studied with Pamela Frank, Ronald Copes, Philip Setzer, Ani Kavafian, and Roland and Almita Vamos.
Kim Kashkashian, violist. Hailed as “an artist who combines a probing, restless intellect with enormous beauty of tone,” Ms. Kashkashians’ work as performing and recording artist and pedagogue has been recognized worldwide. She received the George Peabody Medal and Switzerland’s Golden Bow Award for her contributions to music. In 2016, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2020, named an Honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music. As soloist, Kashkashian has appeared with the orchestras of Berlin, London, Vienna, Milan, New York and Cleveland in collaboration with Eschenbach, Mehta, Welser-Moest, Kocsis, Dennis Russel Davies, Blomstedt, and Holliger. Recital appearances include the great halls of Vienna, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Tokyo, Athens, London, New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia where she appears with the Trio Tre Voce, and in duo partnerships with pianist Robert Levin and percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky. Ms. Kashkashian has forged creative relationships with composers Kurtág, Penderecki, Schnittke, Kancheli, and Pärt and commissioned compositions from Eötvös, Ueno, Olivero, Larcher, Auerbach, Mansurian, and Hosokawa. Ms. Kashkashian’s long association with ECM Records has yielded a discography that has garnered an abundance of praise and international awards—including a Grammy for her solo recording of works by Ligeti and Kurtág, a Cannes Classical Award for the viola concertos of Kurtág, Bartók, and Eötvös, an Edison Prize for her recording with pianist Robert Levin of the Brahms viola sonatas and the Opus Klassik prize for her recording of the unaccompanied cello suites of J.S. Bach. She coaches chamber music and viola at New England Conservatory of Music and is founder and artistic director of Music for Food, a musician-led hunger relief initiative.
Yura Lee, violinist/violist, is one of the most versatile and compelling artists of today. She was the only first prize winner awarded across four categories at the 2013 ARD Competition in Germany. She has won top prizes for both violin and viola in numerous other competitions, including first prize and audience prize at the 2006 Leopold Mozart Competition (Germany), first prize at the 2010 UNISA International Competition (South Africa), first prize at the 2013 Yuri Bashmet International Competition (Russia), and top prizes in Indianapolis (USA), Hanover (Germany), Kreisler (Austria), and Paganini (Italy) Competitions. At age 12, she became the youngest artist ever to receive the Debut Artist of the Year prize at the Performance Today awards given by NPR. She is also the recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Her CD with Reinhard Goebel and the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie, titled “Mozart in Paris” (Oehms Classics) received the prestigious Diapason d’Or Award in France. Ms. Lee was nominated and represented by Carnegie Hall’s Distinctive Debuts and the European Concert Hall Organization’s Rising Stars series. She gave recitals at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall and nine celebrated concert halls in Europe. As a soloist, Ms. Lee has appeared with many major orchestras, including New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Monte Carlo Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, to name a few. She has performed with conductors Christoph Eschenbach, Lorin Maazel, Leonard Slatkin, Myung-Whun Chung, among many others. As a chamber musician, Yura Lee regularly takes part in the Marlboro, Salzburg, Verbier, La Jolla, Seattle, Caramoor, Ravinia, Kronberg, and Aspen festivals. She is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as both violinist and violist. In May 2022, she was named principal viola of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Ms. Lee studied at the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Salzburg Mozarteum, and Kronberg Academy. Her main teachers were Namyun Kim, Dorothy DeLay, Hyo Kang, Miriam Fried, Paul Biss, Thomas Riebl, Ana Chumachenko, and Nobuko Imai. She teaches at University of Southern California. She has been a BCMS member musician since 2013.
Max Levinson, pianist, has performed as soloist with the St. Louis, Detroit, San Francisco, Baltimore, Oregon, Indianapolis, Colorado, New World, San Antonio, Louisville, and Utah Symphonies, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Pops, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and in recital at New York’s Alice Tully Hall, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Zürich’s Tonhalle, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Jordan Hall in Boston, and throughout the US, Canada, and Europe. Mr. Levinson’s international career was launched when he won first prize at the 1997 Dublin International Piano Competition. He is also recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Award. Artistic director of the San Juan Chamber Music Festival in Ouray, Colorado and former co-artistic director of the Janus 21 Concert Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mr. Levinson is an active chamber musician. He has performed with the Tokyo, Vermeer, Mendelssohn, and Borromeo Quartets, and appears at major music festivals including Santa Fe, Marlboro, Mostly Mozart, Bravo/Vail, La Jolla, Seattle and Cartagena. His recordings have earned wide acclaim, including his most recent recording with violinist Stefan Jackiw of the three Brahms sonatas (Sony). Mr. Levinson is chair of the piano department at the Boston Conservatory and also a faculty member at the New England Conservatory. Born in the Netherlands and raised in Los Angeles, Mr. Levinson began studying piano at age five. As a child he also studied cello, composition and conducting. He attended Harvard University, graduating cum laude with a degree in English Literature, and later completed his graduate studies with Patricia Zander at the New England Conservatory of Music, receiving an Artist Diploma and the Gunther Schuller Medal, an award given to the school’s top graduate student. He has been a BCMS member musician since 2016.
Raman Ramakrishnan, cellist, was a founding member of the Daedalus Quartet, winners of the grand prize at the 2001 Banff International String Quartet Competition. During his eleven years with the quartet, he performed coast-to-coast in the United States and Canada, in Japan, Hong Kong and Panama, and across Europe. The quartet has been in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University, where Mr. Ramakrishnan maintains a teaching studio. In 2011, he formed the Horszowski Trio with violinist Jesse Mills and pianist Rieko Aizawa. He has given solo recitals in New York, Boston, Seattle and Washington, D.C., and has performed chamber music at Bargemusic and at the Aspen, Caramoor, Charlottesville, Four Seasons, Lincolnshire (UK), Marlboro, Mehli Mehta (India), Oklahoma Mozart and Vail Music Festivals. He has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and has performed, as guest principal cellist, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. As a guest member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, he has performed in New Delhi and Agra, India and in Cairo, Egypt. He was born in Athens, Ohio and grew up in East Patchogue, New York. His father is a molecular biologist and his mother is the children’s book author and illustrator Vera Rosenberry. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and a master’s degree in music from The Juilliard School. His principal teachers have been Fred Sherry, Andrés Díaz and André Emelianoff. Mr. Ramakrishnan lives in New York City with his wife, violist Melissa Reardon. He plays a Neapolitan cello made by Vincenzo Jorio in 1837. He has been a BCMS member musician since 2013.
Thomas Van Dyck, double bassist. An avid chamber musician and recipient of the Maurice Schwarz Prize at Tanglewood and the Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Prize, Mr. Van Dyck has played chamber music at the Mostly Mozart Festival, New York City’s Town Hall and Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Harvard University’s Houghton Library chamber music series, Bay Chamber Concerts in Rockport, Maine and Kingston Chamber Music Festival in Rhode Island, among many others. He has collaborated with the Borromeo, Ying, Lydian and Parker String Quartets. Thomas was a founding member of A Far Cry and is a member of East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO). A former member of the New World Symphony, he has played with the San Francisco Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and San Diego Symphony. Thomas received his bachelor’s degree at Rice University studying with Paul Ellison and his master’s at Boston University with Edwin Barker. He joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2013, and the New England Conservatory double bass faculty in Fall 2018. He has been a faculty member at the Longy School of Music and Boston Conservatory as well as a guest teacher at San Francisco Conservatory, Boston University, and the Hartt School of Music. He has been a BCMS member musician since 2021.