Tuesday March 2, 2010

The founding cellist of the Guarneri String Quartet, David Soyer, died on February 25, a day after his 87th birthday, in New York. Tonight we hear part of the Quartet's farewell tour.
Friends of Chamber Music
Guarneri String Quartet
Maurice Ravel: String Quartet in F 27:43
Wolfgang Mozart: “Andante” (2nd movement) from String Quartet No. 8 in F major, K.168 3:20 (12/3/08)
Wolfgang Mozart: “Allegro ma non troppo” (4th movement) from String Quartet No.15 in D minor, K.421
Guarneri Quartet
Philips 426 240 Track 8 9:32
Antonin Dvořák: "Allegro ma non tanto" (1st movement) fromPiano Quintet in A major, Op.81
Artur Rubinstein, piano; Guarneri Quartet
RCA 6263 Track 1 10:47


Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): String Quartet in F major
Allegro moderato—très doux
Assex vif—trè rythmè
Très lent
Vif et agité

Ravel’s only string quartet was composed in 1902-03, while he was still a student at the Paris Conservatory. He said it “reflects a definite preoccupation with musical structure, imperfectly realized, no doubt, but much more apparent than in my previous compositions.”
An obvious model was Debussy’s only string quartet. When Ravel played through his effort on the piano, Debussy is supposed to have said, “In the name of the gods of music, and in mine, do not touch a single note of what you have written in your quartet.” A comparison between the two quartets in the press and the cafes escalated into a breach between the two composers. “It’s probably better for us, after all,” said Ravel, “to be on frigid terms for illogical reasons.”
The premiere was given by the Heymann Quartet at a Société Nationale program in Paris on March 5, 1904. The reaction was mostly positive, though the Paris correspondent of the New York Tribune said the opening theme sounded like the wailing of clarinets in a Chinese theater, and the general feeling of all four movements was that of a lesson in arithmetic. More typical was Jean Marnold’s review, in Mercure de France. “One should remember the name of Maurice Ravel,” he wrote. “He is one of the masters of tomorrow.”
Biographer H.H. Stuckenschmidt notes “the astonishing unity that makes this work appear as though it had been poured into its mold in one continuous stream….All the themes and all the motives used in the four movements of the work grow out of a common seed and are elaborated by little rearrangements and by a phenomenal variety of changes in perspective and lighting.” Stuckenschmidt also notes the work’s classical roots: “a rapid first movement in the two-theme sonata form,” a scherzo “with a slow trio of wavering tonality,” “a very songlike slow movement in free form,” and a finale whose meter (quintuple) “probably derives from Russian rhythms.”