(03/11/15 2:28pm)
This Saturday, two French/Catalan sisters, a Swede and a Scot cross the puddle to give the College one of the most vibrant and impassioned quartet performances of the millennia. The Elias String Quarter has risen like a meteor through the chamber music universe and into our own Performing Arts Series.
Too often students report the cost of arts events as barriers to their attendance. To that end, this concert will be completely free and open to the public. Be sure to come to the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts (MCA) Concert Hall slightly before 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 14, for great seating.
The Elias quartet is a relatively young ensemble, having debuted in 2012, but have been playing together for the past 17 years. This weekend they have chosen to perform Beethoven’s late quartets, three complex and incredible pieces.
The first piece that the Elias quartet will play tonight is the 11th quartet in F-minor. Beethoven started to write this piece in 1810, a particularly tumultuous time in Vienna, where he lived for most of his life. 1810 was the height of the Napoleonic campaigns across Europe, and Vienna, the capital of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, was under constant bombardment.
All of Beethoven’s composer-friends left the besieged city but him, although he complained endlessly about the constant noise of the bombardment. An eyewitness account from the time tells that the composer hid in his brother’s basement and covered his ears with pillows to protect the little hearing he had left at the time. Out of this chaos came the short but incredibly powerful 11th quartet, labeled Serioso by the publisher.
Beethoven never intended for this quartet to be played to the public, but rather planned for it to circulate in small settings amongst his composer and royal friends. When you hear Elias play it, you may understand why. The war brought out the character changes that transformed Beethoven’s heroic middle period into the genius late period.
This quartet, among other late pieces, does things that musicians at that time would not have dreamed of in their wildest dreams. Rapid outbursts, rapidly evolving motifs and an unprecedented use of silences characterize this wartime quartet. It is a piece that demands not only technical mastery, but also vibrancy and intensity. This piece matches the Elias quartet’s best traits.
Following the 11th, the Elias quartet will play the 16th quartet in F-major. This is the last significant work that Beethoven finished; he died in March of 1827, about five months after he completed the 16th quartet in October 1826. The most striking movement of this quartet is undoubtedly the finale, named by Beethoven Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß — “the difficult decision.” It starts with slow, dark chordal progression labeled muss es sein — “must it be?” and resolves into a nimble answer, labeled es muss sein! — “it must be!”
The 16th is a very flexible piece throughout. It moves from misty, bemused chordal cadences into complex, rapid counterpoint without fluttering an eyelid. It is another genius piece from Beethoven’s late period.
We step back a very small step in Beethoven’s biography to play the 14th quartet in C-sharp minor, completed in early 1826. Although any musicians reading this probably detest C-sharp minor (four sharps!), this is Beethoven’s favorite key. It is stoic, dramatic, complex and elusive, like the composer himself.
This quartet is almost twice as long as the 11th that Elias will begin the concert with, and many times it is more sophisticated. It captures leftover energy from Missa Solemnis, the grand choral mass written a few years earlier, that lends it a spiritual, puzzling tone. There is powerful melancholy present behind every note, written with a mastery that puzzled great composers for generations to come. After Franz Schubert heard this quartet, he said: “after this, what is left for us to write?” Robert Schumann remarked: grandeur [...] which no words can express. They seem to me to stand ... on the extreme boundary of all that has hitherto been attained by human art and imagination.”
Come to the MCA Concert Hall at 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 14, for this entirely free performance by one of the best quartets in the nation. Associate Professor of Music Larry Hamberlin will offer a pre-concert lecture at 7:00 p.m. in Room 221 for all interested.
(11/12/14 9:33pm)
The Jupiter String Quartet is a family of musicians in every sense of the word: the group began as a childhood musing and has flourished into adulthood over the years. It was honed through college all-nighters, strengthened by the bonds of marriage, and is now blossoming into one of the most renowned string quartets on the planet. Their secret undoubtedly lies in the intimate personal connections that are so vital to excellent chamber music. Jupiter has won countless awards around the globe for their masterful communication and stunned audiences everywhere with their energy and talent. Middlebury cannot wait to welcome them back to campus this Sunday, Nov. 16 at 3 p.m. in the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts Concert Hall.
Chamber music is one of the most difficult and mysterious musical configurations. It requires players to not only pay unwavering attention to their peers, but also to execute their own parts with detailed precision. It is not as structured and foolproof as an orchestra, yet still more absolute and demanding than a modern jazz or rock ensemble. Every note is heard, every microtone off-pitch noted. The personal musicianship of each player is naked before the audience. Yet the secret behind a magical, gripping chamber performance is not one’s own musical excellence, but rather the way it fits with that of the three other players. Attending a chamber recital is watching and listening to four people conjure a temporal realm, a celestial world where the creative energies of all members are understood without words, a communicative work of art in real-time. Playing chamber music is the closest thing we have to telepathy, and Jupiter’s magic is that they have mastered it.
On Sunday, Jupiter will play three monumental chamber works. They will start with Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier, transcribed for string quartet by WA Mozart.The Well-Tempered Klavier is a monumental work, a sort of treatise on the very material of music. Any person interested in music — be it classical, rock, dubstep or any other genre — would take interest in it. Bach, who knew the foundations of music better than anyone before or since, deconstructs the fabric of the music and sensationally re-engineers it across all keys. As an amateur pianist who has the pleasure of playing these stunning pieces, I cannot wait to hear them transcribed to strings, to hear what four different minds can do as opposed to just one.
Following the Well-Tempered Klavier, Jupiter will perform a 1939 Bela Bartók quartet. Written in Hungary during the outbreak of the second World War, Bartók’s sixth quartet brings a cool air of dry dissonance from modern Europe. It was a dark period in the composer’s life — he was starkly averse to the rise of Nazism in neighboring Austria and feared it would overtake his native Hungary as well, yet he was unable to leave due to his mother’s failing health. The manuscript of the quartet is pulsing with these conflicts, an embodiment of all the emotions and sentiments coursing through Bartók’s life. To feel them recreated by Jupiter will be a heart-wrenching experience indeed.
Saving the best for last, Jupiter will end with Beethoven’s 15th String Quartet in A minor. My favorite deaf composer had absolutely no connection to the aural realm when he wrote
this quartet two years before his death. Consequently, this piece, among his other late pieces, was written through purely intellectual motives. His collection of late quartets were highly controversial when they were published due to their deep emotional and intellectual content—legend says that the composer himself cried when he read his work. Only a century after their publication did these pieces become popular again. This composition is not one you can listen to as background music; it is a journey that grips all the attention it can find.
The Jupiter String Quartet, which enjoys a fruitful relationship with the Middlebury Performing Arts Series (this is their sixth visit) is not an event to miss. Not only is every Jupiter concert a collection of highly talented individuals, it is also a family gathering. As such we will see the masks taken off and the music flow freely. With a repertoire this stunning, I know where I will be on Sunday afternoon. Thanks to a generous endowment, this concert is entirely free, with no tickets required! Take the afternoon to treat yourself and experience the glory of a world-class quartet.