String quartets, we bite our thumbs at thee!
On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we smash the hegemony of chamber music’s most prevalent foursome to bring you an hour of contumely quartets.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart spent five months in Mannheim in 1777, hoping to chase down a steady position there. He didn’t get the job, but he did receive a fistful of commissions from gentleman-flutist Willem van Britten Dejong. The 21 year-old composer was broke, in love, and, as usual, being badgered by his old man to make something of himself already. These external pressures may explain, in part, Mozart’s alleged aversion to the flute. He certainly responded to the new commissions as if they were more of a burden than a godsend. Still, he had too much integrity not to lend the works his usual polish.
We’ll hear the Flute Quartet No. 1 in D major, K. 285, performed at the 1989 Marlboro Music Festival, by flutist Marina Piccinini, violinist Scott St. John, violist Christof Huebner, and cellist Peter Wiley.
Bernard Garfield was longtime principal bassoonist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He served with the orchestra for 43 years, from 1957 to 2000. Concurrently, he taught at Temple University and, for over three decades, at the Curtis Institute of Music. He also founded the New York Woodwind Quintet.
It’s hardly surprising that a career bassoonist would write music for his own instrument. Garfield composed three bassoon quartets. We’ll hear the first of these, from 1950. It was performed at Marlboro in 2010 by bassoonist Natalya Rose Vrbsky, violinist David McCarroll, violist Dmitri Murrath, and cellist Judith Serkin.
Finally, Carl Maria von Weber earned his place in the history books as one of the progenitors of German Romantic opera. With its lurid Wolf’s Glen sequence, “Der Freischutz” reverberated in its nightmarish extravagance, making it one of the most influential operas of the 19th century.
Twelve years before “Freischutz,” in 1809, Weber, then 22, wrote a comparatively benign Piano Quartet in B flat major. His model was clearly Mozart, but already his head had grown too hot for his tricorn, as he also indulges in flights of post-Beethovenian temperament.
We’ll hear Weber’s quartet, as played at Marlboro in 1989, by pianist Igor Ardašey, violinist Takumi Kubota, violist Ulrich Eichenauer, and cellist Siegfried Palm.
Strike a blow against the tyranny of the string quartet! It’s an hour of revolting chamber music on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page