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presents…

JERUSALEM QUARTETAlexander Pavlovsky | Violin Ori Kam | ViolaSergei Bresler | Violin Kyril Zlotnikov | Cello

Saturday, March 28, 2020 | 7:30pmHerbst Theatre

HAYDN String Quartet in D minor, Opus 76, No. 2 “Fifths” Allegro Andante o più tosto allegretto Menuetto: Allegro ma non troppo Finale: Vivace assai

SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No. 9 in E-flat Major, Opus 117 Moderato con moto Adagio Allegretto Adagio Allegro

INTERMISSION

BRAHMS String Quartet in C minor, Opus 51, No. 1 Allegro Romanze: Poco Adagio Allegretto molto moderato e comodo Allegro

This program is made possible in part by the generous support of the Bernard Osher Foundation

The Jerusalem Quartet is represented by David Rowe Artists davidrowearatists.com

The Jerusalem Quartet records for harmonia mundi

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ENSEMBLE PROFILE

Jerusalem Quartet makes its San Francisco Performances debut.

“Passion, precision, warmth, a gold blend: these are the trademarks of this ex-cellent Israeli string quartet.”

Such was the New York Times’ impression of the Jerusalem Quartet. Since the ensem-ble’s founding in 1993 and subsequent 1996 debut, the four Israeli musicians have em-barked on a journey of growth and matu-ration. This journey has resulted in a wide repertoire and stunning depth of expres-sion, which carries on the string quartet tradition in a unique manner. The ensemble has found its core in a warm, full, human sound and an egalitarian balance between high and low voices. This approach allows the quartet to maintain a healthy relation-ship between individual expression and a transparent and respectful presentation of the composer’s work. It is also the drive and motivation for the continuing refinement of its interpretations of the classical reper-toire as well as exploration of new epochs.

The Jerusalem Quartet is a regular and beloved guest on the world’s great concert stages. With regular bi-annual visits to North America, the quartet has performed in cities such as New York, Chicago, Los An-geles, Houston, Philadelphia, Washington, and Cleveland as well as in the Ravinia Fes-tival. In Europe, the quartet enjoys an en-thusiastic reception with regular appear-ances in London’s Wigmore Hall, Tonhalle Zürich, Munich Herkulessaal, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, as well as special guest performances at the Auditorium du Lou-vre Paris, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and festivals such as Salzburg, Verbier, Schleswig-Holstein, Schubertiade Schwar-zenberg, Rheingau, Saint Petersburg White Nights and many others.

The Jerusalem Quartet records exclu-sively for harmonia mundi. The quartet’s recordings, particularly the albums featur-ing Haydn’s string quartets and Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, have been honored with numerous awards such as the Diapa-son d’Or and the BBC Music Magazine Award for chamber music. In 2018, the quartet re-leased two albums, an album of Dvorak’s String Quintet Op. 97 and Sextet Op. 48, and a much-awaited recording of the celebrat-ed quartets by Ravel and Debussy. In the spring of 2019, the quartet released a unique album exploring Jewish music in Central Europe between the wars and its far-reach-ing influence. Israeli Soprano Hila Baggio joins the quartet to perform a collection of

Yiddish Cabaret songs from Warsaw in the 1920s. The quartet commissioned composer Leonid Desyatnikov to arrange these songs, which are sung in Yiddish. Schulhoff’s Five Pieces (1924), a collection of short and light cabaret-like pieces, and Korngold’s Quartet No. 2 (1937) complete the program.

In the 2019–20 season, the quartet, along with Ms. Baggio, brings their Yiddish Caba-ret project to Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Ham-burg, and Amsterdam. This season also marks the release of the second and final volume of the group’s recording of the com-plete Bartók quartets on harmonia mundi (the first volume was released in 2016). In spring 2020, they will perform the complete Beethoven quartet cycle in Tel Aviv, Israel. In August 2019, the quartet embarked on the creation of a new string quartet acad-emy in Crans Montana, Switzerland.

PROGRAM NOTES

String Quartet in D minor, Opus 76, No. 2 “Fifths”FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809)

Haydn composed the six quartets of his Opus 76 shortly after returning from his second trip to London, completing them in the summer of 1797 when he was 65. He was writing at a very rarefied level, and this quartet is particularly impressive. It is some-times nicknamed the “Fifths” because the first movement is constructed so rigorously around that interval. But Haydn is just as rig-orous in his handling of tonality, and much of the tension in this quartet rises from his stark opposition of D Major and D minor.

The opening Allegro is an unusually stern movement. The first violin’s first four notes

twice outline the interval of the falling fifth, and all the movement’s thematic material derives from that drop of a fifth. By contrast, the second movement brings relaxation and sunlight. The dark D minor of the opening movement gives way to D Major here, and this movement belongs largely to the first vi-olin, which soars easily over the other voices.

The third movement brings back the rigor of the first. Haydn returns to D minor and writes a minuet in strict canon: the violins (an octave apart) are followed at a one-measure interval by the viola and cello (also an octave apart). This minuet, which plows implacably forward, has sometimes been nicknamed the “Witches’ Minuet” because of its so-called “weird” sound.

The finale’s main theme is syncopated in a way that has suggested folk origins to some scholars, but the theme was apparent-ly Haydn’s own. Some have heard the bray-ing of a donkey in the first violin’s swooping descents in the second theme. The move-ment moves toward what seems a close in D minor, but in the closing moments Haydn eases gracefully into D Major: the first vio-lin makes this change pianissimo, gradu-ally gathers energy, and then rushes the quartet to its radiant D-Major conclusion.

String Quartet No. 9 in E-flat Major, Opus 117DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH(1906–1975)

Shostakovich composed his Ninth String Quartet during the summer of 1964. It had been four years since he wrote his Eighth Quartet, whose haunted vision had been inspired by the devastation of Dresden in World War II, and the new quartet explores different territory. The Ninth Quartet is very tightly unified. Its five movements are played

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without pause, and those movements are fur-ther linked by close thematic connections: certain theme-shapes evolve continuously across the unbroken span of this music. The Ninth Quartet is also distinctive for its sonor-ity. The first sound one hears is the oscillat-ing accompaniment of the second violin, and that sound—murmuring, rocking, throb-bing—will recur at many different speeds and dynamics throughout this quartet.

The Moderato con moto begins with that murmuring sound, and Shostakovich lays out his three seminal theme-shapes over the next few minutes: the first violin’s plain-tive first idea, heard immediately; the cel-lo’s staccato second subject, sung beneath pizzicato accompaniment from the other voices; and the first violin’s saucy rhythmic figure that completes the exposition—this last theme will grow in importance as the quartet proceeds. Here it leads the way into the Adagio, built on a somber, chorale-like melody. Shostakovich rounds matters off with the first violin’s transition—played with mute—to the third movement. This transition gradually outlines the shape of the main idea of that scherzo, marked simply Allegretto. Now this transformed melody dances brightly along the scher-zo’s skittering textures—such continuous transformation of themes is fundamental to the technique of the Ninth Quartet.

Gradually the scherzo loses energy, and its central theme rounds down into the os-cillating rhythm that is also central to this quartet. On this rocking sound, the Adagio begins. Shostakovich interrupts its quiet flow with solo pizzicato outbursts from the second violin and the viola, and the music rises to an intense climax that reprises the quartet’s principal ideas. Once again, qui-etly oscillating textures lead to the finale, a lengthy Allegro that bursts to life as the first violin shouts out its dancing main idea. This movement is driven along by a sort of man-ic energy, and listeners will hear familiar

shapes transformed and made to join in the dance.

String Quartet in C minor, Opus 51, No. 1JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897)

Haunted by the example of Beethoven’s symphonies, Brahms worked for over 20 years before he felt able to publish a symphony of his own, and the case was nearly as extreme with the string quar-tet. Brahms was acutely aware of what Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert had achieved with the quartet, and there is evidence that he may have destroyed as many as 20 quartets before he was satis-fied with one. Brahms began work on the Quartet in C minor in the mid-1860s but did not complete it until the summer of 1873, when he was 40.

The Quartet in C minor is marked by ex-traordinary concentration. This is not music that sets out to charm the heart or please the ear. Rather, it impresses by its fierce logic and the economy of its means: the entire quartet is unified around a central musical idea—the rising, dotted figure heard in the first violin at the very beginning. The mood of this quartet is dark—Brahms sets it in C minor, the key Beethoven reserved for his most dramatic works, and drives the music forward with an unrelieved logic that might have left even that earlier master gasping for relief.

The opening Allegro takes its charac-ter and much of its shape from the theme heard at the very opening. This climbing figure saturates this movement (and much of the quartet)—as theme, as accompani-ment, as rhythm. Especially striking is the nervous, almost unrelenting pound of the accompaniment—the steady pulse of eighth notes is never absent for long here.

A rigorous development and an extremely dramatic coda drive to a quiet close as the first theme collapses into silence.

Brahms marks the second movement Romanze, which suggests music of a lyric or gentle nature, and this movement al-ternates two ideas that—in the aftermath of the first movement—do seem gentle. The dotted motif of the first movement becomes the slow accompaniment at the beginning here, and over it Brahms pres-ents the first theme, marked espressivo. A second idea—marked dolce and built on halting triplets—is somewhat darker; Brahms alternates and varies these two theme-groups.

The concentration that marks Brahms’ thinking in this music is clear at the be-ginning of the Allegretto, where he pres-ents two themes simultaneously: the first violin’s chain of sixteenths (an inversion of the opening motif?) pulses steadily above the viola’s wistful tune. The trio section brings the quartet’s one moment of sunshine—Brahms switches to F Major as the first violin sings a little waltz tune. Beneath that, the second violin alternates A’s on open and closed strings; the shifting colors of the resulting “wow-wow-wow” make an effective accompaniment to the waltz.

The finale brings back the furies—and concentration—of the first movement. This movement’s opening figure is derived almost literally from the quartet’s initial motif, and the more relaxed second sub-ject is in fact a slow variant of that same shape. In sonata form, this movement is built on the contrast between these two themes, already so much alike. The very end brings no relief: Brahms returns firm-ly to C minor, and the final cadence re-in-vokes—one last time—the thematic motif that has saturated the entire quartet.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger