Yakov Kreizberg Photo: Marco Borggreve

In honor of the passing of the wonderful conductor Yakov Kreizberg yesterday, the Arnica Quartet will dedicate the Astoria performance (March 27) of the Cavatina from Beethoven’s Op. 130 string quartet to his memory. It’s the least we can do for such a great artist and human being.

I was asked to write a brief statement about our March 27th program for the weekly Astoria arts paper, and I’m re-printing it here:

All three periods of Beethoven’s compositional output are represented in our concert. Each quartet presents unique challenges and rewards. The Op. 18 quartet is in the vein of Haydn and Mozart, and is similarly transparent, requiring very precise playing and good intonation. The phrasing also must be just right, or the piece can just feel flat. It doesn’t play itself, as we might say, you have to really make it work (as musicians of Beethoven’s time would have been expected to do, as well). The Op. 95 demands a lot of concentration from the performers, as it is, itself, a very concentrated work. Beethoven is taking material that he might have worked out in, say, a 35 – 40 minute quartet (like his Op. 59 and 74 works that precede it) and compresses it right down to just over 20 minutes or so. All of the emotion is there, but it is given no free rein – everything is tightly wound like a watch spring. The Op. 130 is a sprawling piece that allows us to get the mood of each movement as it goes along, but each movement is so different from that which precedes or follows it, and there are often extreme contrasts within each movement as well. The movements tend to be a bit longer, and so we have to be mindful of the overall arch of the movement’s form. The last two movements couldn’t be more different: the Cavatina is pure opera, a soulful and sublime song. Then you’re launched into the giant Grosse Fugue (Grand Fugue) which is just massive and violent and mercurial and exhausting, both for the listener and the performer. But all of these works on the program are the pinnacles of the string quartet form in the 19th century – and some would say of all of music – so they’re at the heart of our repertoire and we’re lucky to be able to study and perform them in Astoria!

We’re in the midst of preparing repertoire for two concerts we have coming up in March. The first is a Marzena concert that is part of the March Moderne festival of new music taking place all over Portland. The crowning piece that concludes Arnica’s contribution to the festival is the Grosse Fugue, which was Beethoven’s originally intended ending to his Op. 130 string quartet. Friends and his publisher persuaded him to publish the fugue under a separate opus number (133) and compose a new, more audience friendly ending for the quartet. It puts quartets that wish to perform the work in a bit of a quandary, since the original version clearly placed the center of gravity of the entire work on the massive, dramatic, and often chaotic sounding fugue. If one performs the revised version of the quartet (with the newly composed finale), it places the center of gravity of the fifth movement Cavatina, which is one of the most sublime pieces in all of Western art music. We have performed Op. 130 once before, and chose to use the replacement finale movement, but this time, since we’re already doing the fugue for the Marzena concert, we’ll be doing the quartet in its original configuration. That will be part of an all-Beethoven concert presented at the Liberty Theater in Astoria, Oregon. Enough of this arcana – here’s a video of the American String Quartet performing the Cavatina:

and here is the Alban Berg Quartet performing the Grosse Fugue (split into two videos):
Part One

Part Two

Susan Dewitt Smith

Coming up on Wednesday, December 8th at 12 Noon, we’ll be playing on the OHSU Noontime Series at the OHSU Auditorium at the top of the Marquam Hill campus.

It’s a short, one-hour program of just two great master works of the chamber music repertoire.  In honor of the 200th anniversary of Robert Schumann’s birth, we’ll be performing his great Quintet for piano and strings in E-flat major, Op. 44.  Joining us will be Portland pianist Susan Dewitt Smith, who does just about everything you can do as a pianist.  She teaches at Lewis and Clark College, has played with Third Angle New Music Ensemble, has been a soloist with the Oregon Symphony, and collaborates with many local musicians.  The second piece on the program is Beethoven’s String Quartet in F minor, Op. 95 “Serioso”.  One of Beethoven’s most compact and thematically tight compositions, it’s a bridge from the middle to late string quartets that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Admission is free.

The OHSU Auditorium is easy to get to, but parking is hard to come by. So it’s best to take the Portland Streetcar to the OHSU center at South Waterfront and take the aerial tram up the hill.  It’s just a short five minute walk up the hill to the auditorium.

We’ve got three concerts coming up in late Winter, early Spring:

If you’re an Oregon Symphony donor of at least $100, you can see us play the first movement of Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet (Kv. 465 in C major) on the Evelyn Nagel Donor Appreciation Concert at Portland Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, February 25th.  You’ll have received an invitation in the mail from the symphony already if you’re on their donor list.

On Friday, March 12  at 7:30 p.m. we’ll be performing the Haydn “Fifths” Quartet (Op. 76 no. 2) and the Mozart “Dissonance” Quartet (in it’s entirety) at one of the Oregon Symphony’s Friends of the Oregon Symphony Parties of Note events.

Finally, on Sunday, March 21 at 2:30 p.m. we’ll be performing the Haydn and Mozart quartets described above as well as Beethoven’s epic String Quartet Op. 59 no. 1 “Razumovsky” on the Salem Camerata Musica series at the Salem Public Library.

Our guest cellist for these concerts will be Trevor Fitzpatrick.

OHSU Noon Concert Series: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 12 Noon
OHSU Auditorium
Mozart – Adagio and Fugue, K. 546
Prokofiev – Quartet No. 2, Op. 92

Camerata Northwest Series: Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 1:00 p.m.
Ravel – Duo for Violin and Cello
Vieuxtemps – Elegie for Viola and Piano
Saint-Säens – Piano Quartet w/ Cary Lewis, piano

Camerata Musica Series:  Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 3:00 p.m.
Salem Library Auditorium
Program TBA.