Musicians' Own Ensemble

Friday, 27 August at 8pm

Charmian Gadd (violin), Yvette Goodchild (viola), Emma-Jane Murphy ('cello),
Phillip Shovk (piano)

Programme

MOZART – Divertimento in E flat for violin, viola and 'cello, K 563

BRAHMS – Quartet in C minor for violin, viola, 'cello and piano, op 60

About the artists

For many years, violinist Charmian Gadd has held concerts in Lindfield in which she and her musician friends present delightful music under the name Musicians' Own – it is at these concerts where we first heard (and hired) groups such as the Tankstream Quartet and the Utzon Ensemble. In this concert, a group of Charmian's musicians, called (for our purposes) the Musicians' Own Ensemble, will play Mozart’s wonderful string trio and Brahms’s C-minor piano quartet quintets for us.

Programme Notes

MOZART – Divertimento in E flat for violin, viola and 'cello, K 563

Allegro / Adagio / Menuetto: Allegro / Andante / Menuetto: Allegettro / Allegro

Mozart's divertimento in E flat for string trio was written in Summer 1788, shortly after the completion of his three last symphonies, for Michael Puchberg his merchant friend who often helped him out with money. Mozart's use of the word "divertimento" to describe the work probably reflects its structure: two rapid outer movements and two slow movements alternating with two minuets, This mature work is the only string trio that Mozart wrote and, while it is written for three instruments, has all the richness of a string quartet.

The first two bars of the opening allegro set the rather grave tone that permeates the first movement. The beautiful second subject is unusual in that the viola plays the bass to the two-part harmonies expounded by the violin and ‘cello. The following adagio, in contrast, seems introspective and provides a measure of concentrated emotion. Gaeity and good humour enter with the first menuetto, in which the repeats (as in Mozart’s symphonies) are varied and expansive.

The andante movement, which serves as a bridge between the two menuetti, opens with a wonderful theme played in octaves together by the violin and the viola, followed by four variations. The first two brilliant variations, in the major, are suddenly contrasted by the short, third, variation in the minor. The final variation returns to the major with sweeping, chorale-like, melody of the violin, accompanied by the warmth of the viola part.

The second menuetto envelopes two trio sections, the first being a Ländler – an Austrian peasant dance – and the second being rather like a courtly waltz. The allegro finale is in rondo form, a joyful outburst that resolves some of the gravity of earlier movements.

BRAHMS – Quartet in C minor for violin, viola, 'cello and piano, op 60

Allegro non troppo / Scherzo: Allegro / Andante / Finale: Allegro comodo

While Mozart had written two excellent piano quartets and Beethoven had composed in his early teens a set of three (WoO 36) – which were left unpublished – the genre was not particularly popular in Brahms’s 19th century. Undaunted, Schumann, Dvořák and Fauré each composed piano quartets and Brahms, still in his twenties, completed two and started the present work (op 60), which was not completed until 1875, ten years later. Heinz Becker writes that “from Brahms’s conversations we know that this work is strongly autobiographical, describing the strivings of a lonely man in an insoluble dilemma. […] The usual sunny mood is missing and a darker, more sombre atmosphere prevails”. In a letter to a friend at the time, Brahms described the first movement of this work as a sort of musical corollary to suicidal desperation. That is not true of the forceful, almost brutal, scherzo which follows. The andante, according to Heinz Becker, “is deeply felt and has, probably rightly, been regarded as a declaration of love” – love, we assume, for Clara Schumann, the wife of Brahms’s composer friend, Robert Schumann. The concluding allegro comodo (comforting allegro), which begins with a provocative motif played on the violin, an atmosphere of general restlessness being portrayed on the piano, ends with a return to the darkness of the quartet's opening.