Australian String Quartet and Paul Dean

Friday, 21 September at 8pm

Kristian Winther (violin), Anne Horton (violin), Stephen King (viola), Rachel Johnston ('cello)
with
PAUL DEAN (clarinet)

Programme

HAYDN – String quartet in B flat, op 76, no 4, Hob III:81, The Sunrise

WEBER – Quintet in B flat for clarinet, two violins, viola and 'cello, op 34, J 182

INTERVAL

MOZART – Quintet in A for clarinet, two violins, viola and 'cello, K 581

About the Artists

This year, the Australian String Quartet comes to us with its new first violinist, and viola player.

Born in Canberra, Kristian Winther was violinist with the Tinalley String Quartet when they won the 2007 Banff International String Quartet Competition. He has performed with many Australian symphony orchestras and in Hong Hong. Kristian is also a conductor and composer.

Stephen King, who grew up in Canberra, studied viola in Brisbane and the USA. He has been a member of the Coolidge String Quartet, based in Washington, DC, and has been a member of the ACO since 2003. Stephen holds a Doctorate in Chamber Music from the University of Maryland.

Anne Horton and Rachel Johnston were members of the Tankstream Quartet before that group became the new Australian String Quartet in 2005. 

Guest artist, Paul Dean, is currently the Artistic Director of the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne. A graduate of the Queensland Conservatorium, where he received the Medal of Excellence, Paul has received a number of prestigious awards. He is a member (and Director) of the Southern Cross Soloists, based in Brisbane, has been Principal Clarinet of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, a soloist with the Adelaide and the Queensland Symphony Orchestras and has toured nationally with the Australian String Quartet and with the Macquarie Trio. He has had a long association with the Australian String Quartet.

Programme Notes

HAYDN – String quartet in B flat, op 76, no 4, Hob III:78, The Sunrise

Allegro con spirito / Adagio / Menuetto (Allegro). Trio / Finale, Allegro ma non troppo. Più allegro. Più presto

For the writer, Haydn quartets are always a great joy to hear. The string quartet was one of Haydn's great gifts to Western music. Opus 76 (1797) is but one set of Haydn's many string quartets. The others are op 1 (1762-4), op 2 (1762-3, only four survive), op 9 (1771), op 17 (1771), op 20 (1772), op 33(1781), op 50 (1787), op 54 (1788), op 55 (1788), op 64 (1790), op 71 (1793, three), op 74 (1793, three), op 76 (1797), op 77 (1799, only two). With the exception of those marked, each set consisted of six quartets.

What is now known as Opus 76 was published in Vienna in 1799 by Artaria and Co as Op 75 (first three) and Op 76 (second three), probably because Haydn had sent the manuscripts in two parcels. Longman, Clementi and Co published them in London in 1799 and 1800, in authentic prints, again in two groups but labelled together as Op 76.

The rising theme over sustained chords that begins the fourth quartet of op 76 gives rise to its English nickname, the Sunrise. Musicologist HJ Robbins Landon describes this as "one of the greatest openings in chamber music".

The deeply felt second movement is one of Haydn's slowest, and brings an atmosphere of grief which ends with "immense, boundless sadness".

But we have, in the menuetto, a clear change of mood; it is fast and full of energy and drive. The trio section is, by contrast, frankly violent.

The finale is in rondo form, A-B-A, the second appearance of A being in slightly modified form. The movement finishes with a very long coda (65 bars) which involves a two-step increase in speed.

WEBER – Quintet in B flat for clarinet, two violins, viola and 'cello,  op 34, J 182

Allegro / Fantasia: Adagio ma non troppo / Menuetto: Capriccio presto / Rondo: Allegro giocoso

Carl Maria von Weber was five years old when Mozart died in 1791. He was the eldest of the three children of Franz Anton von Weber and his second wife. The "von" was an affectation. His father's brother, Fridolin, had four musical daughters, Josepha, Aloysia, Constanze and Sophie, all of whom became notable singers. Mozart was hoping to marry Aloysia, composing several pieces for her. After she had rejected his advances, however, Mozart turned his attentions to Constanze and went on to marry her. Weber and Mozart were therefore cousins by marriage.

Weber's B flat clarinet quintet, op 34, was completed in 1815 and is numbered 182 in Jähns's catalogue. Unlike Mozart's clarinet quintet, which is true chamber music, Weber's is much more of a concerto. It was written for the clarinet virtuoso, Heinrich Baermann. Weber makes good use of the clarinet's ability to make great leaps between registers, many of them across intervals of three octaves or more.

The rather mysterious opening section gives way to a jerky clarinet theme and then what Roger Covell calls "one of those arpeggiated wave-like themes that are typical of Weber". The slow movement brings us those memorable ascending chromatic runs in the clarinet part, and the cappricio presto of the menuetto is contrasted by a calm, simple, trio section. The finale ushers in a much more Weberian theatrical style.

MOZART – Quintet in A for clarinet, two violins, viola and 'cello, K 581

Allegro / Larghetto / Menuetto / Allegretto con variazione

Mozart's clarinet quintet was composed in 1789 between the first two Prussian quartets. Even though the clarinet predominates as the first among equals, this work is in no way a concerto. Alfred Einstein suggests that Mozart treated the clarinet as if "he were the first to discover its charm, its 'soft, sweet breath', its clear depth, its agility". Mozart called the work "Stadler's quintet", having composed it for performance by his friend and fellow Freemason, Anton Stadler, for whom the later clarinet concerto was written as well.

The version of the quintet which is frequently heard is thought by experts to have been an arrangement for clarinet and strings of the original work which featured the basset clarinet, whose lowest note is one octave below middle C.

The development section of the first movement of the work has a concertante air about it, but for all five instruments, and the cantabile character of the second theme is resumed in the larghetto movement, where it is developed more fully. The third movement contains two trios – most unusual for Mozart, except in serenades and divertimenti – the first in a minor key for string quartet alone, and the second a Ländler, in which the clarinet becomes the rustic instrument which it was (and has remained) in South Bavaria and other alpine regions. The finale consists of five wonderful variations on a march-theme, followed by a coda.