Benyounes String Quartet

Friday, 29th January, 2016

8.00 p.m.

Municipal Hall, Biggar

MOZART String Quartet in C, K465, Dissonance

MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in F minor, Op.80

DEBUSSY String Quartet

          Zara Benyounes      violin

          Emily Holland          violin

          Sara Roberts           viola

          Kim Vaughan           cello

Winners of the 2012 First International Sandor Vegh String Quartet Competition in Budapest, and Second Prize Winners at the 2014 Orlando International String Quartet Competition, the Benyounes Quartet is gaining a reputation as one of the most engaging, dynamic and successful young quartets to have emerged from the UK in recent years.

Formed in 2007 at the Royal Northern College of Music, the Benyounes Quartet went on to win the Royal Philharmonic Society's prestigious Julian Isserlis Scholarship, funding their studies with Professor Gabor Takacs-Nagy at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Geneve.   Here they won the conservatoire's most esteemed Prix d'Excellence.   The quartet continues to broaden its repertoire by initiating collaborative chamber music and cross-arts projects;  in 2012 the quartet founded Quercus Ensemble, a mixed chamber music group based in Northern Ireland.   The quartet works regularly with award winning jazz group Empirical, performing in the London Jazz Festival.

Despite the picture, the viola player has changed back to the original founder member, Sara Roberts, returning after having a baby.

Her biographical notes as follows:-  Sara comes from the place with the very long name on Anglesey, North Wales. She began to play the violin at age 7 before taking up the viola at the age of 15. She studied with Penny Stirling and Louise Lansdown at the RNCM. Sara completed her postgraduate studies with Isabel Charisius at the Hochschule Musik in Lucerne. She was a founder member of the Benyounes Quartet and also enjoys regular performances with Quercus Ensemble and Ensemble Cymru. Alongside her passion for chamber music she also plays with several symphony and chamber orchestras across the UK.

Programme notes from the concert:-

STRING QUARTET in C MAJOR, K465 ~ Dissonance Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART   1756 - 1791

Adagio - Allegro

Andante Cantabile

Menuetto (Allegro)

Allegro molto

Nowhere does Mozart show his debt to Johann Sebastian Bach more clearly in these quartets than in the Adagio introduction to the first movement. Its tread-like bass line acts as the foundation to its famous dissonances in just the same manner found in the Crucifixus, for example, of Bach’s B Minor Mass. Every extraordinary chord is the consequence of entirely logical part writing so that while the harmony all makes sense, it is also astonishing - a little like a rational debate which starts from a fantastical premise.

The presence of a slow introduction at all in a quartet is very unusual - Haydn did not use them, and although they do appear in Mozart’s earlier quartets, they are generally restricted to those pieces that were most likely symphonies or overtures in shorthand form. This Adagio both acts as a prelude to the jolly first movement proper, and looks ahead to the thoughtful Andante, which features many more unconventional dissonances and harmonic shifts.  The most Haydn-esque feature of the piece is the concentration of its melodic ideas. Every single movement has one or two small motifs - usually parts of the opening tune - which dominate the entire argument. In the first movement it is the first two bars of the movement proper; more specifically, their rhythm and general contour. Any other material heard in the next eight minutes of music appears solely to throw the development of this little gem into relief.

In the Andante Cantabile, there is a combination of the turning motif, as a kind of question and answer between the cello and first violin parts, and the chugging quavers that go with it in viola and second violin ( a reminiscence of the ‘dissonant’ introduction). These are the simple raw materials which, in Mozart’s hands, come to have sublime expressive power. They appear in several incarnations during the movement, but especially of note is the way in which the turning motif becomes the cello’s mysterious, repetitive accompaniment, rumbling away beneath the other parts.

The Minuet and Trio is like a breath of fresh air, with plenty of space. The mood is only slightly darkened by the chromatic flavour of the melodies.  In the finale, Mozart reaches a peak of economy, and it is in effect the opening two-quaver upbeat which he develops at length, almost risking being accused of monotony. He avoids it with moments of pure capricious fantasy - the first violin rushes off on a virtuosic solo for 20 bars; still chords interrupt the momentum to shift the harmony into mysterious and remote spheres. There is no direct reference back to the Adagio opening of this piece or the Andante, but in those still moments its spirit returns.

Mozart dedicated the six quartets in this set to Haydn, after hearing his Op. 33 quartets, composed “in an entirely new and special way” - more concentrated and integrated than the earlier quartets. The Dissonance quartet seems so triumphantly successful to us simply because of Mozart’s persistence and determination in the most arduous compositional task he was ever to undertake. Haydn, upon hearing Mozart’s new quartets, remarked to Mozart’s father, Leopold, “before God, and as a honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me, either in person or by name. He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.”

STRING QUARTET in F MINOR, Op. 80 Felix MENDELSSOHN   1809 - 1847

Allegro vivace assai

Allegro assai

Adagio

Finale: Allegro molto

This quartet, Mendelssohn’s last completed piece of chamber music, is a powerful impassioned utterance, with more deep feeling than any of his other works. If there could be any criticism, it is that the emotions which he attempted to contain within the confines of a string quartet really require a symphony orchestra for their full expression.  The circumstances of its conception were tragic: On May 17, 1847, Mendelssohn’s older sister, Fanny, to whom he was extremely devoted, died suddenly at the age of 41. Mendelssohn collapsed on hearing the news and he remained so distraught that he was unable to attend the funeral. To help him recover, his wife Cecile convinced him to spend the summer months in Switzerland. At Interlaken Mendelssohn went on solitary walks and made drawings and watercolours of the beautiful landscape, but found it difficult to compose.  By September, he had managed to complete his F minor quartet, a sorrowful yet angry piece which expresses some of the grief and bitterness Mendelssohn must have been feeling. Sadly this profound work, which may have portended the start of a new phase in the composer’s musical development, preceded his own death on November 4 by less than two months. The only subsequent chamber music which he composed was two movements for a string quartet which were combined with two individual movements written earlier and published as ‘Four Pieces for String Quartet’, Op. 81.

The passage opening the first movement is marked by a repetitive beat and builds to an aggressive motto hurtling down through the quartet. Once again the agitated opening phrase clamours up to the motto theme, but this time arrives as a warm tender presentation of the same motto. A thematic extension carries the music to the first part of the subsidiary theme, a calm, sedate descending line. As the theme continues, all forward motion seems to cease as the instruments sustain long-held notes in highly chromatic, advanced harmonies. The motifs of the main theme are the subject of the development, in which they steadily rise in pitch and grow in volume before giving way to the recapitulation. Although the coda starts quietly, like the opening, it quickly reaches a high level of concentrated intensity, maintained to the end.

Instead of being light and effervescent like Mendelssohn’s other scherzos, the second movement is savage and sardonic. The first part is a bizarre dance, with hammered syncopations and harsh dissonances. The brief middle section has the viola and cello playing an implacable ostinato line, to which the violins add a macabre waltzlike tune. The opening section is then heard again.

The most personal movement of the quartet is the elegiac Adagio. Growing from the opening phrase, which is shared by the cello and first violin, the music expresses, with great power and conviction, Mendelssohn’s deep despair and anguish. The forceful climax is followed by a precipitous drop to the quiet level of the opening and a short final statement of the initial part.

The sonata-form last movement projects a restless anxiety, offering little in the way of solace or acceptance. Despite some loud outbursts in the exposition, the two themes, the first a continuing syncopated line, the second with a drooping cadence at the end of every short phrase, are held under tight control. Mendelssohn’s wrath, however, emerges in the development, but is mostly muted in the much-shortened recapitulation, only to rise once again in the coda.

QUARTET in G MINOR, Op. 10 Claude Achille DEBUSSY   1862 - 1918

Animé et très decidé

Assez vif et bien rythmé

Andantino , doucement expressif

Très modéré; Très mouvemente

The period around 1990 was a crucial time in Debussy’s life. The composer had just returned to Paris after a two year Prix de Rome residency in Italy and was eager to rid himself of the restraints of the academicians. One of the first works in which he struck a new artistic direction was the Quartet in G minor, which, along with ‘L’Après-midi d’un faune’ from the same time, established what is called the impressionistic style in music . Its varied tonal effects, soulful beauty, and freedom of form and structure provide an excellent musical counterpart to the Impressionist paintings and Symbolist poetry of the time.

The opening notes of the first movement are of over-riding importance, making up the melodic cell from which the entire quartet unfolds and grows. This germinal motif is a rather rough sounding motto; rhythmically complex and melodically convoluted, it zig-zags back and forth within a comparatively limited tonal range. A distinguishing feature is the rapid three-note ornamental fillip at the central turning point. Following the short motif and its repetition, three other melodies are heard, coming between restatements of the motif, each time, though, in a slightly different form. The various themes, and especially the opening motto, are then heard in an imaginative procession of transformed shapes and guises - now surging with great passion, now stated in stentorian splendour, now stretched and drawn out in length, now plaintively sung - until the movement races to its climactic resolution.

The second movement offers a profusion of sparkling tonal effects, led by the viola playing an obstinately repeated, quickened version of the motif. Above, beneath and all around this ostinato figure, the other instruments furnish brilliant pizzicato flourishes and scintillating cross rhythms. The cello brings this section to a close, and establishes the murmuring accompaniment for the first violin playing the opening motif in leisurely augmentation. Sections of new and derived melodic material follow, including a rhythmically attractive pizzicato passage in which the original motto is transformed into five-beat metre. Then, just as the cello seems to be starting the murmuring accompaniment again, the movement fades away.

After false starts by the second violin and viola, the third movement starts with the first violin softly singing a languid melody which rocks gently back and forth in pitch. The viola next seizes one fragment of the melody and expands it into a slightly faster theme. Another theme, also introduced by the viola, includes the three-note figure of the opening motto. It is worked up into an impassioned climax before a return of the quiet rocking theme brings the movement to a subdued conclusion.

The introduction to the final movement, also based on the original motif, continues the quiet mood. The music grows somewhat more animated, as the cello starts a fugue-like passage, using a further transformation of the germinal motif. The fast part of the last movement then starts with a rapid, cluster-of-notes theme in the viola. From the final notes of this theme, Debussy spins out another melody. The shared notes of both themes become the accompaniment for the motif, this time in grandiose elongation. A reminder of the opening theme of this movement leads to a coda and conclusion which provide a final and exciting glimpse of the considerably altered original motto. Completed early in 1893, the quartet was dedicated to the Ysaye Quartet who gave the first performance in Paris in December 1893.