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July 23 – Festival Fridays

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Montsalvatge – Fantasía

Brahms – Trio in E-flat major for Piano, Violin, and Horn

Schubert – String Quartet in D minor

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Xavier Montsalvatge

Catalonian composer Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2002) was a prolific composer, teacher, and writer. Strongly influenced by modern French music, he attended the Barcelona Conservatory and later taught there, as well as at other prominent schools in the city. Two of his early works, Three Impromptus for Piano and Burlesque Suite, won prizes, as did many of his later works. Other compositions by Montsalvatge include the scores for nineteen ballets and his transcriptions of songs he collected in the West Indies. The latter culture also influenced his Five Black Songs. Another popular work is his first opera: Puss in Boots. He also wrote several concertos, in addition to works in various other genres.

Fantasy (Fantasía) for Guitar and Harp (1983)

This work was commissioned by Narciso Yepes and Nicanor Zabaleta. They premiered it at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center in 1984 and also performed it at New York's Carnegie Hall. It became standard repertory for both musicians. The commentaries in the Washington Post and the New York Times spoke of a technically-complete and imaginative work that gives the sense of a polychromatic painting. The first movement ("Chiaroscuro" - "Clear-Obscure") is at a moderate tempo. The second movement ("Cadence") is calm and easy. The third movement ("Brazilian") is moderately fast.

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Johannes Brahms

German composer Johannes Brahms (1833-97) was the leading 19th-century figure of Classically-inspired Romanticism. Hans von Bülow once joked that Brahms' Symphony No. 1 was "Beethoven's Tenth." The son of a double-bass player, teenaged Brahms made money by playing piano in restaurants, taverns, and brothels. He was then championed as a young man by Robert Schumann, and after Schumann's death he had a long friendship with Clara Schumann. Brahms was very successful as a composer, but he had no comparable successes in his personal life. He died of liver or pancreatic cancer, without ever having gotten married. His works include symphonies, concertos (such as the Violin Concerto in D major, performed on July 16), choral/vocal works (such as the German Requiem), piano music, and chamber works. He also wrote regionally-inspired music, as well as character pieces. His music always follows formal, structural plans, but he never sacrifices emotional content. Brahms' chamber music includes his Sonata No. 2 in A major for Piano and Violin (July 12), his Trio in E-flat major for Piano, Violin, and Horn, and his Viola (Clarinet) Sonata in F minor (August 2).

Trio in E-flat major for Piano, Violin, and Horn (Op. 40, 1865)

This highly-personal work reflects several aspects of a "mid-life crisis." For example, Brahms specifies that the horn used be a valve-less, "natural" one. The natural horn was the instrument his father had played professionally, and he gave young Brahms lessons on it. Brahms also wished to acknowledge the Romantic-era associations with nature and hunting that he had established in his earlier career. The first movement ("At a walking pace") unusually features an expanded ternary form (ABABA) instead of the usual choice of a relatively complex sonata form. In addition, the melodies are nostalgic and yearning in character. The main section of the second movement Scherzo ("Quickly") provides a rambunctious hunting song, which is contrasted by the Austrian Ländler (folk dance) of the middle section. The third movement ("Slow, sad") uses a simple ternary form (ABA), but Brahms adds complexity by presenting his opening material with fugal counterpoint. Later in the movement, he quotes the folk song "There in the Willows Stands a House." He had learned this song as a child from his mother. She had just passed away, and the movement thus functions as his first elegy in her honor. (The German Requiem was the second.) The fourth movement Finale ("Fast, with brilliance") then concludes the work with a light, energetic, "back to hunting" mood.

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Franz Schubert

Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) joined Beethoven as an important musical figure in the transition from Classicism to Romanticism. He is especially important in the development of the German art song, such as "Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel," "The Erlking," and the seminal song cycles The Lovely Maid of the Mill and Winter Journey. However, he also wrote orchestral music, operas, masses, piano works (such as the Wanderer Fantasy), and chamber music. Schubert was especially gifted melodically, but he also explored expansions of harmony and form. In his late teens and early twenties, he supported himself for several years as a schoolteacher (i.e., not teaching music), but he then also taught music lessons privately for the aristocratic Esterházy family. Schubert was something of a bohemian, and his friends helped him financially while he struggled to establish himself as a composer in Vienna. In an arguably related matter, he contracted syphilis in 1822. In 1823, he was elected into the Music Society of Graz, and he wrote his "Unfinished" Symphony for them. Although Beethoven had heard and admired some of Schubert's songs, the rest of Vienna did not catch on until 1828. Unfortunately, Schubert died that same year from syphilis, at only 31.

String Quartet in D minor – "Death and the Maiden" (D810, 1824)

This work is a dark, but important, early entry in the standard Romantic era chamber music repertory. Schubert based the work on the opening theme of his earlier song, "Death and the Maiden" (1817). In the song, Death urges a frightened maiden to trust him—that he means her no harm and that she will simply fall asleep in his arms. Schubert manages to translate that ethos into a large-scale, programmatic chamber work without words. The first movement ("Quickly") is at once harrowing, with a striking rhythmic gesture. The contrasting theme is more joyful and life-affirming. The lengthy second movement ("At a walking pace, but with motion") begins with the "Death" theme from Schubert's earlier song. The theme is then presented five additional times, but the effect is quite oppressive, because the theme is not altered very much. The third movement Scherzo ("Quite quickly") is abrupt and rhythmically complex. The fourth movement ("Very fast") is practically demonic in mood, with a propulsive, swirling force on a recurring rhythm.

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