Farr, Beethoven, & Dvořák

Farr, Beethoven, & Dvořák

GARETH FARR (b. 1968)
Taheke for Flute and Harp
Ben Smith, flute • June Han, harp

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major, Op. 16
Corinne Foley, oboe • Michael Wayne, clarinet • Abigail Lopez, bassoon • Oved Rico, horn • Elinor Freer, piano

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904)
Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81
Mikhail Kopelman, Meg Freivogel, violin • Che-Yen Chen, viola • Edward Arron, cello • Jeewon Park, piano

Program Notes

GARETH FARR
Taheke for Flute and Harp (2002)

Taheke is the Maori word for waterfall. The three movements of this work are each a musical depiction of a particular waterfall in New Zealand.

The first is the mighty Huka Falls near Taupo. The broad and placid Waikato River is channelled gradually into an increasingly narrow chute, ultimately erupting into a waterfall of unbelievable power and fury; then, as quickly as it has built up, the water subsides back into a calmly flowing river.

In contrast to the Huka Falls with its famed reputation, the waterfall of the second movement is known only to my family. It is on our land in the Marlborough Sounds, utterly secluded in the bush and only accessible on foot through thick undergrowth. This waterfall is cool, dark and mysterious.

The finale represents the grandeur and sprightly elegance of the Whangarei Falls in Northland, a beautiful cascade of sparkling rivulets.

Program Note by Gareth Farr

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major, Op. 16 (1796)

In 1796, as his composition career in Vienna was just starting to blossom, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat. The piece is one of Beethoven’s clearest homages to W.A. Mozart, who composed a work for these instruments in 1784 that he considered at the time to be “the best thing I have written in all my life.” The pattern of keys and movement tempos in Beethoven’s Quintet (a slow introduction and a sonata form movement in E-flat; a slow movement in B-flat; then a lively rondo back in E-flat) mirrors that of his predecessor, and there are subtler allusions to Mozart contained in it as well.

The Quintet opens with the full ensemble quietly playing a figure that features a double-dotted, horn-call-like rhythm and conjures the image of a lone trumpeter intoning a military signal in the distance. The body of the movement is set up in the manner of a sonata with instrumental accompaniment of the time, with the piano playing most of the themes first, and one or several of the winds shooting it back in reply. The Andante cantabile has an unmistakably Mozartian quality. The curves of the melodic lines are so simple, and yet each tune contains at least one moment of unanticipated, expressive weight.

At the 1797 premiere of the piece, the composer used the many dramatic pauses written into the final movement to show off. As his student Ferdinand Ries recalled, “Beethoven suddenly started improvising, taking the Rondo subject as his theme and entertaining himself and the others for quite some time.” The audience loved it, but Ries remembered that “This was not the case with the accompanists. They were very annoyed… It did indeed look very droll to see these gentlemen, expecting to begin at any moment, raising their instruments to their mouths incessantly and then quietly putting them down again. At last Beethoven was satisfied and returned to the Rondo. The whole society was enchanted.”

Program Note by Nicky Swett

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81 (1887)

Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet (1842) was not the first work to combine the string quartet with the keyboard; but without a doubt, it was Schumann’s Quintet that catalysed interest in the relatively new genre, and set the scene for future forays, including those of Brahms (1865) and Dvořák. Dvořák in fact attempted a Piano Quintet in A Major (1872) early on in his career, and it was his first composition ever to be performed. But it was Dvořák’s second attempt at the form, composed at the peak of his fame and in the same key as that earlier effort, which came to be considered among his, and the genre’s, greatest masterpieces.

Dvořák structures the outer movements in expansive sonata forms, while the inner movements are modeled on Slavic dances — specifically the dumka and the furiant. The use of these forms played a significant part in Dvořák’s general approach to composition: the folklorist aesthetic resonated with nineteenth-century nationalist and regionalist political movements, and Dvořák saw the use of popular musical traditions as a source of musical rejuvenation: “The music of the people is like a rare and lovely flower growing amidst encroaching weeds,” he wrote; “It will command attention and creep into the books of composers.”

Here, Dvořák draws upon the dumka, a folk ballad of Ukrainian origin, as the basis for the lyrical second movement, opening with a contrapuntal subject for piano and viola. For the third movement, he builds a scherzo on the bounding rhythm of the furiant, a dance from his native Bohemia. These forms — the dumka in particular — proved especially inspiring to Dvořák over the course of his career; in addition to the famous “Dumky” Trio, Op. 90, he had also composed dumky for his Sextet, Op. 48 and for his Violin Concerto, Op. 53.

Program Note by Peter Asimov