Friday 28th June 2024
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) String quartet in F♯ minor, Op. 50. No 4, H III/47
The 6 string quartets in Haydn’s Opus 50 (“Prussian Quartets”) were all dedicated to Frederick William II of Prussia and completed in 1787. All of these quartets have the fast-slow-minuet-fast four movement structure that was usual for the time. The F♯ minor quartet in this set is in an unusual key for Haydn, utilised for only four of his hundreds of works, and that choice of key is never fully settled throughout the quartet with repeated tension with the relative major key of A. Maybe the discomfort felt in this quartet is a reflection of Haydn’s own feelings towards this key and why he used it so rarely.
The opening fast Allegro Spiritoso takes its time developing its themes, and concludes in somewhat unresolved major/minor argument that continues into the slow Andante, a double variation with a declarative coda in an A minor chord. The Menuetto: Poco allegretto is conventionally in two halves, minuet and trio, both exhibiting the key tension prevalent in this work, but separated by a somewhat discordant D major chord. The fugue, Finale: Fuga, allegro molto, weaves the motifs already stated, continuing the somewhat uncomfortable key tensions to the end.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) String quartet in D major, K499, “Hoffmeister”
Mozart wrote his D major String quartet (No. 20, K 499) in 1786 and so was contemporaneous with the Haydn Op. 50 quartet heard earlier. It may have been written for fellow composer Franz Anton Hoffmeister, and was certainly published by him, hence the work’s nickname, and was a stand-alone work written between the six Op. 10 quartets dedicated to Haydn and the three “Prussian” quartets Op. 18 (named for the same reason as Haydn’s Op. 50). Hoffmeister said of K 499 that it was written, ‘with that fire of the imagination and that correctness which long since won for Herr M. the reputation of one of the best composers in Germany’ (though it was written and published in Vienna), and that the minuet was, ‘composed with an ingenuity (being interwoven with canonic imitations) that one not infrequently finds wanting in other such compositions’. In four movements (Allegretto, Menuetto: Allegretto, Adagio and Allegretto) the D major quartet is a carefully constructed and fascinating weave of elegant melodies.
Carl Czerny (1791-1857) String Quartet in A minor
Carl Czerny was a prolific Austrian composer but most of his works remain unpublished and is only now receiving occasional performances and a very few recordings. The A minor quartet, composed in the 1850s, was probably intended for publication, but the manuscript is still held by the Wiener Musikverein to which Czerny bequeathed all his works. We can thank the Sheridan Ensemble for finding and making these works available, and the manuscripts playable, and were responsible for the first recording of the A minor quartet in 2015. Since then, Czerny is being recognised as having written more than the ‘childish pranks’ with which he regarded his compositions, and yet it remains a privilege to hear this work live tonight.
The four movements of the A minor quartet begin with a sense of unease, stylistically likened to Mendelssohn, but in this concert, striking a telling parallel with the Haydn Op. 50 No. 4. The charming trio section of the Scherzo in charmingly and typically Viennese.