Notes by Philip Carlsen
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Quartet in E-flat major, K. 493 (1786)
Johannes Brahms, Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 (1861)
Mozart settled in Vienna in 1781 at age 25, making a definitive break from Salzburg and his father’s control, determined to chart his own
career path from that point forward. The city offered the young freelancer musical opportunities at every turn. In his early years there, he cemented his reputation as the first great piano virtuoso, producing public concerts with himself as soloist in new music he had written specifically for the occasions. Most notably, he debuted more than a dozen piano concertos from 1782 to 1786. These strikingly innovative masterworks provided models for composers for generations to come, and they still appear regularly on concert programs.
As Maynard Solomon wrote in his biography of Mozart, Vienna “contained a multiplicity of audiences with appetites for various kinds of music.” For women of the upper classes, who were expected to learn piano or harpsichord as part of their proper upbringing, the appetite was for congenial pieces they could play in the home at social gatherings, either alone or in small chamber ensembles with other musicians. It was for such accomplished amateurs that Mozart wrote many works, including his two piano quartets, the one in G minor from 1785, and this one in the key of E-flat, published a year later. Such pieces for piano and strings had roots in an earlier genre known as the accompanied sonata—essentially solo keyboard pieces with violin and cello added to reinforce the lines played by the pianist. We hear holdovers of that approach here, with the cello part usually limited to bass notes that are already present in the pianist’s left hand. However, Mozart provided substantial, independent parts for the violin and mviola. Early in the first movement, for instance, the violin steps forward to present a lyrical solo. The piano provides a rippling accompaniment then takes its turn alone with the same melody. Similar trade-offs are common throughout the piece, often with the full string trio engaging in dialogue with the piano, the instruments on an equal footing. Again and again, however, the piano reasserts its primacy, tossing off roulades of scale figures with the right hand. In that sense, the piece feels like a miniature piano concerto, but one with an “orchestra” of just three instruments.
Like Mozart, Brahms was also in his twenties when he started composing his first two piano quartets. But whereas Mozart had good amateur musicians in mind, Brahms was writing music that demanded professional players. The first performance of the G minor quartet, in 1861, included one of Europe’s finest pianists, Brahms’ dear friend and confidante Clara Schumann. Brahms himself played in the Vienna premiere a year later, his debut performance in the city that was soon to become his home. The four-movement, forty-minute piece is symphonic in scope, expansive in its profusion and development of musical themes, so dramatic in its contrasts and colors that the twentieth-century atonal composer Arnold Schoenberg took the logical next step and made a compelling version of the piece for full orchestra.
At the time he wrote the quartet, Brahms had already begun sketches for his Symphony No. 1, a piece that wouldn’t be completed and premiered until 1876. With that long-range project always hovering on the sidelines of his creative spirit, it’s likely that the piano quartets and his other large-scale, four-movement chamber pieces provided an outlet for his symphonic thinking, a workshop for refining his conceptions of musical form and expression. In his book The Music of Brahms, Michael Musgrave writes that “The path from the relative simplicity of form and ideas of the B flat Sextet [1860] to the complexity of the Piano Quintet [1864], string quartets [1865-75] and eventually the First Symphony was to be arduous. In the first movement of the G minor [Piano] Quartet he confronts the problems head on.”
The piece begins simply and quietly with solo piano, the other instruments joining one by one to express a lovely tune in G minor. It melts away. After a momentary silence, a new theme is introduced in B-flat major, more urgent in its rhythms but still soft. It builds quickly to the first fortissimo. Brahms adds powerful sixteenth note figures, traded back and forth between the instruments. Thus, within just the first minute-and-a-half, he’s brought us into three distinct musical regions with their attendant diverse emotions. Clara Schumann told Brahms she had her doubts about the unconventional way the movement unfolded. But, as Musgrave suggests, it represented an important step in Brahms’ “desire to integrate the extremes of expression represented by Beethovenian intensity and Schubertian expansiveness.”
The following three movements are less overwhelming in their length and emotional weight, although just as rich in musical invention. It’s not too far-fetched to hear them as love songs—the urgent longing of the second movement intermezzo, underpinned with the fluttering of rapid repeated notes from the cello; the balletic pas de deux of its trio section; the warm embrace of song in the third movement, interrupted by a glorious march, the loved one passing by in uniform, then a return to deeper thoughts; the rousing gypsy dances of the last movement, “Rondo alla Zingarese,” perhaps at a wedding, the musicians and dancers showing off for one another, the newlyweds quieting the crowd for a moment to take their first slow dance as husband and wife.
Notes by Nokuthula Ngwenyama
Joy Steppin’ (2024)
When Sharon Robinson of the fabulous piano quartet ESPRESSIVO! kindly invited me to write a piece for the ensemble, she offered this prompt: Embrace the joy that is all around us! I was honored to accept.
“Happiness” skirts around the edges, while “joy” settles deep and carries us beyond the abyss. Joy can be a challenge to cultivate, but it remains one of our great human gifts. Joy – on both a personal and universal level – draws from the same deep wellspring as grief, celebrating our capacity for love, compassion and generosity. It is ever hopeful, drawing us forward, embracing and nourishing the human capacity to make things better.
Joy Steppin’ anxiously begins walking along the shallow side of happy. It then settles and reflects, through the piú lento, adagio, and piú andante, before toe-tapping into its G minor dance theme of the title. And then, just before the final section brings the work to a close, the cello and piano take a deep breath, create a sliding, reverberating tone, a deep spiritual sound that begins low and gradually rises – like a meditational “Om ॐ”– providing a unifying moment to allow us to feel our interconnectedness.
* * *
As I was composing, I was uplifted reading The Book of Joy by the 14th Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams and moved by the words of Dr. Brittney Cooper: Joy is an invitation to make new worlds rather than being held hostage to the old ones.
To which I add this wish: May all beings know love, compassion, peace and the experience of stepping into joy.
Thanks very much to ESPRESSIVO! – Anna Polonsky, Jaime Laredo, Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt and Sharon Robinson – for including me in this blessing. Thanks also very much to the International Arts Foundation, Inc. for supporting the creation of this work and to the commissioners: Linton Chamber Music, generously supported by Ann and Harry Santen (world premiere); Apex Concerts; Arizona Friends of Chamber Music; Brattleboro Music Center; Chamber Music Albuquerque; Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland; Denver Friends of Chamber Music; El Paso Pro Musica; Emory Chamber Music Society; Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival; Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle; International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and Ensemble Music Society of
Indianapolis; Kansas City Friends of Music; Lake Champlain
Chamber Music Festival; Peoples’ Symphony Concerts; Phoenix Chamber Music Society; Portland Ovations; Schubert Club; Seattle Chamber Music Society; and Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music.
© Nokuthula NGWENYAMA
1 Smith College. “Reflecting Joy and Justice.” Last modified November 26, 2023. Accessed October 11, 2024. https://www.smith.edu/news-events/news/reflecting-joy-and-justice. (Dr. Cooper is an award-winning author, commentator and professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University.)
ESPRESSIVO performs Saturday, January 25 at 2 PM at Hannaford Hall on the USM Campus in Portland.
