Wolfgang Amadeus Johannes Chrysostomus Theophilius Mozart (1756-1791)

• 9 Variations. On a Minuet by Duport, K.573
  • Zarema Sitshayeva – Piano

Joseph Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

• Piéce en forme de Habanera
• Tzigane
  • Matias Yung & Tristan McCardel – Violin and Piano Duo

Fritz Friedrich Kreisler (1875-1962)

• Recitativo & Scherzo – Caprice
  • Jula Majewska - Violin

Interval (20 minutes)

Amy Marcy Beach (1867-1944)

• Piano Quintet, 2nd movement, Adagio espressivo
  • Julia Majewska, Sonya Kanter, Harry Rughoo, Jessie Sun, Anna Avramidou

Robert Alexander Schumann (1810-1856)

• Violin Sonata in A minor, Op.105
  • Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck (with passionate expression)
  • Allegretto
  • Lebhaft
• Zarema Sitshayeva & Kira Gaek

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

• Piano Quartet
  • Nicht zu schnell (not too fast)
    • Shlomi Shahaf, Dianna JoHoy Kim, Ken Ros Hirano, Tristan Harmanto
                      
       

The concert begins with some Mozart Variations.  The theme is by Jean-Pierre Duport, who was Royal Chamber Music Director and cellist to the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm II.  Mozart visited and possibly played before the King and Duport in a visit in 1789.  

Ravel’s Habanera was originally written for Bass voice and later transcribed as a violin / piano duet.  Tzigane was described by the composer as “a virtuoso piece in the style oof a Hungarian rhapsody ….it consists of a string of successive variations juxtaposed without development”.  The 1st performance took place in London in April 1924 by the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arányi, to whom the piece is dedicated.  

Fritz Kreisler was one of the finest violinists of his time.  His Recitativo and Scherzo, published in 1911, was dedicated to another virtuoso, Ysaŷe, and was inscribed ‘À Eugène Ysaŷe, le maître and l’ami’.  It is the only work for unaccompanied violin that Kreisler wrote.  

The 2nd part of our concert contains 3 larger scale ensemble pieces.  In this age when we are discovering works of female composers, the American composer and concert pianist Amy Beach is a prominent figure.  Her Piano Quintet was 1st performed with the composer and the Hoffmann String Quartet in Boston on February 17, 1908.  Along with an earlier Symphony and Piano Concerto, the Quintet is another work on a large scale full of broad expression, owing something to Brahms, whose work Beach much admired.  

One should never trust what a composer says about his/her own compositions!  Schumann is reported to have said, “I did not like the first Sonata for Violin and Piano; so I wrote a second one which I hope has turned out better”.  The A minor Sonata is, of course, a fine work.

 Composed in one week in September 1851, it was first performed privately by violinist Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski and then in the official premiere by Ferdinand David, with Clara Schumann at the piano on both occasions.  

Gustav Mahler is the last name one would associate with chamber music, rather more with 10 Symphonies and a host of wonderful songs, some beautifully with orchestra and the most wonderful “Das Lied von der Erde” – The Song of the Earth.  So, what of this Piano Quartet?  To find the origins of the Quartet, one has to go back to Mahler’s student days at the Vienna Conservatory.  At the end of his first year Mahler had begun work on a Piano Quartet in A minor and received a performance in 1876 with Mahler at the piano.  It is not clear if this was a complete work.  No documents survive.  Mahler mentions various youthful works in correspondence but nothing about a Piano Quartet.  There was a complete Violin Sonata, but that has not survived.  And so the movement for Piano Quartet we are to hear this evening is the sole survivor of the great symphonist’s student days.  
 

Programme Notes Copyright Alistair Jones, 2025