Mozart Violin Sonata in D major, K306

Continuing the both the Mozart birthday celebration and the Mozart violin sonata cycle, last night was the Mozart Violin Sonata in D major, K306, the last of the set published as Opus 1. 

Neither DG nor I were in our best form last night: he'd had a very long and busy day, which used up much of the brain power he applies to his amazing sight reading.  And I was using my backup viola bow, since both of my other bows are off being rehaired.  Bows do actually make a difference!

Still, a wonderful sonata from beginning to end.  There's a great Haydn-esque touch in the first movement, with the themes scrambled in the recap: we don't get a reprise of the first theme until nearly the end.  The second movement is beautiful, even by the standard of Mozart slow movements, and the last movement is just pure fun, particularly the extended dual cadenza near the end.

Mozart's Birthday! Four Quartets, K464, K499, K428, K458

When I woke up yesterday morning, I had no idea I was going to be playing string quartets that evening, but an email from a friend I hadn't played with in a while started the ball rolling, and we ended up having a quartet session.  Since it was Mozart's birthday, we played only Mozart.  I'm not sure that's the wisest course: it can easily lead to a case of Stendhal syndrome.  But it was definitely fun.

We started with the A major, K464, fifth of the six Mozart dedicated to Haydn.  (I find it a little frustrating that these six quartets are usually referred to as a group as the "Haydn" quartets: that's quite confusing!  Since they were published together as Opus 10, I'd prefer to use that name, but I doubt I'll be able to get anyone to go along with me.)

Our image of Mozart as a composer is that everything just came to him, fully formed, and all he had to do was write it down.  (One of Mozart's autograph scores has the notation, "written while playing skittles".)  But that was apparently not true of these quartets; in the dedication to Haydn, Mozart writes  "They are, it is true, the fruit of a long and laborious endeavor".  And that's evident from the fragment, K464a, which I played last week: it was almost definitely going to be the last movement of the A major quartet, before Mozart thought the better of it.  I got the group tonight to read through it after the third movement of this quartet, before moving on to the published finale.  And I have to say, in my opinion, Mozart made the right choice.  This finale is wonderful, particularly in how a theme that shows up in the middle of the exposition dominates the development, and keeps going right into the recapitulation, adding a whole new layer to what was already a fairly complex texture.

We played three other quartets, the "Hoffmeister" in D major, K499, and then two more from the Opus 10, the E-flat major, K428, and the B-flat major "Hunt", K458.  I'm afraid I have to admit that my memory of these is rather jumbled together, but the beginning of the E-flat major sticks out in my mind.  First, because it has the entire quartet in unison and octaves, a great effect but one that always strikes fear into my heart, because the slightest intonation problem will stick out like a sore thumb.   But also because it's a great example of Mozart's love of chromaticism (including pitches not from the scale of the key the piece is in).  After the first octave leap, there is a sequence of nine different pitches.  Three-quarters of a tone row!  And yet Mozart makes it work, seemingly effortlessly.

I wrote a while ago that only Shostakovich really understood the viola, but I take it back: Mozart gets it, too.  Not surprising, because he tended to play viola when he played string quartets.  My goodness, Mozart writes some wonderful viola parts, and they almost all lie completely under the hand.  Although there are passages that make me suspect that Mozart had particularly large hands. :-)

Two comments about old and new technology.  I'm trying out a viola bow that a friend of mine wants to sell, and I'm becoming more and more enamored of it.   Things I have trouble with when using my own bow (like avoiding skittering when playing a long, soft note after loud passages) just seem to work with this one.  I wonder what properties bows have that make them so different?  I work for a company that creates mechanical analysis software; I wonder if anyone has tried to model bows?

This was also the first evening trying out the full set of white LED downlights in my living room.  They received praise, for the combination of strong light, good color, and lack of heat (13 watt white LEDs replacing 75 watt halogens!).  As an electrical engineer, I'm delighted that we finally have such a good technology for lighting.  Now we just have to be patient as the price comes down...

P. S. In case I didn't make it clear, I invite comments and questions on this blog.  In particular, I'm not quite sure who my audience is (besides myself :-)  so I don't know how much to explain.  Let me know!

Mozart Violin Sonata in A major, K.305

As if three-plus string quartets in an afternoon weren't enough, I had my usual evening at DG's house, ending with a violin sonata, Mozart's A-major, K. 305.  This is one of a set of six that were published as Mozart's Opus 1 (not to be confused with the childhood violin sonatas, K.6 and K.7, also published as Opus 1).  No wonder no one uses Mozart's opus numbers in talking about his music!  Anyway, these six sonatas, K. 301-306, are an absolute delight; I would have been very happy with my purchase if I'd bought them when they were first published.

DG and I had an interesting discussion after finishing the first movement about how Mozart used a diminished seventh chord as a shortcut to get back to the tonic in time for the recapitulation.  I correctly diagnosed how this particular chord was serving in a dominant function to a B-flat major chord on one side, and to an E-major chord on the other side.  Fun stuff.  I am, after all, an engineer, so I feel a natural affinity to music theory.

Haydn, Op. 50/4; Mendelssohn, Op. 44/2; Brahms, Op. 51/2; Mozart, Rondo Fragment K464a

A very full afternoon of string quartets today.  Three full works, plus a nearly-complete movement.  My back is tired: occupational hazard for a violist.

A difficult piece in the Haydn String Quartet project today, the F-sharp minor Op. 50, No. 4.  Haydn does love to take his players to unusual keys.  The problem with F-sharp minor isn't the key itself, which has only three sharps: it's that you often have to play in the parallel major, which in this case has six sharps.  I'm not sure I'll ever be a good enough sight-reader to read six sharps on the viola.  Perhaps practice would help, but there seem to be many more common things that need practicing first!

Still, the parts of the piece that weren't littered with sharps went quite well, particularly the fugue in the last movement.  I think this is the last Haydn quartet with a fugue; there were three in Opus 20, and this definitely feels like an echo of one of those.  The Henle edition we played from was silent on this point, but the cellist recommended we play "sotto voce" until the forte near the end, and the effect was wonderful.

Next up was Mendelssohn's E-minor quartet, Op. 44, No. 2.  I love Mendelssohn; he's so clearly a string player.  His music just "lies under the hand" as we say; it sounds more difficult than it is.  We did a great job with this, I thought.  I was especially impressed with the second violinist, who had never played or even heard the piece before.  We had some duets in octaves that were perfectly together: marvelous!

Contrasting with the Mendelssohn was Brahms' quartet in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2.  Now don't get me wrong: I love Brahms.  But he is very clearly not a string player.  There's a rumor (I heard it again today) that he played the viola, but I can't believe it; Wikipedia says that he studied the cello, and I find that almost as difficult to believe.  Nothing he writes for the viola is technically impossible to play, but it's just so awkward.  Brahms knew this about himself; he wrote, "Oh, how much more agreeable and sensible it is to write for an instrument one knows thoroughly --- as I presume to know the piano."  This quartet is particularly challenging, because it's all about the tritone (an interval of three whole steps together, say from D-sharp to A), and that's an awkward interval in the viola.

We finished up reading through Mozart's unfinished Rondo in A major, K. 464a (or K. Anh. 72).  This was probably the first version of the finale for his A-major quartet, one of the six dedicated to Haydn.  It's frustrating, because it's almost finished: one more pass through the rondo theme and he would have been done.  I have to admit, I like the published finale better, but this is beautiful music that's well worth hearing and playing.

Sextets: Brahms, Op. 36 and Tchaikovsky, Op. 70 "Souvenir de Florence"

Last night was a sextet evening, in part to welcome back for a visit the first violinist of my former regular quartet, back in Boston for a few months, and also because I have a birthday coming up that's divisible by six. :-)  An ambitious program, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, but I had a lot of fun, and I think others did, too.

I like to play bridge, and occasionally a friend of mine will get me to try a six-handed version, with a deck of cards with six suits instead of the usual four.  My feeling when I play is that I'm trying to cram 50% more stuff into my head than usual.  And that's the same feeling I get playing sextets after a diet of nothing larger than quartets.  So much to try to keep track of!

It was interesting to play pieces by Brahms and Tchaikovsky back-to-back, two such different composers.  Brahms is not noted as a composer with particular melodic invention (with one glaring exception: I wonder if he realized that Op. 49, No. 4 was going to be his lasting claim to popularity?)  Tchaikovsky crams Souvenir de Florence with one tune after another.  Brahms is strongly in the tradition of Haydn when it comes to his chamber music, providing interest for all the players through motivic development, passing small musical ideas among them.  Tchaikovsky tries this occasionally, but when he gets one of his great tunes going, the rest of the sextet is reduced to pure accompaniment.  (This worked out well last night: our visiting first violinist is a real superstar, a joy to listen to.  But it does get a little tedious to play forty measure of pizzicato triplets, for example).

Brahms and Tchaikovsky also differ in a quality I can only describe as subtlety.  My late wife Roberta used to remark that playing Brahms is easy: all you have to do is get the notes in the right place, and the music plays itself.  Of course, Brahms makes that very difficult, with his continual three-against-two, displacement of harmonic rhythm, and metrical ambiguity.  I sometimes wish that Brahms had had the courage to change meter to fit the music, the way the composers of the following century did.

Tchaikovsky is not a subtle composer at all, particularly in his use of dynamics.  I started the last page of Souvenir de Florence at forte, but since I'd practiced, I knew that not only did I have to go to fortissimo (ff), and then fortississimo (fff), but by the end, he's at quadruple forte (ffff)!  The end of the first movement is marked "tutta forza".  At least he didn't put a crescendo after that. :-)

By the way, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston has on their website an amazing library of free recordings of their concerts.  The performance of Souvenir de Florence I linked to above is particularly good.

Oh, one more thing.  It's rare in my life that I get direct evidence that the muscles that move the fingers aren't in the fingers or hand, but actually in the forearm.  But I did last night: after finishing the Tchaikovsky, those muscles in my left forearm let their presence be known.  Ouch!

P.S.  I forgot to mention that we found two misprints involving rehearsal number in the Brahms, and I wanted to document them here in case anyone searches for such things.  Edition Peters, Nr. 3906b, Brahms Streich-Sextett G-Dur, Opus 36.  In the second cello part, in the last movement, rehearsal number 5 is missing entirely; it should be at the beginning of the last bar, fourth line from the end.  In the second viola part, rehearsal number 5 is a bar early; it should be in the middle of the 2-bar multirest.

Haydn, String Quartet in F, Op. 74/2; Shostakovich, String Quartet No. 1 in C, Op. 49; Mendelssohn, String Quartet in a, Op. 13

One of the wonderful things about being an amateur chamber musician is that pretty frequently you have an evening of exceptional music.  To use a term from engineering, you get a positive feedback loop going, where somehow the fact that the other players are playing well helps you to play well, also.  That's what happened last night.  I had three wonderful musicians visiting me at my house, and everyone seem on top of his or her form.

We started, of course, with a Haydn quartet, the F major, Op. 74, No. 2.  A typical Haydn quartet, and, boy, did we sound good.  And we had a fun time doing it: you should have seen the smile on the first violinist's face when she played the cadenza in the last movement.  But this quartet made me a little sad, as do all six of the Op. 71/74 set, and the reason is in the first few measures.

See, I'm very firmly an amateur musician, and one of the things that draws me to chamber music is that it has a strong thread throughout history of being music for amateurs to play together.  Schubert's early string quartets were written for his family quartet (Schubert on viola, his brothers on violin, his father on cello).  Brahms dedicated his string quartets to notable amateurs.  And Haydn's string quartets started out as amateur music: as I recall, there's no evidence that any of his quartets were performed at Eszterhazy while he was in charge of music there.

But when Haydn visited London, he composed the six quartets of Op. 71/74 specifically for public performance.  All six of them start with an attention grabber, an introduction that supposedly gets the audience to quiet down before the real quartet starts (although in this quartet, the introduction's theme shows up again at the end of the movement).

So with this set of six quartets, Haydn launches the thread of quartets-as-public-performance-pieces.  And that's what makes me a little sad; I would have preferred that string quartets remained amateur music forever.

After the Haydn, we read through Shostakovich's first string quartet, the Op. 49 in C major.  There are three things that stand out in Shostakovich's quartets for me.  First, he writes great tunes. :-)  Second, he writes the most amazing viola parts.  You'd think, given all the classical composers who played viola (Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak) that the viola would get more prominence in string quartets than it does, but nobody before Shostakovich really seems to get the viola.  The third thing I love about Shostakovich is his willingness to write thin textures.  You often get trios, duets, or even extended solos in his quartets, something which very seldom happened before.  Listen to the second movement of this quartet for an example of all three points.

Finally, we played one of my favorite quartets, the Mendelssohn Op. 13.  This lecture goes into detail about what makes this an amazing piece, but briefly, Mendelssohn, eighteen when Beethoven died, decided to emulate the larger-than-life composer, but not the early or middle quartets, but the late ones, at a time when many people agreed with Louis Spohr that Beethoven's late quartets were "an indecipherable, uncorrected horror".  The way Mendelssohn brings in elements from so many other genres of music, as Beethoven did, is thrilling.  And it's such a romantic piece, beginning and ending with a quote from Mendelssohn's song "The Question".  It's a good thing we were the tiniest bit ragged on the ending (we were all tired!) or I probably would have started crying.  And tears aren't good for the viola!

Mozart Clarinet Quintet, K581, and Haydn Op. 20/1

Most of the time, I’m the instigator of a session of chamber music.  I like to think that’s because I have a gift for getting people to play chamber music who otherwise wouldn’t, not that I have to bribe people with cookies from the local bakery in order to get them to play with me. :-)  But this evening, I was invited to play at the house of a violist, which meant that I got to play violin.

It’s funny:  I would have thought the main difficulty switching back and forth between violin and viola would be the difference in the spread of the left hand.  But that hasn’t been much of a problem; I think because string players are used to different spreads as we change positions.  No, the main problem is that the bow is in a completely different place: I find when I play the violin that my bow slides a significant way up the fingerboard, heading for the proper location if I’d had a viola in my hand.

We had a clarinetist for the first half of the evening, which was a treat: I’d never met him before, but he was a delightful man and a good player.  I don’t have to say too much about the Mozart Clarinet Quintet: it’s pretty famous, as chamber music goes.  It was used in the last episode of the television show M*A*S*H, for example.

I did okay as second violin on the Mozart, except that I’ve been having this problem where soft, slow notes on the G string sound pretty horrendous, and the slow movement of the Mozart is pretty much nothing but soft slow notes on the G string.  Consultation with Facebook friends confirmed my suspicion: I’ve been over-rosining my bow.  Fortunately, I’m going to get it rehaired soon, so that problem will go away.  And I promise to be sparing with the rosin in future!

One of the things I find sad is how little chamber music there is to play with winds.  Among the great classical and romantic composers, only a few pieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms.  And string players tend not to like to play music by lesser composers, in my experience.  An unfortunate source of tension in the hobby.

We closed out the evening with a Haydn Quartet: the host likes to play through all of them in order, and this evening was Op. 20, No. 1.  I’d played this one before, last spring, but on viola: it was a different experience on second violin.  But I felt quite comfortable.  One of the things that’s really improved in my playing over the past few months is my use of second position; I now feel secure with it, both on violin and viola.

It’s funny: even though I’d played this piece only once before, I remembered the trap that Haydn sets, with the first violin having a quarter note pickup whenever the theme comes back in the last movement, and the second violin, an eighth note.  I didn’t do quite so well in supporting the first violin in the syncopated passages.  I think the problem was confusion between the cellist and me about who should be in charge of the downbeats, and the tiny amount of hesitation was enough to throw the first violin off.  But it was a successful reading, anyhow!

Piazzolla “Oblivion” and “Handel” Sonata in F, Op 1/12, HWV370

On Sunday evenings I go over to my friend DG’s house, and after dinner and board games with his kids, we usually have time for one or two violin sonatas.  DG is an amazing pianist, and an incredible sight-reader.  His improvisational skills are also excellent, so when he makes a sight-reading mistake, it usually sounds completely correct.  The only problem is, the violin part sometimes doesn’t fit with what he’s playing!

I usually bring my violin to DG’s house, even though I consider myself primarily a violist these days.  There are just so many more readable violin sonatas than viola sonatas (we’re on our second time through the Mozart sonatas, for example).  Perhaps after DG’s piano recital this spring he’ll have some time to practice the piano parts to some viola sonatas.

We started this evening with a violin-piano transcription I’d done of Piazzolla’s “Oblivion”.  A wonderful little piece, although I think it will sound even better an octave lower on the viola (particularly the final octave glissando down to the open C string).

DG’s wife had asked for Handel sonatas (perhaps she’s tired of Mozart), so I’d unearthed the copy from my childhood, and this evening, we played the F major, the only one I’d worked on back then.  It was great fun, even though modern scholarship labels this sonata as “spurious”.  I’m not one to look down on a piece of music just because it wasn’t written by a “great” composer!

This edition was interesting for a couple of reasons.  The copyright date was from the 1960s, and it was amusing to see what was standard for Baroque music before the original instruments revolution.  It was completely filled with additional dynamics, along with romantic bowings and fingerings.

It was also nostalgic for me to see my violin teacher’s handwriting.  I think Angelo LaMariana was a great teacher: very good with children, with just the right blend of firmness and gentleness.  He had a love of all kinds of classical music, up to the most modern: it was he who introduced me to the Bartok Duos I mentioned last time.  He passed away just a couple of years ago, and I miss him.

Violin Duets, Kalliwoda, Op. 179 and Bartok, Sz 98

I have a friend who started playing the violin several years ago, when her son started playing.  We’ve been playing duets together for about a year, and it’s been a very rewarding experience, particularly to see how much better her sight-reading has gotten over that time.  We’ve been playing some of the staples of my youth, Suzuki and Applebaum violin duets, and I also got a book of violin-viola duets published in Hungary that had some nice pieces in it.  I’ve supplemented the menu with some arrangements and transcriptions of my own (more about those another time).  But tonight we played two pieces I wanted to talk about.

First up was something I downloaded from IMSLP, “Three Easy Duos” by Kalliwoda (or Kalivoda, in the original Czech.)  These weren’t great music, but they did what they wanted to do: provide a complete musical experience while staying in first position for both players.  I’m looking forward to the three slightly harder duets, the Op. 180, which are in the same PDF from IMSLP, and also the “Three Very Easy Duets”, Op. 178, which I’ve put into my cart at Sheet Music Plus for my next order.  Grove's says of Kalliwoda that the verdict of history has not been kind to him, but I would like to play more of his music.  I admit that I have a weakness for obscure composers (more about that another time, as well!)

The only recording I’ve been able to find of the Kalliwoda duets we played this evening was this one from YouTube.  I found the little girl playing the first violin part charming, even if, as my duet partner pointed out, she needs to keep her right elbow down.  But she seems to be enjoying herself so much that I forgive her the technical difficulties.

We finished up the duet session with three numbers from Bartok’s 44 Duos for Two Violins, Sz 98.  I love, love, love these duets.  Technically straightforward (at least the early ones), musically challenging, pure Bartok from beginning to end.  You can hear selections at Instant Encore (generally much better than YouTube for classical music!).

Haydn Quartet Project, Op. 50/1 and Op. 2/6

Sometime early in 2011, I formed the idea of playing all 68 of Haydn’s string quartets.  With the help of a lot of willing, wonderful musicians, I’ve made faster progress than I ever thought possible.  I had started 2011 with two of Haydn’s quartets played; I ended the year with 54!

I wish I had been blogging during this project, because I found the experience fascinating.  One might not think that there could be that much variety in so much music, for the same combination of four similar instruments, written by a composer perhaps more famed for his quantity than his quality.  Perhaps all areas of life, if studied closely, would enable one to become a connoisseur.  But I’ve been continually struck by Haydn’s inventiveness; each quartet is unique, often in surprising ways.

There are many reasons to love Haydn’s string quartets.  Of course, his humor is paramount.  I seldom laugh while playing any other composer’s music; I laugh all the time playing Haydn.  And all the quartets are mature music: none written before he was twenty, and half of them after he reached the age of fifty.  As I get older, I find comfort in the idea that, like Haydn, my best years could still be ahead of me, rather than behind.

The first quartet I played this year, the morning of New Year’s Day, is a wonderful example of what makes Haydn great.  Opus 50, No. 1, in B-flat, written by 1787, the first of the set of six nicknamed “Prussian”.  The first movement starts with a theme that only Haydn would be brave enough to use: eight identical quarter notes by the cello alone.  When the other three instruments enter, they form a dissonance with the cello, which keeps repeating the same note; the others eventually resolve.  This minimal motive gets passed around from instrument to instrument, tying the whole movement together.

The second movement is one of Haydn’s gems, a simple melody, increasingly embroidered, supported by beautiful lower-string sonorities.  The Trio of the Minuet (has anyone ever counted how many minuets Haydn wrote?) has a rhythmic trap for the players that we fell into repeatedly as we tried to read it.  I think we got it right in the end, but it took some work.  And laughter.

The final movement is an absolute gem.  A silly little rondo-like theme, but when it comes back, all of the sudden we have a fugue.  And finally, Haydn gives us one of his famous head-fakes: a three-bar rest, followed by the first violin giving three eighth-note pickups to one more iteration of the silly theme.  I was almost on the floor, laughing.

The quartet Op. 2, No. 6 isn’t up to the level of the later ones.  Haydn himself expressed the opinion that his earliest quartets shouldn’t be included in the complete collection.  They tend to be very light pieces, and the viola and cello in particular don’t have much to do.  There’s a lot of passage work where the viola and cello are in octaves, or even in unison, very difficult to pull off, but not very rewarding.  Still, there are moments of beauty, and many unexpected phrases and ordering of themes.

One amusing thing about Op. 2/6: the second minuet is in B-flat major, but the trio is in B-flat minor without any notated change of key.  Perhaps Haydn didn’t want to scare off potential players by having five flats in the key signature.