12月初,北京的古典音乐舞台有太多吸引人的演出。前一天捷克爱乐乐团演出的《自新大陆》交响曲拉走了太多乐迷。这一场中山音乐堂的波兰之声，我在开演前买了楼座的票，却可以在楼下随便选座位。在冬夜,随意地坐在温暖而不拥挤的音乐厅中欣赏室内乐,有围炉夜话的惬意。
Camerata Quartet成立于1984年,90年代获奖颇丰。开场是他们和单簧管演奏家Wojciech Mrozek合作的Karol Kurpinski B大调单簧管协奏曲。
Concerto in B flat
major for Clarinet (composer KAROL KURPINSKI)
During a trip lasting several months in 1823, the aim of which was to visit the ''most important theatres in Europe'', the composer stopped in Paris.There he finished his''Concerto in B flat major'' for clarinet and orchestra, started in Warsaw in 1820. The premiere of the work took place on the eve of Kurpin'ski's departure. Up to date only the first movement of the Clarinet Concerto, in the sonata allegro form with three themes, has survived. The work was popularized by Jozef Madeja, who played it frequently, edited it and provided it with a virtuoso cadenza.
Wojciech和第二小提琴都很出彩。黑管演奏的悠扬曲调让我想起只在电影中见过的东欧山川。
由于语言和文化障碍，女中音Agata Sava演唱的几首歌给我留下的印象只有忧伤。其中有一首歌名叫《在迷雾中》（In
the mist）。似乎她当天唱的所有歌都在雾中。
上半场的最后一曲是莫扎特的《A大调单簧管五重奏》K581。
It was Mozart's only completed clarinet quintet, and is one of the earliestand best-known works written especially for the instrument. It remains exceptionally popular today due to its lyrical melodies, with the second
movement the best known.
The composer indicated that the work was finished on 29 September 1789. This quintet is sometimes referred to as the Stadler Quintet; Mozart so described it in a letter of April 1790.
It consists of four movements:
- Allegro, 4/4
- Larghetto, 3/4 in D major
- Menuetto — Trio
I — Trio II, 3/4 (Trio I in A minor) - Allegretto con Variazioni, 2/2
First movement
The first movement sets the mood for the entire piece. It has beautiful moving lines in all of the parts and in the
second half there is a virtuoso run that is passed throughout the strings, based on material from the second section of the exposition. (Quarter note=110–140).
Second movement
The second movement, in sonata form with a six-bar transition in place of a central development section, opposes a first section which is mostly a long-breathed clarinet melody over muted strings, to a second group of themes in which —as in the first movement— several upward runs of scales are given to the first violin, alternating with brief
phrases of clarinet melody. These scales are given to the clarinet in the recapitulation, and then in the last few bars of the movement, more chromatic than the rest, the scales turn into triplet arpeggios traded between the strings under the closing clarinet phrases.
Third movement
The third movement consists of a minuet and, unusually, two trios. The first trio is for the strings alone, with
a theme that has a signature acciaccatura every few notes. The second trio is a clarinet solo over the strings, whereas
in the minuet the roles are distributed more evenly.
Fourth movement
The finale has five variations. The theme is in two repeated halves, with the clarinet joining in but only for
a few of its bars. As often with Mozart, phrase structure is generally the same throughout the variations even if other qualities change — the theme consists of four four-bar phrases (Mozart is often more irregular in his phrasing than
this), the first going harmonically from A to E, the second back from E to A, etc. and likewise with the variations.
The first of its variations gives the clarinet a new theme, in counterpoint with the theme of the variations
divided amongst the quartet. The second alternates phrases for quartet only with phrases for full quintet, the latter answering the former. The third, in A minor, also begins without clarinet, with a viola melody —also with signature
acciaccatura— but the clarinet joins in to finish. The major mode returns for the fourth variation, as does the main theme to the accompaniment of semiquaver virtuosity — given to the clarinet only in the first repeated half, first
violin and clarinet in the second. There are four bars of dramatic interruption leading to a pause; the next variation is a lyrical Adagio. A transition brings us to an Allegro coda, containing much of a variation itself.
Analysis
There are a number of similarities between this quintet and Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. Both are in the same
key of A major and were written for the same soloist, Anton Stadler. Both pieces are written for the basset clarinet which has an extended lower range. Also, the first theme of the first movement of each piece begins with a falling minor third. Both the second movements are in the same key (D major) and have similar characters, although they have different tempo markings. There is a direct quotation of two bars in the clarinet line in the second movement of the Concerto of that in the Quintet.
Mozart also wrote a trio for clarinet, viola and piano for Stadler, the so-called Kegelstatt Trio, in 1786.
Alfred Einstein (Mozart: His Character and Work, page 194) notes that while the clarinet "predominates as primus inter pares" (first amongst equals) this is nonetheless "chamber music work of the finest kind" and the roles are distributed more equally than they would be in a more concertante quintet for wind and strings.
Along with his Clarinet Concerto, Mozart's Clarinet Quintet is considered one of Pope Benedict XVI's favorite works of music
下半场是拉威尔的F大调弦乐四重奏。选3段摘自网上的评论介绍拉威尔这部大作和创作背景。
Ravel was admitted as a student to the Paris Conservatoire in 1889, the
year in which the World Exposition introduced the Javanese gamelan orchestra
and Russian music to Paris (and left the Eiffel Tower as an imposing souvenir),
but his academic career proved to be somewhat less than meteoric. While gaining
a reputation for such pieces as the Pavane
for a Dead Princess and Jeux
d'Eau during the next sixteen years, he slipped in and out of the
Conservatoire, auditing classes with Gabriel Fauré and other teachers, and
competing, never successfully, for the Prix
de Rome . Despite his tenuous official association with the
Conservatoire, Ravel retained an almost awed respect for Fauré, whom he
regarded as his principal teacher and an important influence and inspiration
for his music. At the end of 1902, after his second attempt to win the Prix de Rome had proven unsuccessful,
Ravel felt it necessary, as had Claude Debussy a decade before, to subject the
modernity of his musical speech to the rigorous discipline of one of the most
demanding of all Classical genres, the string quartet. He completed the first
movement in time to submit it to a competition at the Conservatoire in January
1903, but the reactionary judges, having become well entrenched in the attitude
that caused them to frustrate Ravel's every attempt to win the Prix de Rome , found this glowing
specimen of musical color and light “laborious” and “lacking simplicity.” Ravel
left the Conservatoire for the last time and never again set foot in one of its
classrooms. More mad than discouraged, he continued work on the String Quartet,
and completed the score in April 1903.
The Quartet opens
with a sonata-form Allegro whose precise Classical structure is made to accommodate effortlessly the piquant
modality of its themes. The principal subject is a lovely violin melody,
accompanied by scalar harmonies in the lower instruments, that rises and falls
through a long arc with elegance and ease. Passages of greater animation lead
to the complementary theme, a melancholy song given in octaves by first violin
and viola above the rustling background figurations of the second violin. The
development section is as concerned with the rustling figurations as with the
thematic materials. As in the Mozartian model, the recapitulation returns the
earlier themes to balance and complete the movement. The second movement
(marked “rather fast and very rhythmic”) is a modern scherzo, with snapping pizzicati and superimposed meters.
The center of the movement is occupied by a wistful melody in slow tempo
initiated by the cello. The third movement serves as a sort of structural foil
to the carefully defined forms of the earlier movements. With its quickly
changing sonorities, frequent juxtapositions of mood and tempo, and continually
evolving themes, it is much in the character of an improvisation for quartet, a
free rhapsody for four instruments joined by some magical centripetalism into
an extraordinarily satisfying whole. The powerful, metrically irregular motive
that launches the finale is brought back as the movement proceeds, much in the
manner of the old rondo form, to separate the contrasting episodes that recall
musical events from the earlier movements.
©2004 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
The Quartet in F major was Ravel's final submission to the Prix de
Rome and the Conservatoire de Paris. The composition was
rejected by both institutions soon after its premier on March 5, 1904. The
quartet received mixed reviews from the Parisian press and local academia.
Gabriel Fauré, to whom the work is dedicated, described the last movement as
“stunted, badly balanced, in fact a failure.” Ravel himself commented on the
work, “My Quartet in F major responds to a desire for musical construction,
which undoubtedly is inadequately realized but which emerges much more clearly
than in my preceding compositions.” As a result of major criticism and
rejection, a frustrated Ravel left the Conservatoire in 1905 following what was
later called the Ravel Affair.
Ravel's loss during
the 1904 Prix de Rome and rejection from the Conservatoire de Paris catapulted his career forward: a
sympathetic public rallied behind his compositions and musical style. In 1905, Claude
Debussy wrote to Ravel: “In the name of the gods of music and in my own, do
not touch a single note you have written in your Quartet.” Ravel's string
Quartet in F major stands as one of the most widely performed chamber music
works in the classical repertoire, representing Ravel's early achievements and
rise from obscurity. On CD, it is often coupled with Debussy's own string
quartet.
Maurice Ravel
(1875-1937)
String Quartet in F Major (1903)
Ravel’s only String
Quartet, often considered his first masterpiece, was composed when he was 28
years old and completing his studies at the Paris Conservatory. He was enrolled
at the Conservatory at the age of fourteen and despite his many years of study
there and obvious musical gifts, he was never awarded the coveted Grand Prix de Rome. He tried for it four times and
never got more than second prize. In his final attempt in 1905, he never got
past the preliminary competition. It might be said that his failure to be
considered in 1905 did more to help launch his career than had he won the
prize. Most of those winners of this most coveted prize have long been
forgotten, both the men and their music. Denying a composer of Ravel’s gift
this prize was seen to be scandalous. The music critics, who had hereto been
cool toward him, rallied to his cause, and in the ensuing uproar, the head of
the Conservatory was forced to resign, and was replaced by Gabriel Faure, who
had been a teacher of Ravel’s.
The Quartet was
premiered a year before this by the Heyman Quartet on March 5, 1904 at a
concert of the Societe National in Paris.
Although the work was enthusiastically received, it did not win unanimous
approval. Gabriel Faure, to whom the work was dedicated, described the last
movement as "stunted, badly balanced, in fact a failure." (Talk about
gracious). Other critics urged major revisions in the piece. However, no less a
composer than Claude Debussy wrote to Ravel, "In the name of the Gods of
music and in my own, do not touch a single note you have written in your
Quartet."
Two years later, a
critic in the New York
Tribune wrote, "In his String Quartet M. Ravel is content with one theme
which has the emotional potency of one of those tunes which the curious may
hear in a Chinese theater, shrieked out by an ear-splitting clarinet. This
theme serves him for four movements during which there is about as much
emotional nuance as warms a problem in algebra. It is a drastic dose of
wormwood and assafoetida." (Wormwood is a very bitter tasting herb used in
making absinthe; assafoetida, a foul smelling and tasting gum resin used as an
antispasmodic, as well as a repellent against dogs, cats and rabbits).
Our current take on
this work is that it remains one of the most popular and often played string
quartets in the literature. In it can be found those well wrought, yet sensual
melodies, amazing range of tone color, vibrant rhythm and touch of the exotic
that characterizes Ravel’s music.
The first movement is
in Sonata form with two contrasting themes. It is full of lovely melody.
The second movement
features rhythmic complexity and pizzicato. The 1st violin and the cello play
in 3/4 time broken down into 3 groups of two eighth notes (2+2+2), while the
2nd violin and viola play in 6/8 time (3+3), so that each measure contains six
eighth notes but because of their groupings, they are stressed differently.
There is a contrasting slow middle section and a shortened reprise of the
opening section.
The slow third
movement also uses melodic material from the first movement and displays
Ravel’s gift for achieving a remarkably wide range of tone colors from the four
stringed instrument. Ravel’s muse always thrived on limitation, the more
circumscribed, the more it flowered.
The finale contains
another interesting rhythm. This time, 5/8 and, indeed, in this movement the
opening theme of the first also plays a significant part.
We can be grateful
that Ravel followed Debussy’s advice, rather than Faure’s. Although Ravel was
very finicky and self-critical regarding his works, admittedly seeking
technical mastery and perfection above all else, he regarded this early work
warmly, and expressed the thought late in his life that perhaps he had
sacrificed what was best in this early work, its boldness and spontaneity for
the technical brilliance of his later work. Was this mere rumination on his
part?
返场曲是柴可夫斯基《如歌的行板》。不知什么原因，乐队以很快的速度完成。
回家反复听CD和网上下载的这几部室内乐作品，深感对古典音乐，特别是室内乐，投入的时间和心思越多，就越能领略其中之美。
