Isidore String Quartet

Isidore String Quartet 

Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon, violins
Devin Moore, viola
Joshua McClendon, cello

Program

 Erwin Schulhoff Five Pieces for String Quartet (1923)

Alla Valse viennese (allegro)
Alla Serenata (allegretto con moto)
Alla Czeca (molto allegro)
Alla Tango milonga (andante)
Alla Tarantella (prestissimo con fuoco)

Bela Bartok String Quartet No. 2, Op. 17 (1917) 

Moderato
Allegro molto capriccioso-Prestissimo
Lento

-Intermission-

 Henri Dutilleux String Quartet: Ainsi la nuit (1971-6)

I. Nocturne I
 Parenthèse I 

 II. Miroir d’espace
Parenthèse II 

III.  Litanies
Parenthèse III 

IV. Litanies II 
Parenthèse IV 

V. Constellations 

VI. Nocturne II 

VII.  Temps suspendu

Maurice Ravel String Quartet in F major (1903) 

Allegro moderato (tres doux)
Assez vif - (tres rythme) - Lent - Tempo 1
Tres lent
Vif et agite

"A polished sonority and well-balanced, tightly synchronized ensemble with nearly faultless intonation....it is heartening to know that chamber music is in good hands with such gifted young ensembles as the Isidore Quartet."

— Chicago Classical Review

Winners of a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022, the New York City-based Isidore String Quartet was formed in 2019 with a vision to revisit, rediscover, and reinvigorate the repertory. The quartet is heavily influenced by the Juilliard String Quartet and the idea of ‘approaching the established as if it were brand new, and the new as if it were firmly established.’

The quartet began as an ensemble at the Juilliard School, and has coached with Joel Krosnick, Joseph Lin, Astrid Schween, Laurie Smukler, Joseph Kalichstein, Roger Tapping, Misha Amory, and numerous others.They are currently completing their final year as Peak Fellowship Ensemble-in-Residence at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. 

In North America, the Isidore Quartet has appeared on major series in Boston, New York, Berkeley, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Durham, Washington DC, Houston, Toronto, and Montreal, and has collaborated with several eminent performers including James Ehnes, Jeremy Denk, Shai Wosner, and Jon Nakamatsu.  Their 24/25 season includes performances in Salt Lake City, Buffalo, Kansas City, Portland (OR), Louisville, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Memphis, Vancouver, San Francisco, and many other cities across the U.S. and Canada. In Europe they will appear at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and in Bonn (Beethoven Haus), Stuttgart, Cologne, and Dresden, among many others.

Over the past several years, the quartet has developed a strong connection to the works of composer and pianist Billy Childs. His String Quartet No. 2, “Awakenings” was among the repertoire that delivered the Isidore their Banff victory, and this season they will play Childs’ Quartet No. 3, “Unrequited.” In the 2025-26 season, they will premiere a new Childs quartet written expressly for them.

Both on stage and outside the concert hall, the Isidore Quartet is deeply invested in connecting with youth and elderly populations, and with marginalized communities who otherwise have limited access to high-quality live music performance. They approach music as a “playground” and attempt to break down barriers to encourage collaboration and creativity. The name Isidore recognizes the ensemble’s musical connection to the Juilliard Quartet:  one of that group’s early members was legendary violinist Isidore Cohen.  Additionally, it acknowledges a shared affection for a certain libation - legend has it a Greek monk named Isidore concocted the first genuine vodka recipe for the Grand Duchy of Moscow!

NOTES

ERWIN SCHULHOFF

Born in Prague, Czechia on June 8, 1894; died in Germany on August 18, 1942 

Five Pieces for String Quartet

The compositions of Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) attempt to answer a question that composers of every age since the late 19th Century have asked: what does contemporary music have to say about contemporary life? Schulhoff lived in a chaotic time and attempted to make sense of it in a similar way the surrounding community of artist intellectuals in Europe did. He committed himself to the brashly simplified nonsense of Dadaism. He embraced radical socialist politics and the common struggle. He danced to jazz and partied at cocktail bars. These interests reflect more than passing intellectual flirtations and youthful exuberance; they reveal a desire that art should be popular in the most literal sense. To Schulhoff, modernism was meant to be accessible.

Schulhoff did not have sufficient time to explore the various forms of radicalism he dedicated his life to. He was Jewish, Czech, and a socialist. His music was deemed degenerate by the Nazi regime. Before he could flee to the Soviet Union to escape persecution, he was arrested and sent to the Wülzburg prison where he later died of tuberculosis. Like many musicians and artists whom the Nazis killed, he has been unfairly neglected in study and performance.

In Schulhoff’s Five Pieces for String Quartet (1924), part of his post-Dada neoclassical phase, accessibility comes in the form of five popular dance forms. It is a modern take on the Baroque suite. Pastiche is the dominant perspective here, reminiscent of the kind Benjamin Britten would begin writing a decade later. Each piece is a faithful rendering of the typical forms and rhythms of the named dances. What has changed is the treatment, resulting in five little paradoxes—a 19th-century waltz does not sound like this, and yet the first movement is a 19th-century waltz, and so on for each successive movement.

The pieces are not thematically unified by shared motifs in the way a standard three or four movement string quartet might be, but they are not simply a collection of similar pieces. Schulhoff applied similar compositional treatments to each form so that all feel unified, as if they are all different cultures’ renderings of some lost ur-dance, the dance version of Cinderella or the great flood myth. Each piece contains similar melodic elements, but they do not progress or vary. They simply repeat and become different by context. 

Modern harmony is of course present - the angular sounds of Bartók and Stravinsky as well as the lushness of Debussy and Ravel appear at turns in each piece—as is the accompanying hum of rhythmically punctuated wide intervals to mark the time, largely from the cello. This accompaniment is reminiscent of the modal music of Central and Eastern Europe, probably inspired by the folk music of Schulhoff’s own Czech heritage. It is a celebratory hodgepodge of musical movement, embracing the modern world, the traditions that made it, and Schulhoff’s individual story - a personal look at the 20th century world in five miniatures. 

—Note by Connor Buckley

BÉLA BARTÓK

Born in Sânnicolau Mare, Romania, March 25, 1881; died in New York, NY September 26, 1945

String Quartet No. 2, Op. 17

Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was not only one of the most accomplished and respected composers of the early 20th century, he was also perhaps the first great ethnomusicologist and cataloger of European folk music. His academic pursuits were not an abstract interest, but part of a holistic initiative to explore the varieties of music beyond the standard aristocratic history of western classical music. For a few years before the composition of his String Quartet No. 2 in A minor (written between 1915 and 1917), he had been traveling throughout Central and Eastern Europe as well as North Africa, researching and recording the folk musics of various cultures with his friend the composer Zoltán Kodály, clunky early phonograph in tow. He composed very little during this time. After WWI broke out, his traveling stopped and, slowly, in between analyzing the collections from his travels, he began composing again, now with a new compositional philosophy rooted not in rote recitations of the melodies he was cataloging, but in the holistic atmosphere of spontaneous creation that these musics embodied. Bartók was a modernist and, to him, modernism was not, as the Romantic grand narrative would have it, a logical conclusion to the complexity of 19th-century concert music; it was most pronounced and compelling when it relied on the essential vitality of these vernacular traditions. From now on, Bartók would write in the spirit of spontaneity that he observed in village performance practice.

Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2 is his first real attempt at this method of writing. For a three-movement work, it is unusually structured as slow-fast-slow, where the traditional orientation for such a piece would be the reverse. It is the first indication that the composer is following a new path. 

Bartók’s music is always strictly controlled in some way, but what is fascinating in this piece is its gradual disintegration of control over form, like the composer is letting go in real time. Although the quartet has the feel of being extemporaneous from the start, it begins with a relatively straightforward though expertly efficient sonata form. Two themes emerge in quick succession, after which a long development section and a clearly delineated recap that rehashes the opening bars occurs. The second movement does not offer the same easy analysis. Bartók himself suggested a rondo (ABACAD etc.) that includes a sonata-like development section, and its oscillation between frenetic dance and restful, sparse contemplation in the middle especially does indicate something like that. But the movement may also be heard zoomed out in simple ternary form (ABA). The exquisite final movement offers even less certainty. It is sort of in ternary form, as Bartók also suggested, but listening to it does not leave this impression. It is the most potent representation of group improvisation in the piece. It offers the listener refrains and vague recollections of previous movements, but it is not a traditional final movement, gathering everything that has occurred and concluding the piece in a tied up box. It is a meditation calling the listener to fix their attention on what is currently happening. It ends by decay, dissipating until two pizzicato knells signal finality.

An oft-noted anecdote about this piece is that Bartók’s close friend and fellow cataloger Kodály called these three movements expressions of life: “1. A quiet life. 2. Joy. 3. Sorrow.” It is possible to hear the work this way, but seeing other similarly structured Bartók pieces, one can construct an alternative metaphor more grounded in the composer’s fieldwork: 1. A gathering. 2. A dance. 3. Rest. Regardless of how lifelike the music is, its distinctive structure and dazzling sound world are enough to make it stand on its own without regard to metaphor.

—Note by Connor Buckley

HENRI DUTILLEUX

Born in Angers, France, January 22, 1916; died in Paris, May 22, 2013

String Quartet: Ainsi la nuit (1971-6)

An acutely self-critical musician, French composer Henri Dutilleux painstakingly built a high reputation based on a relatively small number of works.  One of his best-known pieces, the Sonatine for flute and piano (1943), shows clear connections with French tradition and the music of Debussy and Ravel. Shortly after writing it, however, Dutilleux disowned much of the music he wrote before the end of World War Two as unoriginal and derivative. He came relatively late to a more progressive outlook on mid-20th century music, though without the missionary zeal of Pierre Boulez and associates. With his Piano Sonata (1946-8), he stated his own increasing detachment from tonality... together with his love for French pianist Geneviève Joy, whom he married. Though the language of his music continued to evolve, and Dutilleux studiously avoided affiliation with any group of French composers, his music, nevertheless, maintains a strong connection with classic French characteristics of economy of gesture, precision and clarity of thought, and a refined feeling for harmony and orchestral timbre.

Dutilleux’s only quartet, Ainsi la nuit (And so the night), was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Juilliard Quartet.  The cautious, yet exploratory composer began by making sketches as drafts for the composition. Each resulting section has its own mood and color. Then, Dutilleux reveals their intricate interrelationship through short, organic, transitional passages, which he refers to as ‘parentheses.’  Throughout, themes are rarely presented in their primary form. Rather, the composer tends to work sideways, prefiguring a theme or, conversely, recalling a past event. The brief gasps of a thematic cell of Parenthèse III, where ethereal harmonics shadow plaintive, chromatic pizzicato motifs, soon unfold into a more expansive, haunting sequence of variations in Litanies II, uncovering a wide range of moods, never tangibly defined earlier.  Dutilleux has acknowledged the influence of Proust on his thinking, notably on the oscillation between past and present and between the static and the dynamic.  

Ainsi la nuit is, essentially, in two large sections, the pause coming immediately before Parenthèse III.  Within these two sections are seven movements, four of which are preceded by the transitional parentheses. Dutilleux dislikes pauses between movements. “They spoil the power of music to enchant us,” he once said. By giving a poetic title to the work, he encourages us to focus on its nocturnal evocations and allusions rather than on the detail of its structure. “The different movement titles, including the overall title, refers to a certain poetic or spiritual atmosphere, but not in any way to an anecdotal idea,” he says. The final section Temps suspendu (Time suspended) circles back on the introduction and to a chord structure that has recurred several times already. “A movement that recalls a clock mechanism gradually develops over a harmonic background of distant bells,” the composer says. “Time seems to stand still.”

— Program note copyright © Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca

MAURICE RAVEL

Born Ciboure, France, March 7, 1875; died in Paris, France, December 28, 1937 

String Quartet in F major

By the time Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) composed his String Quartet (1903), the genre had a well-trodden 150-year history. It was the era of modernism, when many composers were a little sick of the traditional forms, and there were many attempts to find methods of artistic expression outside of this tradition. With his String Quartet, Ravel proved that aspects of modernism - the complex harmony, the vibrant orchestration, the off-kilter rhythmic gestures - could quite naturally be applied to traditional forms and could enrich tradition in the process. 

The quartet’s sound is especially modern in its rejection of Romantic self-seriousness, a tradition at least nominally, though perhaps not fairly, aligned with the work of Beethoven, whom Ravel did not like (he found him bewildering). Ravel created work that was elegantly beautiful above all. His music is dandyish - sheen and artifice and prettiness that never pretends to cultivate a verismo aesthetic or extra-musical political sentiment. It is music for pleasure’s sake and it is in the very serious tradition of Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn and other committed classicists in that regard. Ravel does borrow some of Beethovinian technique here - material in the piece is economical to the extreme, derived from only a handful of similarly structured motifs. Ravel, however, is not an essentialist like Beethoven, who seemed to find joy in the directness of laying his compositional choices bare. The material in this quartet is not itself the point, but rather an excuse to explore texture. The surface, what the audience hears and takes pleasure in, is primary.

From the start it is apparent that Ravel is not interested in the development of microscopic germ motifs - he is giving a long-form theme that will provide small bits of material for the rest of the piece. The entire quartet participates in its ceremonial announcement, each instrument independent but supportive, rising and falling as the first violin does. This ascent and descent itself becomes an important motif, giving Ravel a precedent for a certain kind of color variation. Soon after the first explorations into the main theme, a new theme emerges, played in octaves between the violin and viola. It is reminiscent of the first theme, especially in its main motif’s direction—the first phrase down, then right back up—but it serves as counterpoint to rather than variation of the opening statement. The first phrase of this theme will often be repeated in the piece, especially along with the beginning phrase of the first theme. 

Ravel’s love of strict form is evident especially in the first movement. It is in traditional sonata allegro form (theme statement - development - recap), the default of the previous 150 years. It was historically typical for composers to introduce primary thematic material in these opening movements, and Ravel does that here, but his movement is stuffed with such a variety of textures - the pizzicato, the heavy tremolo, the Mozartean lyrical section—that it feels like it is foreshadowing more than establishing. It is almost like an overture to a musical.

The second movement scherzo begins pizzicato with a theme that is essentially a variation of the first movement’s second theme, though its motion, again, is reminiscent of the first theme as well. Another variation, played bowed, occurs soon after, and each are explored thoroughly, often together as melodic and textural counterpoint, until the puttering dissipates and the cello ushers the quartet toward a slow, drawn out section, the primary theme of which is partially an upside down version of this movement’s first motif. A short restatement of the first theme, introduced again by solo cello, concludes the movement.

The third movement is effectively a reverse of the first movement, with a slow, patient introduction and theme and a faster, but still lyrical B section that gradually tapers back to its “tres lent” pace. The breadth of the movement is Mozartean, with a seemingly unbroken, extravagantly elegant melody that is passed freely between instruments. The thematic material is primarily a recap of first movement motifs. 

The fourth movement is a brusque restatement of all former themes. The constant barrage of tremolo hinted at in the first movement becomes the primary driver of this movement’s intensity. It is a virtuosic showcase of the textural capabilities of a string quartet, accomplished often by pairing of instruments with opposing but mutually reinforcing techniques. It is a movement that propels with its restlessness, until all that’s left is for it to stop, suddenly, triumphantly. 

— Note by Connor Buckley

The Isidore String Quartet appears by arrangement with David Rowe Artists www.davidroweartists.com