Our 2009/2010 Season

Raised in a wealthy and cultured family in Berlin, Felix Mendelssohn displayed amazing musical ability as a very young child, and by age 17, he had composed his Octet for strings, showing a creative gift surpassing even that of Mozart at a comparable age. His enormous success as a conductor, composer, educator, and performer, led to his recognition as the greatest musician of his generation.

Shortly after his 20th birthday in early 1829, Mendelssohn embarked on a post-university "grand tour" of Europe, first sailing to England, and writing the Opus 12 Quartet, his third, rather quickly in London that year. This early work is cast in the mold of Beethoven, then an inescapable influence, but with innovative Mendelssohnian touches.

Mendelssohn's Opus 12 is highly unified, with musical ideas from the first movement reappearing in both third and fourth movements. The slow Adagio non troppo introduction to the first movement is similar to that of Beethoven's E flat major, Op. 74 String Quartet “Harp”, but the ensuing Allegro non tardante, in a song-like sonata-form structure, is stylistically unlike music by the older composer. In the second movement, Mendelssohn replaces the more traditional scherzo with a delicate, fairy-like canzonetta, a light vocal form. A musical motif in the character of the first movement is heard early in the third movement Andante espressivo and reappears even more prominently at the third movement's ending. The fourth movement Molto allegro e vivace, is a high-spirited, dance-like flow of notes, which proceeds without pause. The mood changes, however, and Mendelssohn re-introduces quieter musical material from the first movement to produce an unexpectedly subdued ending.

"One of the most fundamental issues in my work and the aim of my musical creation is to give listeners strong, unforgettable emotions, the feeling of miracle that happened once in all the life.”

– Benjamin Yusupov–

Born in 1962 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Mr. Yusupov did study piano, composition, music theory and conducting at the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory in Moscow. In 2001, he received his Ph. D. degree at the Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Composer, conductor, and concert pianist, Mr. Yusupov has developed a language for his own unique musical world, showing specific cultural identities of various ethnic groups, while combining the special rules of these traditions with the tools of modern Western achievements.

The world premiere of Yusupov’s new work, Musica Mundi for string quartet, commissioned by the Musica Mundi Festival, took place in July 2008 in Brussels, played by the Talich Quartet. The composer said: “The idea of my piece is rather simple: it tries to connect the influences of the most varied cultures. For this quartet, I used the Armenian duduk, traditional Irish fiddle music, Indian raga, Gypsy-influenced Rumanian virtuoso instrumental music as well as a song in the cimbalom style, all mixed with my original music. We live in a multicultural society: I try to reflect our existence in my music.”

Quartet No. 14 is held to be the most accessible of Shostakovich’s late quartets. Like Beethoven’s, these tend to show refinement of the composer’s musical language and experimentation in musical form, an intense personal idiom eloquent to those who will listen.

Shostakovich’s penultimate quartet was a tribute to the late cellist of the Beethoven Quartet, which premiered most of the composer's 15 such works. The cello dominates much of the time, yearning in its highest registers and providing the poetic foundation. The other instruments play haunted and violent roles in expansive narratives. There are two animated movements flanking an adagio movement reminiscent of Beethoven. The first Allegretto opens with the viola repeating an F-sharp over a simple melody by the cello, which later introduces a second theme. Both are treated in the development, with the cello later returning to that first theme. All twelve notes of the chromatic scale are heard in the Adagio’s D minor theme, yet it never strays from tonality. It is announced by the violin, but soon evolves into a long, richly expressive soliloquy for the cello. The Adagio ends in a quiet passage leading without interruption into the opening pizzicati of the Allegretto finale. Launched by the return of the repeated-note figure that began the Quartet, the finale rises into climaxes of both rhythmic tension and lyrical effusion before subsiding to a resigned, dying close.