Gems of the classical quartet
Music in the salons
Hensel – Felix Mendelssohn – Beethoven
FiBO Players:
Irma Niskanen, violin
Hannu Vasara, violin
Laura Kajander, viola
Lea Pekkala, cello
During the 1830s, the Sunday Music sessions arranged by Fanny Hensel (1805-1847) were an important part of the bourgeois concert life in Berlin. An audience of a couple of hundred could fit in the garden building by the home at Leipzigerstrasse. The concert programmes varied from chamber music to oratorios and opera, and from Bach to Beethoven and Chopin. Guest performers like the virtuosos Clara Schumann and Henri Vieuxtemps also joined the Sunday Music sessions. The first movement of Hensel’s only string quartet (1834), on the programme today, is filled with melancholy. It’s an example of the aptitude for fantasy and historical awareness during the Romantic period.
For Hensel and her brother Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), Beethoven was the classic of the string quartet. However, they had a very different relation to the composer than the musicians of our time. For instance, Mendelssohn had an argument about Beethoven’s fifth symphony in Goethe’s living room only three years after the death of the composer. In Mendelssohn’s first string quartet (E flat major, Op. 12 No. 1, 1829), an influence of Beethoven’s later quartets have been heard. The quartet combines the classical clarity with the cyclical form, typical for the Romantic period, in which the theme of the first movement returns in the finale.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770-1827) last quartet (F major, Op. 135 No. 16, 1826) certainly made his contemporaries aware of his sense of humour. The wild, syncopated rhythms of the Scherzo brings a smile to your face. The composer titled the finale “The Difficult Decision” and gave names to two motifs: “Muss es sein?” and “Es muss sein” (Must it be? It must be!). It might be a question of a sense of fate, or just a musical joke. Regardless, Beethoven’s refined quartet style is a music of small surprises and savoury subtlety.
Duration: 1 h 15 min (no intermission)