String Quartet in B flat major Op 76 No 4 (“Sunrise”) [1797]

Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)

String Quartet in B flat major Op 76 No 4 (“Sunrise”) [1797]

Allegro con spirito

Adagio

Menuetto: allegro

Finale:allegro ma non troppo

Although the quartets Haydn dedicated to Count Erdödy in 1797 were not his last - the two Op 77 quartets and the unfinished Op 103 were yet to come - they were the last full set of six he was able to complete. Writing them at the same time as he was working on The Creation and taking no more than a few months over them even so, he was clearly still at the height of his powers. He seems to have been aware of that himself. Certainly, he was confident enough of his mastery over the medium to to set himself challenging problems in each one.

The problem with the first movement of the Quartet in B flat is one of reconciling three acutely contrasting sorts of material - a main theme so radiantly expansive that it has earned the work its “Sunrise” nickname, an exhilararing surge of semiquaver activity and, near the end of the exposition, a closing theme rhythmically fragmented by one part of the ensemble apparently failing to synchronise with the other. Haydn solves the problem not so much by thematic integration, although that does have something to do with it, as by holding the contrasting elements in balance. He begins the process in the exposition, giving the the opening theme more space by presenting it in inversion as a second subject, and definitively continues it in the development, where each item is given more or less equal treatment. If the opening theme seems to receive special attention on its recall in the recapitulation, the compensatory factor is that it does not reappear in its inverted form as second subject. A coda summarises the neatly balanced situation in little more than a dozen bars.

The Adagio is one of the most adventurous of all Haydn’s slow movements. Conforming to no standard formal pattern, it is essentially an improvisation on the five-note theme thoughtfully introduced in E flat major by first violin in the opening bars. In that there is a central episode in E flat minor, beginning with the five-note theme in its new harmonies on first violin again, the construction does approximate to a ternary form. But, like the decorative inspirations shared between first violin and cello (and second violin later on), the shape of the movement seems to be a matter more of spontaneous impulse than design.

While there is nothing very challenging about the Ländler-style Menuetto, the rustic Trio section with its heavy drone on viola and cello and its intrusions of modal melody anticipates even Bartók in its peasant-music frankness. There is something of Bartók also in the Finale. Based on a fairly leisurely Kontretanz tune, it seems for much of its duration to be taking shape as an unsensational ternary construction with a central episode in B flat minor. But that is before a sudden acceleration (più allegro), with the four instruments passing fugitive scraps of melody between each other as in a Bartók finale, and yet another (più presto) acceleration that threatens to rush the Kontretanz off its feet.

Béla Bartók (1881-1945)

String Quartet No.4 [1928]

Allegro - più mosso

Prestissimo, con sordino

Non troppo lento

Allegretto pizzicato

Allegro molto

Bartók’s Fourth String Quartet - which was written in Budapest between July and September 1928 and, though dedicated to the Pro Arte Quartet, first performed by the faithful Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet less than a year later - is the supreme example of concentric or arch-form construction. Its core is the pro­foundly intimate slow movement, Non troppo lento, around which there is an inner layer of two scherzos, one muted and the other pizzicato, which are themselves flanked by two closely related Allegro movements. It is all based, moreover, on one short theme.

The problem is that, since the basic idea of the construction is that it is sealed only when the outer circle is complete, it is not immediately clear which of the several melodic ideas introduced at the beginning of the first Allegro, is to be the most influential. It is not in fact the urgent theme on first violin in the opening bars nor the upward striding steps on the cello underneath it. It is the intentionally rough-sounding chromatic motif - three notes rising and three notes falling through the narrow interval of a minor third - which is heard at an early stage on the cello and then taken up by the whole ensemble in a brief exchange of muscular counterpoint. The second subject, which follows after half a bar of silence, is a contrast­ingly quiet legato melody with the same shape as the other but covering a wider interval in its chromatic steps. By the end of the movement, which closes on a particularly forceful statement of the six-note motif, it is clear which is the more significant theme.

The first of the two scherzos - a cloud of insects hovering on muted strings, swooping up on bowed and pizzicato glissandos and fluttering down on minutely detailed sul ponticello figuration - is also based on two main themes. The first of them, a chromatic run up and down a fifth presented on viola and cello in the opening bars, is clearly related to main theme of the preceding movement; the other is a more sharply defined motif which is energetically exchanged by first and second violins in the middle section,

The heart of the work is the Non troppo lento. It is so expressive, so atmos­pherically coloured, so picturesque even that it might not be too fanciful to think of it as a serenade. Against the motionless background of opaque harmonies sustained by the other three instruments, the cello utters an eloquent soliloquy. It grows louder and more passionate but finds no answer except in an elaborate cadenza of nocturnal birdsong on the first violin. At the centre of the movement - at the very centre of the work - the material of the first section is displaced and eerily, sometimes aggressively recoloured, the recitative now on the G-string of the second violin and the birdsong mainly in harmonics on the viola. When the cello resumes its plea, however, it is answered immediately, the first violin joining it in canon with an upside-down mirror reflection of its melodic line. After that, the now muted cello sinks quietly into the night-time background.

The second (Allegretto) scherzo takes the material of the first (Prestissimo) and treats it in a different manner - obviously by applying the fingers where the bow was applied before but also by expanding the intervals of the chromatic runs and by marking each appearance of the second main theme with two slaps of the “Bartok pizzicato,” the fiercely plucked string rebounding noisily on the finger board. A similar transformation is performed by the last movement on the material of the first Allegro, again expanding the intervals but this time converting it into a wild Hungarian dance. The main theme of the work makes its first re-entry in a comparatively lyrical middle section and reappears as the motivating force of a powerfully conclusive coda.