String Quartet No 2 in F major Op 92

Alarmed by the rapid advance of the German army on Moscow in 1941, the Soviet Committee of Artistic Affairs evacuated many of its leading “artistic workers” to what seemed at the time to be safer parts of the country. Prokofiev - together with his new partner Mira Mendelson, fellow-musicians Nikolai Miaskovsky and Pavel Lamm, and Chekhov’s elderly widow Olga Knipper - was sent on a three-day train journey to Nalchik in the northern foothills of the Caucasus. Conditions there obviously suited him: in the three months before further enemy advances compelled him to move on to Tbilisi, Prokofiev wrote nearly half of War and Peace, the whole of The Year 1941 and most of the Second String Quartet.

The opera and the orchestral piece he would have written anyway. The String Quartet was the direct consequence of his experience of the folk music brought to the composer’s attention by local officials eager to impress Kabardinian culture on their distinguished visitors. “It seemed to me,” he wrote, “that bringing new and untouched Eastern folk song together with one of the most classical of all classical forms - the string quartet - could yield interesting and unexpected results.”

Although Prokofiev was to modify his approach as the work progressed, the first movement is written uncompromisingly in that experimental spirit. Three authentic folk tunes are exposed, developed and recapitulated in text-book sonata form without any attempt being made, either in their harmonisation or their scoring, to disguise their essentially primitive quality. The result, as the composer predicted, is “interesting.” The second movement, where he seems to remember what Borodin made of similarly exotic material in the Notturno of his String Quartet in D major, is rather more engagingly presented. Inspired by a Kabardinian love song - heard first in a high position on the cello A-string after a few atmospheric bars of introduction - it incorporates a quicker middle section based on a charmingly scored Caucasian dance tune.

The folk dance that opens the last movement was chosen, presumably, because of the phrase it so prominently has in common with the first subject of the first movement. Certainly, its distinctive rhythms perform a valuable function not only in holding together a rondo construction dangerously expanded by a dramatic cello cadenza and an expressive central episode in a slower tempo. It last appearance, delayed until the end by a recapitulation that takes the melodic material in reverse order, neatly recalls the opening bars of the work.

Josef Suk (1874-1935)

Meditation on the old Czech hymn “St Wenceslas” Op.35 (1914)

Sylvie Bodorová (b 1954)

String Quartet No. 1 Dignitas homini (1987)

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

String Quartet No 2 in F major Op 92 (1941)

Allegro sostenuto

Adagio - poco più animato - poco meno

Allegro - andante molto - allegro

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

String Quintet in C major Op.163, D.956 (1828)

Allegro ma non troppo

Adagio

Scherzo: presto - Trio: andante sostenuto - Scherzo

Allegretto - più allegro - più presto

Although Josef Suk - Dvorák’s favourite pupil and son-in-law - was a member of the Czech Quartet for more than forty years, he wrote little chamber music. The Meditation on the old Czech Hymn “St Wenceslas,” his third and last work for string quartet, was written only because of the outbreak of war in 1914, which put a stop to touring and kept him at home in Prague. Its nearest relation in the repertoire is Samuel Barber’s Adagio, another contrapuntal contemplation of modal melody, although Suk’s Meditation has a spiritual urgency to it. In turning to one of the oldest of Czech hymns - which culminates in a supplication to the nation’s patron saint to “preserve us and preserve our descendants” - Suk no doubt reflected the feelings of the majority of his compatriots at the time.

Sylvie Bodorová’s First String Quartet is another Czech composer’s reaction to an unhappy political situation - although in this case, in the last few years of the Communist regime, it was nowhere as distressing. Subtitled Dignitas homini, it is said to be “a meditation on the interplay between true humanity and artificial, inhuman constraint.” In a single movement (lasting about 12 movements) it opposes two contrasting ideas and ends with an aspiring example of the lyrical sonority apparently characteristic of Bodorová’s work in general.

Had he not been evacuated to Nalchik in the Caucasus - to get him out of the way of the German army advancing on Moscow in 1941 - Prokofiev would probably never have come across Kabardinian folk culture. He was so fascinated by what he heard there that he based his Second String Quartet exclusively on local folk tunes, beginning with an Allegro sostenuto where he makes no attempt to disguise the primitive quality of his three main themes. The material of the second movement is rather more engagingly presented - a Kabardinian love song introduced by the cello and, in the middle section, a charmingly scored Caucasian dance tune. The folk dance that opens the last movement was chosen, presumably, because of the phrase it so prominently has in common with the main theme of the first movement. Certainly, its distinctive rhythms perform a valuable function in holding together not only a rondo construction dangerously expanded by a dramatic cello cadenza but the whole three-movement construction.

The second of six works for string quartet and another instrument to be heard in this year’s festival, Schubert’s String Quintet in C major is thought by many to be be the greatest example of its kind. Why he chose to add a second cello, rather than a second viola like Mozart, we do not know but that is its most distinctive and most formative feature. The surge of cello sound produced by the pair of them just after the introduction and their fond counterpoint on their respective A-strings when they come to the melodious second subject are just two texturally inspired moments in the opening Allegro. The slow movement is similarly resourceful in this respect, above all in the outer sections where three voices sustain the rapturous melodic interest in the middle of the texture while first violin and pizzicato second cello exchange harmonic comments from above and below. Although the cellos continue to act together in the Scherzo, the scoring here is more remarkable for their relationship with the viola. As for the Allegretto last movement, while its main dance-tune material does not encourage much in the way of textural enterprise, there are two episodes where a cello duet recalls the first movement as a distant but touching memory.