PROGRAM UPDATE: Today’s chamber music concert will now feature NWS Fellows playing Errollyn Wallen’s Horseplay and Franz Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in D. The concert will be approximately 40 minutes of music, performed without intermission. Guest artist Andrew Bain will no longer be performing.

Errollyn Wallen considers Horseplay one of her favorite works due to its vitality and contrast, writing that “it’s the perfect work to be performed by young people.” Franz Joseph Haydn’s string quartet legacy is solidified in the Op. 76 collection, his last complete set.

This concert is part of the Chamber Music Series. NWS Fellows and acclaimed guest artists collaborate at these intimate concerts, performing a wide range of repertoire for small ensembles. Subscriptions for this 6-concert series are $72. Click here to explore the full subscription! 

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Program

Errollyn Wallen

Horseplay  (1998)
Approximate duration: 21 minutes

After leaving her native Belize at the age of two, Errollyn Wallen grew up and studied in England. She blends her classical training in piano and composition with a gifted ear for songwriting and popular melodies, and her career has allowed her to travel freely through diverse musical worlds. A major platform in her early career was the group she founded in 1990, Ensemble X, with the motto, “We don’t break down barriers in music…we don’t see any.” She has gone on to create operas, ballets, films and pop songs, along with a range of orchestral scores and chamber music, all of which have kept her at the vanguard of British music throughout this century.

Wallen, who studied ballet as a child, has proved especially adept at creating dance music. The Royal Ballet commissioned Horseplay and premiered it in 1998, and the Continuum Ensemble recorded it for a 2002 release of Wallen’s music on Avie Records. A “dark and mysterious” theme, introduced by the piano in octaves, grounds the many escapades in this fantastical score, blending sophisticated orchestral shadings with toe-tapping grooves and earworm-worthy melodies. References to wide-ranging earlier music are there—Stravinsky’s Russian ballets for sure, perhaps some “new tango” from Piazzolla, and even some moody jazz piano in the vein of Herbie Hancock—but the total effect is a voice that is proudly and effortlessly Wallen’s own.

Franz Joseph Haydn

Quartet in D minor for Strings, Op. 76, No. 2, “Fifths” (1797-98)
Approximate duration: 20 minutes

In 1761, at the age of 29 and with a decade of modest freelance work under his belt, Joseph Haydn accepted a prestigious job offer to serve as Vice-Kapellmeister for the wealthy and powerful Esterházy family. First in that assistant role and later as Kapellmeister himself, Haydn worked tirelessly to entertain his insatiable patrons. One new genre he began cultivating around the time he joined the Esterházy court was the quartet of two violins, viola and cello, compositions that he labeled at the time as Divertimentos. Amassing 68 such works over the next 40 years, Papa Haydn truly earned his distinction as “Father of the String Quartet.”

When Prince Nikolaus Esterházy died in 1790, Haydn was the most famous composer in the world, and his business model had gradually morphed from satisfying one court’s needs for private entertainment to juggling a variety of commissions and publishing deals. Building on those fledgling Divertimentos, Haydn elevated the string quartet into a chamber music mainstay, and he published set after set to great international acclaim. He usually released quartets in sets of six, and his last complete set, from 1797, started as a commission from a Hungarian patron, Count Joseph Erdödy. Haydn agreed to give the count two years of exclusive use of the quartets, but as soon as that period ended the enterprising (and not entirely scrupulous) composer sold the scores to competing publishing firms in London and Vienna, which both released editions in 1799, printed as Opus 76.

The second quartet from Opus 76, in the key of D minor, got its nickname of “Fifths” from the distinctive leaps that begin the main theme. Pairs of notes separated by the interval of a perfect fifth circulate obsessively throughout the movement, pointing the way toward Beethoven’s similarly concentrated use of compact, recognizable motives.

The Quartet’s second movement—the only one in a major key—lightens the mood with cheerful variations set in a rather breezy tempo, the walking pace leaning toward an accelerated Allegretto pulse. Often Haydn saved his most jovial music for the minuet, but this Quartet instead features an unusually dark example of that dancing form, with severe themes voiced in naked octaves and layered in austere canons. Musicians, quite aptly, have taken to calling this movement the “Witches’ Minuet.”

The finale picks up in the same key of D minor, but the attitude here is more dashing and playful. To resolve this Quartet’s central argument, upward leaps of a perfect fifth arise as a bemused answer to the first movement’s dour descents. Another theme, jumping abruptly down a space of nearly two octaves, sounds an awful lot like the braying of a donkey, as if to laugh off all the turbulence. Gently at first and with growing conviction, the Quartet finally reaches a hearty resolution in the key of D major.

FOR YOUR SAFETY 

As of September 18, 2021, these are the guidelines that all guests at New World Symphony concerts must follow. These guidelines will apply to all members of your party before they are allowed to enter the New World Center and to any users of the tickets purchased by you.  Click here for additional information.

 

COVID REQUIREMENTS: 

• We request that all guests are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (at least two weeks after final dose) and provide proof of vaccination; i.e. original vaccination card, copy of vaccination card, or picture of vaccination card. Name on vaccination card must match name on ID. 
• In lieu of proof of vaccination, we require proof of a negative COVID-19 diagnostic test result within 72-hours (including for unvaccinated children under 12 years of age). Name on test result must match name on ID. Results from self-test kits and test-at-home kits will not be accepted.
• All guests may undergo a temperature screening upon entry into the building. 
• Masks are required inside New World Center at all times, regardless of vaccination status. 

 

DAY OF EVENT 

• Please arrive early for check-in process. 
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• Please remember to bring a mask. 

 

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