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10 More Dazzling and Awe-Inspiring Piano Quartets

by Hermione Lai, Interlude

A couple of years ago, Interlude published a blog on the 10 most beautiful piano quartets. Once again, featuring just 10 works in that particular genre is simply not enough. So, we decided to present a follow-up, highlighting 10 more dazzling and awe-inspiring piano quartets.

As a quick recap, you get a piano quartet when you add a piano to a string trio. The standard instrument lineup for this type of chamber music pairs the violin, viola, and cello with the piano. In its development, the piano quartet had to wait for technical advances of the piano, as it had to match the strings in power and expression.

© serenademagazine.com

Piano quartets are always special because the scoring allows for a wealth of tone colour, occasionally even a symphonic richness. The combined resources of all four instruments are not easy to handle, and the number of works in the genre is not especially large. However, a good many of the extant piano quartets are very personal and passionate statements. 

When talking about chamber music, and specifically chamber music with piano, it is difficult to avoid Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). Lucky for us, Brahms wrote three piano quartets, and his Op. 60 took its inspiration from his intense relationship with Clara Schumann. However, it took Brahms almost twenty years to complete the work. The origins date back to around 1855 when Brahms was wrestling with his first piano concerto.

Brahms put this particular piano quartet aside and only showed it to his first biographer in the 1860s with the words, “Imagine a man who is just going to shoot himself, for there is nothing else to do.” Thirteen years later, Brahms took up the work and radically revised it. He probably wrote a new “Andante” and also a new “Finale.” In the end, the work finally premiered on 18 November 1875 with Brahms at the piano and the famous David Popper on cello.

Brahms and the Schumanns

The emotional distress of his relationship with Clara is presented in a mood of darkness and melancholy. A solitary chord in the piano initiates the opening movement, with the string presenting a theme built from a striking two-note phrase. Some commentators have suggested that Brahms is musically speaking the name “Clara” in this two-note phrase. The second theme is highly lyrical but quickly develops towards the dark mood of the opening. The “Scherzo” is also in the minor key, and the deeply felt slow movement is a declaration of love for Clara. The dark opening returns in the final movement, and while the development presents some relief, the work still ends on a note of resignation, albeit in the major key.

Heinrich von Herzogenberg: Piano Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 95

Heinrich von Herzogenberg

The intensely emotional and meticulously crafted compositions by Brahms served as models for a number of composers, among them Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843-1900). As he writes, “Brahms helped me, by the mere fact of his existence, to my development, my inward looking up to him, and with his artistic and human energy.” While Brahms respected Herzogenberg’s technical craftsmanship and musical knowledge, he never really had anything to say.

Herzogenberg was undeterred and never stopped composing. In 1897, he wrote to Brahms, “There are two things that I cannot get used not to doing: That I always compose, and that when I am composing I ask myself, the same as thirty-four years ago, ‘What will He say about it?’ To be sure, for many years, you have not said anything about it, which is something that I can interpret as I wish.”

A few days before Brahms’ death, Herzogenberg presented him with his probably best and most mature work, the Piano Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 95. The gripping “Allegro” is full of unmistakably Brahmsian character, constructed with compositional economy. An introductory chord develops into the motific core of the entire movement. The “Adagio is full of dreamy intimacy, while the capricious “Scherzo” eventually transports us into a pastoral idyll. Three themes, including a folkloric principle theme, combine in a spirited and temperamental “Finale.” 

When Richard Strauss (1864-1949) left college and moved to Berlin to study music at the age of 19, he suddenly discovered a new model in Johannes Brahms. Strauss would meet his current idol personally at the premiere of Brahms’ 4th Symphony in 1885. Under the influence of Brahms, the teenaged Strauss completed his Piano Quartet in C minor in 1884, and a good many commentators believe it to be Strauss’ “greatest chamber work.”

Richard Strauss

Op. 13 is a large work fusing “the sobriety and grandeur of Brahms with the fire and impetuous virtuosity of the young Strauss.” The work opens quietly, and the deceptively simple motif returns in various disguises. However, the music quickly explodes with superheated energy, and its dark sonorities and dramatic scope drive it to a virtually symphonic close.

Finally, the “Andante” introduces a measure of calm, with the piano sounding a florid melodic strain that gives way to a lyrical second subject in the viola. Both themes are gracefully extended while bathing in a delicate and charmed atmosphere. The concluding “Vivace” returns to the mood of the opening movement, and the rondo design also features a serious refrain and a spiky fugato. The work won a prize from the Berlin Tonkünstler, Strauss, however, would say goodbye to chamber music and explore orchestral virtuosity in his great tone poems. 

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) seems another surprising entry into a blog on the piano quartet. However, a single movement from his student days at the Vienna Conservatory does survive. Mahler took piano lessons from Julius Epstein and studied composition and harmony under Robert Fuchs and Franz Krenn. Mahler left the Conservatory in 1878 with a diploma but without the coveted and prestigious silver medal given for outstanding achievement.

Gustav Mahler’s Piano Quartet

Although he claimed to have written hundreds of songs, several theatrical works, and various chamber music compositions, only a single movement for a Piano Quartet in A minor survived the ravages of time. Composed in 1876 and awarded the Conservatory Prize, it is strongly influenced by the musical styles of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms.

Conveying a sense of passion and longing, Mahler presents three contrasting themes within a strict formal design. The opening theme possesses an ominous and foreboding character, while the contrasting second—still in the tonic key—is passionately rhapsodic. To compensate for this tonal stagnation, the third theme undergoes a series of modulations. Thickly textured and relying on excessive motivic manipulation, this movement nevertheless provides insight into the creative processes of the 16-year-old Mahler. 

Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904) is another composer who, for a time, took his bearings from Johannes Brahms’s music. Dvorák had always been strongly drawn to chamber music, as his first published works are a string quartet Op. 1 and a string quintet Op. 2.

Dvořák in New York, 1893

Apparently, he composed his D-Major piano quartet in a mere eighteen days in 1875. It premiered five years later, on 16 December 1880. Surprisingly, this piano quartet has only three movements, as the composer combines a scherzo and Allegro agitato in alternation in the Finale. The opening “Allegro” sounds like a rather characteristic Czech melody, initiated by the cello and continued by the violin. By the time the piano takes up the theme, the tonality has shifted to B Major.

The melody of the slow movement, a theme followed by five variations, is introduced by the violin. Dvorák skillfully presents fragments of the theme in various meters and textures. The cello, accompanied by the piano, takes the lead in the final “Allegretto.” After the violin has taken up the theme, the piano takes us into the finale proper.

Béla Bartók: Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 20

Béla Bartók

To his contemporaries and critics, Johannes Brahms looked like a bastion of musical conservatism. Surprisingly, it was Arnold Schoenberg, in his celebrated Radio address entitled “Brahms the Progressive”, who suggested that Brahms was “a great innovator in the realm of musical language and that his chamber music prepared the way for the radical changes in musical conception at the turn of the 20th century.”

Just one year after Brahms’ death, the teenage Béla Bartók (1881-1945) embarked on the composition of a four-movement piano quartet. For years, this score was believed to have been lost, but it was rediscovered by a member of the “Notos Quartet,” who also prepared the edition following the composer’s autograph score. What is more, they also presented a world premiere recording in 2007.

The opening “Allegro” immediately evokes the harmonic and sensuous soundscape of Johannes Brahms. And like his model, Bartók’s musical prose does not follow a predictable pattern as the boundaries and distinctions of theme and development are blurred. Brahms’ rhythmic shapes are the topic of a blazing “Scherzo,” with the “Trio” sounding a sombre lyrical contrast. The “Adagio” sounds like a declaration of love for Brahms, while the “Finale” brims with spicy Hungarian flavours. 

Camille Saint-Säens introduced Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) to Pauline Viardot in 1872. Her youngest daughter, Marianne, immediately stole his heart, and Fauré courted her for four painful years. In July 1877, she finally agreed, and the engagement was announced. However, the relationship only lasted until the late autumn of 1877, when Marianne suddenly broke off the engagement.

Pauline Viardot

The exact reasons remain unclear, and Fauré was deeply distressed, with friends reporting that his “sunny disposition took a dark turn.” He started to suffer from bouts of depression, and the Clerc family helped him to recover. At this point, Fauré composed the masterpieces of his youth, among them the piano quartet in C minor.

It might well be considered an early work, however, the composer was already over forty. The opening “Allegro” is pervaded by a sense of optimism, urged on by a strong rhythmical gesture. The E-flat Major “Scherzo” opens with plucked strings and the piano making a light-hearted contribution. The sombre character of the “Adagio” provides an unexpected contrast, and that mood is taken over in the “Finale.” The asymmetrical piano accompaniment continues throughout and brings the work to an emphatic conclusion in the major key.

Théodore Dubois: Piano Quartet in A minor

Théodore Dubois in 1905

Théodore Dubois (1837-1924) was highly influential on the French musical scene. Early on, he was known as a composer-organist with a large oeuvre of sacred music to his name. As a pedagogue, he is still famous as the author of the most common music theory textbooks, and as an administrator, he gained notoriety by denying the famed Rome prize to Maurice Ravel on multiple occasions.

Once Dubois retired from the directorship of the Conservatoire, he worked on a chamber music project. A scholar writes, “If they are not progressive works of genius, we can still enjoy their faultless design and beauty of sonority as documents to help us understand the world and spirit in Paris before, around and after 1900.”

Dubois’ piano quartet in A minor appeared in 1907 and features a conventional four-movement design. The opening “Allegro” begins with a cautious drama but quickly transitions to a lyrical melody. The sense of melodic dominance is taken over in the “Andante,” followed by an “Allegro” replacing a scherzo. Essentially a character piece in the style of Mendelssohn, it is followed by a “Finale” of sophistication and balance.

Mélanie Bonis: Piano Quartet No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 69

Mélanie Bonis, 1908

Mélanie Bonis (1858-1937) was born into a Parisian lower-middle-class family and initially discouraged from pursuing music. Undeterred, she taught herself how to play the piano, and only at the urging of a family friend and with help from César Franck was she admitted to the Paris Conservatoire.

To conceal her gender during a time when compositions by women were not taken seriously, she shortened her first name to “Mel.” A good many of her late compositions have still not been published, and as she wrote to her daughter, “My great sorrow is that I never get to hear my music.”

Her first piano quartet was written between 1900 and 1905, and stylistically, it is cast in a post-Romantic tradition. Bonis explores the various possibilities of harmony and rhythm, infused with a dash of Impressionism. A good many passages show the influence of César Franck with long developments and rigorous counterpoint. At the work’s first performance, a surprised Camille Sain-Saëns declared, “I would never have believed a woman capable of writing that. She knows all the tricks of the trade.” 

Joaquín Turina (1882-1949), together with his friend Manuel de Falla, helped to promote the national character of 20th-century Spanish music. At first, influenced and inspired by Debussy, Turina soon developed a distinctly Spanish style, “incorporating Iberian lyricism and rhythms with impressionistic timbres and harmonies.”

Jacinto Higueras Cátedra: Bust of the composer Joaquín Turina, 1971 (Madrid: Escuela Superior de Canto)

While his Op. 1 Piano Quintet in G minor emerged from his study with Vincent d’Indy, the Op. 67 piano quartet in A minor is “music without the slightest need of any explanations.” The three-movement work is carefully constructed in cyclical form, and “the juxtaposition of contrasting themes give the overall shape a rhapsodic structure.”

The fundamental musical idea is introduced in the opening movement and transformed and modified throughout the work. Of particular lively interest is the central “Lento,” where Turina transformed Andalusian elements without abandoning the gestures, temperament and uniqueness of his native lands. I hope you have enjoyed this further excursion into the realm of the piano quartet, and I can already promise one more article on the subject with music by Mozart, Taneyev, Hahn, Brahms, Copland and others.

Ticket prices, seat plan for 2NE1’s Manila concert released

BY JONATHAN HICAP

Sep 26, 2024 09:27 AM

  

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The ticket prices and seat plan for K-pop group 2NE1’s concert in Manila have been released. 

2NE1, composed of Sandara Park, CL, Minzy and Park Bom, will be holding their “2NE1 Asia Tour: Welcome Back” in Manila concert on Nov. 16, Saturday, 7 p.m., at the SM Mall of Asia Arena. 

Live Nation Philippines released the details of the concert and announced that the presale will be on Oct. 10 while the general ticket selling will start on Oct. 11. 

2NE1 (Instagram)

“The wait is over, Blackjacks! Are you ready to see CL, BOM, DARA, and MINZY back on the big stage?” Live Nation Philippines posted on X. 

The ticket prices range from P3,000 for General Admission to P16,500 for VIP, which includes send-off and soundcheck. 

Here are the details: 

K-pop girl group ILLIT to return with new album in October

BY JONATHAN HICAP

Sep 23, 2024 04:20 PM

  

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K-pop girl group ILLIT of HYBE Labels will be making their comeback to the music scene with a new album in October. 

ILLIT will be releasing their second mini-album “I’ll Like You” on Oct. 21, or just in seven months after they came out with their first mini-album “Super Real Me” in March. 

ILLIT (X)

ILLIT will release "I'll Like You" on Oct. 21 (Belift Lab)

While “Super Real Me” focused on capturing what they called “my true self,” “I’ll Like You” will tell the story of the “self” that becomes deeply immersed in the moment. 

ILLIT will portray their candid charm in  “I’ll Like You” as they encounter a “you” they wish to get closer to, navigate moments of doubt, and ultimately follow their heart to discover their own answers. 

“Super Real Me” sold 380,056 copies in the first week of release, based on data from Korea’s Hanteo Chart. 

The album entered the Billboard 200 chart, while the lead single “Magnetic” made history as the first-ever K-pop debut track to enter the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Official Singles Top 100 charts. 

Recently, “Magnetic” surpassed 400 million streams on Spotify, becoming the fastest K-pop debut track to reach the milestone. 

Pre-orders for “I’ll Like You” started on Sept. 23 with the official release at 6 p.m. KST on Oct. 21. 

ILLIT's members are Yunah, Minju, Moka, Wonhee and Iroha. 

The Orchestra in a Box: The Accordion

by Maureen Buja, Interlude

The accordion works on a bellows system. As the instrument is pulled apart and pushed together, air is forced passed reeds held in a frame. Other instruments like this include the concertina, the harmonica, and the bandoneon. The keyboards on both sides of the instrument each have a different function. The right side, the diskant, is for melody, and the left side buttons provide the accompaniment function. The playing mechanism can be either like a piano keyboard (piano accordion) or with buttons (button accordion). For both piano and button accordions, the left side is the same.

Piano Accordion (Startone 72 MKII)

The button accordion.

Chromatic Button Accordion (Hohner Mattia IV)

The instrument is held by two straps around the shoulders and is played in front of the body. For most accordions, the same pitch is played when you open or close the bellows, but some instruments will play different notes depending on the direction of the bellows’ motion.

The accordion is a 19th-century instrument invented in Germany by Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann around 1822.

Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann

From Germany, the instrument went to Russia, with the earliest known ones being made in the 1830s. By the late 1840s, two Russian manufacturers were producing some 10,000 instruments a year. By 1828, the instrument was in England and in New York by the mid-1840s.

For classical music, it wasn’t until the 1960s that works for accordion and orchestra were being written, and Poland has been a particular center for this genre.

Bronisław Kazimierz Przybylski’s Concerto polacco was completed in 1973 and is one of the most popular of the accordion concertos. 

In Denmark, the composer Per Nørgård has been an important contributor to the genre. His 1964 work, Introduction and Toccata, developed from a first version in 1952 that accordionists agreed as being unplayable on current instruments. The 1964 revision captured the idiosyncratic methods needed for performances. 

Maltese composer Charles Camilleri (1931–2009) was also an accordion virtuoso and international performer. His 1968 Concerto for Accordion and String Orchestra was originally intended as a didactic work for his students. The work includes both classical forms (a first movement sonata-allegro) and local references (the main subject of the first movement is close to a Maltese traditional melody). The final movement was intended to be not only a brilliant finish but also a nod to the 12-music of the time. 

Finnish composer Erkki-Sven Tüür (b. 1959) had to be urged for five years to consider the accordion as a solo instrument for a concerto. He had to change his thinking of the instrument as purely for folk dances to something that had an orchestral connection. In its upper register, the accordion can sound like the wind instruments, and in its middle register, is closer to the strings and the composer used these sounds in different combinations. 

For many people, it was the Tango Nuevo of Astor Piazzolla that brought the accordion (or in Piazzolla’s case, the bandoneon) to the performing stage.

The bandoneon is a middle instrument between the hand-sized concertina and a full accordion. It is named for its inventor, Heinrich Band, who intended it for religious or popular music accompaniment. It made its way to Argentina around 1870, where it became one of the distinctive sounds of tango music.

Astor Piazzolla

His Concerto for Bandoneon, Percussion, and String Orchestra of 1979 is very different from the European concertos we’ve heard above—it immediately incorporates the rhythm of tango and its melancholic alternation between major and minor, expressive solo lines and other emotive details.

The accordion has long been associated with France, be it from French accordionists on street corners or the accordionist Yvette Horner, who played her accordion along the route of the Tour du France in the 1950s and 1960s (and who was caricatured in Les Triplettes de Belleville).

Yvette Horner

A new work in the French tradition is Thibault Perrine’s Capriccio for Accordion and Orchestra. The work makes reference to the former music activities on the Place de la Bastille where musicians from the Auvergne encountered accordionists coming up from Italy. Together, they created a new dance music known as the musette and Perrine makes that the center of his work. 

The lack of repertoire has made transcriptions central to the performance of classical music by accordionists. Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1, originally for piano, takes on a different life with accordion, vocals, trombone, and three melodicas (another free-reed instrument that mixes the harmonica with a keyboard).

Melodica

Or some Bach for accordion and saxophone.

And Rameau keyboard music arranged for accordion.

Japanese accordionist Mie Miki has been very active in bringing not only Baroque keyboard music to the accordion but also vocal music, such as this Dowland work, arranged for viola and accordion.

As a new instrument to the classical stage, the accordion has had to fight for recognition as a serious instrument. Its versatility in sound, melding with elements of the orchestra, has been a benefit, and as composers begin to understand how many ways it can contribute to the orchestral sound world, its repertoire will grow. Rethink the accordion – it’s more than polkas and popular music. It has become a real voice of serious music.

"Philippine Classical Music"

 

"Philippine Classical Music" generally refers to 19th-20th century instrumental and vocal works by Filipinos made with the influence of Western music movements, notably of romanticism, post-romanticism, impressionism, and many others.

Among the major Philippine contemporary composers are Francisco Santiago, Nicanor Abelardo, Antonio Molina, Col. Antonino Buenaventura, Lucio San Pedro, Alfredo Buenaventura, and Ryan Cayabyab

Francisco Santiago Santiago (January 29, 1889 – September 28, 1947) was a Filipino musician, sometimes called The Father of Kundiman Art Song.

Life

Santiago was born in Santa Maria, Bulacan, Philippines, to musically minded peasant parents, Felipe Santiago and Maria Santiago. In 1908, his first composition, Purita, was dedicated to the first Carnival Queen, Pura Villanueva, who later married the distinguished scholar Teodoro Kalaw.

He studied at the University of the Philippines (UP) Conservatory of Music, in its original campus in Manila, obtaining a degree in Piano in 1921, and a degree in Science and Composition in 1922. He went to the United States to pursue further education. He first obtained his master's degree at the American Conservatory of Music in June 1923, and finally a Doctorate degree at the Chicago Musical School in August 1924. He is the first Filipino musician to attain a doctorate degree.

He became the director of the UP Conservatory of Music in 1930, after the entire music faculty and students of the conservatory protested for the removal of the previous director, Alexander Lippay, for alleged harassment of students and musicians. Santiago is the first Filipino director of the Conservatory.

In 1934, the President of the university, Jorge Bocobo, launched a committee to collect and document folk songs of the Philippines. Francisco Santiago was named the chair of the committee. Part of this committee were dancer Francisca Reyes-Aquino, who notated numerous folk dances and compiling them in several books, and composer Antonino Buenaventura, who transcribed numerous folk music, including those accompanying the dances recorded by Reyes-Aquino.

In 1937-1939 Santiago would compose his masterpiece - the "Taga-ilog" Symphony in D Major. It is one of the first Filipino classical works to feature Philippine instruments such as the gangsa and sulibaw.

Plagiarism case

In 1939 he was faced with a plagiarism lawsuit by another Filipino composer Jose Estella. According to Estella, Santiago stole a melody from Estella's 1929 work Campanadas de Gloria and incorporated it in Santiago's 1939 song Ano Kaya ang Kapalaran. However, the investigation found out that both Estella and Santiago's melodies were influenced by the folk song "Leron, Leron Sinta" and that Estella's Campanadas de Gloria also contained several quotations from other composers, therefore breaking Estella's claim. The court decided in favor of Santiago in 1942.^[2]

Santiago in 1945

War years[edit]

During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines the University of the Philippines was closed down by the invading Japanese forces. In 1942, Francisco Santiago became music director of the newly established New Philiippines Symphony Orchestra - created to replace the Manila Symphony Orchestra who refused to play under the Japanese rule. In 1943 he suffered a heart attack and his hand and arm were later paralyzed in an illness.

On February 5, 1945, during the Liberation of Manila, while the family was escaping their neighborhood due to constant bombing, a cart full of Santiago's compositions and manuscripts caught fire near the burning Quiapo Church. The family eventually escaped the shelling, but most of Santiago's compositions were destroyed.

Death

After the war in 1946, he was named Professor Emeritus by the University of the Philippines. He died one year later on September 28, 1947, and was buried in Manila North Cemetery.

Jose Estella (1870 - 6 April 1943) was a Filipino composer and conductor who was known for his title as the "Philippine Waltz King".[Besides composing waltzes, he also became one of the major contributors of localizing Spanish zarzuelas from 1890s to 1900

Jose Estella was born in Escolta, Manila in 1870. After studying and graduating from the Madrid Conservatory, he returned to the Philippines and pursued a career in music. In Manila and Cebu, he conducted several orchestras. In Manila, he had a teaching career as a piano instructor. He spends his time studying history, visiting different Filipino provinces and exploring the local folk music. In Cebu, he was director of the Municipal Band where he started to gain recognition.Estella also became a director of the Rizal Orchestra, founded in 1898.

Estella became involved with a plagiarism case in 1939 with Francisco Santiago over which he complains that Santiago copied his Campanadas de Gloria. In the end of the investigation, it was revealed that they both get inspiration from the same folk song named "Leron Leron Sinta".

He died on April 6, 1943, and throughout his lifetime, he composed more than 100 waltzes hence he is given the title, "the Philippine Waltz King". There are no information regarding his personal life except he has a son named Ramon Estella, a film director.

Notable works

Ang Maya

Composed in 1905, it was a piece from Estella's zarzuela, "Filipinas para los Filipinos" with Severino Reyes as librettist The piece represented the everyday life of the common people in the Philippines, thus predating some works by other composers who graduated from UP Conservatory of Music in the 1920s. Severino's youngest son, Pedrito, said that the song was inspired by the maya chirping in the trees near his father's summer hut. Estella's "Filipinas para los Filipinos" was a satire made by the composer as a reaction to an American Congress bill banning American women from marrying Filipino men.

La Tagala

Originally composed for piano in 1890s and 1900s, the waltz is a collection of Filipino folk songs such as Balitaw, Hele hele, Kundiman, Kumintang, etc. It was dedicated to the Tobacco Company Germinal. One of its notable performance was on a concert night of November 1899.

Filipinas Symphony (1928)

Jose Estella's Filipinas Symphony is the first Filipino Symphony by modern scholarly consensus.[2][8][11] Although not much was known about the information of the piece, according to sources, the symphony was based on the Filipino folk song "Balitaw" meanwhile the Slow Movement (Adagio) was based on another folk song "Kumintang".

Other Works

California March (Ragtime)

El Diablo Mundo - First performed at the inauguration of the Teatro Zorrila on October 25, 1893, this zarzuela was described to have a dark and gloomy atmosphere.

Los Pajaros[

Katubusan (Fox-Trot)

My Dreamed Waltz