Borealis String Quartet Performs Beethoven

The performance will take place in the intimate setting of the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall and will include Beethoven’s Quartet in G major, Op. 18, No. 2, “Compliments;” the Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 74, “Harp;” and the Quartet in F major, Op. 135.

Borealis Quartet

Critics say: “[The Quartet] served notice with the lightning attack of the initial bars that they were not going to let anyone cling to their sober stereotypes of classical music and chamber quartets” (The Globe and Mail, Toronto). The Borealis String Quartet was formed at the University of British Columbia in the fall of 2000. In the 2003–2004 season, they performed more than 70 concerts as part of an extensive national tour supported by the Canada Council, and made their New York City debut at Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music. In 2004–2005, they returned to New York, made their British debut in London, and had their first appearance at Music Toronto.

The group’s recording projects include the critically acclaimed Classic Borealis, which was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award, and Vancouver Visions, an album of music by Stephen Chatman. They have appeared at several festivals, including the Vancouver Chamber Music Festival, the Festival of the Sound in Ontario, the Indian River Festival on Prince Edward Island, and the Baies des Chaleurs Festival in New Brunswick. In 2005, the Quartet made its first U.S. festival appearance at the Mendocino Music Festival in California. The Borealis String Quartet is currently Quartet-in-Residence at the University of British Columbia, where its members give master classes and teach chamber music in the University’s School of Music.

Program Information

Beethoven’s Quartet in G major, Op. 18, No. 2, “Compliments,” emerges as a charming and witty work, very close in style and temperament to the best of 18th-century Rococo chamber music. Despite its light, happy character, many musicians consider it the most difficult of all Beethoven’s quartets to play due to its intricate construction. The subtitle, “Compliments,” comes from the opening of the quartet in which a series of short, balanced phrases conjure up an “18th-century salon, with all the ceremonious display and flourish of courtesy typical of the period…with bows and gracious words of greeting,” as described in Theodor Helm’s 1885 book on the Beethoven quartets.

Several important events occurred during 1809, the year when Beethoven composed the Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 74, “Harp.” Early in the year, three noblemen had granted the composer an annual stipend and, anticipating financial security, Beethoven proposed to Therese Malfatti, his teenage pupil, and was devastated by her family's rejection. In May, the French army bombarded Vienna and there are accounts of the composer cowering in a cellar with his hands over his ears, attempting to protect what little hearing he still had. No one can say exactly how the personal and political turmoil in his life affected the composition but, as his letters reveal, Beethoven found it difficult to write under wartime conditions. Perhaps this is one reason why this particular opus does not push forward into new and unexplored regions, but rather demonstrates a consolidation of previous growth, with some backward glances over well-traveled Classical territory.

Beethoven’s Quartet in F major, Op. 135 is the 16th and last complete string quartet that Beethoven wrote. It represents a sharp departure from the other late quartets in that the work is quite short and possesses less emotional intensity than its companions. Rather, it is characterized by a deep sense of calmness and peaceful resignation. For some listeners, it represents a return to middle-class taste, “a touch of Biedermier,” the conservative movement in the decorative arts of the early 1800s. Brevity, accessibility, and the use of more traditional compositional techniques were employed, qualities that Beethoven associated with music written for the bourgeoisie. The fact that Beethoven dedicated the quartet to Johann Wolfmayer, a cloth merchant, and not an aristocrat, lends some credence to this belief. -- www.seattlesymphony.org