California at Los Angeles and composed the scores for numerous

Hollywood films. Outstanding examples include Ben Hur, El Cid, and

Quo vadis, which owe their monumentality not only to their casts of

thousands, but also to the stirring scores Rosza provided. His identity as a

film composer was so firmly established in his lifetime that his other

works were largely ignored. His String Quartet, Op. 22, is an excellent 

example of his virtually unknown chamber music. It is steeped with

Hungarian flavor, especially in its lively second movement. Given the

austere nature of most of the string quartets written in the mid-twentieth 

century, the quartet’s unabashed neoromantic sweep is almost an

anachronism. Nevertheless, the skill and sincerity of the writing and the

extreme virtuosic demands it makes on the performers make this work a

classic of the twentieth-century string quartet repertoire.

Program notes by Stephen Ackert

Notes on Enriquez, Sanchez de Carpio, and Rosza

by Matthew Schubring, adapted and edited by Stephen Ackert

The use ofcameras or recording equipment during

the performance is not allowed. Please he sure that cell

phones, pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

For the convenience ofconcertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30 p.m.

The Sixty-second Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

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2492d Concert

CUARTETO DE CUERDAS DE BELLAS ARTES

BALBI COTTER, violin VIKTORIA HORTI, violin

MATTHEW SCHUBRING, viola ADOLFO RAMOS, cello

Presented in honor of the exhibitions 

Courtly Art ofthe Ancient Maya and

The Cubist Paintings ofDiego Rivera: Memory, Politics, Place

Sunday Evening, 4 April 2004

Seven O’clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart String Quartet in D Minor

(1756-1791) K. 421 (1783)

Allegro moderato

Andante

Minuetto: Allegretto

Allegretto ma non troppo

Manuel Enriquez 

(1926-1994)

Energico

Tranquilo

Festivo

String Quartet No. 1

(1957)

Intermission

Hilario Sanchez de Carpio

(b. 1939)

Miklos Rosza

(1907-1995)

El cenote sagrado

(1984)

String Quartet 

Op. 22(1950)

Andante con moto

Scherzo in modo ongarese

Lento

Allegro feroce

The Musicians

The Cuarteto de Cuerdas de Bellas Artes was founded in 1974 and is

currently one of several musical units of the Mexican National Institute of

Fine Arts. The quartet members have served as principal players in

Mexico’s leading orchestras, including the Mexico City Philharmonic, the

National University Philharmonic, the Bellas Artes Theatre Orchestra, and

the Fine Arts Chamber Orchestra. They have taught at Mexico’s prime

centers of music education, including the Ollin Yolitzli School, the

National University’s School of Music, and the “El Nigromante” Cultural

Center in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato.

The Cuarteto de Cuerdas de Bellas Artes performs the full range of

string quartet repertoire, from Haydn to composers of the present day.

Special emphasis is placed on the music of contemporary Mexican

composers. The quartet has given world premieres of many works and

actively collaborates with the Mexican Society of Authors and Composers,

Mexico’s International Women’s Day, and the Foro Internacional de

Musica Nueva “Manuel Enriquez,” an annual festival dedicated to new

music. Other collaborations of note have included the Mexican premiere

performances of the tango-inspired opera Maria de Buenos Aires, by the

Argentinean composer Astor Piazzola.

Program Notes

Mozart expressed profound respect and admiration for the inimitable

string quartet writing of his “most dear friend” Joseph Haydn in the

dedication of the six quartets known as the “Haydn” quartets. An excerpt

from the dedication reads: “Behold here, famous man and dearest friend,

my six children...your praise...encourages me...and makes me hope that

they shall not be entirely unworthy of your good will.” Haydn, for his part,

was so impressed with Mozart’s quartets that he thereafter insisted that

Mozart had taught him how to compose for string quartet, even though by

that time Haydn already had forty-two such works to his credit! The D

Minor Quartet is by far the most tragic of the six, with a piercing sadness

that sometimes borders on gloominess. The falling octave in the opening
theme is the first of numerous musical devices traditionally associated

with sadness that continually reappear throughout the quartet. The only ray

of hope is provided by the trio of the third movement (Minuetto: Allegro),

which introduces playful spurts in the reverse dotted rhythm of the

Schottisch. The final variation of the theme and variations that make up

the fourth movement {Allegro ma non troppo) is in major mode, but even

here the frequent harmonic changes present a troubled picture.

Diego Rivera (1886-1957) was arguably the most important 

Mexican painter of the twentieth century and certainly one of the most 

dynamic figures in Mexico’s recent history. The exhibition The Cubist

Paintings of Diego Rivera: Memory, Politics, Place, which opens today at

the National Gallery and remains on view until 25 July 2004, emphasizes 

Rivera’s distinctive approach to synthetic cubism and includes works he

created between 1913 and 1915, when he was in France and Spain. These

extraordinary compositions of vivid colors and tactile surfaces

demonstrate the artist’s engagement with themes of identity and place

during a time of profound social and political upheaval in both Europe and

Mexico. The exhibition explores the evocative links developed between

objects, people, and places, often including specifically Mexican motifs or

references to the cities Rivera inhabited at the time (Paris, Madrid, and

Mallorca). Together, these paintings not only represent the artist’s finest 

cubist work, but they also offer important meditations on self-identity and

nationalism.

By replacing the words “these paintings” and “cubist” in the

previous sentence with the musical terms “this chamber music” and

“neoclassical,” the statement applies equally well to the string quartet by

Manuel Enriquez on this program. Enriquez was born in Ocotlan in the

state of Jalisco. He died in Mexico City in 1994. His teachers were his

father and the Mexican composers Ignacio Camarena and Miguel Bernal

Jimenez. In the course of graduate studies in the United States, Enriquez 

attended courses taught by Ivan Galamian, Louis Persinger, William

Primrose, Peter Mennin, and Stefan Wolpe. He was honored during his

lifetime by consecutive appointments as head of Mexico’s National

Conservatory of Music, National Institute of Fine Arts, and International

Forum of New Music, which was named after him upon his death.

Enriquez’ first string quartet is neoclassical in style, in that the traditional 

sonata-allegro form defines its first movement and the rondo form its third

movement. The second movement is reminiscent of a nocturne and

features expressive solos for the cello and the viola. The most palpable 

Mexican traits can be found in the third movement (Festivo), in which the

alternating 5/8 and 6/8 rhythms, displaced accents, and extended pizzicato 

section suggest music that might accompany a joyous Mexican folk

festival.

Hilario Sanchez de Carpio is a native of Bochil, in the southeastern

Mexican state of Chiapas. With barely three years of grade school

education, he taught himself to read and write music and, at age eighteen,

was invited to join the Tropical Octet of France, a jazz ensemble that

performed extensive tours in Africa. In the course of that collaboration, he

worked with Stephane Grapelli and Bill Coleman, among others. Sanchez

de Carpio has composed music for films, dance, and the theater as well as

symphonic and chamber music. His works are firmly rooted in his

background as a Chiapanecan and his experience as a jazz musician. El

cenote sagrado (The Sacred Pool) is a musical impression of the

seemingly bottomless pools of water that can be found in the jungles of

Chiapas. Cenote is the Mayan word for such pools, to which the Mayans

ascribed mystical qualities. In pre-Columbian times, the pools were used

in the sacrifice of virgins. Sanchez de Carpio composed this onemovement work in response to a visit to Chincultic in Chiapas, where he

was able to observe the famous Cenote of Chincultic from atop a Mayan

pyramid. The music is by turns hypnotic and rhythmically obsessive,

reflecting the composer’s feelings upon encountering a place of mysterious

and violent history. An encounter with nearly 200 intriguing artifacts of

the Mayan civilization is available to visitors to the Gallery’s East

Building, where the exhibition Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya remains

on view until 25 July 2004.

Miklos Rosza, a native of Hungary, attended the famous Leipzig

Conservatory in Germany. The rising tide of fascism and national

socialism in central Europe forced him to emigrate to Paris in 1932 and to

the United States in 1940. He spent the rest of his career in Los Angeles,

where he served as a professor of composition at the University of