For the convenience of concertgoers

the Cafe Provencal remains open until 6:oo pm.

The use of cameras or recording equipment during the 

performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones, 

pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

Please note that late entry or reentry of

the West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-fourth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,559th Concert

The Auryn String Quartet

Matthias Lingenfelder, violin

Jens Oppermann, violin

Stewart Eaton, viola

Andreas Arndt, violoncello

February 12, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

String Quartet in D Minor, op. 76, no. 2 (“Fifths”) (1797)

Allegro

Andante o piuttosto allegretto

Menuetto: Allegro ma non troppo

Finale: Vivace assai

Bela Bartolc (1881-1945)

String Quartet no. 1 in A Minor, op. 7 (1908)

Lento

Allegretto

Allegro vivace

INTERMISSION

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

String Quartet no. 12 in F Major, op. 96 (“American”) (1893)

Allegro ma non troppo

Lento

Molto vivace

Finale: Vivace ma non troppo

The Musicians

The Auryn String Quartet takes its name from Michael Ende’s 1979 novel,

Die unendliche Geschichte (The Neverending Story), in which the Auryn is

an amulet that, as the quartet’s Web site describes, “bestows its bearer

with a capacity to realize his or her dreams and an ability to access extraordinary powers ofimagination.” The members ofthe ensemble studied with

the Amadeus Quartet in Cologne as well as the Guarneri Quartet at the

University of Maryland. Soon after completing their studies, they won first

prizes at the prestigious ard International Music Competition in Munich

and the International String Quartet Competition in Portsmouth, England.

In 1987, as a representative ofthe German Radio Stations Organization,

the Auryn Quartet won the Competition of European Radio Stations.

The ensemble has concertized in most ofthe major music centers of

the world and has been invited to the music festivals of Bregenz, Gstaad,

Lockenhaus, Lucerne, Mondsee, Kuhmo, and Schleswig-Holstein, as

well as the Beethovenfest Bonn and the Berliner Festwochen. In the summer of 2003 the quartet appeared at the Salzburg Festival and KlangBogen

Wien, and performed a cycle of three all-Mendelssohn concerts at the

Concertgebouw Amsterdam. The Auryn also participated in the Beethoven

quartet cycle ofthe International Beethoven Festival in Bonn, played at the

Edinburgh Festival, and served as the quartet-in-residence of Washington’s

Schubert, Schubert, and Schubert Festival.

The Auryn Quartet regularly tours in North America and has appeared at

the Frick Collection and in the quartet series at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie

Hall. Other American venues and series have included the University of

California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Notre Dame 

University, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Da Camera

Society of Los Angeles. The ensemble has performed with such internationally renowned musicians as Christian Tetzlaff and members ofthe Guarneri

3
and Amadeus Quartets. The Auryn Quartet is a strong champion of contemporary music and has played the world premieres ofworks by Brett Dean,

Peter Michael Hamel, Maria Cecilia Villanueva, and Charlotte Seither.

The group’s many recordings include the complete cycle of Schubert’s

quartets on the cpo label—awarded the Diapason d’Or—and, recently, the

string quartets of Debussy, Faure, Ravel, and Brahms. Their Hugo Wolf

and Schumann CDs have also won the German Record Reviewers prize, and

Gramophone magazine rated their recordings ofthe complete Beethoven 

quartets the best currently available. Since 2000 the ensemble has recorded

exclusively for the German label Tacet. The Auryn Quartet appears at the

National Gallery by arrangement with Shupp Artists Management, Inc.,

of Port Jefferson, New York.

4

Program Notes

Written in 1797 and 1798, the string quartets of Haydn’s opus 76 represent

the culmination of his long and productive mature period. Having invented

the string quartet as a genre in the 1760s, he had improved upon it little

by little over the years, giving it a standard form (two fast outer movements

surrounding a slow movement and a minuet). In spite oftheir predictable

form, each of Haydn’s late quartets has a distinct personality. No. 2, in D

minor, gets its nickname, “Fifths,” from the falling fifths that pervade the

first movement. The first violin, always the workhorse in Haydn quartets,

plays flourishes that grow out ofthe falling-fifth motif. In the second movement, Andante 0 piuttdsto allegretto (andante, or more readily allegretto), the

form comes close to a theme with variations but does not quite match the

criteria. The movement features modulations that might be mistaken for

Haydn’s indecision as to the key, were it not for their satisfying resolution.

The main body ofthe Menuetto is a strict canon. The opening section is

thick in texture, with the violins and the two lower instruments pairing off,

while the trio is lighter in weight, wispy, and mysterious. The final movement uses falling intervals, as did the first movement, but here they are not

all fifths. It reiterates the key ofthe quartet (D minor) but closes optimistically in the parallel major key.

Bartok was still under the spell ofthe great romantic composers, especially Liszt and Brahms, when he wrote his first string quartet. He departs

from his predecessors though, in handling tonality in an adventuresome

manner that his heroes would not have recognized. For example, the basic

A minor chord is most often presented as A-B-E, rather than the textbook

A-C-E. The folk melodies that were beginning to preoccupy Bartolc’s research

appear only sporadically in this work, but the emphasis on the offbeat, a

mark of Magyar musical dialect, occurs frequently.

5
The Quartet no. 1 in A Minor is in three movements, which Bartok

intended to be played without breaks. The intense contrapuntal writing of

the first movement (Lento) is often compared to Beethoven’s String Quartet

no. 14, which also begins with a slow fugue. The second movement (Allegretto)

introduces a homophonic texture, in contrast to the polyphony ofthe opening

Lento. An introductory duet for the first and second violin is countered by a

duet for the viola and cello. After the duets the solo violin announces a fluttering motifthat appears throughout the rest ofthe movement. This motifis

destined to become a basic element ofthe final movement (Allegro vivace),

where it informs the energetic first theme, the lyric second theme, and the

fugato at the core ofthe movement. Up to this point in the quartet, each 

change oftempo has been from slow to fast, and as the work surges to its

conclusion, the tempo moves from allegro vivace to allegro molto to a breathtaking presto.

The composition was in part inspired by Bartok’s unrequited love for 

the violinist Stefi Geyer. In a letter to her, he characterized the first movement as a “funeral dirge,” calling attention to his reuse of a motifthat first

appeared in his Violin Concerto no. 1, a work dedicated to Geyer and suppressed by Bartok for many years.

Dvorak was sojourning in the Bohemian immigrant community of

Spillville, Iowa, when he wrote his String Quartet no. 12 in F Major, op. 96,

and it represents a conscious effort on his part to incorporate American

music into his writing. No folk tunes or spirituals are directly quoted, but

the spirit and characteristic rhythms ofthose genres and of American

Indian music are present at many points. Listeners who are familiar with

the Bohemian musical tradition will detect that it is present in equal proportion to the American elements. The last movement has been described

as a juriant (a traditional Bohemian dance) danced on American soil. With 

only two briefmoments ofrepose, the fiery rhythm continues relentlessly

until the full-blown conclusion, which comes as close to an orchestral

texture as is possible with only four instruments.

6