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The Seventy-second Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,997th Concert

Henschel Quartett

Christoph Henschel and Daniel Bell, violins

Monika Henschel, viola

Mathias Beyer-Karlshoj, violoncello

May 11, 2014

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Christopher Theofanidis (b. 1967)

Visions and Miracles (1997)

“All joy wills eternity”

“Peace Love Light youmeone”

“I add brilliance to the sun”

Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012)

Quartet no. 1 (1947)

Allegro molto

Andantino

Lento, ma non troppo

Presto

INTERMISSION

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Quartet in C-sharp Minor, op. 131 (1826)

Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo

Allegro molto vivace

Allegro moderato

Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile

Presto

Adagio quasi un poco andante

Allegro

The Musicians

HENSCHEL QUARTETT

Celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, the Henschel Quartett was 

founded in 1994, when Christoph, Markus, and Monika Henschel joined

with cellist Mathias Beyer-Karlshoj to form a string quartet. The new ensemble quickly made a distinctive mark in the world of chamber music. In 1995

it won multiple prizes at the international competitions of Banff, Evian, and

Salzburg, and the following year won first prize and the gold medal at the

Osaka International Chamber Music Competition. Highlights ofthe quartet's two decades include an acclaimed bbc live broadcast in which the

Henschel substituted on short notice for the Juilliard String Quartet; the

official re-opening ofthe historic Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, a unesco

World Heritage site; a March 2010 performance at the Vatican; and concerts

at the Royal Palace of Madrid, where the ensemble performed on the four

Stradivarii ofthe Spanish Royal Collection.

After welcoming the celebrated British violinist Daniel Bell as a replacement for Markus Henschel in 2011, the quartet went on to play the complete

Beethoven string quartets in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall in 2012. That same year,

Monika Henschel became the president ofthe newly formed Association ofGerman String Quartets, and in 2013 Christoph Henschel was appointed professor

of chamber music at the Leopold Mozart Center ofthe University Augsburg.

Among the prizes garnered by Henschel Quartett recordings are the Preis 

der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik and several CD ofthe Year Awards from

London’s imw Studio. Regularly invited to teach at world-class institutions,

the ensemble has held master classes at the Royal Northern College of Music,

the University of Melbourne, and Yale University. Active in musical outreach

programs for youth in its home city of Munich and an ambassador ofsos Children’s Villages International, the Henschel Quartett appears at the National

Gallery by arrangement with Lisa SapinkopfArtists, www.chambermuse.com.

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Program Notes

As it did in 2013, the National Gallery of Art joins the Delegation ofthe

European Union to the United States and numerous other concert presenters in the Washington, dc area in celebrating May as the “European Month

ofCulture.” In addition to nearly forty concerts, this year’s festival featured

yesterday’s traditional European Embassies’ Open House, and includes spotlight tours at area museums, dance, lectures, films, workshops, and special

exhibitions throughout the month. In tonight’s concert, the Henschel

Quartett from Munich and the German composers Beethoven and Henze

represent the Federal Republic of Germany, and the work of composer

Christopher Theofanidis represents Greece. The Gallery will also host the

concerts that present performers and composers from Belgium, Ireland,

and Lithuania, as well as a National Gallery ofArt Chamber Players concert

featuring music by composers from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Malta,

and Slovenia on May 28.

A graduate ofthe Eastman School of Music, Yale University, and the

University of Houston, Christopher Theofanidis has had many of his works

performed by prominent orchestras throughout the world. Composer ofthe

Year for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 2006-2007, he is the recipient ofthe American Academy ofArts and Letters’ Charles Ives Fellowship, 

six ascap Gould Prizes, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a

Tanglewood Fellowship, and the Rome Prize. Theophanidis was nominated

in 2007 for a Grammy for best composition for Here and Now, a work for 

chorus and orchestra based on the poetry of Rumi (1207-1273). His orchestral concert work Rainbow Body has been performed by more than one hundred orchestras internationally.

About Visions and Miracles, Theofanidis writes: “The ideas came from

little fragments of poetry. One was from Nietzsche actually, who’s not

necessarily the lightest person, but the phrase was All joy wills eternity,’

which I really liked. Mahler used that line, too, and thought that was an

inspirational starting point for joy. Another [fragment] was something that

Timothy Leary, (the counterculture guru from the ‘6os [and] Harvard professor

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run amok), [who] was cremated and sent up into outer space and dispersed

among the stars, with the words ‘peace love light youmeone’ written on the

vial containing his remains. His words also struck me as a particularly great

feeling for a starting point for a movement. The last phrase, ‘I add brilliance

to the sun,’ was written by a medieval troubadour and also struck me as

particularly fanciful. So all three ofthose movements started with the feeling

of each ofthose phrases, and then spun out into the music.

“At the time, I was listening to Ensemble Alcatraz, which is a Bay Area 

early music ensemble, and they had released a recording of Spanish medieval 

music, The Cantigas de Santa Maria, that were super fast twos and threes...

like the Greek [dance rhythms, but faster]... .They sounded brilliant. I picked 

up on that language ofthe really, really fast alternations oftwos and threes

that kept a constant surface and really up kind offeeling. And this piece 

came out ofthat.”

Hans Werner Henze was a German composer of prodigious output,

undoubtedly one ofthe most important European composers ofthe postwar

era. An avowed Marxist, he left Germany for Italy in 1953 because ofintolerance in his homeland towards his leftist politics and homosexuality. His music

progressed from an early angular phase to a sensuous lyricism, reminiscent

perhaps ofthe relaxed environment ofItaly. His influences include Arabic 

music, atonality, Cuban and Italian music, jazz, serial techniques, and

Stravinsky, as well as traditional German schools of composition. The first

composer-in-residence ofthe Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and twice 

composer-in-residence at the Tanglewood Festival, Henze wrote five string

quartets between 1947 and 1976.

His String Quartet no. 1 was premiered at a small chamber music party

in Heidelberg. For a few months after that performance, the performers,

members ofthe Freund Quartet, kept both the parts and the score and gave

the piece occasional further performances, but then it disappeared. About

ten years ago the parts and the score resurfaced in Stuttgart, and were

subsequently published by Schott. Henze wrote about the work: “My early 

works from the late forties...show the frankly dismaying immaturity, lack of

information, and dependence ofthe learner who, once freed from the fascist

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blockade, hungry and lacking standards (rather as a child learning to speak),

grasps at anything he meets and finds it new, different, better....The German 

Spielmusik style between Hindemith and Fortner... is predominant in these

early pieces... but a favorable listener may notice further influences here

and there; they are almost quotations, so obvious that it seems unnecessary

to list them. As I have said, everything that reached my inquisitive ears at that

time was caught and held onto, and set other things in motion.... At that

time, 1947, it was an effort for me to distinguish sound-impressions, to find 

ways to trust, and make writeable, certain conceptions ofsound. It does

seem to me, however, that even in this first quartet, beside its many conventionalities and formalistic elements, something personal was dawning. Anyone who wishes to understand my present style, the origins ofits melody,

syntax, ofmy conception ofform, would do well to consider my music from

its beginnings, from its arduous, untutored, but for me exhilarating attempts 

at speech and movement.”

About the Quartet in C-sharp Minor, op. 131, musicologist and founder of

earsense.org Kai Christensen writes: “When the Russian Prince Gallitzin

approached Beethoven with a commission for ‘one, two, or three’ quartets,

he helped catalyze one ofthe most wondrous creations in all of chamber

music: the ineffable ‘late’ quartets.... After finishing the three commissioned

quartets, Beethoven kept on composing, adding a fourth and fifth quartet and 

a final revised movement comprising a singular corpus ofsustained musical 

thought and feeling oftremendous scope and arguable unity.... Spanning a

working focus oftwo years’ time, these are Beethoven’s final compositions, 

testament to his enduring devotion to the string quartet, witness to his

mastery, transcendence, and everlasting dominance ofthis august genre.

“The fourth ofthe late quartets in the order he composed them, op. 131 is,

by ample testimony, the greatest ofthem all. It was Beethoven’s favorite.

Schubert’s final musical request was to hear Beethoven’s op. 131, [and]

Wagner wrote a florid, poetic tome about [its] epic greatness.... All seven

movements are played without pause, creating a single giant continuous

structure embracing an initial somber but lyrical fugue, two vibrant scherzi,

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a colossal theme and variations, connective recitative, a wisp ofheartbreaking adagio, and a dazzling finale cresting in mountainous developments 

alongside the most delicate, visceral, effervescent and tensile textures 

imaginable....

“Attempting to write about op. 131, [one] reaches a glorious impasse: one 

word is too many, ten thousand are not enough. There is and will always be

the music. Thanks to Prince Gallitzin and Beethoven.”

Program notes based on materials provided by the Henschel Quartett.

Mote on Beethoven © 2014 Kai Christiansen and Music at Kohl Mansion.

Used by permission.

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