Wisconsin Public Television University Place University Place Presents  Pro Arte Quartet Celebrates 100 Years  May 10, 2011 UP587     cc >> Norman Gilliland: Welcome to University Place Presents. I'm Norman Gilliland. The string quartet has been around since at least the middle of 18th century, but the first string quartet to be the artist in residence at a university is the Pro Arte Quartet, which came to the UW-Madison under extraordinary circumstances that we'll hear about shortly. The Pro Arte Quartet celebrates its 100th year this year and in the year following. Its members currently include violinists David Perry and Suzanne Beia, the violist is Sally Chisholm, and the cellist is Parry Karp. The best way to meet them is through their music, as they play a movement from an early string quartet by Beethoven.  § §  >> I don't know if it's true of all string quartets, but listening to the Beethoven just now, it struck me very much as a conversation among four friends who know each other very well, who may have a few differences of opinion but all of these are worked out harmoniously. How important is it for the members of a string quartet, the players, to be good friends? >> Well, Budapest is famous for not being, but I think musically you have to be good friends. And I think today because the quartets travel so much together and have so many more quartets than the original groups, you have different levels of friendship that are typical in quartets of today, where I guess, they're married, many are married, and long time friends. And I think, also, when you change a member, bonds change a lot, and it becomes more of a family. 

>> The Pro Arte Quartet has been around now for a hundred years, and I think Parry you've been around for more than a third of that, right? >> 35 years, yes. >> Are you longest running member ever of the quartet? >> Well, just this month I'm tying the original violist, Germain Prevost, for the longest. >> And you actually met him, didn't you? >> I've met him a few times. When I was first in the quartet in the '70s and the '80s, whenever we would play in San Francisco we would meet with him which was wonderful. And we actually did a CBC television special with him in '79 and brought him together with a member of the Hart House Quartet, which is the original professional quartet of Canada. They had a transatlantic crossing in the '30s together and hadn't seen each other since then. So that was a lot of fun. >> It was not exactly fun for the Pro Arte Quartet to come to Madison. They came often during the '30s, I think. >> Yes. 

>> They had become the Royal Quartet for the Queen of Belgium? >> Yes, Queen Elizabeth of Belgium. But they also had a great American patron. Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who was a great patron of the arts and especially of chamber music, and she was very fond of the Pro Arte Quartet. So they were touring here a lot, and they were doing a Beethoven cycle at the new Union Theatre in 1940 and during that time, the Nazis invaded Belgium. And this was announced at the end of one of the concerts by the university president who then said they had a home here as long as they would like. And that started the first artist in residence program at an American university by a string quartet. They had already had that idea of an artist in residence earlier with John Steuart Curry as a visual artist, and then Gunnar Johansen, the Danish pianist, was hired in 1938. Both by the Agricultural School. So a land-grant school they wanted these people to, students from all around rural Wisconsin to get exposed to great artists. And so it was really a very forward-thinking idea. 

>> And did you get any ideas about the difficult years of the quartet from Prevost when you talked to him or any of, for example, recording pioneering experiences? >> He had a wonderful story. One of the times we were in San Francisco we were playing the Opus 20, No. 2, Haydn Quartet, and we'd listened to their recording of it. We liked it a lot but the last movement seemed very slow. And I remember we asked him about that, and he said, oh, that's a great story. He said, when we started recording Haydn quartets we didn't think recording was going to be a big thing it was just a way for us to make a little extra money. We showed up for the first session and we thought we were going to record Opus 20, No. 4, Haydn, and we showed up there were four beautiful stands and chairs and new editions and it was opened to 20, No. 2. And he said, we didn't know it. And I went over to Alphonse, and I asked Alphonse, what do we do? And he said, shh, we'll learn it. So he said, we learned it in that recording session. So the first three movements we were able to do, but that last one was very complicated fugue so he said we had to take a very slow tempo so we wouldn't fall apart. 

But that started a performance tradition for that movement which many, many famous quartets later have emulated, and he said they're all wrong. He said they're just imitating a recording, and the only reason it's slow is because they didn't know it. >> A little practicality there. >> So that was kind of an interesting story. >> When you play something like Schubert, I think of Schubert, of course the great songwriter, as being so lyrical, does that come out in his string quartets too? >> Of course. That's, I think, what they're known for, one of their predominant characteristics. >> And especially this one. >> This one, right. >> Which is called Rosamunde. >> Right. 

 § §  >> There's a wonderful story about Rosamunde and that incidental music that Schubert wrote for a play that didn't amount to too much, but for a long time people knew about the music but they didn't know where it was. And a young musicologist by the name of Arthur Sullivan and Sir Charles Groves went looking for it, and at the last minute as they were leaving Austria they found a stack about two feet high of very dusty Schubert music in a closet. And lo and behold it was the missing incidental music to Rosamunde, and that's where this theme comes from. And you're certainly right when you say, Suzanne, that it's of course very lyrical, very song like. >> Very gentle music. >> Very winning. Well, the inventor, in some ways, of the string quartet was Haydn, wasn't it, because he wrote so many over such a long period of time, and it really had not been formalized when he took up the genre. >> Correct. Boccherini wrote a few, too, but Haydn was really tremendous at it. >> He's started in the late 1750s, I guess, and was still writing string quartets after 1800. 

>> Yes. >> And the Quinten is one of the early-ish ones, I think? >> It's pretty late. It's Opus 76. >> Oh, is it 76? Then it is one of the very last ones, in fact, and it gets the name Quinten because of the intervals that we won't necessarily hear in this movement. >> Right. You hear that more in the first movement. >> What are the characteristics of this movement that make it stand out? Anything typically Haydn in it? >> Well, I don't know if it's a Hungarian last movement because it's got a pick up, but it's got that flair in a brilliant last movement that Haydn probably had to do to keep his boss happy. >> I think of it as his Gypsy side coming through. >> And you see that occasionally in Haydn. >> Syncopated accent in the opening of the first violin melody. 

>> Very clever. >> I look forward to some Haydn with a Gypsy flair.  § §  >> A reminder that Haydn spent, what, 30 years working in Hungary for the Esterhazy family. It certainly has that Hungarian or Gypsy flair to it in one of his last string quartets. Well, I have to ask now about instruments. And these instruments all have been around for a while by the looks of them. Let's start with you, David. >> Actually, speaking of centennials, this is turning 300 this year. >> Congratulations. >> Made in Venice. 

>> Do you know the name of the maker? >> Gobetti. >> Was he one of the prominent makers at the time? >> He was. Worked next door or across the street from Seraphin, another prominent maker of the time. >> And Suzanne, what do you have? >> My instrument is a baby relative to the others. 1901, Marchetti, Enrico Marchetti. Made in Italy. >> And what are the qualities of that instrument that made you attracted to it? >> I don't know if I can even verbalize that. I had it shown to me when I was 15, and the only thing I really remember concretely is falling in love with the sound and not wanting to stop. I practiced and played every piece I knew at the time, and it was 4:00 in the morning and my mother was screaming go to bed, go to bed. >> It was love. 

And, Sally, you have a very distinctive looking viola. I don't think usually you see them with that kind of decoration. >> Well, the purfling is just so broad. Usually it's more slender. But it's a well-known instrument that belonged to one of my teachers, and we were not allowed to touch it, so when I first tried it out, I felt I was betraying him. But evidently, I do think instruments sometimes seek owners so I'm proud it came my way. >> So the viola stops there. >> Well, temporarily, yes. >> Parry, you have a cello that actually has writing on the sides of it. What does it say? >> It's gold leaf graffiti. 

It was commissioned by the King of France in 1819 as the grand prize cello at the Royal Conservatory of Music which is now the Paris Conservatory. So it says in French first prize awarded to, and the name of the person, and the Royal School of Music. >> And what kind of pedigree does it have other than that? >> Well it belonged to Raya Garbousova for a lot of her career. She premiered Barber Concerto on it, from what I gather. So I feel very lucky to have it. >> The Samuel Barber did you say? >> Yes. >> Well, speaking of Samuel Barber, we can't let slip entirely the connection of the Pro Arte Quartet and Samuel Barber's famous Adagio for Strings. >> I know only slightly a few facts about it. But he was writing it for the Curtis String Quartet. And particularly the cellist, he wrote several letters about how it was going and that the slow movement was his best ever and was going to be a sensation. 

But he hadn't finished the last movement in time to get it to the Curtis Quartet to premiere it. And so by providence or, I don't know, if it's designed or fate but it came to the Pro Arte to actually premiere it in Europe. So it's part of the heritage of the Pro Arte Quartet. >> So that would have been about 1936. >> Right. >> It's one of the most famous pieces of 20th century music period, and the Pro Arte Quartet got the scoop. >> Yes. >> Right. >> Well, the Haydn that you just played had that wonderful dance quality to it, but a composer that we always associate with dance music too, whether it's in a symphony or string quartet, is Antonin Dvorak. But here you have this Alla Polka movement, and so we are going to expect some serious dance rhythms in this? >> Yes. 

This is a quartet of Dvorak that's not performed that often. His D minor quartet. But it's a quartet that really made Brahms aware of Dvorak and then Brahms was very supportive of Dvorak after that and told Simrock they should start publishing his music. So this quartet is actually dedicated to Brahms. It was the start of a very long friendship between the two of them. >> All right, not so heard, not so often, at least, but heard here.  § §  >> And there you have a polka filtered through the string quartet medium. The work of Antonin Dvorak. This would have been written just before the first set of Slavonic dances that made him world famous, as you say, Parry, in part because of the help of Johannes Brahms. One of the traditions of the Pro Arte Quartet in the course of its hundred years now is to commission music and that goes way back, too, doesn't it? >> Yes, many, many, many works were just written for I think without commissioning as well. 

Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge commissioned many works for them in the early part of the career. >> Let's see, I think Darius Milhaud wrote for them and Arthur Honegger. >> And Bartok. >> And how did the Bartok come about? >> It wasn't a commission at all. In fact, it just arrived, Germain Prevost told us, in the '80s that the quartet had a concert in Vienna, a broadcast, in the mid-'20s. And they showed up at the address a half hour before, and there was a beautiful room, four chairs, four stands, a mic set up and no one was there. They didn't know if it had been canceled or not, but they knew the concert was supposed to start at, say, 1:00 o'clock. And they weren't even sure they should play, but they finally went ahead and played the concert starting at 1:00. But they never saw anyone. So it was a very strange occurrence. 

And they didn't realize for sure that it had been broadcast until a year later when the Fourth Bartok Quartet arrived to them from Bartok who said I loved your performance of the Second Quartet from Vienna, a live broadcast a year ago, I want to dedicate this to you. And then they finally knew that it had actually gone out. And they had never met him. He just gave it to them because he liked their performance so much. >> An early victory for radio. >> Yes, exactly. >> And you have plans in this 100th year to commission, I believe you have commissioned works from several prominent composers. >> Yes, well, some wonderful supporters of the quartet a few years ago just wanted to be sure this 100th year didn't go unnoticed, and so Bob and Linda Graebner were very, very helpful in their enthusiasm for making this happen. And so there are four composers who have been commissioned to write works. John Harbison is writing a quartet. 

And William Bolcom is writing a piano quintet. Paul Schoenfield is writing a piano quintet, and Walter Mays is writing his second quartet for us. He wrote his first for us about 15 years ago. >> We'll look forward to hearing that celebratory year or two to come. What about the string quartets of Mozart? He wrote so many of them, is there anything that kind of ties them together, makes them distinctive, and what, in particular, about this one we're about to hear? >> It's one of the six that he dedicated to Haydn in great admiration. Haydn, whom, as you mentioned earlier, sort of the father of the string quartet. >> Sure. >> And Mozart heard the quartets and learned in a way string quartet writing style and wrote a set of six and dedicated them to Haydn. >> And it was Haydn who said of Mozart to Mozart's father those famous words: I swear before God and as an honest man that your son is the finest composer I have ever encountered. So definitely a mutual admiration society. 

>> Definitely. >> Tremendous and probably pretty usual of two greats like that of different generations to appreciate each other so much. I don't think you would find to many instances of that in the music world. >> Then or now. >> Then or now. And when Haydn went to London, Mozart was very upset because he was afraid he would never see Haydn again and he treasured him so much. Of course, little did he know that it was not Haydn that would die but Mozart himself. That was the last time they saw each other. >> Let's hear some Mozart.  § §  >> Mozart played both the violin and the viola. 

I don't know, Parry, that he played the cello. >> I don't think so. >> But would he have participated in a lot of string quartet performances do you think? >> I think chamber music evenings, I think there are accounts of him performing. Mostly viola. >> And, of course, his letters detailed a lot of those performances in very vivid terms, some of which we probably couldn't even repeat here. He was a colorful person. Your plans, other than these commissions you have coming up, your plans for celebrating the centennial of the Pro Arte Quartet? >> Many things in store. There's been a group of friends and supporters of the quartet that have been meeting every few weeks for over a year. Of course, we're very grateful for that. Sometimes meeting with us, sometimes without us. 

And they've planned quite a season for next year that will be hard to top in season 101 and 102. [LAUGHTER] >> Lots of performances in lots of places. >> Yes and we're recording all of the commission works. >> Guest lecturers are coming in to give talks about all the works and music in general. >> And the composers will be here almost a week, each one of them. So students and faculty will also get to take advantage of them being around. >> And this is going to go on for the course of a year or maybe two. >> This part will be this next school year, 2011-2012, so first and second semesters. >> Well, as artists in residence, you have your work cut out for you. >> Yes. 

>> Best of luck as you launch your second hundred years of the Pro Arte Quartet. >> Thanks very much. >> Thank you. >> It's been a pleasure. I'm Norman Gilliland, thank you for joining me. I hope you can join me next time for University Place Presents.