Fibonacci Quartet Programme Notes 23rd July, 2025
String Quartet in Bb Op.76 No.4 ‘Sunrise’ Josef Haydn (1732 – 1809)
I: Allegro con spirito II: Adagio
III: Menuetto: allegro IV: Finale: allegro ma non troppo
String Quartet No.1 ‘From my Life’ Bedřich Smetana (1824 – 1884)
I: Allegro vivo appassionato II: Allegro moderato à la polka
III: Largo sostenuto IV: Vivace
String Quartet No.2 ‘Intimate Letters’ Leoš Janáček (1854 – 1928)
I: Andante – Con moto – Allegro II: Adagio – Vivace
III: Moderato – Andante – Adagio IV: Allegro – Andante – Adagio
The idea of instrumental music ‘telling a story’ came to the fore during the romantic period and it was orchestral music which led the way in this matter. Symphonies, hitherto free of narrative elements, began to sport suggestive titles and illustrate increasingly elaborate programmes via the traditional four movement structure. Single movement concert overtures relaxed formal procedures in the interests of vivid musical picture painting and in symphonic poems, the depiction of an external ‘story’ became almost a raison d’être. Chamber music was slower to follow this trend and never exhibited it to the same extent. Other than the extraordinary viola da gamba sonata of 1725 in which composer Marin Marais provided vivid and explicit musical illustration of the excruciating bladder stone operation he had recently undergone, there are very few chamber works which purport to tell a story; as in so much else, it was Arnold Schoenberg who led the way with his string sextet of 1899 ‘Verklärte Nacht’.
This is not to imply that pre-romantic music or chamber music in general wasn’t written ‘from the heart’ with little to say about any external sources of inspiration. The late chamber works of Schubert and Beethoven, for instance, clearly have a great deal to say about the composers’ respective situations; but there is no explicitly narrative element – we understand the sources of inspiration from biographical study which is then transformed and heightened by the music itself. Classical orchestral works sometimes hint at what might have triggered the composer’s imagination with a suggestive title – but nearly all these nicknames were attached after the event by publishers looking for an aide to sales and anyway often point one small aspect of the piece only. They say little about the composer’s intention, more about a listener’s possible reaction.
Such is the case of tonight’s Haydn quartet. That the opening rising phrase might bring to mind a sunrise tells us nothing about the composer’s methods or intention. For this we look to biographical material which explains that here is a composer in his late sixties but still full of creative energy, comfortably situated in the employment of a generous, music-loving patron and in the happy position of having amongst his colleagues at Esterhazy very accomplished players able to give first-rate performances of any new, demanding work which Haydn chose to put before them. And for its time, this work was indeed new and demanding, exploring more relaxed formal procedures and continuing the process of giving all four players equally important roles in the discussion of the musical material. But this innovation is accomplished within the broad boundaries of convention; having been a musical employee for so long, Haydn never forgot that it was wise not to startle his listeners but rather to lead them gently into new territory; in a typically enthusiastic letter, his English admirer Charles Burney spoke not only of the quartet being “full of invention, fire and new effects” but also commending its “good taste”.
Turning to tonight’s other two quartets, the programmatic element is clearly of a different order; each has an emotive name bestowed by the composer himself and each has ‘a story to tell’ even if not in the same way as the ‘Symphonie Fantastique’ or a Strauss symphonic poem. Like the ‘Sunrise’ quartet, each was written towards the end of its composer’s life, but how different were the circumstances in which they were composed.
Bedřich Smetana was blessed with musical gifts which might have ensured a successful career; he was a gifted conductor, a more-than-able pianist and no lesser figure than Franz Liszt warmly endorsed his Opus 1 piano pieces. But both professional setbacks and personal tragedy had their effect and, despite the enthusiasm with which his nationalist operas and orchestral works were received, by the time his first string quartet appeared in 1876, the alarmingly swift loss of his hearing coupled with increasingly poor physical and mental health amid the turbulent politics of musical life in Czechoslovakia at the time were ruining his career even though he was only in his early fifties. Eight years later he was to die in a Prague asylum.
Thus is explained the powerful, unsettled mood which in general terms pervades the work which ‘tells this story’. But there are more explicit aspects which deepen the autobiographical element and were all acknowledged by the composer himself: the deeply sorrowful slow movement written to remember the early death of his much-loved first wife, many echoes of the Czech folk music which had been of such crucial importance in the formation of his mature style and, most notoriously, the piercing high E heard at a climactic moment in the last movement, a sound which Smetana used to represent the tinnitus which was such a distressing aspect of his deafness.
Smetana’s younger compatriot Leoš Janáček’s career was very different although for him too the study of folk music and more especially the pitch inflections and rhythms of his native Moravian speech proved to have the strongest influence on the development of his mature style. His composing career began quietly with choral works and orchestral music following in the footsteps of Dvorak’s simpler works in national vein. It wasn’t until the composition of the opera ‘Jenufa’ when he was fifty that he achieved real musical maturity, and the production of a revised version of this in Prague in 1916 not only established his reputation as a composer but also unleashed his creative powers; nearly all the works on which his justly solid reputation rests were written in the last dozen years of his life. Alongside five more operas and some large-scale choral and orchestral work, there is a quantity of chamber music headed by the two string quartets of 1923 and 1928.
‘Intimate Letters’ is the second of these quartets, first performed a month after the composer’s death. The trigger of the work was the series of 730 letters which Janáček wrote to Kamilla Stösslová, a married woman thirty-eight years his junior whom he first met in 1917 after he and his wife had established an ‘informal divorce’. His infatuation with the young woman was largely unrequited; it has been said that she “neither sought nor rejected his devotion” and it was only in 1927 that she began signing her letters to him (most of which have not survived) using her Christian name alone. This obsessive relationship clearly had the most powerful influence on Janáček’s creativity. He was justly unapologetic about the deeply individual, quirky nature of his mature musical style, fully evident in this late masterpiece. But the individuality is overlaid by his obsession; as he put it in one of the letters “You stand behind every note, you, living, forceful, loving”. But just as the relationship never found a true equilibrium, so there is certainly little sense of fulfilment or resolution at the end of this passionate, unsettled work.
The Fibonacci Quartet originally came together at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. They have quickly won for themselves a position as one of Europe’s leading young quartets with many prizes and awards to their cedit. As well as performances throughout the UK, the 2024/25 season will see them performing in seven other European countries and holding residencies in Paris, Cardiff and at Aldeburgh.