
Chamber Music Circle Paris
presents
Beethoven String Quartet Project 5
14 June 2025 • 7.30pm • Paris 3rd
Whilst using this digital programme, please silence your phone and use “Do Not Disturb” mode.
This digital programme is also printable for your convenience:
Thank You to our Donors!
As an arts organisation, we depend on generous supporters like you to produce the events that you will experience this evening and more. Your gifts make everything we do possible.
We extend our sincerest thanks to you, our audience, for your generous support.
Tonight’s performance is generously supported by the following people:
Reception & Hosting by:
Simon Todd & See Yeaw Yang
contents
welcome
Welcome to the final concert of our 2024–25 Season of Inspiration. Tonight, we close our season with two remarkable string quartets written at the end of the 18th century. For Haydn, his Sunrise Quartet represents one of his final contributions to a genre he virtually invented. For Beethoven, Op. 18, No. 6 marks the culmination of his early quartet style—a work rooted in the Classical world of Haydn and Mozart, yet already reaching toward something new. Heard together, these two quartets seem to suggest a passing of the torch: from Haydn, the father of the string quartet, to Beethoven, its great innovator. After this moment in musical history, the quartet would never be the same.
Haydn’s Sunrise opens with one of the most beautiful and imaginative moments in his oeuvre: a radiant theme that emerges gradually, like the rising sun. A master of variation and surprise, Haydn reintroduces this theme throughout the first movement, each time casting it in a new light—clear, cloudy, or somewhere in between—like sunlight shifting over the course of a day. The quartet unfolds as a vivid musical narrative, full of unexpected turns and delights. The slow movement is strikingly introspective, even foreshadowing the meditative slow movements of Beethoven’s final period. The third movement minuet pairs rustic charm with offbeat wit, and the exuberant rondo finale, constantly transforming, builds to a thrilling close.
In Beethoven’s Op. 18, No. 6, we hear a Classical model (inspired by Haydn and Mozart) imbued with an entirely new intensity. The opening movement leaps forward with infectious energy, as the violin and cello toss the theme back and forth in comic operatic fashion. The second movement transforms a simple theme into something profoundly expressive—at times even melancholic—anticipating the emotional depth of his later quartets. The third movement, a devilish Scherzo (Italian for “joke”), is a veritable display of metric mischief that leads to a ridiculous and virtuosic gallop in the first violin during the contrasting Trio.
In the final movement, Beethoven breaks the mould not only of his earlier quartets but also of those by his predecessors. Here, he expresses something profoundly personal—an emotional terrain he would later explore more deeply in his “late” quartets. Rather than a typical lively finale, the movement begins with a slow, brooding introduction titled La Malinconia—melancholy. What begins as a quiet meditation is soon charged with increasingly terrifying harmonies, revealing that this is no ordinary slow introduction. Beethoven seems to be grappling, through music, with the intense emotions of his inner life.
After this dark prelude, the music suddenly shifts into the spirited dance we might have expected. But it never fully settles. At several points, the haunting material from the opening returns, interrupting the cheerful energy and pulling us back into shadow. In this movement, Beethoven begins to explore what would become a hallmark of his mature voice: the juxtaposition of the sublime with the banal, the joyful with the despairing. Though he would refine this contrast with greater nuance in later works, here he embraces it with striking boldness and emotional impact.
As the quartet nears its close, with less than a minute remaining, we are left wondering which force will prevail—darkness or light, melancholy or joy. This tension, unresolved until the very end, is part of what makes this one of the most powerful movements in all of Beethoven’s “early” quartets.
Thank you for joining us on this musical journey—and for a season inspired by the boldness, beauty, and imagination of these great composers. Enjoy the evening, and we look forward to seeing you after the performance.
KYLE founder & director
programme
Marie Salvat & Juliette Leroux violins
Kyle Collins viola
Marie-Thérèse Grisenti cello
Joseph Haydn 1732-1809
String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 76, No. 4, “Sunrise”
Allegro con spirito
Adagio
Menuetto. Allegro—Trio
Finale. Allegro, ma non troppo
-
Composed: 1797
Dedication: Count Joseph Georg von Erdödy
Duration: about 24 minutesWhen Count Joseph Erdödy commissioned the Opus 76 Quartets in 1796, Haydn had recently returned to Vienna from the second of his highly successful London visits. He had always composed with confidence, but a certain new boldness in his style may have come from the realisation that the entire Western world considered him the greatest living composer. The six “Erdödy” Quartets show formal experiments (continued, as mentioned above, in his Opus 77 quartets) both within or instead of sonata-form movements, a new profundity in their extremely slow-paced Adagios, fast “modern” minuets—scherzos in all but name—and more weight and novel tonal approaches in their finales.
In June 1797 Haydn played some or all of the quartets on the piano for Swedish diplomat Frederik Silverstolpe, who considered them “more than masterly and full of new thoughts.” The Quartets were completed in time for a September 1797 performance at Eisenstadt as part of the grand festivities surrounding the visit of the Viceroy of Hungary, Palatine Archduke Joseph. Count Erdödy’s rights to the Quartets precluded their being published until 1799. That year English music historian Charles Burney wrote to Haydn that he “never received more pleasure from instrumental music: [the Quartets] are full of invention, fire, good taste, and new effects.”
The B-flat major Quartet exudes the composer’s supreme confidence and originality: in one of the greatest openings in chamber music, the lovely first violin melody rises out of a chord sustained by the three lower instruments in a wonderful sunrise effect that earned the Quartet its nickname. Several commentators have remarked on the feeling of growth that this idea initiates in the movement. The continuation of the main theme brings great contrast with an energetic idea that fosters all the fiery passages in the movement, including the remarkable fortissimo bursts that close the exposition and recapitulation. The second theme uses the “sunrise” idea of the opening but in a kind of mirror image—the cello plays a winding descent as the others sustain the chord. Throughout the movement one hears the kind of mastery that so impressed Beethoven as he began writing string quartets with his Opus 18 series.
Haydn’s Adagio sombrely explores the possibilities of its first five notes. For a major-mode movement, this is one of the most dark-hued in the repertoire and seems to create a direct link with the poetic slow movements of Beethoven’s later quartets. Delicate filigree erupts not merrily but poignantly and the great downward leaps at the ends of sections seem to release but not totally relieve built-up tension. The second half, which begins like the opening, exaggerates these qualities with more filigree and wider plunges.
For his fast Menuetto Haydn takes a little repeated two-note slur and fashions two entire sections from it. The second much longer section includes a varied return to the first, signalled by the little repeated slur in the cello—a nice bit of humour. Partway through this return, the focus again shifts briefly to the cello, soon followed by the viola. The Menuetto ends with another subtle touch of humour as twice the upward arpeggio fails to resolve in its own register. The contrasting trio evokes a truly rustic atmosphere with its folklike drones in the manner of a musette or bagpipes.
The finale is a little masterpiece based on what some suspect is an English folk tune heard on his travels, but which he treats to sophisticated bits of contrapuntal and rhythmic manipulations. The matching first and third sections surround a no less jolly minor-mode section that contains several impish surprises. Following the return of the opening section Haydn takes us on an extended whirlwind ride, suddenly picking up speed only to shift to yet a higher speed for a virtuosic thrill.
JANE VIAL JAFFE
Interval
10 minutes
Ludwig van Beethoven 1770-1827
String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 18, No. 6, “La Malinconia”
Allegro con brio
Adagio ma non troppo
Scherzo. Allegro—Trio
La Malinconia. Adagio—Allegretto quasi Allegro—Adagio—Allegretto—Un poco adagio—Prestissimo
-
Composed: 1800
Dedication: Prince Joseph Franz von Lobokowitz
Duration: about 25 minutesThe last of Beethoven’s opus 18 quartets, number 6 seems especially to affirm his debt to Haydn. Like its companions, this quartet on the whole favours wit and surprise over melodiousness. Despite hewing faithfully to Classical forms (at least in the first three movements), the piece recalls the fondness of Haydn for sudden stops, changes of mood, rhythmic elegance, and economy of material.
The first movement is extremely compact, a characteristic that is emphasised by the incredibly fast metronome mark added by Beethoven in later life. The piece explodes out of the gate with a brilliant, arpeggiated melody accompanied by a whirling accompaniment. The second theme may lack the kinetic energy of this opening idea, but makes up for it in terseness, as the whole quartet remains in rhythmic unison throughout its statement. The movement leaves the listener with a feeling that not one note more than necessary was used: no digressions, frills, or codas.
The second movement is also strict in its form, but has the quality of a tender aria, and plays on the most beautiful sonorities of the quartet timbre. Perhaps the most memorable moment of the movement is near the end, when the music slips briefly into a glowing, hushed C-major restatement of music that previously was only heard in minor keys.
The third movement, a Scherzo, is humorously off-balance in its syncopated rhythms, which are omnipresent in the main section; a quicksilver Trio serves as contrasting material.
The final movement is immediately arresting. It opens with an extended slow section, operatically entitled “La Malinconia”, or “Melancholy”. Something more intense than ordinary melancholy is contained in this wandering music, which interrupts its own glassy flow with painfully stabbing chords. Resolution comes in the form of the movement’s main section; this is a rondo with a spinning, cheerful demeanour, never content to remain in one place for long. It has the quality of being compressed, or abbreviated, by the gravity of the “Malinconia”, which makes a second appearance late in the movement: there isn’t enough room for these two incompatible personalities, and they are each vying for the upper hand. Ultimately the lighter music has the final word, as a brilliant Prestissimo brings the work to a close.
MISHA AMORY
musicians
Marie Salvat violin
Juliette Leroux violin
Kyle Collins viola
Marie-Thérèse Grisenti cello
support us
The CMC is made possible by audience contributions.
If you enjoy what we do, please consider donating so that we can continue to provide high-quality chamber music. We are an association loi 1901 which means that your donation 66% tax deductible. Find out more what your contribution can do.
Make a financial gift online or learn more about ways to give, including hosting events, offering wine or food, or inviting your friends to our next event.
coda
Receive news about our upcoming events, special offers, and more.
Share the CMC experience
@ParisCMC #CMCexperience
Special Thanks
We would like to offer a special thanks to our hosts Simon and See Yeaw. Thank you for welcoming us into your beautiful flat, providing the exceptional reception, and supporting the CMC over the years. We truly appreciate it!