Philomusica Opens Season with Beethoven, Bridge and Fauré

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Photo: Philomusica Quartet - philomusicaquartet.com

Philomusica Quartet

Philomusica Quartet

The Philomusica Quartet, quartet-in-residence at Wisconsin Lutheran College, opens their 2024–25 Season with music by Beethoven, Bridge and Fauré. The concert will take place in the campus’ acoustically wonderful Schwan Hall. 

The quartet was formed in 2008 by violinists Jeanyi Kim and Alexander Mandl, violist Nathan Hackett and cellist Adrien Zitoun as an outlet for sharing and expressing their love of chamber music. Kim, Hackett and Zitoun are also members of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Mandl is the concertmaster for several regional symphony orchestras besides being a member of the music faculty at UW-Parkside, Wisconsin Lutheran College and the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. Hackett and Zitoun also teach at Wisconsin Lutheran College. 

They’ll be joined by guest pianist Juan Pablo Horcasitas, who made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2009. Currently the piano department chair at the Conservatory, he has played with orchestras and chamber ensembles world wide. A native of Mexico his promotion of music of U.S. and Latin American composers has earned him recognition and national awards.

The program opens with Beethoven’s Serenade in D Major Opus 8. Published in 1797 as Beethoven was introducing himself to Vienna’s musical circles, the Serenade was meant to be a light evening’s entertainment and accessible for amateur musicians. But this isBeethoven and while the music sounds like he’s having fun, there are still challenges for musicians. The cellist must play four 16th notes against the three 8th notes against the musical lines of the violin and viola. And there are hints of the complex works to follow later in his career. 

Staging a Quartet

I’ve always been curious as to the placement of the musicians in small ensembles. I asked and Hackett was kind enough to answer. (And in case you wondered or forgot: stage right is to the right of the performer who is onstage looking out at the audience.) For the trio, he will sit in the center with the violin on his right and the cello on his left.

“The seating is done this way because the viola is the middle voice,” Hackett says. “From stage right it’s high, middle, low. It is the same for quartet and orchestra in most cases. But in a string trio the seating allows me to point my F holes straight out giving the viola line a better chance to have equal presence with the violin and cello. When the violist is positioned on the side as in quartet and orchestra, the F holes are pointed towards the back wall.” 

As for trios vs. quartets, he was happy to add. “Trios from the classical period are very satisfying for violists because the inner voices (second violin and viola) are covered by one viola. This makes for much more to do: double stopping (playing two notes a once), trading melodies, with the violin or supporting the melody with harmony. In quartet, especially in classical repertoire, this role is most often given to the second violin.

Phantasy Piano

The second piece is by the English composer Frank Bridge. His “Phantasy Piano Quartet in f# Minor, H.94” was commissioned and composed in 1910 for the annual and prestigious Cobbett Competition. The composition is a single movement in three sections. It is a romantic chamber piece meant to entertain and flow. One might be tempted to call it ear candy—nothing wrong with that! Latin American tonalities can be found throughout and there are hints of the Londonderry Air in the middle section.

Both piano Qqartets are wonderfully romantic, rich with sound, rhythms and invention. The Fauré is delightful! Really delightful! Faure composed the Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor Opus 15 in 1876–1879 adding a new finale in 1883. 

“Both piano parts (Bridge and Fauré) are really involved, as happens with most of the chamber music with piano,” Horcasitas says. “Also, I find a lot of similarities between both composers: the technical challenges and the way they distribute the various themes between the four instruments. I love the first theme in the Bridge Phantasy. It has a melancholy quality, turning into a more hopeful one later. The Allegro Vivace section sounds almost like narrative music for a story or film scene. The way he writes in the different piano registers, searching for different colors, is very unique.

He adds that the Fauré piece touches almost every emotion with strong rhythmic unity. “Every movement has beautiful themes, and Fauré has a great sense of how to present those themes in all four instruments in terms of texture and color,” he continues. “I love the contrast that the second movement brings to the piece, more playful and, in some way, unexpected. The writing for the piano is complex but not uncomfortable. My favorite part of this piece is probably the fourth movement because of the way he manages to develop this intense motion from beginning to end.”

Zitoun grew up in France and shared this about Faure: “For me, what amazes me about him are the harmonies and color that he finds. I remember taking composition classes in Paris for three years and we started with writing in the style of Bach, following the writing rules of the time, moved on along the way, slowly arriving at the classical period and the romantics. 

“We usually got a set bass line or a melody line and we had to come up with three other lines to complement it like in a string quartet. When we got to Wagner, that was pretty amazing, but I have to say that Fauré was even more surprising. All students came up with some sort of a composition. We would all sit around the piano and the teacher would play what we had written over the week and point out the composition rules of the time we didn’t follow. Some of us did better than other but once the teacher would play for us what Fauré had come up to, that was something out of this world for us.” 

Information about the Philomusica Quartet and the balance of their 2024-25 concert season can be found on their website: https://philomusicaquartet.com/

Ticket information and directions to Schwan Hall can be found on the Wisconsin Lutheran College website: wlc.edu/Philomusica-String-Quartet.

Philomusica Quartet performs 7:30 p.m., Monday, Oct. 7 at Wisconsin Lutheran College Schwan Hall.