• Haydn - Quartet Op.77 No.1

• Danish String Quartet - The Sønderho Bridal Trilogy – Part I,II

• Handel - The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba

• Wieniawski - Dudziarz Mazurka Op. 19 No. 2

• Coath (Arr.) - Two Gardel Tangos

• Bach - Brandenburg 3

Haydn - Op.77 No.1: Movement I Allegro

Haydn was the father of the string quartet, and it is the third rule of the Wivelscombe Quartet that everything, including concerts, starts with Haydn. (The first two rules are, of course, that you do not talk about the Wivelscombe Quartet!)  Haydn was prolific and hard working and enjoyed lifelong employment in the service of enlightened aristocrats. He developed a distinctive and attractive style which became very popular and influential. He was also a likeable man who influenced and promoted the work of Mozart when he was relatively unknown, and later taught composition to Beethoven.

The Op.77 quartets were commissioned in 1799 by Joseph Franz von Lobkowitz. (Later Lobkowitz was the dedicatee of Beethoven's 5th and 6th symphonies and the Op.18 quartets.) The commission was for four quartets but Haydn, in bad health and busy elsewhere, only managed to deliver two. Four years later Haydn returned to the string quartet for the last time but failed to complete his final work in this form (Op.103). This makes the Op.77 set the last Haydn completed - but the composition is fresh, fluid, and witty.

On a personal note this was the first string quartet I ever played - in 1974!

Danish String Quartet - The Sønderho Bridal Trilogy – Part I,II

The Danish Quartet have made a big impact by bringing their idiosyncratic arrangements of tunes from their own folk tradition to their recitals. These have proved to be both compelling and popular - and we are delighted to have discovered them.  Today we are playing their arrangements of two bridal songs - one from the Faroe Islands, and one from the Island of Fanø.

Two Gardel Tangos (arr. Coath)

Carlos Gardel was a French-born Argentinian singer and songwriter - the most famous popular tango singer of all time. He is recognized throughout the world for his distinctive baritone voice and dramatic phrasing. His good looks, enormous popularity, tragic early death, and the mystery surrounding several aspects of his life have combined to make him a compelling romantic figure. With lyricist and long-time collaborator Alfredo Le Pera, he wrote several classic tangos before he was killed in an airplane crash at the height of his career in 1935.

Por Una Cabeza is a tune made famous by the movie Scent of a Woman and subsequently on BBC Strictly Come Dancing. It tells of the singer's compulsion to bet on horses, and put faith in lovers - both will prove to be unreliable! The second tune Sus Ojos Se Cerraron is an altogether darker offering - as the reality of grief and loss is made manifest in the lifeless features of a lover in death:

"It was mine, the constant sweetness of her hands
that gently soothed my pain
and now even that evokes my deep grief
the turbulent ever flowing tears
and I weep, inconsolable"

Great tunes, fun to play. 

Wieniawski - Dudziarz Mazurka Op. 19 No.2

The great Polish violin virtuoso Henryk Wieniawski wrote a series of short pieces for chamber performance many of which reflect the composers love of Polish folk music.  The Opus 19 pair Obertass and Dudziarz were originally published in 1899 and both are Mazurkas - a triple time form based on dance music. The Dudziarz is a bagpipe player, and this simple tune does have the underlying drone characteristic of  bagpipe playing. But the same piece is also known as Le Menetrier  or The Village Fiddler which reflects its predominant violinistic mood.

Handel - Arrival of the Queen of Sheba

After the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah this is probably the most familiar work by Frideric Handel. Originally scored for string orchestra and two oboes it is an instrumental interlude or sinfonia from Act 3 of Handel's opera Solomon  (HWV 67, 1748) . 

The Queen (called Nicaula by the anonymous librettist following a tradition also found in Josephus and Boccaccio, perhaps better known as Bilqis from Islamic tradition) ruled over an area assumed to correspond to Ethiopia, Yemen, and possibly parts of Egypt - the archaeological, scriptural and ethnographic evidence is highly convoluted. More or less everyone agrees on the basic story that she visits the court of Solomon, King of Israel (this would have been around 1000 BCE) and is converted to the true faith. This is just one event in a rich and complex web of episodes, myths, and tall tales surrounding the figures of Solomon and Sheba found in many traditions. I will make no attempt to summarise them here! 

Bach - Brandenburg No 3 BWV 1048 

The Third Brandenburg is just about as famous as any piece of music gets. The opening passage was for many years the theme tune for BBC Antiques Roadshow in a version arranged for Moog Synthesiser by the pioneering American composer Wendy Carlos - although the current very familiar theme for the show by Paul Reade and Tim Gibson has been used for 25 years!

In its most familiar Bach scoring it is a piece for nine strings (3 violins, 3 violas, and 3 cellos) and continuo, but here we are using a four part arrangement. Bach would have undoubtedly approved as he was always re-using and re-arranging his music for different purposes with different instrumental combinations. 

The six Brandenburg Concertos form a set of diverse orchestral pieces dedicated to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt and presented to him in 1721 (although containing a great deal of material composed much earlier). They were possibly put together as part of a job application. 

Martin Coath