Zemlinsky Quartet program notes
A string quartet gives us four musical lines—but much of its expressive power lies in what passes between them. A melody is interrupted, an answering voice changes the mood, a silence leaves something unsaid. In this programme, “Between the Lines” invites us to listen for the experiences and emotions beneath the notes: the persistence of memory in Smetana, the meeting of restlessness and reflection in Bartók, and the dramatic imagination of the young Beethoven. These are not stories we need to decode. They are invitations to listen more closely.
Bedřich Smetana
String Quartet No. 2 in D minor (1882–1883)
Composed 1882–83
How do you give musical expression to a world you can no longer hear? Smetana had been completely deaf for several years when he began his Second String Quartet. His health was deteriorating, and composing had become an increasingly difficult undertaking. Yet he continued to work, completing this compact, intensely personal quartet in March 1883, little more than a year before his death.
His First Quartet, subtitled From My Life, had already turned the medium into a form of autobiography. The Second revisits that inward-looking territory, but its language is more compressed and unsettled. Rather than a continuous narrative, we seem to encounter thoughts as they arrive: urgent statements, sudden recollections, moments of tenderness that give way to agitation. The music can suggest a conversation in which feeling moves faster than words.
The four short movements offer sharply contrasting perspectives. The opening is restless and changeable, its ideas pressing forward with little sense of repose. In the second movement, the familiar step of a Czech polka brings a welcome lightness. Here Smetana recalls a dance he had written in his twenties—a youthful memory returning within a late work. Heard in this setting, its charm carries an added poignancy: the past is not simply described, but briefly brought to life.
The third movement’s direction asks for agitation and fire, and the brief, fast-moving finale sustains the work’s concentrated energy. Yet this is not music of unrelieved gloom. Dance and vitality remain part of its character, resisting any easy reading of the quartet as a farewell. Between its abrupt turns, we can hear not only distress but the continuing impulse to create.
Béla Bartók
String Quartet No. 2, Op. 17, Sz. 67 (1915–1917)
Composed 1915–17
Bartók’s Second Quartet takes us into a different kind of inner landscape. Written during the First World War, it unfolds in three movements: a searching opening, a fiercely energetic centre, and a slow, withdrawn conclusion. His friend and fellow composer Zoltán Kodály heard these as episodes of life—peaceful existence, joy, and suffering. Those descriptions offer one possible route through the music, rather than a fixed story that every listener must follow.
The first movement seems to discover its direction through conversation. An angular opening idea leads into music of unexpected tenderness; the instruments draw together, separate, and find one another again. There is unease here, but also warmth. Listen for the way an expressive gesture changes character as it passes between the players, as though each voice understands the same thought a little differently.
The second movement releases an altogether more physical energy. Its repeated figures, driving rhythms and sharp accents can make four string instruments sound almost percussive. Behind this music lies Bartók’s fascination with traditional music—not only that of Hungary and its neighbours, but also the North African music he had studied during a visit to Algeria. These encounters helped shape a musical language that was unmistakably his own. The result is less a picturesque folk dance than a dance charged with extraordinary intensity.
After this whirlwind, the final movement changes our sense of time. Phrases become spare, movement slows, and silence takes on unusual weight. Where the central movement seems unable to keep still, the finale often seems reluctant to move at all. Its ending offers no conventional flourish or reassuring resolution. Instead, Bartók leaves us attending to the space around the notes—and to what remains when the instruments fall silent.
Ludwig van Beethoven
String Quartet in F major, Op. 18, No. 1 (1798–1800)
Composed 1798–1800
With Beethoven, the programme turns back towards the beginning of a remarkable quartet-writing career. The six quartets of Op. 18 were his first published set in the medium. Although the F major Quartet stands first in the collection, it was actually the second he composed. He revised it extensively before publication, later asking his friend Karl Amenda not to circulate an earlier version. This was a young composer testing, questioning and refining what a quartet could be.
The first movement makes a great deal out of very little. Its short opening figure becomes a recurring participant in the conversation: asserted, answered, reshaped and passed around the ensemble. The pleasure lies partly in recognition—we keep hearing something familiar—but also in surprise, as Beethoven finds new possibilities within it. The music’s energy comes not simply from attractive melodies, but from the lively interaction of four individual voices.
The slow movement reveals a more private drama. According to Amenda’s later recollection, Beethoven associated it with the tomb scene in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; references in Beethoven’s sketches support that connection. Its marking, Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato, asks for music that is slow, tender and passionate. There is no need to assign a theatrical action to every phrase. The connection instead illuminates the movement’s emotional scale: an intimate quartet becomes the setting for profound grief.
The quick-footed scherzo changes the atmosphere, and the finale restores the outward energy of F major. The tragedy of the slow movement has not been explained away; it has become one part of a larger emotional world, alongside wit, movement and exuberance. That contrast is central to the work’s appeal: Beethoven can speak with devastating seriousness without surrendering the pleasure of musical play.
Across these three quartets, listening between the lines means allowing such contrasts to register without forcing them into a single explanation. Memory may interrupt the present; a dance may carry unease; an apparently sunny work may shelter a scene of sorrow. Four instruments give these possibilities a voice—and leave room for us to hear something of ourselves in their conversation.
Bedřich Smetana
String Quartet No. 2 in D minor (1882–1883)
Composed 1882–83
How do you give musical expression to a world you can no longer hear? Smetana had been completely deaf for several years when he began his Second String Quartet. His health was deteriorating, and composing had become an increasingly difficult undertaking. Yet he continued to work, completing this compact, intensely personal quartet in March 1883, little more than a year before his death.
His First Quartet, subtitled From My Life, had already turned the medium into a form of autobiography. The Second revisits that inward-looking territory, but its language is more compressed and unsettled. Rather than a continuous narrative, we seem to encounter thoughts as they arrive: urgent statements, sudden recollections, moments of tenderness that give way to agitation. The music can suggest a conversation in which feeling moves faster than words.
The four short movements offer sharply contrasting perspectives. The opening is restless and changeable, its ideas pressing forward with little sense of repose. In the second movement, the familiar step of a Czech polka brings a welcome lightness. Here Smetana recalls a dance he had written in his twenties—a youthful memory returning within a late work. Heard in this setting, its charm carries an added poignancy: the past is not simply described, but briefly brought to life.
The third movement’s direction asks for agitation and fire, and the brief, fast-moving finale sustains the work’s concentrated energy. Yet this is not music of unrelieved gloom. Dance and vitality remain part of its character, resisting any easy reading of the quartet as a farewell. Between its abrupt turns, we can hear not only distress but the continuing impulse to create.
Béla Bartók
String Quartet No. 2, Op. 17, Sz. 67 (1915–1917)
Composed 1915–17
Bartók’s Second Quartet takes us into a different kind of inner landscape. Written during the First World War, it unfolds in three movements: a searching opening, a fiercely energetic centre, and a slow, withdrawn conclusion. His friend and fellow composer Zoltán Kodály heard these as episodes of life—peaceful existence, joy, and suffering. Those descriptions offer one possible route through the music, rather than a fixed story that every listener must follow.
The first movement seems to discover its direction through conversation. An angular opening idea leads into music of unexpected tenderness; the instruments draw together, separate, and find one another again. There is unease here, but also warmth. Listen for the way an expressive gesture changes character as it passes between the players, as though each voice understands the same thought a little differently.
The second movement releases an altogether more physical energy. Its repeated figures, driving rhythms and sharp accents can make four string instruments sound almost percussive. Behind this music lies Bartók’s fascination with traditional music—not only that of Hungary and its neighbours, but also the North African music he had studied during a visit to Algeria. These encounters helped shape a musical language that was unmistakably his own. The result is less a picturesque folk dance than a dance charged with extraordinary intensity.
After this whirlwind, the final movement changes our sense of time. Phrases become spare, movement slows, and silence takes on unusual weight. Where the central movement seems unable to keep still, the finale often seems reluctant to move at all. Its ending offers no conventional flourish or reassuring resolution. Instead, Bartók leaves us attending to the space around the notes—and to what remains when the instruments fall silent.
Ludwig van Beethoven
String Quartet in F major, Op. 18, No. 1 (1798–1800)
Composed 1798–1800
With Beethoven, the programme turns back towards the beginning of a remarkable quartet-writing career. The six quartets of Op. 18 were his first published set in the medium. Although the F major Quartet stands first in the collection, it was actually the second he composed. He revised it extensively before publication, later asking his friend Karl Amenda not to circulate an earlier version. This was a young composer testing, questioning and refining what a quartet could be.
The first movement makes a great deal out of very little. Its short opening figure becomes a recurring participant in the conversation: asserted, answered, reshaped and passed around the ensemble. The pleasure lies partly in recognition—we keep hearing something familiar—but also in surprise, as Beethoven finds new possibilities within it. The music’s energy comes not simply from attractive melodies, but from the lively interaction of four individual voices.
The slow movement reveals a more private drama. According to Amenda’s later recollection, Beethoven associated it with the tomb scene in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; references in Beethoven’s sketches support that connection. Its marking, Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato, asks for music that is slow, tender and passionate. There is no need to assign a theatrical action to every phrase. The connection instead illuminates the movement’s emotional scale: an intimate quartet becomes the setting for profound grief.
The quick-footed scherzo changes the atmosphere, and the finale restores the outward energy of F major. The tragedy of the slow movement has not been explained away; it has become one part of a larger emotional world, alongside wit, movement and exuberance. That contrast is central to the work’s appeal: Beethoven can speak with devastating seriousness without surrendering the pleasure of musical play.
Across these three quartets, listening between the lines means allowing such contrasts to register without forcing them into a single explanation. Memory may interrupt the present; a dance may carry unease; an apparently sunny work may shelter a scene of sorrow. Four instruments give these possibilities a voice—and leave room for us to hear something of ourselves in their conversation.