The Catalyst Quartet: UNCOVERED | Remarkable Women Composers

Hailed by The New York Times as “invariably energetic and finely burnished…playing with earthy vigor,” the Grammy Award-winning Catalyst Quartet was founded by the internationally acclaimed Sphinx Organization, which is dedicated to transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts. Catalyst combines a serious commitment to diversity, education, and contemporary works with virtuosic playing “reminiscent of great quartets of the past such as the Guarneri and Budapest” (Richmond Times). In this concert, CMNW’s 2022-23 Artists-in-Residence will continue their celebration of music by composers that may have been previously overlooked because of their race or gender with an inspirational program comprised entirely of women composers. Selected pieces represent a range of bold women composers of the past through the present day like Fanny Mendelssohn, Jessie Montgomery, Joan Tower, and Angélica Negrón.

“Like all great chamber groups, the Catalyst Quartet is beautiful to watch, like a family in lively conversation at the dinner table: anticipating, interrupting, changing subjects.”
— The New York Times

2023 CMNW Artists-in-Residence

AT-HOME CONCERT | This concert will be professionally recorded to stream April 30 through May 14.
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WEARING MASKS + UP-TO-DATE VACCINATION STATUS ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED at this time for attending CMNW concerts.

The Old Church
Sunday, 4/16 • 4:00 pm PT

Program

Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.

CAROLINE SHAW Bittersweet Synonym

CAROLINE SHAW “Bittersweet synonym”
(b. 1982)

To mark its 10th anniversary in 2024, the Catalyst Quartet commissioned 11 composers to write miniature string quartets for their CQ Minute. These are stand-alone compositions are also featured as 11 individually unique music videos comprising a new video album. Nine composers committed to the project; two additional composers were selected through a national competition focused on new and emerging talent. Caroline Shaw’s Bittersweet Synonym is a part of this project.

CQ Minute is a co-commission of Chamber Music Monterey Bay, the Chamber Music Detroit, Electric Earth Concerts, and Town Hall Seattle.

ANGÉLICA NEGRÓN “Lo infinito”

ANGÉLICA NEGRÓN “Lo infinito”
(b. 1981)

To mark its 10th anniversary, the Catalyst Quartet commissioned 11 composers to write miniature string quartets for their CQ Minute. These are stand-alone compositions to be featured as 11 individually unique music videos that will comprise a new video album. Nine composers committed to the project; two additional composers were selected through a national competition focused on new and emerging talent. The pieces by Caroline Shaw, Angélica Negrón, Jessie Montgomery and Joan Tower, are a part of this project.

CQ Minute is a co-commission of Chamber Music Monterey Bay, the Chamber Music Detroit, Electric Earth Concerts, and Town Hall Seattle.

JESSIE MONTGOMERY “Build”

JESSIE MONTGOMERY “Build”
(b. 1981)

To mark its 10th anniversary, the Catalyst Quartet commissioned 11 composers to write miniature string quartets for their CQ Minute. These are stand-alone compositions to be featured as 11 individually unique music videos that will comprise a new video album. Nine composers committed to the project; two additional composers were selected through a national competition focused on new and emerging talent. The pieces by Caroline Shaw, Angélica Negrón, Jessie Montgomery and Joan Tower, are a part of this project.

CQ Minute is a co-commission of Chamber Music Monterey Bay, the Chamber Music Detroit, Electric Earth Concerts, and Town Hall Seattle.

JOAN TOWER “A short flight”

JOAN TOWER “A short flight”
(b. 1938)

To mark its 10th anniversary, the Catalyst Quartet commissioned 11 composers to write miniature string quartets for their CQ Minute. These are stand-alone compositions to be featured as 11 individually unique music videos that will comprise a new video album. Nine composers committed to the project; two additional composers were selected through a national competition focused on new and emerging talent. The pieces by Caroline Shaw, Angélica Negrón, Jessie Montgomery and Joan Tower, are a part of this project.

CQ Minute is a co-commission of Chamber Music Monterey Bay, the Chamber Music Detroit, Electric Earth Concerts, and Town Hall Seattle.

TERESA CAREÑO String Quartet in B Minor

TERESA CAREÑO String Quartet in B Minor                  
(1853-1917)
  I.  Allegro
  II.  Andante
  III. Scherzo: Allegro ma non troppo
  IV.  Allegro risoluto

Born in Venezuela, Teresa Carreño had an international career that saw her perform throughout North and South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa. From a musical family, she learned to play the piano from her father, and she developed so rapidly that when she was 9 the family moved to New York City, where she studied with Gottschalk. When she was 13, the family went on to Europe, where Carreño met Liszt and Gounod and continued her piano studies with Anton Rubinstein. Carreño also sang, and she studied singing with Rossini before singing roles in operas in Europe and the United States (it appears that she briefly conducted opera, as well). But it was as a pianist that she achieved her greatest fame. Carreño played with such force that she was nicknamed “the Valkyrie of the piano,” and she appeared as soloist with orchestras conducted by Mahler, Grieg, and von Bülow. It is a measure of Carreño’s fame that in this country both Amy Beach and Edward MacDowell (who was her student) dedicated concertos to her, and it is a measure of the span of the career that she played at the White House for both Lincoln (when she was 9) and Woodrow Wilson (when she was 63). Those interested in Carreño should know that early in the twentieth century she made some piano rolls, and so it is possible—a century after her death—to hear her play.

Like most nineteenth-century virtuosos, Carreño also composed. Her catalog of works runs to about 75 compositions, and almost all of these are for piano. There are a few songs and choruses, as well as a serenade for chamber orchestra, but the only piece of chamber music she wrote is the String Quartet in B Minor, composed in Berlin in 1896. The quartet, in four compact movements, spans about 23 minutes, and it shows Carreño’s nice melodic sense as well as her clear grip of classical form. Both themes of the opening Allegro unfold at length: first violin introduces the first idea immediately over murmuring accompaniment, while the viola has the second idea. There is no repeat, the development is concise, and the movement comes to its conclusion on firm B-minor chords. The viola sings the long principal theme of the Andante over pizzicato accompaniment from the cello. The development is quite vigorous, and in the closing moments Carreño sends the first violinist quite high in the instrument’s range—some of the passages here must be played almost at the end of the fingerboard. The Scherzo is a very attractive movement. It gets off to a spirited start with the four instruments dancing, staccato, along the 6/8 meter. The trio section, led by the cello, is much slower, and Carreño makes an effective return—full of pauses—to the opening section before the movement winks out on quiet pizzicato strokes. The concluding Allegro risoluto is indeed resolute—textures are dense, the mood intense. The chordal second subject makes nice contrast to the opening, but at this point Carreño springs a surprise: she creates an intense fugue, whose long subject is introduced by the vio- la. This is worked out at some length before the firm conclusion, which makes an unexpectedly serious conclusion to a quartet that has often charmed with its humor and the beauty of its themes.

©—Eric Bromberger

Courtesy: San Francisco Performances

GERMAINE TAILLEFERRE String Quartet “Quatuor à cordes”

GERMAINE TAILLEFERRE String Quartet Quatuor à cordes  
(1892-1983)
  I.  Modéré
  II.  Intermède
  III. Final. Vif

Germaine Tailleferre studied piano with her mother, but her decision to make a career in music was violently opposed by her parents—it may be a measure of the girl’s independence that she changed the spelling and pronunciation of her last name as a rebuke of her father. At 22, she entered the Paris Conservatory, where she was quite successful, winning prizes in harmony, counterpoint, and accompaniment, and earning the friendship and support of Ravel. In the early twenties, she joined Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud, and Poulenc to form Les Six, a group of young composers who set out to write in a new language, one free of the influence of both Wagner and impressionism. Tailleferre lived in the United States for two extended periods: 1926–27, following her marriage to an American, and during World War II, when she lived in Philadelphia; she returned to France in 1946. Tailleferre was a most prolific composer: she wrote for orchestra (including many concertos for unusual instruments), chamber ensembles, piano, and voice; she wrote a number of film and television scores, and she also composed music for children. She remained active as a composer right up to her death in 1983 at age 91.

Tailleferre composed only one string quartet, and it came from very early in her career: she began it in 1917, during World War I, and completed it two years later, when she was 28. In three movements, the quartet is quite brief—it spans barely ten minutes—but it is quite an imaginative work, both in structure and harmony. The quartet opens not with the expected fast movement but with a movement marked Modéré. This “moderate” movement, however, contains a number of surprises: it is in C-sharp minor, a very rare key for string quartets, and the movement, which we expect to be in sonata form, does not develop its themes—it simply announces and repeats them, then proceeds directly into the middle movement. The opening theme, first sung by the cello, passes in turn through the other instruments before the second violin has the second subject, marked espressif. Harmonies are often pungent in this movement, which comes to an ambiguous conclusion.

Tailleferre mutes the instruments for the second movement, a scherzo titled Intermède; in ternary form, this scherzo has a flowing trio section. The finale, which is as long as the first two movements combined, is very fast—Tailleferre’s marking is Vif: “Quick.” The movement is set initially in the unusual meter of 6/16, which has been described as a saltarello rhythm, and here the music dances with a pleasing asymmetry. But Tailleferre changes meters throughout this episodic movement, which has the same harmonic freedom as the first. The conclusion is very subtle—and completely unexpected.

©—Eric Bromberger

Courtesy: San Francisco Performances

FANNY MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in E-Flat Major

FANNY MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in E-Flat Major  
(1805-1847)
  I.  Adagio ma non troppo
  II.  Allegretto
  III. Romanze
  IV.  Allegro molto vivace

There is general agreement that the two most prodigiously-talented young composers in history were Mozart and Mendelssohn, and there were many parallels between the two. Both were born into families perfectly suited to nurture their talents. Both showed phenomenal talent as small boys. Both began composing as boys, and from the earliest age both had their music performed by professional musicians. Both became virtuoso keyboard performers. In addition, both played the violin and viola and took part in chamber music performances. Both composed voluminously in every genre. Both drove themselves very hard. Both died in their thirties.

But there is uncanny further parallel between the two: both Mozart and Mendelssohn had an older sister whose musical talents rivaled their own. Mozart’s sister Maria Anna, five years his senior, performed as a child with her brother in all the capitals of Europe, where they were put on display by their ambitious father. She also composed (none of her music has survived), but a serious career in music was out of the question for a woman at the end of the eighteenth century: she married in 1784 and grew estranged from her brother—they did not see each other over the final years of his life.

Fanny Mendelssohn, four years older than Felix, had a much closer relation with her brother. Like Felix, she began composing at an early age, and some of her songs were published under her brother’s name. She too was discouraged from making a career in music, and at age 24 she married the painter Wilhelm Hensel and had a son. But music remained a passion for her, and she composed an orchestral overture, chamber music, works for piano, and a great deal of vocal music (by the end of her life several of these works had been published). Fanny remained extremely close to her brother throughout her life, and her sudden death from a stroke at age 41 so devastated Felix that he collapsed on hearing the news and never really recovered—his own death six months later at age 38 was triggered at least in part by that shock.

Fanny began her String Quartet in E-flat Major during the summer of 1834 and completed it on October 23 of that year, just a few weeks before her 29th birthday. The work was probably performed during the Mendelssohn family’s Sunday musicales in Berlin but was not published. When the manuscript was finally discovered many years later, small parts of it were missing, and editors were able to reconstruct those sections by using music from other parts of the score. The Quartet in E-flat Major was not published until 1986, over a century and a half after its composition.

The quartet is in the expected four movements, though its structure is unusual: it begins with a lyric, understated movement at a slow tempo and concludes with a very fast movement, so the quartet seems to gather force as it proceeds. The Adagio ma non troppo offers smooth, flowing lines at the beginning and a more animated middle section before coming to a quiet close on the return of the opening theme. The Allegretto dances easily along its 6/8 meter—there are some nice touches along the way here, including the rapid alternation of pizzicato and bowed notes and a fugal episode in the development. Gradually the movement’s energy subsides, and it concludes on two quiet pizzicato strokes. The third movement is titled Romanze, an indication of a gentle atmosphere rather than a specific form. First violin leads the way, both at the opening (marked molto cantabile) and in the active central episode. The last movement is quite fast (the marking is Allegro molto vivace), and it has an unusual meter, 12/16, though for practical purposes the music is stressed in 6/8. There is some brilliant writing for all four instruments here, and the first violin soars high above the other voices in the breathless rush to the close.

©—Eric Bromberger

Courtesy: San Francisco Performances

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