Rick Langer
Pro Arte players, from left, Parry Karp, Suzanne Beia, Sally Chisholm and David Perry.
Music scholars consider Ludwig van Beethoven’s 16 string quartets to be milestones in chamber music development. This year, in honor of the German composer’s 250th birthday, UW-Madison’s acclaimed Pro Arte Quartet has launched a six-concert series featuring the monumental pieces.
The next performance, scheduled for Feb. 28 in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall at UW’s new Hamel Music Center, will feature three of the quartets drawn from the composer’s three developmental periods.
Pro Arte members performing the works include David Perry and Suzanne Beia on violin, Sally Chisholm on viola and Parry Karp on cello. Beia says the musicians are excited about the opportunity to play all 16 quartets.
“Beethoven’s quartets represent one of the highest pinnacles of human achievement,” says Beia, who also performs with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. “As musicians, we grow by studying the works, and we are all better musicians for having done so.”
The evening’s playlist includes the String Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1, composed between 1798-1800; the String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 74, “Harp,” composed in 1809; and the String Quartet in C-Sharp Major, Op. 131, composed in 1826. The three works represent a solid hour of music.
The string quartets echo Beethoven’s larger, more familiar symphonic works helping usher music from the orderly Classical period to the more emotional Romantic era, both in content and style. The composer’s musical fingerprints are evident throughout the series, Beia says.
“Beethoven sometimes used nonconventional notations in his music and musical language not found with other composers,” she says. “His quartets contain an intimacy and clues to interpreting the music. It’s like being privy to the innermost thoughts and spirituality that a human being can have.”
Although they are separated by less than 30 years, the three pieces reflect the composer‘s comprehensive musical development.
“The Opus 18 is economically and ingeniously constructed, much like his Fifth Symphony,” says Beia. “You can see the influence of his teacher [Franz Joseph] Haydn’s sense of humor through sudden silences and shocking dynamics. It’s very much the student imitating the master, but a student that’s beginning to break free.”
Opus 74, nicknamed “Harp” after the pizzicato sections, is freer in its musical architecture and more lyrical than the previous composition.
Opus 131, the evening closer, is something else entirely. “People consider this Beethoven’s greatest chamber piece and an epic journey that takes you through seven movements without a break,” Beia says. “The opening four-note motif reappears throughout the composition, often in abstract ways, and the whole thing leaves performers and listeners emotionally exhausted — but in a good way.”
Fans of Beethoven’s symphonies will want to experience his string quartets, the violinist says. “It’s impossible to exhaust the emotional depth of what he’s given us,” she explains. “No matter how many times I come back to one of his works I always discover something new and miraculous.”
