Oslo Philharmonics’s Chamber Series Joseph Haydn
Béla Bartók
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

This concert is thematically connected to the performance on 9 October.

Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) composed his iconic Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) while he was a prisoner of war in Germany during the Second World War. He wrote the quartet for the instruments available in Stalag VIII-A: piano, violin, cello, and clarinet. In her own quartet, Abgang & Kaddish, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939) employs the same instrumentation. While Messiaen was able to return home after the war, Zwilich gives a voice to those prisoners who never did. Her work includes quotations from music written in the concentration camps.

Over a twelve-year period toward the end of the 18th century, Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) composed 27 trios for keyboard, violin, and cello—works that played a significant role in establishing the piano trio as the genre we know today. At the time, the popular harpsichord was gradually giving way to the newer fortepiano, the predecessor of the modern piano. Unlike the harpsichord, the fortepiano features touch-sensitive keys, allowing for dynamic nuance. Haydn’s Piano Trio in E minor was published along with two other trios in a set originally titled Trois Trios pour le Clavecin ou Piano-Forte, avec Accompagnement de Violon et Violoncelle—“Three trios for harpsichord or fortepiano, with accompaniment of violin and cello.” The use of dynamic markings such as forte and piano in the piano part suggests that Haydn primarily had the fortepiano in mind for performance.

The Hebrew prayer “Kaddish” is traditionally associated with mourning and remembrance of the dead, yet its content is primarily a praise of God—giving the prayer a dual significance: both as a prayer for the mourners and as a tribute to the divine. The mood of Béla Bartók’s (1881–1945) Contrasts for violin, clarinet, and piano aligns more closely with this latter, celebratory interpretation. The piece was commissioned from Bartók in 1938 by clarinetist Benny Goodman and violinist Joseph Szigeti. By this time, Bartók had developed a distinctive style heavily influenced by Hungarian folk music, though he had not yet written a chamber work that included wind instruments. In Contrasts, the piano serves primarily an accompanying role, while Bartók explores the tonal and technical possibilities of both the clarinet and the violin. It is not unusual for the clarinetist to switch between two different clarinets, but it is more uncommon for the violinist to require two violins tuned differently. The title Contrasts refers both to the differing characters of the three instruments and to the musical contrasts within the work itself.