Four of Toronto’s best period string players are teaming up with actor R.H. Thomson to take a Heliconian Club audience back in time to June 13, 1784. It’s a salon where musical guests Mozart, Haydn and two contemporaries are entertaining their wealthy listeners with string quartets.
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That fateful evening, with four of Europe’s great composers sitting together in one room, was captured by actor, singer and future London theatre impresario Michael Kelly in his memoirs.
Through Kelly and his contemporaries, all given voice by Thomson, the Eybler String Quartet will put this music and its composers in context.
The programme features quartets by Mozart and Haydn, as well as their contemporaries Johann Vanhal and Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf. There is some cutting and pasting of the music — to reflect what was common in the day, before concertgoers reverently sat through uncut performances of full works.
In fact, it was well before string quartets were heard anywhere but in people’s homes.
The home in question on June 13, 1784 was that of English composer Stephen Storace, whose sister Nancy was a famous opera singer. They and their guests were in the middle of a new production of an opera by Giovanni Paisiello, and were taking a relaxing break — and likely having a drink or two.
Joseph Haydn, the most respected of composers at the time, sat down with Vanhal and Dittersdorf as well as the young upstart, Mozart.
“None was a great master of his instrument, but there was a bit of science between them as I’m sure you’ll agree,” quotes Eybler Quartet violist Patrick Jordan from Kelly’s reminiscences.
Jordan points out how Haydn’s name comes first and Mozart’s last in Kelly’s account. “For us Dittersdorff and VanHall are the footnes of the period. But for them, Mozart was the punk.”
“Just think of that moment,” Jordan continues enthusiastically. “Here’s Paisiello, who has just written his Barber of Seville, which has a mandolin aria in it and, in a couple of years, Mozart is going to write Don Giovanni, which has a mandolin aria. You can just imagine Paisiello hearing it and going, why you little….”
Jordan laughs, underlining the serious-but-lighthearted attitude he and his quartet mates — violinists Aislinn Nosky and Julia Wedman and his wife, cellist Margaret Gay — have taken with this programme.
“The whole idea is to put a standard string quartet concert into a completely different perspective – the perspective of how the music was enjoyed by the people of that time,” Jordan explains.
The concert is casual. “The whole idea, I guess, is to take Haydn and Mozart off their pedestals and put them back into the company that they lived in – and you can draw your own conclusions from that,” he adds with a smile.
The Eyblers present their programme tonight at 8 at Heliconian Hall, with a repeat performance in St Catharines at the Rodman Hall Arts Centre on Sunday at 2 p.m. You’ll find more information here.
I thought I’d let Jordan lay out in his own words the fascinating process of coming to know a composer and his style — and what it really means to present a historically informed interpretation. You can find it in the 11-minute podcast below, complete with a performance of the Eybler Quartet of a movement from one of the Haydn pieces they will play at the concerts:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
