The Borromeo Quartet
“It’s always particularly inspiring to really get deep into Bartók’s world for string quartet,” says Borromeo Quartet first violinist Nicholas Kitchen. “It’s like the Beethoven quartets. They are pieces that when you get deeper into them and you really get closer to them, they show even more layers than you had any idea: the emotional depth and the harmonic gorgeousness of what Bartók created and also the perfection of the way he imagines things for string quartet.”
The Borromeo Quartet will be performing a complete cycle of all six Bartók string quartets across two evenings at Guarneri Hall on December 4 and 5.
“We love playing them,” says Kitchen. “In Chicago, we’re going to do 1, 3, 5 in one concert and 2, 4, 6 in the other. Two days ago, we played all six in a row and we’ll do the same thing next Tuesday. We love both ways of doing them, but in this case, we’re going to talk a little bit about Bartók’s creative process.
“We’ve had a lot of interest in the manuscripts of many composers, particularly Beethoven. Our work with Bartók ended up leading to a very fabulous trip that I took to the Bartók Archive in Budapest. I spent a whole week there studying manuscripts and getting to know some of the really wonderful scholars there. I was spending hours and hours looking at the manuscripts of the quartets and actually discovered things that really hadn’t been noticed before. We’re going to share a lot of that with the audience.
“There’s a whole different version of the second movement of Quartet No. 2. There is a whole different centerpiece or point of symmetry in No. 1, completely different music that features the intervals B A C H [H is B-flat in German] high in the first violin. And a completely different midpoint to No. 5. And a completely different last movement to No. 6. We’re going to play those for the audience and share with them basically a path that Bartók was deeply involved in and then turned away from to choose the pathway that we now know as these great Bartók quartets.
“It’s amazing to visit a landscape that was, at one point, what he was thinking was going to be these works that are fascinatingly different from what they ended up becoming. That’s really how doing this got off the ground. [Guarneri Hall artistic director] Stefan Hersh is a quartet player himself and his son, Alex Hersh has been someone we’ve known for many years and admired so much as artists at the New England Conservatory of Music,” where the Borromeo Quartet is in residence. “We were visiting and playing a different concert in Chicago. We got to talking about this and I just started referring to these very interesting discoveries that had been part of our life with the Bartók quartets. Stefan was like, ‘Wow this is exactly the kind of thing that we envisioned Guarneri Hall can do in a special way.’ That’s where this project was born. We really hope in that intimate setting to give people a very exciting sense of worlds that might have been and let them revel in the masterpieces that are what eventually became the Bartók six string quartets.”
These alternate movements will be performed alongside the final quartet versions in their finished form.
Béla Bartók/Photo: Fritz Reiner
“They are absolutely Bartók and are just as great as any other Bartók. But they are not the ones he chose. It’s not the path that he ended up choosing. We find that deeply stimulating. It reminds you how these pieces started out on blank pieces of paper. I wouldn’t say we take them for granted but we feel like somehow they were already there. In some strange sense, we don’t realize the enormous amount of creative energy that had to be present for these pieces to emerge in his imagination. And they really could have turned out differently.
“The one that I think is just so shocking is that his original idea for No. 6 was that the fourth movement would start in the way that we’re familiar with, this very gorgeous lamenting music. In the manuscript, it exists the way that we know it. But then at a certain ghostly chorus, it turns a corner and it becomes a brilliant last movement, something like the last movement of the ‘Concerto for Orchestra.’ That’s what we’ll be playing.”
So there was clearly a change of heart as the ending of Quartet No. 6 became quite melancholy.
“That’s right,” agrees Kitchen. “And of course, you’re in September of 1939, so not only is the world falling apart, but so is his personal life in one thing after another and finally, having to leave Hungary. It was a moment where he seems to say, ‘No, I can’t write this joyous celebratory last movement. It’s not the right thing to do.’”
In the case of Quartet No. 5, Bartók went the opposite direction.
“When you get to the manuscript, you realize that that melody that we know as the centerpiece of No. 5 was a completely different melody in his first imagining of the piece. It was the same metrical kind of complexity and much of the same features with the same electric kind of passagework. But instead of it being the joyous ringing-of-the-bells kind of melody that we know, it was in fact a quite sorrowful and sad melody also done by the viola and passed around in the group, as he eventually did but with a completely different character, a completely different mood and a completely different level of sadness. And we’ll play that. People can then hear the joyous one that he eventually wrote. It’s pretty amazing to see the switch from dark to light.
“This stuff is so exciting to me as a form of further insight into the finished scores and the many paths that Bartók was considering. How rich they were and how completely he developed ideas, even that just went on to the editing room floor. These were finished products that he decided to abandon.
“This is a perfect way to have folks able to get into this incredibly great music but also have the chance to feel all those layers that are invisible in most cases. We can have the chance to bring them into that, to bring them into Bartók’s workshop, as it were. And hopefully that will help them feel even more wonderful about what they experience when they get to enter into the real finished product, the finished creation.”
Borromeo Quartet at Guarneri Hall, 11 East Adams, guarnerihall.org. December 4 and December 5 at 6:30pm.
Dennis Polkow is an award-winning veteran journalist, critic, author, broadcaster and educator. He made his stage debut at age five, was a child art prodigy and began playing keyboards in clubs at the age of fourteen. He holds degrees in music theory, composition, religious studies and philosophy from DePaul University in Chicago. Polkow spent his early years performing and recording in rock and jazz bands while concertizing as a classical pianist, organist and harpsichordist and composing, arranging and producing for other artists. As a scholar, Polkow has published and lectured extensively and taught at several colleges and universities in various departments. As an actor, narrator and consultant, Polkow has been involved with numerous films, plays, broadcasts and documentaries. As a journalist, Polkow helped co-create the experiential Chicago Musicale and Spotlight, the award-winning tabloid arts and entertainment section of the Press Publications chain of newspapers, which he later edited. He also created and ran the nationally recognized journalism program at Oakton College and was faculty advisor to its award-winning student newspaper; many former students went on to major media careers, including Channel Awesome’s the Nostalgia Critic. Polkow’s research, interviews, features, reviews and commentaries have appeared across national and international media and he has corresponded from the Middle East, Asia and Africa for the Chicago Tribune. Contact: dpolkow25@aol.com
