LINCOLN CENTER

Alice Tully Hall
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Tempest in C Minor

Inon Barnatan - Piano

Augustine Hadelich - Violin

Matthew Lupman - Viola

Clive Greesmith - Cello

Calidore String Quartet
Jeffrey Myers - Violin

Ryan Meehan - Violin

Jeremy Berry - Viola

Estelle Choi - Cello

Beethoven - Trio in C minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 1, No. 3 (1794-95)
Brahms - Quartet in C minor for Strings, Op. 51, No. 1 (1873)
Fauré - Quartet No. 1 in C minor for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 15 (1876-79)

"The 24 keys in music mysteriously possess unmistakable personalities. Like human beings, some are more suited to one occasion than another. For whatever reason, C minor (the dark side of C major) has often been the key of choice for composers in stormy moods. Join us for Beethoven, Brahms, and Fauré at their turbulent best."

"The concert you are about to hear is the first we have ever programmed intentionally in entirely the same key: C minor. Assuming that now is the time for an explanation, we’ll attempt one.

The first aspect of this idea worth noting is the number of works, throughout music history and in many genres, composed in this special key. They all strikingly bear the same emotional content, whether written in the Baroque era or today. From Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue, to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, to Brahms’s Third Piano Quartet, to Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, to Shostakovich’s Eighth Quartet, the key of C minor provides a realm within which so many composers have created their most intense and memorable works.

But why C minor? There is no proven reason, only guesses based on instinct. It certainly seems that each key center in music—and there are 24 of them—has its own personality. How and why a composer chooses a key for a work is certainly a question worth asking if given the opportunity. But for now, from a listener’s point of view, it’s obvious to point out that C minor is the dark side of the world’s most accessible and friendly key: C major. Anyone can play a C major scale by walking up to a piano and running one’s finger up and down the white keys. It’s the first orderly thing that a baby does on a piano once past the random banging stage. The note-naming concept of do-re-mi is based on the C major scale. So if C major is arguably humankind’s happiest and most familiar key, then possibly its polar opposite is music’s most traumatic transformation.

In any case, with all the storm and stress on its way to the stage, we are happy and very excited to experience this immersion. Please keep in mind that not every moment of this concert is in C minor! These great works do indeed find their ways through multiple keys, which act as foils for each piece’s defining tonality."