San Francisco Chamber Music Society:
A Concert by the Lenox Quartet, March 16, 1981

The sixth concert of the 1980-81 season of the San Francisco Chamber Music Society featured the Lenox String Quartet performing works by Mozart and Beethoven as well as the world premier of Robert Basart’s “Imaginary Song,” which was commissioned by the Society and written specifically for the Lenox String Quartet. The two works by Mozart are, according to the program guide: “the third and fifth of a group of six quartets composed by the sixteen year old Mozart in Milan while on his third trip to Italy in the winter of 1772 to 1773.” While they can not compare to Mozart’s later string quartets they do exhibit flashes of Mozart’s genius, especially when performed by the magnificent Lenox Quartet. In his “Imaginary Song” Basart uses such techniques as pizzicato, sul ponticello, non-vibrato, and imprecise pitch to great effect. According to the composer, “the piece is in one movement. It borrows its title from a poem of W. H. Auden, and it borrows the interval of a major sixth from Beethoven. Such additional borrowings as there may be are unintentional.” Beethoven’s Opus 132 was one of his later quartets and, according to the program guide: “The third movement is one of the strangest and most exalted pieces Beethoven ever composed. It bears the heading ‘Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Divinity,’ in the Lydian mode. The movement consists of three increasingly elaborate appearances of the opening section alternating with an Andante section, ‘Feeling renewed strength.’ The last Molto adagio is marked ‘With the most inward feeling.’ The sharpest contrast imaginable is provided by the fourth movement, a jaunty march, followed by a melodramatic recitative in the first violin, over tremoli in the other instruments. The main theme of the finale was originally intended for the last movement of the Ninth Symphony, before Beethoven finally decided on a choral ending for that work.” This live recording was made on March 16, 1981 at the Fireman’s Fund Forum in San Francisco.