Frederick Slee; Docenko, Fuster, Boyce and Joseph

Attention all local classical music lovers: What do we have in Buffalo that music lovers in New York, Boston, L.A. London, Paris, Vienna, Rome and just about every other major metropolitan area in the world do not have? If you even begin to think the word “snow,” please step to the front of the class and prepare yourself to receive a sharp rap on the knuckles. The correct answer, of course, is that this year, as in every year since 1956, the lucky residents of Western New York will have the opportunity to hear all the string quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven in a series of six concerts, known as the Slee/Beethoven String Quartet Cycle. Naturally, most major metropolitan areas have seen their share of complete performances of the Beethoven string quartets over the years, but Buffalo is unique in the world in having a complete performance of all the Beethoven quartets every year—now for over 50 years.

This Friday evening at 8pm, the 52nd annual Slee/Beethoven String Cycle kicks off at Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall with the first of three performances by the world-renowned Tokyo String Quartet. The Friday evening concert features the Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127, the Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1 and the Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3. There is a master class with the members of the quartet on Thursday, January 31 at 7pm, free and open to the public.

The action heats up on Saturday when the group offers the next two programs in a time-frame that might well be a first for the series—the two concerts are only four hours apart. A pre-concert talk at 2:15pm precedes the 3pm event featuring the Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 74 (The Harp), the Quartet in G-Major, Op. 18, No. 2 and the Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 131. The Saturday evening concert at 7pm features the Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3, the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133, with the Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1, and is followed by a reception with the artists.

The Tokyo String Quartet has been performing at the highest level since its inception at Julliard in 1969. The members of the quartet have changed over the last 40 years, with only one of the original members still a part of the group; Martin Beaver has been the first violinist since 2002 and is the fifth person to occupy that position. What has remained the same is the quartet’s ability to perform the masterworks of the string quartet literature with an abundance of style, grace and, yes, perfection rarely attainable by other contemporary quartets. The Tokyo String Quartet has been the quartet-in-residence at Yale University for over 30 years, and performs on a matched set of four Stradivarius violins that once belonged to the legendary Italian violinist Niccolo Paganini. The superbly balanced, delicately nuanced and flawlessly intoned nature of the group’s music making was most recently evident to local audiences when they opened the Buffalo Chamber Music Society’s 2004-2005 Season, where they set a standard of excellence that may have been almost matched but was never surpassed by subsequent artists that season.

The annual performance of the complete cycle of Beethoven string quartets is the legacy of Frederick and Alice Slee. Born in Skaneateles in 1870, Slee was a Harvard-educated corporation lawyer who married Alice Macdonald of East Aurora in 1905 and settled into a successful legal career in Buffalo. Slee was a highly trained musician who recollected in his memoirs that he went to Harvard specifically to study with John Knowles Paine, one of the leading composers of the era. He later studied with Walter Damrosch, the conductor of the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic. Damrosch recommended that Slee continue his musical studies at the Sorbonne in Paris under Nadia Boulanger, who later became the renowned teacher of composers such as Virgil Thomson, Aaron Copland and the still-living Elliott Carter.

In Buffalo, Slee continued to perform on the viola as an amateur. He formed the Saybrook String Quartet, whose other members were Isabelle Workman Evans, George Kogler and Nicholas D’Addio. The quartet performed a long-running series of public concerts for invited guests, held at his home on Saybrook Place in Buffalo. The artistic ability of the musicians must have been at a high level, as evidenced by a manuscript list of works performed, now in the library of the University at Buffalo. Many works by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, including several of Beethoven’s difficult late quartets, appeared on their programs. Slee also remained a serious student of composition, observing in a lecture that he gave as early as 1914 that, like Wagner, “Schoenberg is either nothing at all or epoch making. His music is radically different from his predecessors’. If it shall establish itself, then Music has entered upon a new career—just as with Wagner it entered upon a new career thirty years ago”—a remarkably astute observation in 1914 from a non-professional musician.

When Frederick Slee died in 1954, his widow Alice, following the instructions contained in his will, set up a bequest at the University of Buffalo to fund an annual cycle of six concerts of all the Beethoven string quartets. The large bequest, the equivalent of almost six million of today’s dollars, also stipulated the order in which the quartets are to be performed. Slee’s largesse has allowed generations of music lovers to hear many of the finest quartets in the country in performances of the complete Beethoven cycle, including the Guarneri, the Cleveland and the Emerson Quartets. The Budapest Quartet holds the record for longevity, having been the performers for the first 11 years of the series.

Advanced tickets for all concerts are priced at $20, with discounts for senior citizens ($15), and students ($8). At the door, tickets are $30, with discounts for senior citizens ($20), and students ($12). Advanced tickets can be obtained at the Slee Hall box office Monday through Friday, 9am-4pm, the Center for the Arts box office (Monday through Saturday, 10am-6pm) or through Ticketmaster.

For further information, visit slee.buffalo.edu or call 645-2921.

Bartok at Buffalo State

Bela Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion is the featured work in a concert program at Buffalo State College’s Rockwell Performing Arts Center at 8pm on Thursday, February 7. Three members of the Buffalo State College Music Department—Bryan W. Boyce (piano), Ivan Docenko, Jr. (piano) and Bradley J. Fuster (percussion)—will join forces with Dinesh Joseph, assistant principal timpanist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, for a rare performance of the exciting Bartok work.

Bartok was at the height of his powers when he composed the work in 1937, working out his musical principles and ideas to their absolute limits in the most economically possible manner. The work evokes the vigorous, asymmetrical melodies and additive rhythms of the folk music of rural Hungary and Eastern Europe that Bartok had collected and studied from an early age. The slow middle movement is an example of Bartok’s “night music” or “nature music.” Bartok always felt more at home in the natural world than in an urban environment. He liked to notate the sounds of nature, especially at night. He felt that deprived of the sense of sight, it is the sounds of nature that make the world understandable.

The Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion experiments with the varied percussive sonorities of pianos and percussion instruments, perhaps for the first time in the history of classical music. Bartok had a very clear idea of the percussive sound effects he wanted, specifying where the pianos as well as the percussion instruments were to be placed. The result has been one of Bartok’s most popular works, right from its very enthusiastically received premiere in 1938, and it continues to influence many composers up to the present day.

Given the complexity of the music and the logistic difficulties of securing two grand pianos for performance, the work is not heard in live performance nearly as often as it should be. Luckily, listeners have two chances to hear the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. In addition to the February 7 evening performance at Buffalo State, the work will also be performed at noon on February 5, in Slee Hall on the University at Buffalo North Campus. For more information call 645-2921.

As an added bonus, but only at the Buffalo State event on February 7, pianists Boyce and Docenko will perform Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 2, Opus 17, For Two Pianos, Four Hands, a work for two pianos that still manages to develop a full orchestral sound. Both concerts are free and open to the public. For more information call 878-6401.