Program

Stephen Prutsman: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) (Film by Robert Wiene)
Eric Chin, violin I
Joseph Maile, violin II
Pei-Ling Lin, viola
Jeremiah Shaw, cello

- Intermission -

Alban Berg: Lyric Suite
     I. Allegretto gioviale
    II. Andante amoroso
    III. Allegro misterioso – Trio estatico
    IV. Adagio appassionato
    V. Presto delirando – Tenebroso
    VI. Largo desolato
Joseph Maile, violin I
Eric Chin, violin II
Pei-Ling Lin, viola
Jeremiah Shaw, cello

About the Telegraph Quartet

Known for their technical prowess and appreciation for the history behind music, the Telegraph Quartet brings a concert program to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music that is both steeped in the history of the 1920s but also grounded in writing from the present day and reflective of two very different styles of music. Though Stephen Prutsman –– known for his film scoring –– is an active musician and composer of today, The Cabinet of Caligari is a silent horror film from the dawn of the 1920s that’s considered the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema. Conversely, Alban Berg found inspiration for his Lyric Suite in Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, with whom Berg began a love affair in 1925. Despite the affair being clandestine, the Lyric Suite itself served as Berg’s manifestation of the excitement, trepidation, and suffering of the secret relationship, with Berg going so far as to include their initials in musical cryptograms throughout.

Violinist Joseph Maile says of the emotional contrast found in this program and performing Prutsman’s film score:

“We programmed both of these works for their use of the incredibly overwrought and distorted lens of expressionism that was such a hallmark of this era of the early 20th Century.  The stark shadows and harsh lighting cast on the crooked scenery of Robert Wiene’s “Caligari” create one of the first psychological thrillers of film, and Stephen Prutsman’s outstanding score draws on the styles of Bartók and the Second Viennese School (of which Alban Berg was a seminal figure) to underscore the dark expressionism of the film.

Alban Berg’s seminal chamber work and ‘latent opera’ as he called it, was inextricably tied to and pulled out of his deeply personal, secret affair and spiritual relationship with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, which, in his own words, caused his world to be turned upside down and continued via letter until his death 10 years later.  It expresses through the newly created 12-tone language, that same degree of delirium, passion, and mysticism of the ‘Caligari’, but through a purely musical medium.”