TUESDAY NIGHT UPDATE: Now that I can hear the audio clips in place, I've added some notes on the First Quartet performances
One-stop shopping: I love the Borodin Trio, and I really love this set, so much so that we're going to dip into it twice. For openers, here's the Borodin playing the dramatic first-movement Allegro of the Brahms First Piano Quartet (in G minor, Op. 25):Borodin Trio (Luba Edlina, piano; Rostislav Dubinsky, violin; Yuli Turovsky, cello); with Rivka Golani, viola. Chandos, recorded in Layer Marney Church, Colchester (England), July 14-16, 1988
by Ken
In Sunday's post, "Even if Brahms's new work-in-progress was going to be a piano concerto rather than a symphony, he still had to create forms for it," you may recall that I flirted with the idea of expanding my tiny-clip offering of the opening of the Brahms A major Piano Quartet, Op. 26, to include a corresponding sliver of the opening of its vastly different fraternal twin, the G minor Piano Quartet, Op. 25. For once, though, I exercised restraint, and remained steadfast even when I was tempted to shoehorn in additional mini-clips as an update.
The idea wouldn't quit me, however. And since the subject we're exploring is the way Brahms, despite his habitual use of existing musical forms, tended to reinvent them pretty much every time he worked in them, it quickly occurred to me that it would actually be easier -- far less labor-intensive -- to plunk in whole movements rather than do the grindingly picky work of making mini-clips, and to do so for all three of the piano quartets.
HERE AT SUNDAY CLASSICS WE'VE PONDERED THE
BRAHMS PIANO QUARTETS ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS
These pieces are now so widely played that it's hard to remember what a relatively recent phenomenon this is, tracing back to, say, the last quarter of the 20th century. It's not that they were unknown or unplayed before; they just didn't seem to loom large in the musical community's mind.
Interestingly, as we'll see when we get back to the Brahms First Symphony, after Clara Schumann heard Brahms play for her a piano reduction of the initial "completed" version of the actual First Symphony, she wrote in her diary (little imagining that we'd still be poring over it a century and a half later): "I cannot disguise the fact I am painfully disappointed; it does not seem to me to come up to some of the other compositions such as the F minor Quintet, the Sextets or Piano Quartets." She went on to write that she would need to hear the symphony in proper orchestral form, and the fact is that she did in time change her mind. What interests me is the works of Brahms she chose to reference. Of course as a pianist she would have been naturally drawn to works that involved the piano, which she no doubt played. So maybe it's most interesting is her inclusion of the two sublime String Sextets. Still, I'm fascinated that she specifically mentioned the Piano Quartets alongside the great F minor Piano Quintet.
When the idea for this after-post struck me, I figured that from our previous experience of these pieces that there would likely be a fair number of reusable clips
Which is a reminder, as we listen to these first movements, that the piano quartets are all in four-movement form. Brahms seems to have been comfortable with the generally accepted rule of thumb that trios of whatever sort tended to work best in three-movement form, while quartets, quintets, and sextets tended to work best with four movements. (Remember, though, that it's a "rule of thumb," not a rule, just like the rule of thumb that symphonies have four movements and concertos (and sonatas) three. Just as Brahms cast the magnificent Second Piano Concerto in four movements, and the Clarinet Trio as well, the First String Quintet has only three. It was only in the actual creation of an individual work that Brahms fogired out the form(s) it should take.
Finally, placing the three piano quartets in Brahms's lifespan (1833-1897) is made tricky by the, er, expansiveness of his compositional process; in this case, though the quartets may have been finished, or virtually finished, earlier, what I'm giving as the "completion date" is the year of publication. That said, let's call it so: Nos. 1 and 2, 1856-63; No. 3, 1861-65.
BRAHMS: Quartet for Piano and Strings No. 1 in G minor,
Op. 25: i. Allegro
[See the top of the post for the expanded Borodin Trio's performance.]
Murray Perahia, piano; Amadeus Quartet members (Norbert Brainin, violin; Peter Schidlof, viola; Martin Lovett, cello). Sony, recorded in Henry Wood Hall, June 29-July 1, 1986
Martha Argerich, piano; Gidon Kremer, violin; Yuri Bashmet, viola; Mischa Maisky, cello. DG, recorded in Teldex Studio Berlin, February 2002
Tamás Vásáry, piano; Thomas Brandis, violin; Wolfram Christ, viola; Ottomar Borwitzky, cello. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin, January 1982
The Brahms G minor Piano Quartet would be well represented if we left it at the Borodin Trio-plus performance we've already heard. We've got an embarrassment of riches here, though, with three starry pianists teamed with equally swell string players.
Starting with Murray Perahia, than whom there haven't been many more deeply musical pianists, teamed here with the great trio of Amadeus Quartet members, who seem -- 16 years down the line from the terrrific recording with Emil Gilels to which I alluded in the last post (which we might be hearing if I had it on CD) -- inspired to a somewhat more expansive mode. Meanwhile Martha Argerich, the Argentinian-born firebrand (who turns 80 in June) who has always made time for chamber music with big-time (and big-personality) musical friends of hers sounds like she and this team of all-stars are having the time of their lives.
If we can regret that the Perahia-Amadeus and Argerich-and-friends teams didn't record the other Brahms piano quartets, we can be grateful that Tamás Vásáry and his distinguished string colleagues did, in a more teamlike framework than, say, Argerich-and-friends. In particular, violinist Thomas Brandis, longtime (1961-83) concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, was a great chamber musician; I treasure the recordings I've come across by the Brandis Quartet -- nearly all the Beethoven string quartets and the final trio of Schubert's along with his sublime String Quintet, and the two string quintets of Brahms. I won't choose, so please don't ask.
AND HOW CAN WE NOT HEAR THE ORCHESTRAL VERSION CONCOCTED BY A GONZO BRAHMS FAN?
BRAHMS-SCHOENBERG: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 (arr. for orchestra): i. Allegro
London Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, cond. Chandos, recorded in St. Jude-on-the-Hill, London, July 11-13, 1988
BRAHMS: Quartet for Piano and Strings No. 2 in A,
Op. 26: i. Allegro non troppo
Sviatoslav Richter, piano; Borodin Quartet members (Mikhail Kopelman, violin; Dmitri Shebalin, viola; Valentin Berlinsky, cello). Philips, recorded live in Tours (France), c1986
Borodin Trio (Luba Edlina, piano; Rostislav Dubinsky, violin; Yuli Turovsky, cello); with Rivka Golani, viola. Chandos, recorded in Layer Marney Church, Colchester (England), July 14-16, 1988
István Lantos, piano; Bartók Quartet members (Péter Komlós, violin; Géza Németh, viola; Károly Botvay, cello). Hungaroton, recorded 1972-74
I didn't see how we could not include the Richter-Borodin Quartet or Borodin Trio-plus versions, quite apart from the curious historical juxtaposition -- in the former we hear the violinist who replaced Rostislav Dubinsky after he and his wife, Luba Edlina, emigrated from the Soviet Union, and among other things formed the Borodin Trio with their cellist friend Yuli Turovsky. Edlina had frequently played piano quartets and quintets with the Borodin Quartet, of which Dubinsky and cellist Valentin Berlinsky were founding members. (They recorded the Brahms piano quartets together, and I believe the Piano Quintet as well.) Violist Dmitri Shebalin was also a holdover from those glory years of the Borodin Quartet, whose legacy includes the landmark Melodiya recording of the first 13 Shostakovich quartets (all there were at the time), which easily dominated the growing Shostakovich-quartet discography until the St. Petersburg Quartet recorded its stimulatingly different but equally masterful cycle for Hyperion.
It can't all have been the fault of replacement violinist Mikhail Kopelman, clearly an able musician, but much of the quartet's personal chemistry seems to have disappeared along with its first violinist, so that even violist Shebalin and cellist Berlinsky generally sounded like shadows of their former selves. I've always found the comparison of the complete-15-quartet Shostakovich cycle the "new" Borodin Quartet recorded deeply dispiriting. As I've noted elsewhere, though, Berlinsky came wonderfully back to life in the later Borodin incarnation with violinists Ruben Aharonian and Andrei Abramenkov and violist Igor Naidin, with whom Berlinsky played until his eventual retirement, collaborating most notably on a vibrantly played and deeply thought-out complete Beethoven quartet cycle for Chandos.
Finally, if you've noticed the timings of our three performances of the first movement of the A major Quartet you must be wondering if the three ensembles can be playing the same piece. If you've listened to the performances, you may still be wondering. As far as I know, all editions of the piece give the tempo marking as Allegro non troppo -- "not too much allegro." In the Hungaroton recording, the three members of the great Bartók Quartet (curiously not identified as such), who recorded the three Brahms piano quartets with three different pianists, and their colleague in No. 2, István Lantos, seem to have been determined to see how much allegro could be passed off as "non troppo." It's certainly a very different way of hearing the music!
BRAHMS: Quartet for Piano and Strings No. 3 in C minor,
Op. 60: i. Allegro ma non troppo
Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Guarneri Quartet members (Arnold Steinhardt, violin; Michael Tree, viola; David Soyer, cello). RCA, recorded in Webster Hall, New York City, Dec. 27-28, 1967
Mozart Piano Quartet (Tamara Cislowska, piano; Natalie Chee, violin; Hartmut Rohde, viola; Peter Hörr, cello). Arte Nova, recorded in the Konzertsaal Bundesallee der Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, May 12-14, 2000
Ruth Laredo, piano; Shanghai Quartet members (Yiwen Jiang, violin; Honggang Li, viola; James Wilson, cello). Arabesque, recorded at Music Mountain, Litchfield, CT, Apr. 26-30, 1999
As often happened when Brahms plied a large-scale musical form more than twice, in the third effort he tended to a more streamlined conception, the three piano trios being an obvious parallel. (But even the Third Symphony, grand as it is in scale, is noticeably more concise than its predecessors, and in some ways so is the Fourth, though here, maybe having already gotten past that third effort, Brahms seems more relaxed about attempting grander forms.) Which gives us an opportunity to slip in one of the recorded collaborations of Arthur Rubinstein and the Guarneri Quartet, which I've always wished I enjoyed more, and keep hoping will one day sound less bloated and heavy-gaited to me.
Happily, the Brahms C minor Piano Quartet provides scant encouragement for that sort of treatment. Oh, the very opening gives all our teams a chance to indulge some high-quality C minor brooding, but what sounds like an Adagio or Maestoso introduction in fact isn't -- it's metrically identical to the overall movement Allegro non troppo, and soon enough the musicians are scampering and then, in the lovely countersubject introduced by the piano, waxing lyrical and noble. Brahms, perhaps thinking that the musicians might not get the idea, or maybe that they might feel the need for special authorization to play expressively, helpfully included a marking of "espress." in all the parts.
THE PATH TO BRAHMS 1: The series so far
"After-post: As promised, here's a proper quick-sampling of the three Brahms piano quartets" [5/10/2021]
By Borodin Trio et al.: 3 perfs each of 1st mvmt of all 3 Brahms piano quartets (+ Schoenberg orch. of No. 1)"Even if Brahms's new work-in-progress was going to be a piano concerto rather than a symphony, he still had to create forms for it" (aka Part 2 of "More 'pre-post' than 'tease' ") [5/9/2021]
Brahms & Beethoven mini-clips. Perfs A-B-C of Brahms Piano Cto No. 1 = Fleisher-Szell-Cleveland, Curzon-Szell-LSO, Serkin-Szell-Cleveland; bonus perfs = Curzon-van Beinum, Serkin-Ormandy"More 'pre-post' than 'tease': If our sights are set on Brahms's First Symphony, why are we listening to his First Piano Concerto? (Part 1)" [5/6/2021]
"Perfs A-B-C" (+ 2 bonus perfs!) of i. Un poco sostenuto"Just a bit more teasing before we get to the main post . . ." [5/4/2021]
Perfs of 2 Mystery Movements (Brahms 1: ii. Andante sostenuto, iii. Un poco allegretto e grazioso) by Toscanini, Mackerras, Bernstein"Post tease: How do we -- or maybe I mean how did Brahms -- get to this from this?" [5/2/2021]
Start and finish of Mystery Movement (Brahms 1: ii. Andante sostenuto). Perfs by Walter, Herbig, Barbirolli, Furtwängler, Celibidache, Toscanini
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