Violinists Arnaud Sussmann and Paul Huang, cellists David Finckel and Nicholas Canellakis, and violist Matthew Lipman performed the sublime Schubert String Quintet in C in the "Evenings at the Frederick R. Koch Foundation Townhouse" concert streamed free on the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center website for a week beginning last Monday (August 2), and theoretically available until 7:30 tonight, when --This week's program streams live --
with Paul Huang and Nicholas Canellakis returning, joined by violinist Sean Lee and violists Misha Amory and Hsin-Yun Huang, for (as I described it recently) Dvořák's "strange and surprising and also singularly luscious" Terzetto for two violins and viola, Op. 74 (which we listened to in the June 6 post, "At the very least, we can listen to this vaguely weird and utterly beguiling little Dvořák piece"), and Mendelssohn's added-viola Second String Quintet. Still to come: on August 16, Ravel's Violin Sonata and Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata; from August 23, "Schubert Fantasies" (the great F minor for piano four hands, D. 940 and the C major for violin and piano, D. 934); and on August 23, the First Piano Trios of Beethoven and Saint-Saëns played by pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, violinist Chad Hoopes, and cellist Dmitri Atapine.
General tip: Keep an eye on the CMS website's "Watch & Listen" page to see what's currently available and coming up.
by Ken
Call it simple dereliction of duty, on account of that's what it is. When I got the idea for this stopgap post, stalling for time while I try to make one of the dozen or so stalled posts materialize, you would have had a good day, or maybe two, to catch the Chamber Music Society of Lincolin Center's offering of the above-referenced concert performance of the one-of-a-kind Schubert String Quintet. By now, alas, unless you've super-quickly found this post with enough time to spare, it's too late, since at 7:30 tonight (August 9) the next program in CMS's Evenings at the Frederick R. Koch Foundation Townhouse series takes over the slot, with two more programs to follow, starting August 16 and 23.
Assuming you've mised the CMS Schubert Quintet, and have finished venting (altogether appropriate under the circumstances), in partial compensation -- or even if you managed to squeeze it in -- here's a taste in the form of what may be the single most beautiful movement of music ever concocted.
SCHUBERT: String Quintet in C, D. 956:
ii. Adagio
Josef Suk and Jiří Baxa, violins; Ladislav Černý, viola; Saša Večtomov and Josef Simandl, cellos. Praga, recorded live in Dvořák Hall in the Rudolfinum, Prague, Jan. 31, 1971
Melos Quartet Stuttgart (Wilhelm Melcher and Gerhard Voss, violins; Hermann Voss, viola; Peter Buck, cello); Mstislav Rostropovich, cello. DG, recorded 1977
(If you're still feeling cheated, I can reveal that we're going to hear the whole of the quintet, in an interesting assortment of performances, including the entirety of the two we've just sampled. I hope you noticed, in the 1971 Prague performance, the special glow of the Adagio's gorgeous violin solos. It's worth remembering that the first violinist here, Josef Suk, one of the 20th century's great violinists, was also a compulsive chamber-music player, who from 1951 on pretty much always found time in his concert and recording schedules to accommodate a standing piano trio. Cellist Saša Večtomov, by the way, was a member of that inaugural 1951 Suk Trio.)
YOU'RE PROBABLY WONDERING WHAT THE PLAN IS
(OR WHETHER THERE'S ANY KIND OF PLAN AT ALL)
Basically, it's going to be a listening day, culminating in -- in case you haven't guessed -- the Schubert Quintet. It's possible that once the thing is posted, and I can finally listen myself to the array of clips locked down and in place, I may be moved to add a word or two. Or maybe we'll all get lucky and I won't, and we'll just let the music speak for itelf.
For starters, you may recall that a few weeks ago we spent a good deal of time listening to another one-of-a-kind chamber work, also by Schubert, the Octet, D. 803 (July 1l's "What happens when you've got a clarinetist, a bassoonist, a horn player, two violinists, a violist, a cellist, and a bass player?"), an hour-long entertainment overflowing with unremitting spirited and spiritual joy, which, as I pointed out, is so grabbing that musicians will seize just about any opportunity to play it -- just as any listener with a lick of sense will seize just about any opportunity to listen to it.
As I pointed out, the six-movement extravaganza that is the Schubert Octet, like the Beethoven Septet that clearly pointed the way, really belongs less to the legacy of "sonata form"-ish chamber works than to early-Classical-era forms like the serenade and divertimento, except for the nagging sense that Schubert has kicked the genre up a notch or two or ten. In the earlier post we made our way through the Octet movement by movement, but by way of a refresher, let's listen to the whole thing in one fell swoop. (Is it possible that we never heard this? It was intended for the earlier post but doesn't seem to have found its way there. Well, here it is.)
SCHUBERT: Octet in F for Winds and Strings, D. 803:
i. Adagio -- Allegro [at 0:01]
ii. Adagio [at 11:56]
iii. Scherzo: Allegro vivace -- Trio [at 21:50]
iv. Andante with variations [at 27:47]
v. Menuetto: Allegretto -- Trio [at 39:10]
vi. Andante molto -- Allegro [at 44:42]
Vienna Octet: Alfred Boskovsky, clarinet; Rudolf Hanzl, bassoon; Josef Veleba, horn; Willi Boskovsky and Philipp Matheis, violins; Günther Breitenbach, viola; Nikolaus Hübner, cello; Johann Krump, double bass. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, Mar. 20-29, 1958
WHAT DOES A "REGULAR" MOZART SERENADE SOUND LIKE?
Of course "regular" Mozart isn't like regular anybody-else, as I was reminded recently when I spent time with the boxes of Mozart divertimentos and serenades recorded (with Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields) for Philips' monumental Mozart edition celebrating the 200th anniversary of the composer's death, in 1991. When you really listen to these pieces, you hear Mozart constantly surprising, even startling, you with all sorts of touches well beyond ther reach of the composers who regularly churned out such occasional or entertainment music. That said, let's listen to --
MOZART: Serenade No. 3 in D, K. 185/167a (Antretter)
Camerata Academica des Mozarteums Salzburg, Sándor Végh, cond. (1990)
i. Allegro assai
ii. Andante [at 7:10]
iii. Allegro [at 15:23]
iv. Menuetto and Trio [at 18:10]
v. Andante grazioso [at 21:32]
vi. Menuetto - Trio I - Trio II [at 27:51]
vii. Adagio -- Allegro assai [at 33:18]
March in D: Andante, K. 189 [at 40:02]
[Marches were often written for use with divertimentos and serenades to allow for entrances or exits of anybody who needed to enter or exit for the particular occasion for which the music was to be used.]
AS I NOTED WHEN WE LISTENED TO THE SCHUBERT OCTET,
MOZART COULD EXALT THE HECK OUT OF A SERENADE
The work that's always pointed to is the Serenade No. 10, the Gran Partita, for 13 wind soloists (with the option of a string bass rather than a contrabassoon anchoring the ensemble from below). I intended to toss K. 361 into the Schubert Octet post but, but this is a piece that doesn't lend itself well to casual tossing in. I didn't want to miss another opportunity to, er, toss the thing in, so I scavenged a couple of performances from online sources (fleshing out the documentation somewhat), and supplemented them with the specially affectionate, songful 1943 recording of five movements by the pioneering bassoonist-conductor Fernand Oubradous.
MOZART: Serenade No. 10 in B-flat for 13 Wind Instruments (Gran Partita), K. 361:
i. Largo -- Allegro molto
ii. Menuetto -- Trio I -- Trio II
iii. Adagio
iv. Menuetto -- Allegretto -- Trio I -- Trio II
v. Romanze: Adagio -- Allegretto -- Adagio
vi. Thema mit Variationen
vii. Rondo: Allegro molto
[LISTEN TO OUR FIRST PERFORMANCE ON YOUTUBE.]
[i. 9:15, ii. 10:18, iii. 5:32, iv. 5:22, v. 7:21, vi. 9:34, vii. 3:12] Members of the Orchestra of St. Luke's (Stephen Taylor and Melanie Field, oboes; William Blount and Daniel Olsen, clarinets; Gary Koch and Mitchell Weiss, basset horns; Stewart Rose, Russell Rinzer, Scott Temple, and William Purvis, horns; Dennis Goodburn and Marc Goldberg, bassoons; John Feeney, string bass), Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. Telarc, recorded in the Performing Arts Center, State University of New York at Purchase, July 1-2, 1993
[i. at 0:01, ii. at 8:30, iii. at 17:00, iv. at 23:32, v. at 28:10, vi. at 35:09, vii. at 45:44] Wind soloists of the Vienna Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. EMI, recorded in the Brahmssaal, Vienna, Nov.-Dec. 1947
[abridged: i. at 0:01, iii. at 6:59, iv. at 12:24, v. at 16:25, vii. at 21:40] Orchestra of the Society of Wind Instruments (Paris), Fernand Oubradous, cond. EMI-Dante, recorded in Studio Pelouze, Feb. 10, 1943
WHICH BRINGS US BACK TO THE SCHUBERT QUINTET
Again I've scavenged a performance online: the Melos Quartet-Rostropovich-DG one, from which we've already heard the Adagio. I don't recall hearing this performance before, and on first exposure I quite love it: big in scale and sound and conception, fearlessly, almost ferociously bold in execution, and pretty unrelentingly serious. Note that with all repeats taken, and with no impulse to hurry, this performance clocks in at not much under 58 minutes! Then again, it is pretty unrelenting, and so, to give us an idea of the range of possibilities built into this singular creation, we go next in almost the opposite direction with the Tátrai Quartet, a performance that reminds us that we're dealing here with the singingest composer there's ever been.
From somewhere in the vast in-between ground, we hear finally the Suk-and-company performance (the other one whose Adagio we also heard earlier). Note that with the long first-movement repeat not observed, the movement -- which stretches to almost 20 minutes in the Melos-Rostropovich performance -- actually times out shorter than the next-up Adagio. I'm a sucker for soulful Hungarian and Czech string playing, so these performances are home ground for me. I'm even charmed to hear the Suk team take the old-fashioned (and now much-scorned) slowdown for the lyrical second theme of the first movement.
The Quintet, completed in Septemeber 1828, wasn't quite the last major work that Schubert finished before his death in November. His last months were an extraordinary creative period, which notably also yielded the mind-blowing triptych of piano sonatas, which individually and collectively expanded the form way beyond anything he had attempted, and naturally at the time he was also deeply engaged in song-writing, producing the songs eventually published posthumously as Schwanengesang (Swan Song), songs that were clearly intended by the composer to be gathered into some kind of collection (or collections?).
Finally, it's impossible to think about the Schubert Quintet without obligatorily mentioning that while the composer did hear the work in rehearsal, not only was there no public performance in his lifetime, but none took place until 1850, more than 20 years after his death.
SCHUBERT: String Quintet in C, D. 956:
i. Allegro ma non troppo [at 0:43]
ii. Adagio [at 21:20]
iii. Scherzo [at 37:28]
iv. Allegretto [at 48:47]
[i. at 0:01; ii. at 20:34; iii. at 36:34; iv. at 47:51] Melos Quartet Stuttgart (Wilhelm Melcher and Gerhard Voss, violins; Hermann Voss, viola; Peter Buck, cello); Mstislav Rostropovich, cello. DG, recorded 1977
[i. at 0:01; ii. at 19:44; iii. at 31:14; iv. at 42:44] Tátrai Quartet (Vilmos Tátrai and István Várkonyi, violins; György Konrád, viola; Ede Banda, cello); László Zilvásy, cello. Hungaroton, recorded in Budapest, c1965
[i. at 0:01; ii. at 14:16; iii. at 29:19; iv. at 37:15] Josef Suk and Jiří Baxa, violins; Ladislav Černý, viola; Saša Večtomov and Josef Simandl, cellos. Praga, recorded live in Dvořák Hall in the Rudolfinum, Prague, Jan. 31, 1971
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