"Out-of-body" Beethoven? We have three gifted samples (and then we'll add a couple more)

"[These three] extraordinary slow movements in the key of E major . . . share an almost out-of-body quality, and it’s inspiring to wonder what this beautiful tonality must have meant to Beethoven."

-- David Finckel, in "Making the most out of chamber music coaching,"

from The Strad newsletter, Jan. 21, 2025 [from which much more below]

(1) from the Piano Trio No. 2 in G, Op. 1, No. 2:
ii. Largo con espressione (Largo with expression)

Suk Trio (Josef Suk, violin; Josef Chuchro, cello; Josef Hála, piano). Supraphon-Denon, recorded in the House of Artists, Prague, April 1984
[NOTE: Volume on this clip is a bit low -- you might nudge your level up.]

Isaac Stern, violin; Leonard Rose, cello; Eugene Istomin, piano. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in CBS 30th Street Studio, July 11 & Dec. 18-19, 1969

(2) from the String Trio in G, Op. 9, No. 1:
ii. Adagio ma non tanto e cantabile (Adagio but not too much and cantabile)

Jascha Heifetz, violin; William Primrose, viola; Gregor Piatigorsky, cello. RCA, recorded in Radio Recorders Studios, Hollywood, Mar. 27, 1957 (mono)

Trio à cordes français (Gérard Jarry, violin; Serge Collot, viola; Michel Tournus, cello). EMI France, recorded 1970

(3) from the String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2 (Rasumovsky No. 2): ii. Molto adagio. Si tratta questo pezzo con molto di sentimento (This piece is to be treated with much feeling)

Brandis Quartet (Thomas Brandis and Peter Brem, violins; Wilfried Strehle, viola; Wolfgang Boettcher, cello). Harmonia Mundi France, recorded November 1986

Borodin Quartet (Ruben Aharonian and Andrei Abramenkov, violins; Igor Naidin, viola; Valentin Berlinsky, cello). Chandos, recorded in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, March 2003

by Ken

Yes, yes, we have many important projects afoot, and during the long silence I've been toiling away at them. All I can say is, watch this space. Then, as part of my daily online dose of The Strad, that invaluable publication that takes as its brief everything and everyone having to do with string instruments, I found myself immersed in the above-referenced piece by cellist, professor, and general music administrator-impresario David Finckel offering an overview of one of his favorite and at the same time most demanding musical activities: coaching chamber music.

from "Making the most out of chamber music coaching"
(from The Strad newsletter, Jan. 21, 2025)

by David Finckel

"Teaching chamber music has been one of the greatest pleasures of my professional life. Students who seek my guidance garner my utmost admiration for their pursuit of expertise in one of the highest forms of art ever devised by humankind. I cannot possibly encourage them enough.

Here's the key -- or is it?

Piano Trio: 
i. Allegro moderato -- opening

Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Jascha Heifetz, violn; Emanuel Feuermann, cello. RCA-BMG, recorded in Holllywood, Sept. 12-13, 1941

Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano; Itzhak Perlman, violin; Lynn Harrell, cello. EMI, recorded in New York, c1979

UPDATE: If you looked at this post before 10pm ET/7pm PT, you saw only the Ashkenazy-Perlman-Harrell clip, and in fact originally the whole first movement. When I went back to edit it to include just the opening, I was disheartened by how namby-pamby the performance is. (I actually thought the EMI CDs contained a different one, and then I figured how far wrong could we go with this one? I learned.) Most of my CD versions are on a hard-to-get-at shelf, so as an add-on I chose a much grander performance that happened also to be more readily at hand.

by Ken

This piece suddenly popped into my head this afternoon, and I couldn't have been happier that it did. So we're going to hear it tomorrow. Meanwhile it set me to thinking about other works in the same key, with the realization (I'm sure not for the first time, but then, who remembers?) that it's hard to find others of the same character.


SOME OTHER WORKS IN THE SAME KEY

Tchaikovsky's home away from home, or perhaps haven from home, inspired this "Memory of Florence"

No, there's nothing at least overtly Italian about the orchestral introduction to Tchaikovsky's great opera The Queen of Spades (performed here by the Sofia Festival Orchestra under Emil Tchakarov). The connection is that a good part of the composition of the opera was accomplished in the haven provided by the composer's beloved Florence.

When he is creating, the artist must have calm. In this sense, creative activity is always objective, even musical creation, and they are mistaken who believe the artist can use his talent to rid himself of specific feelings of the moment.

The sad or happy emotions which he expresses are always and invariably retrospective.

-- Tchaikovsky, in a letter to his patron Nadezhda
von Meck, explaining how he set about composing

by Ken

We began this series of musical reminiscences of Italy with Tchaikovsky's glorious romp, the Capriccio Italien, then moved on to Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony -- offered with the promise that we would be returning to Tchaikovsky, who was able, thanks to the generosity of his patron Nadezhda von Meck, to establish a sort of home away from home or perhaps a haven from home in Florence. (Madame von Meck had a villa there, but they don't seem to have broken their rule of never actually meeting.)

In Friday night's preview we heard the gorgeous Adagio of the string sextet, Souvenir de Florence, that Tchaikovsky conceived in his happy refuge. In the liner note for the orchestral performance we heard by David Zinman and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, John Warrack writes:

It was to Italy, and above all to Florence, that Tchaikovsky owed what he called "the happiest months of my life." Time and again, fleeing from the exhausting round of his duties at the Moscow Conservatory or from the unhappiness of his private life, he would turn his steps to the South and, basking in the warmth of the Italian spring, he absorbed impressions that were to colour his music in many different ways . , , ,

To his patroness Nadezhda von Meck he was able to write, after returning to Russia from Florence with the score of Queen of Spades: "I had hardly finished the opera before I took up a new piece, the sketch of which I have already finished. I hope you will be pleased to hear that I have written a string sextet.

WE'LL HAVE MORE OBSERVATIONS ABOUT
THAT SEXTET, IN ADDITION TO HEARING IT

Preview: A quick musical peek at the place in Italy that really captured Tchaikovsky's heart

Florence: Il Duomo. We hear, in orchestral guise, the end of the second movement, Adagio cantabile e con moto, of the Tchaikovsky string sextet Souvenir de Florence ("Memory of Florence"). We're going to hear the complete performance of this movement in the click-through.

by Ken

In last Friday's preview we kicked off this composers' celebration of Italy with Tchaikovsky's Capriccio italien, a souvenir of the composer's happy visit to Rome. But the city that really captured his heart was Florence, which inspired one of his chamber masterpieces, the string sextet Souvenir de Florence (Memory of Florence). (For the record, the main work we heard in Sunday's post, "Young Felix Mendelssohn traveled to Italy, and when he returned home . . . ," was Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony.)

Tchaikovsky stressed that he was composing six solo parts that would combine in a unique way. Which hasn't stopped orchestras from beefing the sextet up to chamber-orchestra proportions. And I thought we would start tonight by listening to the glorious slow movement both in its composed form and then in orchestral guise. The orchestral version may not have been what the composer had in mind, but once you hear it, I think you'll understand why orchestras like to claim it as their own.