You might still catch the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Schubert Quintet before 7:30pm tonight (Aug. 9). But if not --

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)

What happens when you've got a clarinetist, a bassoonist, a horn player, two violinists, a violist, a cellist, and a bass player?

[MONDAY MORNING NOTE: I can now report that this post is about as complete as it's going to get! UPDATE: Except for some subsequent odd bits of fixing and updating here and there.]

Or even if you've got only 5 or 6 of the above, here's the first
not quite 19 bars of what can happen if you fill in those gaps

[. . . and so on]  

Chamber Players of Canada. CBC Records, recorded in Fallowfield, Ont., June 2002 [we'll have full credits when we hear the full movement]

by Ken

Sorry about the protracted silence. It's been rough, and you don't want to know. We were about to enter an "intermezzo" phase in our lookback at four Brahms slow movements, as we maneuvered our way toward the first landmark of Brahms's creative career, the Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5, one of whose curious features is an "extra" slow movement -- labeled, of all things, Intermezzo -- nestled between its third and fifth movements.

The question has been how to proceed, how to proceed. It's been a project of considerable turmoil, involving all manner of addition, bits of subtraction, a fair amount of multiplication, and a confounding agglomeration of diversion and digression. The mass as it stands, clearly way beyond the bounds of a single post, will probably wind up as at least three post, including at least one that will be virtually Brahms-free. But figuring out just how to accomplish the division and distribution, and to fill in the resulting gaps . . . well, it hasn't been easy, especially with the dispiriting questions "Who cares?" and "What does it matter?" sounding in the background.


SO INSTEAD, LET'S FOCUS ON A MUSICAL MOMENT,
OR MOVEMENT, THAT GAVE ME A MOMENTARY OF LIFT

It starts with the musical introduction we heard above, a not-quite-two-minute expanse that comprises, as noted, not quite 19 bars, bar 19 being -- as we'll hear -- at one and the same time the conclusion of the work's Adagio introduction and the opening of the Allegro first movement proper.