Program Notes

A brief note about the Beethoven piano sonatas:

A great deal has been written about the Beethoven piano sonatas, and there is certainly no need—indeed, there can hardly be any excuse! —for more. Nonetheless, in honour of this KWCMS cycle, two small observations:

Hans von Bülow famously called them “The New Testament” of the piano literature— Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier being “The Old Testament”.

They are conventionally considered in three groups: the early sonatas (#1-15, Op.2-28, 1795-1801), the middle sonatas (#16-27, Op.31-90, 1802-14), and the late sonatas (#28-32, Op.101-111, 1816-22). This will remind many readers of the traditional classification of the string quartets: the early quartets (#1-6, Op.18, 1798-1800), the middle quartets (#7-11, Op.59-95, 1806-14), and the late quartets (#12-16, Op.127-135, 1824-27).

What’s interesting here is that the early and middle periods are roughly the same for the sonatas and the quartets: the earlies in 1795-1801 and the middles in 1802-14. But the late quartets all come well after the last sonata (Op.111, 1822). It is as if Beethoven felt compelled to exhaust the possibilities of the piano sonata before turning, in the last few years of his life (1824-27), to do the same for the string quartet.

Dvorak quintet Op.77

Schubert quintet D.667 (“Trout”)

The two quintets on tonight’s program are almost entirely happy, optimistic, sunny works. Not without emotional and musical depth! – but quite free of angst.

“String quintet” almost always means string quartet plus an added viola or cello; quintets made by adding a bass to a quartet are vanishingly rare. Indeed, aside from a few by outliers like George Onslow (1784-1853), the one by Antonín Dvořák on tonight’s program is pretty much the whole repertoire.

Whatever led Dvořák to the choice of the bass, it was an inspired choice, opening up the full palette of the string orchestra. Besides the obvious deeper bass lines, the presence of the bass liberates the cello to indulge quite often in a tenor role. The sheer fullness of sound might border on the edge of a chamber orchestra, but Dvořák manages to maintain a rich chamber texture throughout.

“Piano quintet” almost always means piano plus string quartet, and the “trout” configuration is quite rare. (There is one such quintet by Vaughan Williams, and two by Louise Farrenc, whose music is having a moment in the sun these days.) The instrumentation imparts a unique sonority among chamber works for piano and strings. As in the Dvořák quintet, the bass frees the cello to soar in a tenor role, and supports the piano part, which is often concentrated in the highest register, with the two hands playing the same melodic line in octaves.

Schubert’s “Trout” quintet is well known and well loved, and needs little introduction to this audience. Compared to other major chamber works by Schubert, it is a leisurely, discursive work, with less emphasis on structural aspects and more on the pure joy of melodic invention. Sit back and soak it in!

Chopin: Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52

Brahms: Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34

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Chopin's four Ballades were composed between 1831 and 1842, and are thus more or less contemporaneous with his four Scherzos. The latter are far more ambitious structurally than the classical Scherzo, and the Ballade form seems to be largely Chopin’s own creation. It has been described as a free amalgam of traditional sonata-form and variation, but that feels not so much like a description as an attempt to contain the unconstrainable. In fact each of the four has its own structure, and a quick online search reveals conflicting structural analyses of the same piece… All of this applies in spades to the fourth of the Ballades, far and away the longest, most difficult (technically and musically), and structurally most complex (or ambiguous, depending on one’s point of view). For anyone craving analytical details, the Wikipedia article “Ballade No. 4 (Chopin)” is a good start. For the rest of us, just know that in the right hands (like tonight!) this is Chopin at his best: arresting, brilliant, emotionally profound, deeply satisfying.

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Brahms’ only piano quintet has an intriguing history. A key figure is Robert Schumann, who famously composed most of his chamber music -- the three string quartets Opus 41, the piano quintet Opus 44, and the piano quartet Opus 47-- in a single year, 1842. There are a few earlier piano quintets of the piano/violin/viola/cello/bass variety, most notably Schubert’s “Trout”, composed in 1819 when Schubert was 22, but Schumann’s is essentially the first piano quintet as we now know it: piano plus string quartet. (The only significant antecedent is Beethoven’s early quintet (Opus 16, 1796) for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon, which he subsequently rewrote for piano quartet (piano plus string trio); there is no evidence that Schumann had this piece in mind.)

So, when Brahms set out to compose his piano quintet, there was little precedent… but in fact he didn’t set out to compose a piano quintet: the piece began life as a string quintet, for two violins, viola, and two cellos. 

What follows is adapted from an online article by Chris Darwin (“please use freely for non-commercial purposes”). The year 1861 was the start of Brahms' “first maturity” in chamber music: in that year he produced the first of his two string sextets (Opus 18) and the first two of his three piano quartets (Opus 25 and 26). The following year, apparently inspired by Schubert’s monumental string quintet (for two violins, viola, and two cellos, D.956, composed in 1828, just two months before Schubert’s death), Brahms set out to write a quintet in the same format. Brahms’ friends and musical confidants Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim were both unenthusiastic about the instrumentation. 

Discouraged, Brahms destroyed the string quintet version and rewrote the piece as a sonata for two pianos (rather than making a piano four-hand arrangement, as he often did). The two-piano version was successfully performed several times (at least once with Brahms himself at one of the pianos) and it was subsequently published, but Clara remained unconvinced. It was at her suggestion that Brahms cast the work into its final form, with the same instrumentation as her husband Robert’s piano quintet from about twenty years earlier. 

Brahms completed the work in its final form in 1864 and it was published the following year. The piece is so compelling, and feels so natural, in its final piano-quintet incarnation, that it is hard to imagine it could have been conceived otherwise. It is certainly (along with the much later clarinet quintet) one of the crowning glories of Brahms’ output, and indeed of the entire chamber music canon.

Note for KWCMS concerts Nov. 6-7, 2024

Complete Brahms chamber music with clarinet

Brahms famously retired from composition at 57, after the successful Vienna premiere of his second string quintet (Opus 111) in 1890. He wrote to a friend that he "had achieved enough; here I had before me a carefree old age and could enjoy it in peace." And then he heard a performance of Mozart’s clarinet quintet (and some works by Weber and Spohr) featuring Richard Mühlfeld, the self-taught clarinetist of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, whose remarkable playing re-ignited his musical imagination. Four masterful works for clarinet resulted: the clarinet quintet and the trio for clarinet, cello, and piano (both in 1891), and the two sonatas for clarinet and piano (in 1894). These years also produced the celebrated late piano pieces Op.116-119 (in 1892-3) and the Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs, for bass voice and piano), composed in anticipation of Clara Schumann’s death (May 1896) and less than a year before Brahms’ death (April 1897).

Amanda Maier - Sonata in B Minor

Swedish violinist and composer Amanda Maier (1853-1894) is not to be confused with German composer Emilie Mayer (1812-1883)!

Emilie Mayer’s many compositions include seven unjustly neglected string quartets, two of which will be performed next March in this series by the Carpe Diem String Quartet.

Amanda Maier was less prolific. Her compositions include a piano quartet and a violin concerto which she premiered as soloist, to favourable reviews, as well as the sonata on tonight’s program. The sonata, in three movements, owes a lot to Mendelssohn and Schumann, but has its own charm and is certainly a welcome addition to the repertoire.

One of Amanda Maier’s violin teachers was Engelbert Röntgen, then the concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. In 1880 she married his son, the German-Dutch pianist and composer Julius Röntgen (1855–1932), who was friends with Liszt, Grieg, and Brahms, and who performed Brahms's second piano concerto with the composer himself conducting. Julius’s more famous cousin Wilhelm is the Röntgen of x-ray fame.

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César Franck - Sonata in A

Although Franck was 64 years old in 1886 when this sonata was written, he was still known primarily as an organist and professor of organ at the Conservatoire. The piece was written as a wedding present for his friend and countryman (both were born in Liège), violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. (In addition to Franck’s Sonata, Chausson’s Poème and Debussy’s string quartet are dedicated to him.) Ysaÿe famously played the piece at his own wedding, and often afterwards on tours; his championing of the work was a big part of Franck’s increasing recognition, in his later years, as a composer.

The sonata is one of only a handful of chamber works by the mature Franck: there is a string quartet and a piano quintet, both rather austere and nowhere near as popular as the violin-piano sonata. (There are, on the other hand, a large number of interesting early Franck compositions for piano trio, some only recently uncovered and hardly any heard nowadays.) The violin-piano sonata was well received by the public and critics from the get-go and remains probably Franck’s most loved work. Eschewing the murky textures and relentless modulations of much of Franck’s writing for organ or orchestra, it is clear and lyrical throughout, with contrasting stormy and quiet sections, all bound together in an over-arching cyclic structure typical of Franck. The highlight, for most listeners, is the opening of the finale, which has been described as “a state of pure lyric grace”—the serene and optimistic theme presented in canon, the violin following the piano.

Cellist Jules Delsart, who heard a performance of the sonata in Paris in December 1887, was so taken by it that he asked Franck’s permission to make a transcription of the violin part for his own instrument. Delsart remained close to the original, leaving the piano part unaltered and transposing the violin part into the lower register only sparingly, and this version is firmly established in the cello-piano repertoire. (There are also versions for flute, viola, double bass, saxophone, and maybe more, about which the less said the better.)

Mozart: Divertimento K. 563

Janacek: String Quartet No. 1

The late 1780s were not a happy time for Mozart. Finances were strained: a sequence of pitiful letters survives, to his friend and fellow Freemason Michael Puchberg, begging for loans. And yet his glorious last three symphonies, his last three piano trios, and the “Coronation” piano concerto (#26, K.537) all date from 1788, and his last three string quartets from 1789-90.

The Divertimento K.563 also comes from this fertile period: it was composed in 1788 and dedicated to Puchberg. It is Mozart’s only composition for string trio, and his longest chamber work. Its premiere took place at a concert in Dresden, April 13 1789, with Mozart himself on viola.

The title “Divertimento” does a serious disservice to this piece, which has justly been called “far and away the greatest string trio ever written, and one of the unquestionable monuments of chamber music generally”. The only thing this trio has in common with the typical divertimento is that it is in many movements; it is no light work meant merely to divert and entertain!

It is in six movements: fast first and last movements, two slow movements (the second and fourth), and two menuets (the third and fifth). The piece is characterized by a superabundance of invention, brilliant instrumental interplay, and exquisitely controlled form. As a CD review by David Hurwitz puts it, “there is no greater testament to Mozart’s genius than this epic…masterpiece…that contains not a second that fails to rise to the highest level of textural gorgeousness and supreme melodic inspiration.”

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Czech composer Leoš Janáček has a unique and immediately recognizable musical voice. Influenced at first by Dvořák, he soon moved on to the creation of a wholly original synthesis, incorporating into his music Moravian and other Slavic folk music, as well as his transcriptions of the "speech melodies" of spoken language.

His two string quartets are late works, the first from 1923 and the second from 1928.  The second, titled Intimate Letters, was inspired by his long obsession with Kamila Stösslová, a married woman 38 years his junior, and has been called Janáček's "manifesto on love". His first quartet, titled The Kreutzer Sonata, on tonight’s program, was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s novella of the same name, the title referring of course to Beethoven’s violin-piano sonata #9 (opus 47, 1803) which plays a prominent role in the novella.

In a letter to the same Kamila Stösslová, Janáček writes "I was imagining a poor woman, tormented and run down, just like the one the Russian writer Tolstoy describes in his Kreutzer Sonata.”  The passionate music of the quartet reflects psychological drama, conflict, and emotional outbursts, leading to catharsis and final climax.

Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock)

Everybody knows that Schubert wrote an astonishing amount of music in his tragically short life: more than 600 songs and almost as many works for piano, piles of chamber music, seven complete symphonies and six more left incomplete, etc.etc.

But who knew that he also composed eleven complete operas? (not to mention several more left incomplete at his death) And what has this to do with tonight’s concert?

Schubert’s friend, the noted soprano Anna Milder-Hauptmann, had tried to help get one of Schubert’s operas staged in Berlin-- an effort which, like almost everything related to Schubert’s operas, proved unsuccessful. When Schubert offered to compose something for her, she asked for “a show-piece that would allow her to express a wide range of feelings” [Wikipedia], and the result was the extended Lied, Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, composed barely a month before Schubert’s death.

The Shepherd on the Rock, remarkable for the delicate interplay between voice and clarinet, is in three sections. In the first, the shepherd hears echoes rising from the valley below; in the darker middle section he expresses the loneliness of his calling; and in the third he anticipates the return of Spring and a kind of rebirth.

[compare and contrast: Brahms Op.91, Two Songs for voice, viola and piano]

The literature for violin-viola duo is small, but it boasts two non-pareil masterpieces: the duos by Mozart, K.423 in G and K.424 in Bb. Their origin is curious. Michael Haydn, a composer with none of the genius of his famous older brother Franz Joseph, was commissioned by the Archbishop Colloredo to write a set of six duos for violin and viola. (This is the Colloredo best known nowadays as Mozart’s employer and patron in Salzburg. A relationship which did not end well. But that’s another story.) Serious illness prevented Michael Haydn from composing more than four duos; he asked his friend Mozart for help to complete the commission. The result was the two magnificent duos K.423 and 424, arguably Michael Haydn’s finest gift to the world of music.

Both of Mozart’s duos are in three movements. The first duo, on tonight’s program, begins with a movement in classical sonata-allegro form. The second movement is a delicious song-like Adagio, and the finale is a spirited Rondo. Throughout, the music charms with its sunny themes, seemingly-effortless invention, and delightful interplay between the two instruments.

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Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) moved to Paris in 1923 to study with Albert Roussel, and emigrated to the United States in 1941, fleeing the German invasion of France. While teaching at Tanglewood in the summer of 1946, he had a near-fatal fall from a balcony, which fractured his skull. During his long recovery he composed chamber music, including the Three Madrigals on tonight’s program (1947). The inspiration was a performance of the Mozart duos by his friends the brother-sister violin-viola team of Joseph and Lillian Fuchs, to whom the Madrigals are dedicated. The musical language of the piece is hard to describe but immediately recognizable: pure Martinů. The folk-dance- infused finale has been described as “an exuberant mashup of hoedown and Bach invention.”

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Paul Hindemith’s Sonata for Solo Viola, Opus 25 #1, is a bulwark of 20th century music for viola. Written in 1922 and premiered by the composer the same year, it is in five movements, all except the fourth in ternary (ABA) form. The short introductory movement gives way without pause to a quicker second movement, and there are two lyrical slow movements, the third and fifth. The fourth movement, which is over almost before it starts, is a furious outburst with the extraordinary marking “Rasendes Zeitmass. Wild. Tonschönheit ist Nebensache” (“Frenzied tempo. Wild. Beauty of tone is of a secondary consideration”).

Mozart - Trio in E Major, K.542

Shostakovich - Trio No.1 in C Minor, Op.8

Tchaikovsky - Trio in A Minor, Op.50

The late 1780s were not a happy time for Mozart. Finances were strained: a sequence of pitiful letters survives, to his friend and fellow Mason Michael Puchberg, begging for loans. Several scholars have concluded that he was depressed. And yet his glorious last three symphonies and his last three piano trios all date from 1788, and his last three string quartets from 1789-90.

Mozart’s six piano trios, composed 1776-88, are largely overshadowed on the concert stage by Haydn’s much larger output, which is a shame, for there are riches galore in Mozart’s trios. The fourth of these, K.542, on tonight’s program, is a sunny work in E major, a notoriously unfriendly key for strings and rare in Mozart’s oeuvre. The piano takes the lead in all three movements and is particularly virtuosic in the finale, but overall the writing exhibits a charming and amiable conversation among the three protagonists.

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The two piano trios by Shostakovich could not be more different. The second, Opus 67, composed 1943-44, is a monumental work of searing emotional intensity and is a compelling candidate for greatest piano trio of all time. (Some would nominate the Ravel, or either of Schubert’s last two, or the Brahms “Opus 8”…)

His first piano trio, on tonight’s program, was composed twenty years earlier, when Shostakovich was seventeen, and is far less often heard than the famous #2. The trio #1 was not published until the 1980s, and it has an interesting history. Shostakovich had met, and fallen in love with, Tatyana Glivenko in 1923 while recuperating from tuberculosis at a Crimean sanatorium. Upon his return to Leningrad, he started work on the trio, which he dedicated to her. (One of Shostakovich’s professors at the conservatory criticized the young composer’s “obsession with the Grotesque” in the piece-- a remark which Shostakovich apparently took as a compliment.) He was working at the time as a pianist at a cinema, where his job was improvising live piano accompaniments to the (silent) films. This nighttime job may have influenced the abrupt changes of mood in the piece: apparently Shostakovich, with a couple of friends, tested the trio by performing/rehearsing it, as the soundtrack to some films.

The work is in one extended movement, with contrasting and recurring sections, beginning with a slow descending chromatic passage which sticks in the mind, and ending in a burst of youthful enthusiasm.

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Tchaikovsky’s only piano trio (in A minor, Opus 50) is well-known much loved, and needs little introduction. It is in two long movements: an elegiac first movement, and an elaborate theme and variations which is on the edge of coming to a head several times before arriving at its triumphant conclusion. Tchaikovsky completed the scoring on January 25 1882, and on that day he wrote to a friend: "The Trio is finished ... having written all my life for orchestra, and only taken late in life to chamber music … I fear I may have arranged music of a symphonic character as a trio, instead of writing directly for the instruments. I have tried to avoid this, but I am not sure whether I have been successful.” The listener may judge!

Two sonatas for viola and piano

• Brahms Eb Op.120 #2

• Shostakovich

The two viola-piano sonatas on tonight’s program are pillars of the viola repertoire, and both are among the last works of their creators.

The Shostakovich sonata was his very last composition. It was completed on July 5, 1975, and on the following day he entered the hospital where he would die on August 9 from terminal heart disease and lung cancer. He seems to have thought of the work as a final statement. Each of its three movements ends with the instruction morendo (dying away), and the work is replete with allusions (notably to Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata) and quotations: all fifteen of Shostakovich’s symphonies are referenced. It is a complex and introspective work, not exactly “accessible” but, like so much of Shostakovich’s music, it packs a substantial emotional wallop.

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Brahms famously “retired” from composition at 57, after the successful Vienna premiere of his second string quintet in 1890. He wrote to a friend that he "had achieved enough; here I had before me a carefree old age and could enjoy it in peace." And then he met Richard Mühlfeld, whose remarkable clarinet playing re-fired his imagination. Four masterful works for clarinet resulted: the trio for clarinet, cello, and piano, and the clarinet quintet (both in 1891), and the two sonatas for clarinet and piano, in 1894. (These years also produced the celebrated late piano pieces Op.116-119, in 1892-3.)

Brahms himself re-wrote the two clarinet-piano sonatas for viola and piano, but he seems to have had considerable ambivalence. Joachim had written to Brahms, proposing a visit, and in his reply Brahms writes “That’s excellent… I hope Mühlfeld will be able to come —for I fear that the two pieces are very clumsy and ungratifying [sehr ungeschickt und unerfreulich] as viola sonatas”. To be fair, Brahms expressed this judgment before hearing them played on viola, and from the fact that he subsequently allowed them to be published, we may infer that Joachim was able to change the composer’s opinion.

“Vitali” Chaconne

Prokofiev sonata #2

Respighi sonata #2

Who composed the Vitali Chaconne in g minor? Almost certainly not Tomaso Vitali (1663-1745), an otherwise obscure Baroque composer/violinist. While the piece is neo-Baroque in language, it is unlike any surviving music known to be by Vitali (primarily a handful of trio sonatas). The piece was not published until 1867 when violinist Ferdinand David “arranged” it for violin and piano. He may have been working from a scrap of Baroque manuscript, or not. In any case, since the original publication it has been extensively edited, tweaked, pumped up and tampered with, and has become an established violin showpiece. Jascha Heifetz began his American debut recital (Carnegie Hall, 1917) with the Chaconne and it remained in his concert repertoire for the next forty years.

(A parallel story surrounds the well-known Adagio in, yes, g minor, traditionally attributed to another Baroque composer, Tomaso Albinoni, which was in fact composed in neo-Baroque style by Italian musicologist and Albinoni biographer Remo Giazotto, and published in 1958.)

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Prokofiev’s two violin-piano sonatas, composed just a few years apart, could hardly be more different. The first, begun in 1938, was completed and published in 1946. It is vintage Prokofiev: dark, fierce, angular, and brooding, and it won the Stalin Prize in 1947. Meanwhile, in 1942, Prokofiev had written an elegant sonata for flute and piano, classical in form and sunny and lyrical in spirit. At the request of violinist David Oistrakh, Prokofiev made the minor changes required to adapt it for violin and piano, and it has become part of the standard repertoire in both versions. Both violin-piano sonatas were premiered by Oistrakh and pianist Lev Oborin, #1 in 1946 and #2 in 1944, and the first and third movements of the first sonata were played at Prokofiev's funeral in 1953, again with Oistrakh on violin.

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Ottorino Respighi, remembered nowadays mostly for brilliantly orchestrated large-scale symphonic works, also left a substantial body of chamber music: there are at least three string quartets, and two violin-piano sonatas, written twenty years apart. The first displays the ambition and prodigious talent of an 18-year-old; the second, on tonight’s program, is the work of a mature composer: the same year (1917) saw the premiere of his Fountains of Rome, the first of the “Roman Trilogy” of tone-poems which are the core of his legacy. The sonata is dramatic and intense, and embodies the wide range of Respighi’s eclectic musical interests, from modal early music, through German Romanticism (hints of Brahms and Schumann), to flights of impressionistic tone-colours and both rhythmic and harmonic experimentation.

Schubert - Piano Trio in E-flat D.929

Shostakovich - Piano Trio No. 1 “Poème” Paul Schoenfield – Café Music

Benjamin Britten called the last year of Schubert’s life “the most miraculous year in the history of music.” Among the fruits of that astonishing year were the last three piano sonatas (c minor D.958, A major D.959, and B flat major D.960), the C major string quintet (D.956), and the two great piano trios: D.898 in B flat and D.929 in E flat, the latter heard on tonight’s program. The quintet is on everyone’s list of greatest chamber music of all time, and both of the trios are strong contenders for the title of greatest piano trio ever.

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Shostakovich’s second piano trio (1943-44), although very different from the Schubert trio D.929, is an equally compelling candidate for greatest piano trio of all time. His first piano trio, on tonight’s program, was composed twenty years earlier, in 1923, when Shostakovich was sixteen, and is far less often heard than the famous #2. The trio #1 was not published until the 1980s, and it has an interesting history. Shostakovich had met Tatyana Glivenko in 1923 while recuperating from tuberculosis at a Crimean sanatorium. Upon his return to Leningrad, he started work on the trio, which he dedicated to Tatyana. (One of Shostakovich’s professors at the conservatory criticized the young composer’s “obsession with the Grotesque” in the piece, a comment which Shostakovich apparently took as a compliment.) He was working at the time as a pianist at a cinema, where his job was improvising live piano accompaniments to the (silent) films. This nighttime job may have influenced the sudden changes of mood in the piece: apparently Shostakovich, with a couple of friends, tested the trio by performing/rehearsing it, as the soundtrack to some films. The work is in one extended movement, with contrasting and recurring sections, beginning with a slow descending chromatic passage which sticks in the mind and ending in a burst of youthful enthusiasm.

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Paul Schoenfield (1947-2024) was a pianist, composer, and educator: he taught at the universities of Toledo and Akron and the University of Michigan. Café Music is one of his most frequently performed and recorded works. It was commissioned by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and inspired by Schoenfeld's turn as house pianist at Murray's Steakhouse in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Pendercki String Quartet with Anya Alexeyev, piano

Franz Joseph Haydn - String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No.2

Sergei Prokofiev - String Quartet No.2 in F Major, Op. 92, (“Kabardinian”)

Edward Elgar - Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84

With the six quartets of Opus 20, Haydn justifies his nickname, father of the string quartet. He was forty when they were published in 1772, and he had written at least twenty earlier quartets, but it is only with Haydn’s Opus 20 that the classical quartet form emerges unambiguously from the divertimento/serenade from which it evolved. And while Haydn’s subsequent forty or so quartets (the last, Opus 103, left incomplete six years before his death in 1809) arguably show increasing depth and maturity, the essential ingredients are all evident in the Opus 20 set: confident mastery of the forms, wit, playful interaction among the instruments, and relentless invention.

The C major quartet on tonight’s program, the second of the set, begins improbably with the theme in the cello and the first violin silent. The second movement begins with a pompous unison statement in the parallel minor, which immediately transforms into heartbreaking lyricism, again in the cello. The two elements (Sturm und Drang, songfulness) alternate throughout the movement: typical Haydenesque invention/experimentation. The Menuetto (and contrasting Trio) is pure Haydn, and the quartet ends (as do several of the Opus 20 set) with an engaging, and mostly very quiet, fugue.

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Prokofiev’s second (and last) string quartet acquired the nickname “Kabardinian”, which needs a word of explanation. When the German army invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Prokofiev, along with many other Soviet artists, was evacuated to a region well south of Moscow, where he was “instructed” to write a quartet using folk themes of the local Kabardino-Balkar region. The resulting quartet has a muscular first movement, a lilting Adagio central movement with a playful middle section, and a hyper-kinetic finale with a cello cadenza. What’s not to like?

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And then there’s the ineffable and inexhaustible piano quintet by Edward Elgar (1857-1934): possibly the greatest piano quintet of them all (though some would argue for Schumann or Brahms or Dvořák or Shostakovich). By the early 1900s Elgar was highly esteemed in his native England; his Enigma Variations (1899) had established him as the pre-eminent English composer of his time, and his first symphony (1908) and the violin concerto (1910; commissioned and premiered by Fritz Kreisler) cemented his reputation. The approach of WWI horrified him, and by the end of the war he was in poor health. At the urging of his devoted wife Alice, the Elgars bought a house in the countryside. There Elgar recovered his health, and in 1918-19 he produced four masterpieces in quick succession: the violin-piano sonata Opus 82, the string quartet Opus 83, the piano quintet Opus 84, and the cello concerto Opus 85: a remarkable flowering indeed!

A great deal has been written about this piano quintet, and this is not the place for more. It just needs to be experienced, again and again.

August Klughardt (1847-1902) is hardly a household name. From 1869 to 1873 he worked at the court theatre in Weimar, where he met Franz Liszt, and in 1892-93 he conducted Wagner’s Ring cycle. He left behind six symphonies and a considerable body of chamber music, but nowadays only his cello concerto, his woodwind quintet, and the Schilflieder (Reed Songs) are programmed with any frequency.

The Schilflieder, composed in 1872, are five Fantasiestücke (Fantasy Pieces) after poems by Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850). Lenau studied law at Pozsony (now Bratislava) and then spent four years attempting to qualify in medicine; unable to settle down to either profession, he began writing verse. The Encyclopaedia Brittanica says “The disposition to sentimental melancholy inherited from his mother, stimulated by disappointments in love and by the prevailing fashion of the romantic school of poetry, descended into gloom after his mother's death in 1829.” He lived briefly in America in 1832-33, landing at Baltimore and settling on a homestead in Ohio. About ten years later his mental health began to deteriorate, and in 1844 he was placed in an asylum, under restraint, for the remainder of his life. Schumann, who also died in an asylum, set six of his poems (Opus 90, composed in the year of Lenau’s death). Remarkably, an asteroid is named after him: 7400 Lenau, discovered in 1987, with a diameter of 6.3 km.

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Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935) is also not exactly a household name. He studied violin in Berlin with Joseph Joachim and in 1881 he emmigrated to the United States to join the Boston Symphony Orchestra as assistant concertmaster, resigning that position in 1903 to devote himself to composition. As a composer, Loeffler is noted for unusual instrumental combinations (such as the remarkable trio we’re hearing tonight!). He was one of the earliest modern enthusiasts for the viola d’amore, which he ‘discovered’ in 1894. He used the instrument in several compositions and arranged a lot of music for it. In his later years he became deeply interested in jazz, and wrote some music for jazz band.

Nicolai Medtner was a younger contemporary of Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, and it is only in the last several decades that his music has emerged from their shadow. His compositions include 14 piano sonatas, 3 piano concertos, 3 violin-piano sonatas, a piano quintet, and more than 100 songs. Some of his most appealing compositions are the dozens of piano pieces called Forgotten Melodies (1919-22) and Skazki (literally tales or legends, but usually called Fairy Tales in English, apparently at the suggestion of Medtner's wife, Anna.) The Six Skazki on tonight’s program are representative.

A charming biography of Nikolai Medtner appears in a website with the irresistible name Dr. Estrella’s Incredibly Abridged Dictionary of Composers https://stevenestrella.com/composers/composerfiles/medtner1951.html

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Rachmaninoff: the theme is La Folia, not by Corelli although he is one of the more than 150 composers who have made use of it over the years. The first publication of La Folia dates from the mid-1500s, but it is likely much older. Rachmaninoff dashed off these variations at his holiday home in Switzerland in 1931. He tells a hilarious story about his own performances of the work in a letter to Medtner quoted in the Wikipedia article Variations on a Theme of Corelli.

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In 1931 President Herbert Hoover invited the 16-year-old pianist Earl Wild to play at the White House, and the next five presidents (FDR, HST, DDE, JFK, and LBJ) all renewed the invitation. He created numerous virtuoso piano transcriptions, including 14 songs by Rachmaninoff (1981). His best-known works are the Gershwin transcriptions, culminating in two sets of Virtuoso Etudes after Gershwin (1954, 1973) and a set of variations on Someone to Watch Over Me (1989). YouTube has some videos with Earl Wild playing Gershwin/Wild.