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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
August 30, 2003
In 1894 a young man from the town of Pozsony -- then in Hungary (and also known as Pressburg), later to become part of Czechoslovakia under the name of Bratislava -- took a momentous decision. Rather than take the standard route for young men of musical talent and travel to Vienna for his education, Ernö Dohnányi decided instead to enrol in the Academy of Music in Budapest.
Dohnányi was blazing a trail; his fellow Pozsony native, Franz Schmidt -- a mere three years older -- had indeed heard the siren song of Vienna: and is now accounted an Austrian composer. Perhaps the most significant effect of Dohnányi's decision, though, was its probable influence in deciding a fellow student at the Pozsony Gymnasium to study in Budapest rather than Vienna. That student was Bela Bartók.
Dohnányi's progress at the Academy was rapid; during the Christmas break in 1894 he began work on the piano quintet, finishing it early in 1895. He was just 18 years old. Dohnányi's teacher, Hans Koessler, met Brahms during the following summer and the elder composer agreed to take a look at the young man's work.
For months Brahms maintained a frustrating silence but, just as Dohnányi was beginning to give up on ever hearing back, Brahms arranged for a performance (the first) in the programme of the Vienna Tonkünstlerverein on 25 November.
There is no arguing with the fact that Dohnányi's Piano Quintet No.1 is highly derivative (of Brahms in particular, but the shade of Schumann also hovers above the music), but its second-handness is more than compensated for by the youthful freshness of the music, by its sheer exuberance.
And there was exuberance aplenty in Saturday's performance, which ended this year's Victoria Summer Music Festival on a high note (with one small proviso, but read on).
From the pregnant opening of the work (rumbling low piano figurations overlaid with pizzicato strings), it was clear that we were in for a "big" reading of a "big" work. This is particularly important, in my opinion, in music which is ultimately not of the first rank (and, much as I love the Dohnányi I cannot in all honesty consider it a masterpiece) any hesitancy, any holding back is fatal. The music must be played for all its worth or not at all.
Therein lie pitfalls, of course, and there were a few points in the music where the piano (Catherine Ordronneau being able to produce a very powerful sound) overbalanced the strings, but this was a minor blemish on a first-rate performance.
As I have the luxury of essentially unlimited space for this review I shall dwell a little more than usual on details, such as the magnificent climaxes in the first movement, or the rhythmic vitality of the scherzo -- which closed magically on a finely-tuned high string chord.
The eloquent -- and eloquently played -- viola melody upon which the slow movement is based has been described as reminiscent of Schumann. For me the passage summoned up another, perhaps surprising name -- that of Edward Elgar; although perhaps it is not surprising, as Elgar was himself heavily influenced by Schumann. The central climax of the movement was very intense ("full- bore" I wrote in my notebook) and the close was quite lovely.
If there is a passage which has always reminded me of Schumann it is the lumpy main theme to the finale. This almost always sounds foursquare (quite an achievement for music written in 5/4!), yet Saturday's players managed -- at least in part, I suspect, by their fairly rapid tempo -- to avoid this sense of tedious bombast and imbue the movement with tremendous vitality.
The barnstorming coda was almost over the top (but aren't most 18-year-olds?) and the performance closed with a dramatic chord into which was mixed a rather curious rasping sound from Gleusteen's violin.
I mention this not to draw attention to the fact in itself, rather to point out that this kind of thing is not an uncommon occurrence in live performance. Very, very few musicians are capable of playing an entire evening without making the occasional slip, but the relentless perfection of the recording process has accustomed listeners to the idea of note-perfect performance.
Several years ago I attended a performance of the Beethoven violin concerto during which the soloist (I'm not naming names) had a lapse of memory and for several bars played nothing. This is not particularly remarkable. What was unusual (to say the least) was the spectacle (or whatever the aural equivalent is) of the conductor whistling his part at the soloist to refresh his memory. Which it did.
And the point of this story? Hardly anybody with whom I spoke about the performance afterwards had noticed a thing. I strongly suspect, therefore, that if Gleusteen had had his disagreement with his violin bow earlier in the music it would have passed unremarked.
Fortunately the VSMF's audience is sophisticated enough to realise most of the above and the enthusiastic applause which ensued clearly showed that the performance was being appreciated for what it had been, rather than for what it had not.
For an encore, the performers returned for a "second try" at the close of the finale, which they despatched at an even more rapid pace and without glitches. A fine close to the season.
Before the interval Gleusteen and Ordronneau played two works for violin and piano: Dvorák's Sonatine and César Franck's Sonata.
The Sonatine is Dvorák's Op.100 and, even if the closeness of opus numbers were no clue, a few moments in the presence of this delightful music not only serves immediately to identify the composer, but also to associate it with the outpouring of homesickness for his native land that also produced the "New World" Symphony and the "American" Quartet (among other works).
Gleusteen and Ordronneau opened the evening with a delightful account of the Sonatine, featuring full rounded tone from both players and excellent balances between the two.
Franck's Sonata, one of the best-known works in the repertoire, fared somewhat less well. The sonata is less chromatically dense than Franck's orchestral music (for which relief, much thanks) and has an unmistakably French lyricism: once can clearly hear the first steps being taken on the road which would eventually lead to the music of Debussy and Ravel.
And while the music was in lyrical vein the performance had much to commend it; where it came adrift was in the more dramatic passages, where -- as the police might put it -- Gleusteen and Ordronneau were guilty of using excessive force to quell the music.
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