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First Unitarian Church
June 5, 2016
Why are there two violins in a string quartet, but only one viola and one cello?
For well over two centuries now, the makeup of the string quartet has been fixed and few would query it. Yet, if one thinks about it — and for reasons which will very soon become apparent, I have been thinking about it since last Sunday's concert — it does not entirely make sense.
The violin is, after all, a more penetrating instrument than either of its larger siblings, some of the greatest composers of string quartets have not been violinists, so one might imagine, that in the interests of fairness, balance and je ne sais quois else, somebody might have at least experimented with a different combination.
And indeed, sporadically — very, very sporadically — there have been limited experiments, but neither of the two that I know of led to anything further: Arensky's quartet in memory of Tchaikovsky (played at Eine Kleine two years ago — review here) featured two cellos and Mozart's Horn Quintet, K.407, is scored for horn (obviously) and a quartet consisting of violin, two violas and cello.
Mozart, of course, played the viola.
It was during Sunday's delightful performance of the Mozart — to be precise, during the lovely slow movement — that the question with which I opened this review occurred to me.
Obviously the main focus of the quintet is the horn, possibly even more so than in other quintets the additional instrument has an almost concertante rôle. In the opening movement, for example, pretty much all of the melodic interest is with the horn and the strings just need to "sound pretty".
Fortunately, Alana Despins proved an excellent "soloist" and her "accompanists" (Terence Tam, Kenji Fusé, Kay Cochran and Laura Backstrom) provided the ideal background.
The slow movement was perhaps the highlight of the work and it was the absolutely gorgeous accompaniment here which prompted my musings.
The bubbly finale smiled (grinned, even) its way merrily towards its ending, with a delicious little fugato near the close just to liven matters up.
Exquisite.
The afternoon opened with Despins and pianist Lorraine Min playing the Nocturno by Franz Strauss, Richard's horn-playing father (Wagner wrote specifically for his playing in a number of his operas).
Quite why Strauss used Spanish rather than Italian for his title I have no idea, but frankly nor do I care. Despite its very conventional, arpeggiated opening (I can just imagine Wagner's comments about that) the entrance of the horn dispelled any doubts.
Despins played with great skill and confidence, producing a fine tone and was clearly totally in sympathy with what was surely, to the majority of the audience, myself included, unfamiliar music. Min made the best of what is, for the most part (the bolder central section excepted) not a terribly interesting accompaniment.
Ah, first love! For most of us there will be nothing more tangible remaining than our increasingly unreliable memories of this major rite of passage.
Dmitri Shostakovich, on the other hand, could always play through his first piano trio to remind him of his own sixteen-year-old self's emotions.
The trio, splendidly played by Min, Tam and Backstrom, is — obviously — not mature Shostakovich, although there are occasional hints of the later composer. But Shostakovich was still living in the Soviet Union of Lenin and, whatever one says about Lenin, who was certainly far from being a nice man, he paled into insignificance when Joseph Stalin succeeded him and millions of lives sank into starvation and worse. There is probably an argument to be made (a PhD thesis perhaps?) that it was precisely the persecution of Stalin and his henchmen which forced Shostakovich to become the truly great composer we know. One might make a similar argument about Beethoven's deafness.
The suffering of unrequited love is of a quite different nature and those first romantic feelings inform the trio, far less often heard than its mature sibling.
Sunday's performance was as passionate as one could reasonably ask. The playing was first-class and balances between the instruments excellent. While a far cry from the mature Shostakovich, the work does deserve to be heard more often, especially when played like this.
I will readily admit to having a somewhat ambivalent relationship with the music of Johannes Brahms.
I was going to say "chamber music" but, on reflection, my ambivalence extends to more than that.
My feelings about Brahms cover the entire spectrum: there are a few works — the first violin sonata and third symphony spring immediately to mind — which are among my personal all-time favourite works. At the other end, there is a handful of works — and the piano quintet certainly stands out here — which I cannot abide and would happily never hear again.
Of course, the majority of his output falls in between these two extremes, with much, perhaps even most, of it tending more towards the enjoyable than otherwise.
But Brahms did have a tendency to ramble on occasion, at length, and this is why my reaction to Sunday's performance of the Piano Quartet No.2, Op.26 was not wholeheartedly enthusiastic.
This was not, I hasten to make abundantly plain, any fault of the performers.
Part of the problem is the sheer length of the work, around fifty minutes in total. Terence Tam, in his spoken introduction, calls it possibly the third-longest chamber work in history, outdone only by Schubert's Octet and String Quintet — either deliberately or otherwise ignoring twentieth century monsters like Morton Feldman's String Quartet (II), which lasts almost five [sic] hours.
There was a great deal to enjoy in the performance, even though I would happily have forgone the repeat in the first movement: the development of the first movement, particularly intense; the echt-Brahmsian opening of the slow movement, Backstrom's ominous cello giving way to more relaxed, sunnier music, before the return of the atmospheric moodiness. The scherzo was almost playful in parts — hardly the first adjective one would associate with Brahms — while the jolly, perky finale ended with an exciting coda.
The warm reception which followed the final chords was thoroughly merited and the 2016 Eine Kleine Summer Music season is off to a resounding start.
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