Wow—who knew?
Most piano quintets are hastily thrown together affairs;
either a string quartet will scrounge up a pianist, or a piano trio will look
for an extra violinist and violist. They’ll play for a couple of rehearsals,
and then do the concert. Then it’s kiss / kiss and goodbye.
What’s the problem with that?
Well, it takes a surprisingly long time to take five
individuals and make one unified group. And even with extraordinary musicians,
there are matters of style that have to be worked out over the years. My
staccato, for example, may be shorter than yours. (Staccato are short, sharp
notes.) My vibrato is faster than yours—should I slow it down, or should you
speed yours up? Even tuning—a colleague once told me that my thirds are quite
high: not high enough to be out of tune, but still higher than hers. So I
adjusted.
That’s the technical stuff, and it’s by no means little. But
rather like the soup that keeps getting better after days of heating and
reheating, something almost mystical happens. It’s no longer onions sitting
next to tomatoes next to potatoes; it’s no longer a violinist playing with a
cellist and a pianist.
The problem? Well, there aren’t that many pieces of music
for piano quintets out there—certainly nothing like the piano trios or the
string quartets. Schubert has the famous Trout Quintet—but that has a double
bass instead of the second violin. Schumann has a wonderful piano quintet,
which essentially established the pattern. Brahms follows suit, as does Cesar
Frank, Franck, Dvorak and Shostakovich.
Who’s missing? Well, there’s Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and
Schubert—pretty big names.
So the world is filled with guys who play in piano trios or
string quartets. But until today, I was unaware that there was a full time
piano quartet out there. And boy, what an amazing ensemble they make! They
started in 1999, and the group—called Ensemble Syntonia—is made up of five
excellent French musicians. Here’s a riveting performance of the Cesar Franck
piano quintet, which a group of French critics voted “definitive” in a blind
listening in 2010. Take a listen:
I apologize, by the way, for the annoying background hum,
which is as inexplicable to me as the recording, which couldn’t possibly have
taken place outside. Why? Because the resonance—the slight echo in the sound—is
too great for anything played outside. You need walls and an enclosed space to
get that sound. But what do I know?
At any rate, this is classic Franck, who wrote a lot
of music, but who is only remembered for three or four pieces, of which this is
one. Franck had a difficult life, in parts—a childhood prodigy, he had an
overbearing father who shopped him around Paris, eventually turning off the
musical public. So they retreated back to Liege, where Franck fell in love with
a girl of whom Papa didn’t approve. Then Franck gave the middle finger to his
father and walked out. They reconciled enough to attend the wedding.
After that, Franck served as organist at Sainte-Clotilde,
and was later appointed professor of organ at the Paris Conservatory. So he
wrote a lot of organ music, a lot of religious music, and operas and oratorios.
With the exception of the organ pieces, which are still played, and the Panis
Angelicus, which is still sung, not much of this music ever gets heard.
Nor was it all particularly good. And then, somewhere in the
late 1870’s until his death in 1890, he got an incredible creative surge. And
that’s when this work comes from—1877-1879.
And what a tempestuous work it is. Legend has it that Franck
had fallen in love with one of his students—and that may be what lies under it.
Interestingly, Madame Franck had a particular antipathy to the piece, and said
so publically. Oh—and another funny story: the piece was premiered with Camille
Saint-Saens, the noted French composer, at the piano. And apparently,
Saint-Saens so disliked the piece that he played it, walked off the stage and
never acknowledged the wild applause or the offer of the manuscript (a serious
economic mistake).
Well, the disc which has the Franck Quintet pairs it with
the father of them all: The Schumann Piano Quintet. And this is from what has
been called “Schumann’s chamber music year;” 1842, during which he produced
this work, a Piano Quartet, and three string quartets.
Liszt didn’t like it, feeling that it was too conservative,
but nobody else joins him in this opinion, at least today. It’s a wonderful,
fiery work, which Schumann’s wife Clara played often throughout her career. And
yes, apparently Robert Schumann, probably peeved by his wife’s prominence
versus his own somewhat lesser star, stated that the piece could only be played
by a man.
Well, this performance does have a man on the ivory, and it’s
an excellent, tempestuous rendition. But I can tell you that, having a version
of the same work with Martha Argerich, women can definitely play the piece.
Here it is:
Lastly, to finish up, here’s another Romantic Piano Quintet,
by Antonin Dvorak. Written in 1887, it’s trademark Dvorak—filled with Czech
melodies and musical forms (the second movement is a dumka: a form that slow movement with a manic fast section).
Sadly, the Ensemble Syntonia have not posted this on
YouTube. So here, standing ably in, is Sviatoslav Richter with the Borodin
Quartet.
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