Mannes Chamber Music: Dvorak and Schoenberg

Last evening's chamber recital at Mannes consisted of two famous pieces, a quartet by Dvorak arranged for winds and a sextet by Schoenberg, played without intermission.

The program opened with Dvorak's String Quartet in F, No. 12, Op. 96, the “American Quartet” (1893) in a transcription for wind quintet by David Walter.  The quartet was composed, along with the Ninth Symphony and the String Quintet No. 3, during the period (1892-1895) when Dvorak sojourned in this country as director of the National Conservatory of Music.  Just as the composer had been influenced by Czech folk music in his earlier work, so during his American period he sought inspiration in Native American and Afro-American music.  In this, he was assisted by his pupil Harry Burleigh who first introduced him to American spirituals.  Though musicologists have long sought to identify the exact "folk tunes" that inspired Dvorak, such academic exercises miss the real point - that Dvorak was the first composer to recognize the importance of the Afro-American contribution to the development of American music.  He wrote at the time:

"I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed in the United States. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them."

As far as the transcription is concerned, although the students at yesterday evening's recital all played marvelously, I have to admit that I much prefer the original quartet for strings to the use of wind instruments.  To me, the winds are simply not able to convey the same effect.

The evening ended with Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4 (1899) in the original version for string sextet.  Ironically, it is for this piece, written long before Schoenberg involved himself with the twelve tone technique, that the composer is best remembered and that still today remains his most popular work.  It is based on a poem by Richard Dehmel in which a man learns that his lover is pregnant by another man who is now no longer part of her life.  The verse is extremely moving, especially at the end when the strength of the man's love overcomes all barriers and enables him to fully embrace his companion's condition and accept the child as their own.  In their performance of the sextet's finale, the Mannes students succeeded perfectly in capturing this transcendental moment.  It was wonderfully played by the entire ensemble.