Good Shepherd Church: Jupiter Symphony Players Perform Mozart, Schubert, Schreker and Hiller

At yesterday afternoon's matinee, the Jupiter Symphony Players performed works by Mozart, Schubert, Franz Schreker and Ferdinand Hiller in a program entitled Austro-German Gems.  The works featured were lesser known pieces I had never before heard.  All I knew of them were the brief descriptions I had read on the Jupiter website.

The program opened with three of Mozart's Kegelduette, K. 487/496a, Nos. 4, 5 and 8 (1786).  These duos - Mozart composed twelve in all - were originally written for two horns but were here arranged for horn and clarinet.  According to the Jupiter site, they were "most likely composed for the virtuoso hornist Joseph Leutgeb (a friend of the Mozart family in Salzburg) and completed on July 27, 1786 while playing ninepins."  Apparently Mozart was very fond of a game called kegel (German for "skittles") and it's from this that the work's title derives.  At any rate, these were very brief pieces - it took only ten minutes to perform all three - and were pleasant enough to hear if not particularly distinguished.

The next work was Schreker's Der Wind (1909) arranged for violin, clarinet, horn, cello and piano.  Although Schreker is known today, to the extent that he is remembered at all, as a composer of opera during the Weimar period, he first gained recognition through several dance pieces he had written early in the twentieth century before the outbreak of World War I.  According to Wikipedia:

"His "pantomime", Der Geburtstag der Infantin, commissioned by the dancer Grete Wiesenthal and her sister Elsa for the opening of the 1908 Kunstschau, first called attention to his development as a composer. Such was the success of the venture that Schreker composed several more dance-related works for the two sisters including Der Wind, Valse lente and Ein Tanzspiel (Rokoko)."

The work itself was moody and opened with a the plaintive sound of a violin accompanied only by piano.  To me it foreshadowed Schreker's tragic end as a victim of Nazi persecution.  It certainly would have been interesting to have heard it in performance along with the actual ballet for which it was written.  Reading the quote above, one wonders how much contact Schreker himself might have had with Klimt, Kokoschka and the other members of the Vienna Secession who participated in the 1908 Kunstschau.  Grete Wiesenthal, the dancer who commissioned the piece, occupies a minor place in the biography of Mahler.  The conductor created a scandal when he bypassed the ballet master at the Hofoper in order to give a coveted role to Wiesenthal and was forced to resign as a result.

The Schreker was followed by Schubert's String Quartet No. 9 in G minor, D. 173 (1815).  The composer was only eighteen at the time he wrote this work.  If it as not as great a masterpiece as the later quartets, it is still a remarkable achievement for one so young to have composed.  It shows clearly the influence Mozart had on Schubert when the latter first began his career.  But already Schubert had an individual style all his own that comes through here perfectly well and impresses the listener with its maturity and self-assurance.

After intermission, the program closed with Hiller's Piano Quartet No. 3 in A minor Op. 133 (1868).  As a close friend of Mendelssohn and a student of Hummel, Hiller was at the very center of German music in the mid-nineteenth century.  He was even the dedicatee of Schumann's piano concerto and conducted that work at its premiere.  Judging by this work's high opus number, he was a very prolific composer; but he first enjoyed a very successful career as a concert pianist and later was appointed director of the Leipzig Gewendhaus Orchestra.  The quartet itself is a major work.  The slow second movement, marked adagio expressivo, that opens with the cello playing alone is particularly beautiful.  Listening to such a work can only make one wonder at the twists of fate that ultimately rendered this composer, so famous in his own day, almost totally forgotten today.  This is definitely a work that deserves to be performed more often.  It also makes one curious to hear more works by Hiller.

The ensemble played all the above works with their usual high level of musicianship.