Juilliard Chamberfest 1: Andriessen, Smetana and Mozart

Juilliard's Chamberfest is a weeklong series of recitals given every January by students who had sacrificed a week of their winter vacation to rehearse these pieces.  There are eight performances in all, and I try each year to attend as many as I can.  The first I saw this season was Tuesday evening's recital of works by Louis Andriessen, Smetana and Mozart.

The program began with Andriessen's Hout (1991) for the unusual combination of tenor saxophone, marimba, guitar and piano.  Before the piece began, it was described by saxophonist Julian Lee as "a canon displaced by a sixteenth note."  For all that, the music blurred the line between classical and jazz.  It was exciting and upbeat, and the ensemble performed perfectly together.  Sae Hashimoto was a standout for her work on the marimba.

The next work on the program was Smetana's Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 15 (1855), one of the most moving works in the entire chamber repertoire and a highlight of the Romantic movement.  As its date of composition would indicate, Smetana wrote his only piano trio long before Brahms and Dvořák began their experimentation with the genre, and his work fares very well beside their later attempts.  The cause of its greatness can be found in its tragic inspiration.  It was composed in memory of Smetana's eldest daughter who had died that same year of scarlet fever.  (Smetana's second daughter had died the year before, and the following year his fourth daughter also died and his wife was diagnosed with tuberculosis.)  Evidence of the composer's heartbreak and despair can be heard throughout the work.  But there are lighter touches as well.  In the first movement, the dark principal theme alternates with a more graceful second theme based on what Smetana described as his late daughter's favorite melody.  The final movement opens with a "gallop" that has been interpreted as a reference to an 1815 lied by Schubert, itself based on an earlier poem by Goethe entitled Der Erlkönig in which a child is killed by a supernatural force.

"The father now gallops, with terror half wild,

He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child;

He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread, –

The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead."

The harsh critical reception the piece received following its Prague premiere may have been one reason Smetana decided to relocate to Sweden in 1856.  At the time, only Liszt perceived its worth.

After intermission, the evening concluded with a performance of Mozart's late Quintet in A Major for Clarinet and Strings, K. 581 (1789).  This was one of Mozart's most sublime achievements and without doubt the finest work ever composed for clarinet.  1789 had been a very difficult year for Mozart and one wonders if it were the tribulations the composer experienced that inspired him to his best efforts.  As H.C. Robbins Landon wrote in Mozart: The Golden Years:

"If there is any one work that sums up this unhappy year, this [K. 581] must be it – parts of it seem to reflect a state of aching despair, but the whole is clothed not in some violent minor key, but in radiant A major. The music smiles through the tears…"

The quintet was written for the virtuoso Anton Stadler who performed it at its Vienna premiere on an extended range basset clarinet.  As the Wikipedia article points out, the instrument used by Stadler differed significantly from the standard Viennese basset horn.  It was only in 1992, when illustrated programs from recitals given by Stadler in Riga in 1784 were found, that the appearance of this clarinet could be determined.