At yesterday's matinee at Good Shepherd Church, the Jupiter Symphony Players began the second half of the season by performing works from a quartet of composers - Paul Juon, Henryk Wieniawski, Georgy L'vovich Catoire and Alexander Glazunov - who were all at one time or another employed as music instructors at prestigious conservatories.
The program opened with Juon's Arabesken, Op. 73 (1940). Juon has been all but forgotten today, but in the mid-twentieth century he was a highly respected professor and musician. He was himself a student of Arensky at the Moscow Conservatory and later, after having relocated to Germany, was employed by Joachim as a professor at the Berlin School of Music. The present piece turned out to be a short four-movement trio for winds - flute, clarinet and bassoon - that was quite pleasant to hear.
Next was Catoire's Piano Trio in F minor, Op. 14 (1914). It was Tchaikovsky who originally discovered Catoire's talent and referred him to Rimsky-Korsakov for training. The latter, though, only gave Catoire one lesson before sending him to Lyadov for further instruction. Though nothing much came of this, Catoire eventually became a professor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory and was signed to a contract by Koussevitsky's publishing house Editions Russes de Musique. A biography by Natalia Bolshakova refers to Catoire as "one of the most neglected composers of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." The trio performed yesterday was much longer and more complex than I had anticipated. It was in four movements, and the titles given each movement, such as Allegretto fantastico, were rather interesting in themselves.
After intermission, the program proceeded with the works of better known composers. First came Wieniawski's Rêverie in F minor (1885). Wieniawski was a child prodigy and a protege of Anton Rubinstein with whom he toured the U.S. from 1872 to 1874. He relocated to St. Petersburg at Rubinstein's urging and taught violin there for over a decade; in 1875 he moved to Belgium and was appointed a professor at the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles. Wieniawski was a talented composer and might have created a greater legacy if his life had not been so short; he died of a heart attack at only age 45. Still, he left behind several notable works for violin, including two concertos, which are often performed. The Rêverie, though, was actually a fantasy for piano and viola. It was a brief but hauntingly beautiful work that was here performed exquisitely by Cynthia Phelps on viola and Elizaveta Kopelman on piano.
The program concluded with Glazunov's String Quintet in A major, Op. 39 (1891-1892). Though Glazunov is today the best known of the four featured composers, this is at least partly due to his notoriety as the conductor who premiered Rachmaninoff's First Symphony in 1897. This was one of the most infamous fiascoes in musical history and led directly to Rachmaninoff's subsequent psychological collapse and crisis of confidence. Rachmaninoff's wife later accused Glazunov of having been drunk while on the podium.
Although Glazunov was indeed an incurable alcoholic, there is much more to his story than this unfortunate incident would suggest. He was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov and, like his teacher, a strong proponent of nationalism in Russian music. He was in fact the first of the nationalist composers to have been sponsored by Mitrofan Belyayev and became a prominent member of that publisher's circle, a group that also included Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin and Lyadov. Among Glazunov's own students, the most successful was Shostakovich who later recalled his teacher with a great deal of fondness.
Whatever Glazunov's personal failings, he was certainly capable as a composer of chamber music. The present string quintet (for quartet plus additional cello) was written immediately following what Glazunov's Wikipedia biography referred to as a "creative crisis" that lasted from 1890 to 1891. The work betrayed no sense, however, of any inner turmoil but was instead very mature and assured as it progressed from one movement to the next. The pizzicato that opened the second movement scherzo was especially striking.
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