Yesterday afternoon, the Jupiter Symphony Players performed a program entitled German Masters in which were featured works by Spohr, Beethoven and Bruch.
The program opened with Beethoven's String Trio in G major, Op. 9, No. 1 (1797-1798). The trios were early works, written when the composer was only 28 years old, and represented some of his first attempts at chamber music. Significantly, once he had begun to compose string quartets, starting a year later with the Op. 18, he never again returned to the trio genre. No matter that Beethoven considered them - at least at the time he wrote them - his best work, he must have found something wanting and decided he could better express himself in the quartet form. In this regard, it's interesting that Mozart only composed one string trio himself even though I've always considered that piece, the K. 563 in E-flat major, his greatest achievement in chamber music.
At any rate, though the trios are not often played today, Beethoven was quite correct to think highly of them. Even if he had never progressed beyond his early period (and who knows if he ever would have if not impelled by the tragedy of his deafness), Beethoven would still have been one of the nineteenth century's most formidable composers. We tend now to dismiss the trios and other early pieces, such as the Septet, but they are only minor when compared with the works of genius Beethoven would produce in his middle and late periods. During his first days in Vienna the composer wrote pieces he felt the audience would most enjoy, and he succeeded brilliantly. In this work, the second movement adagio is particularly beguiling.
The next work was Louis Spohr's Quintet in C minor, Op. 52 (1820) for flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon, and piano. Spohr is typical of the composers the Jupiter ensemble delights in presenting. The composer was, at least early in the nineteenth century, as popular as Beethoven, Meyerbeer, Weber and Mendelssohn, all of whom he met at one time or another on his travels through Europe. It was only in the twentieth century that Spohr's work fell into obscurity and his reputation languished. Some of this neglect was rooted in political considerations. His oratorio The Last Judgment was often performed in England prior to the commencement of World War I at which time its German origin rendered it unfashionable; his opera Jessonda had been highly regarded by Strauss but was banned by the Nazis when they assumed power in Germany. In addition, Spohr's adherence to classical forms must eventually have seemed outdated when compared with the modernism of later composers.
The present quintet took as its models the works which Mozart and Beethoven had written for similar instrumentation (the oboe was here replaced by a flute). Spohr had composed the piece for his wife, a professional harpist and competent pianist, and so favored the piano part over the winds. It was an interesting if not completely successful exercise.
After intermission, the program closed with Max Bruch's String Quintet in A minor (1918-1920). Bruch, of course, is most best known today for only one piece, his Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, but he was actually an extremely prolific composer who worked in a number of genres including opera and choral works. Like Brahms, Bruch remained rooted in the tradition of Romantic classicism and his work for that reason often resembles that of his more famous contemporary. For a long while it was thought that the present piece, written in the last year of Bruch's life, was his only attempt at composing a string quintet. In 2008, however, another quintet, this in E-flat major and copied in his daughter-in-law's hand, was discovered. It is still the A minor, though, that is best known and most often performed. This was a lush Romantic masterpiece that might very well have been written one hundred years earlier.
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