Jupiter Symphony Players Perform Ries, Beethoven and Dvořák

Yesterday afternoon at Good Shepherd Church, the Jupiter Symphony Players gave a performance of nineteenth century works by Beethoven and Dvořák as well as the now nearly forgotten German composer Ferdinand Ries.

The program opened with Ries's Trio in B flat major, Op. 28 (1810) for clarinet, cello and piano.  It is not as a composer that Ries is best remembered today, although he was in fact quite prolific and left behind a fair sized body of work in a number of different genres.  Instead, Ries is known primarily as the friend and biographer of Beethoven who, not surprisingly, exercised a huge influence over Ries's style that helped place it squarely between the classical and romantic traditions.  Beethoven not only gave Ries piano lessons but also employed him as his secretary and music copyist.  When Ries gave his public debut as a pianist in Augarten in 1804, it was his teacher's Third Piano Concerto that he performed.  The Op. 28 trio, though, was written at a time when the two were experiencing a rift in their friendship.  Beethoven had mistakenly thought that Ries was trying to secure for himself the position of Kappelmeister at Kassel, a sinecure in which Beethoven had at one time himself been interested.  The suspicion was unfounded, however, and Ries eventually left Vienna to travel about Europe before finally arriving in England in 1813.  Ries proved a great success in London and while there worked as Beethoven's unpaid agent.  Much later, in 1825, Ries was to conduct Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at a festival held at Aix-la-Chapelle.  Afterwards, he wrote to his teacher:

"It is a work which is without its equal; had you never written another one, you would have assured your immortality by it.  Where will you lead us yet?"

No matter what Ries's relations with his mentor at the time he composed his Op. 28, he obviously intended it as a form of tribute as he took for his model Beethoven's own Op. 11, also written in the key of B flat major and originally arranged for the same combination of instruments.

The next work on the program was a much more familiar piece - the Piano Trio in E flat major, Op. 70, No. 2 (1808) by Beethoven himself.  Though perhaps not so well appreciated as its companion piece, the "Ghost," this is nevertheless one of the major works of the composer's middle period.  Its genesis may have been inspired at least in part by the Beethoven's reexamination of Haydn's methods of composition.  As one source points out:

"...Beethoven had written a Haydnesque alternating-variation movement in the E♭-major Piano Trio, Op. 70, No. 2.  Indeed, in the trio Beethoven most closely approximated the theme-type, character, and form of Haydn's alternating strophic variations, in a work which quoted the slow movement of Haydn's Symphony 88 (as had the Trio of Op. 18 No. 5), and which is worth exploring here.  E.T.A. Hoffmann noted the formal resemblance to Haydn in his 1813 review, and Czerny even strengthened the association by asserting that the major theme imitated a Croatian folksong."

Whatever its debt to Haydn, the music is unmistakably Beethoven's own.  He far surpassed his former teacher in achieving a more equitable balance among the three instruments than had previously been heard in this genre.  In many of Haydn's trios, so much of the emphasis is placed on the piano part that the strings often appear to be present merely as accompaniment.  In contrast, it is really only in the final movement of this work that Beethoven gives the piano free rein and allows it to come into its own as it brings the music to a triumphant conclusion.

After intermission, the afternoon ended with a performance of Dvořák's String Sextet in A major, Op. 48 (1878) for two violins, two violas and two cellos.  The work was written relatively early in Dvořák's career, only a few years after he had first come to prominence by winning the Austrian Prize (a competition that had been judged by both Eduard Hanslick and Brahms himself) and following the success of his Slavonic Dances in 1878.  The fact that Joseph Joachim was among the musicians who played the sextet at its Berlin premiere was one sign that the composer had at last arrived.  Another indication of Dvořák's increasing confidence in his abilities can be found in the emphasis he now placed on traditional Czech folk music, especially in the use of the Dumka in the second movement, in place of the German works that had hitherto served as his models.  This is reinforced by the reference to the Slavonic Dances in the third movement trio and again in the third variation in the fourth movement.

One of the advantages to attending a Jupiter Players performance is their ability to attract exceptionally talented guest artists.  Yesterday, there were two highly accomplished musicians at hand.  I've heard pianist Drew Petersen play with the ensemble on prior occasions and have always been impressed by his ability.  He was particularly effective here in his performance on the Beethoven trio, a work whose piano part was deliberately made difficult by the composer as a means to showcase his own prowess at the keyboard.  In the same manner, violinist Shmuel Ashkenasi contributed a great deal to the success of the allegretto in that same piece.  In the third movement, the violin plays a long lyrical melodic line that is untypical of Beethoven's music and that requires great finesse on the part of the violinist.  Mr. Ashkenasi handled it expertly.