On Wednesday evening I went to Paul Hall to hear the ACJW Ensemble perform works by Mozart, Janáček and Schumann. As I had not renewed my subscription to the ensemble's series at Weill, this was only the third opportunity I'd had this season to hear these excellent musicians.
The program opened with Mozart's Quintet for Horn and Strings in E-flat Major, K. 407 (1782). The work was composed at a turning point in Mozart's career. After having quarreled bitterly with Archbishop Colloredo, he had left Salzburg the year before to start over in Vienna where he hoped to eventually make his fortune. He was also a newlywed after having married Constanze Weber in August of that year. The quintet was written for Ignaz Leutgeb, a former member of the Salzburg orchestra who had relocated to Vienna at about the same time as Mozart. He must have been quite a virtuoso if he were able to handle the intricacies of the horn part that were made all the more difficult by the absence of any valves on the instrument. Mozart went on to write his four horn concertos for Leutgeb, who also ran an unsuccessful cheese shop that had been financed by Mozart's father Leopold, and the two continued as close friends even if Mozart did sometimes tease the musician unmercifully with his jokes. In later years, Leutgeb was one of those willing to lend Mozart money when the composer had fallen on hard times.
Mozart's quintet is unique among his works in its unusual configuration of instruments. Aside from the horn, the work was arranged for one violin, two violas and one cello. Mozart was an accomplished violist and displayed a great affinity for that instrument. Here the viola's mellow tones worked perfectly in conjunction with the low range of the horn. In some places, the piece seemed more a concerto than a chamber work as the horn was continually given solo passages in which the strings were used only as accompaniment.
The next work was Janáček's Mládí ("Youth") (1924) for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon and bass clarinet. It's seems that the composer's chamber works have been performed more often than usual during the past few seasons; hitherto I hadn't had much opportunity to hear any other than his two famous string quartets. As I've been exposed to more of Janáček's oeuvre, I've gained a much greater respect for his abilities. The work at hand consisted of a standard arrangement for a woodwind sextet and served the work's purpose very well. The composer's intent had been autobiographical. He had wished to create in musical form a reminiscence of his long past schooldays (Janáček was already age 70 at the time he wrote this music) at the Augustinian monastery in Brno, the Moravian city in which he spent almost his entire life.
After intermission, the evening ended with Schumann's Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 63 (1847). This was the strongest performance of the evening. It was also particularly interesting to hear this work after having attended a performance on Sunday of Mendelssohn's C minor trio that had been written only two years earlier. In fact, Schumann's choice of the D minor key in his own work was a tribute to Mendelssohn's D minor trio with which Schumann had been extremely impressed and had written upon first hearing it:
",,,the most masterly trio of the present era, just as, in their times, were the B-flat [Archduke] and D major [Ghost] trios of Beethoven and that of Schubert in E-flat major. It is a beautiful composition that years from now will delight our grandchildren and great-grandchildren."
Listening to any of the works Schumann composed in the 1840's, one cannot help watching for signs of the incipient madness that was to overtake him in the following decade. And indeed this trio, especially in the first and third movements, is filled with darkness to the extent that Schumann himself characterized the piece as "gloomy." The death of his infant son Emil, which occurred as the composer was at work on the trio, could only have contributed to the sense of despair with which the work is infused.
Of the three Schumann trios, it is the D minor that is usually regarded as the most accomplished. In a sense, however, it is a throwback to the Baroque era in that the strings are not given equal weight with the piano and are sometimes used only as accompaniment. In spite of this, the trio is one of the composer's most successful and best known chamber pieces. It's definitely a powerful work, and the three talented musicians who performed it on Wednesday evening did an excellent job of expressing all the depth of feeling Schumann had put into it. These were Shir Semmel, piano; Siwoo Kim, violin; and Caleb van der Swaagh, cello.
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