On Monday evening at Christ & St. Stephen's Church, the Jupiter Players performed the last of their three summer recitals. The program was appropriately entitled Timeless Classics and featured works by the three greatest composers of the Classical period - Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. Although each of these three left behind him a considerable body of chamber work, only the piece written by Mozart had originally been arranged for chamber ensemble. In contrast, those by Haydn and Beethoven were transcriptions of larger symphonic works that had later been scored for smaller groups of players.
The program opened with Mozart's Salzburg Symphony No. 3 in F major, K. 138 (1772), a work often referred to more accurately as a Divertimento for String Quartet. But this is not a true string quartet in the sense we now know it. Nor, for that matter, were the six "Milanese" quartets, K. 155 through 160, that followed shortly thereafter. It was not until the following year, 1773, that Mozart first had an opportunity to hear Haydn's quartets (Opp. 9, 17 and 20), an experience that led him to then attempt his own series of six "Viennese" quartets, the K. 168 through 173. The instant three-movement piece (it lacks the customary minuet) was instead based on the Italian sinfonia and was intended more as a form of light entertainment than any type of serious composition. Mozart had only recently returned to Salzburg from a visit to Milan, and it is likely he began work on the quartet while still in Italy. Even if this were not the case, he was still clearly under the influence of that country and its music as he composed this and its two companion pieces, the K. 136 and 137. All three have a buoyant cheerful character that reflect the fifteen year old's high spirits. His early patron, Archbishop Schrattenbach, had only just passed and Mozart had not yet begun to encounter the problems that would eventually force him to leave Salzburg for the more congenial atmosphere of Vienna. The quartet is extremely engaging and demonstrates how precocious a composer Mozart had already become at so young an age, but its true significance lies in its foreshadowing of the great chamber works the composer was later to produce once he had attained full maturity and had left behind the confining atmosphere of Salzburg.
The next piece was Haydn's Symphony No. 103 in E-flat major, H. I:103 (1795), nicknamed "The Drumroll" for the timpani that open the full orchestral version. This was one of the composer's most famous symphonic works, written on the occasion of his second visit to London at a time when he had already been acknowledged "father of the symphony." In its original form, it made use of a much larger ensemble, consisting of some sixty instruments, than was then the custom. Perhaps in this, his next to last symphony, Hadyn wished to show off to his English audience his full mastery of the genre. If so, he succeeded beyond all expectation. The second movement andante was so well received at its premiere that it had to be encored. But it was in the complex final movement, which Haydn later shortened when conducting the work in Vienna, that the composer's full genius could best be appreciated. At the recital on Monday evening, the transcription performed was for flute quintet and had been artfully arranged by J.P. Salomon, the producer of Haydn's London concerts. Aside from his role as impresario, Salomon was himself an accomplished violinist and the founder of a respected string ensemble that had already premiered the composer's Opp. 71 and 74 quartets. Though Salomon no doubt intended the current arrangement primarily as a showpiece for his ensemble, the work went on to enjoy great popularity among amateur musicians throughout the nineteenth century. The transcription captured very well the spirit of the original; the inclusion of only a single flute worked far better than I had anticipated in capturing the full range of the winds which in the original had consisted of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns and two trumpets.
After intermission, the program closed with one of Beethoven's best known works, the Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 (1808), nicknamed the "Pastorale." Although Beethoven is today considered the epitome of the the classical composer, it would be equally correct to see him, especially in a work such as this, as a forerunner of the Romantic movement. The symphony shows a completely different side of his character from the "heroic" stance more commonly associated with him during his Middle Period. Countless descriptions of the eccentric composer lodged in his Vienna apartment have tended to blind us to Beethoven's intense love of nature, a trait that was later to become emblematic of the Romantic artist. Instead of locking himself in his rooms as his hearing affliction worsened, Beethoven more than ever sought the solitude of the countryside where he would at last be free from the troublesome intrusions of his fellow men. According to Anton Schindler, the composer's favorite reading during this period was Christian Sturm’s Reflections on the Works of God in the Realm of Nature and Providence. The Sixth Symphony thus can be seen as Beethoven's tribute to the natural world in which he felt so at home; it was an attempt to recreate in his music the sounds of nature he was no longer able to enjoy himself but could only imagine. There were few precedents for such an approach. Haydn's oratorio The Seasons was much too stylized and lost in its mythological antecedents to have served as a true source of inspiration. Much closer was Portrait musical de la nature (Pastoralsymphonie) written in 1784 by Justin Heinrich Knecht; the descriptions given by its author to each of its five movements, in fact, were remarkably similar to the programmatic titles Beethoven devised for his own work. The transcription for string sextet played here was completed by Michael Gotthard Fischer, a composer and organist who was a contemporary of Beethoven. The six musicians, even with the diminished resources available to them, still strove their utmost to bring out the full glory of this work and ended by leaving the audience with a truly memorable performance. Though all the performers were uniformly excellent, I was especially impressed with the virtuosity of guest artist Danbi Um who played first violin brilliantly while using a 1683 "ex-Petschek" Amati.
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