For their last recital of 2015 the Jupiter Players performed a fascinating program at St. Stephen's Church that, even if it were not technically holiday music, was certainly in the spirit of the season. The Austrian and Hungarian composers featured were Haydn, Lickl, Handel and Dohnányi.
The program opened with Haydn's String Trio in G major, Op. 53, No.1 (1790) as transcribed from the Piano Sonata Hob. XVI:40 (1784). All three string trios in the Op. 53 are identical to the Hob. XVI:40-42 keyboard sonatas. Although the sonatas were published first and are customarily considered the original versions of these pieces, it's not actually known when they were written or even if they do in fact antedate the trios. Some musicologists believe it may have been the other way around and that the sonatas were in fact derived from the trios. It's also unknown who completed the transcriptions, whether it was the composer himself or a colleague. Certainly, just as he was "father of the string quartet," Haydn was a master of the string trio form as well. He wrote some 80 trios for traditional instrumentation as well as a huge number (126) for viola, cello and the baryton (a lower register string instrument played by his patron Prince Esterházy that has since fallen out of use).
The next work was Johann Georg Lickl's Cassazione in E-flat major (1798) for flute, clarinet, horn and bassoon. Lickl, a student of Albrechtsberger and Haydn, was a (very) minor Austrian composer who is today no more than a footnote in Viennese musical history. In spite of his lack of renown, Lickl somehow managed to produce the present serenade, a piece so lovely that when it was first discovered in 1910 it was thought to be a lost Mozart work, or so at least its publisher Albert J. Andraud claimed when it first made the cassazione available in 1936. Still, after having heard the piece, it's not difficult to understand how such a mistake could have been made. The four-movement work is absolutely charming and bears more than a superficial resemblance to the wind serenades that Mozart himself authored. No matter how obscure its composer, the work itself deserves a permanent place in the repertoire.
The first half of the recital ended with a Passacaglia composed by Handel and transcribed for violin and viola by Johan Halvorsen in 1894. Based on the last movement of Handel’s Keyboard Suite No. 7 in G minor, HWV 432, the work consists of sixteen variations over a continuing bassline. A thesis by one Jessica Emory details Halvorsen's changes to the original work and argues that these are so extensive that the result can be viewed as an original work in its own right. An interesting sidelight is that famed violinist Jascha Heifetz took Halvorsen's piece and rewrote it for two violins. The manuscript was only discovered in 2012 among Heifetz Collection papers at the Library of Congress. In any event, the version for violin and viola performed here was a showcase for the virtuoso skills of guest artists Josef Špaček, concertmaster of the Czech Philharmonic, and violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt.
After intermission the recital continued with Liszt's 1879 transcription of the Sarabande and Chaconne from Handel's first opera Almira. Liszt, of course, is known as much for his transcriptions as for his original compositions. An article in Wikipedia lists 99 composers whose works Liszt transcribed or arranged for piano(s). A separate article gives the history of this particular transcription which was completed by Liszt for his English student Walter Bache who at the time was preparing to travel to England to take part in a Handel festival:
"Liszt's decision to set Handel was probably due at least in part to please British audiences, for whom Handel was still the preeminent national composer and before whom Bache would likely appear. Nevertheless, the choice of subject matter was surprising, not only by being Handel instead of Bach but also from being taken from a Handel opera which was virtually ignored at the time."
Guest pianist William Wolfram gave an excellent rendition of this difficult piece.
The program concluded with Ernő Dohnányi's Piano Quintet in C minor, Op. 1 (1894). Unlike his fellow Hungarian composers, Bartók and Kodály, Dohnányi did not find inspiration in his native country's folk music but rather turned to the Classical/Romatic tradition of Brahms who in fact said of this piece: "I could not have written it better myself" and thereupon arranged for its first public performance. It's easy to understand Brahms's enthusiasm. This is a powerful work whose symphonic breadth stretches the boundaries of chamber repertoire, so much so that the listener finds it hard to believe that this was Dohnányi's first published work. It deserves to be heard more often. As it is, the performance provided a fitting end to the ensemble's 2015 recital series.
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