Jupiter Players Perform Weber, Bruch and Brahms

On Monday, I went to hear the Jupiter Players give a matinee performance, appropriately entitled German Masters, at Good Shepherd Church on West 66th Street.  The program featured major works by three of the greatest German Romantics - Carl Maria von Weber, Max Bruch and Brahms.

The program opened with Weber's Trio in G minor, Op. 63 (1818-1819) for flute, cello and piano.  Weber's music is not that often performed and listening to the lively piece, which I had never heard before, made me realize what a shame that it is.  This is really wonderful music that makes the Romantic era come alive.  Though it opens in the key of G minor, it soon moves to a major key and is filled with pleasant surprises, as when the opening theme is unexpectedly recalled at the end of the first movement.  The real delight is the lyrical third movement andante, titled by the composer Schäfers Klage ("Shepherd’s Lament"), that provides a musical setting for Goethe's 1802 poem.  Written shortly before Weber began work on Der Freischütz, the trio was premiered at the home of Louis Spohr, and Weber was quite pleased with the result.

The next work was Bruch's Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 5 (1858), a youthful work written when the composer was only age 19 and still heavily under the influence of Mendelssohn.  Later, Bruch would follow Brahms in the tradition of Romantic Classicism, but he never possessed the latter's genius even if his own violin concerto came to rival Brahms's in popularity.  This particular three-movement work, whatever promise it may show, is not entirely successful and at times sounds almost turgid.

After intermission, the program concluded with Brahms's String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36 (1864-1865).  This was the piece I'd really come to hear.  It's a masterpiece, and I've always considered it among Brahms's finest chamber works.  He was only age 32 when he completed the piece, and it's somewhat surprising he never returned to the genre after having achieved such outstanding success with both this and the Sextet No. 1 written five years earlier.  In the No. 2, Brahms displays an astonishing mastery of counterpoint and, in the third movement, new dexterity in composing variations.  Of course, one reason the Sextet has gained attention is the coded reference in the first movement to Agathe von Siebold.  In 1858, while staying in Göttingen, Brahms had met Agathe, a doctor's daughter and an excellent amateur singer, and become infatuated with her to the point that they became briefly engaged before Brahms abruptly broke it off.  He must still have had strong feelings for her, however, to have remembered her seven years later in this work.

As always, the Jupiter ensemble musicians were excellent at this performance and were joined by a trio of virtuoso guest musicians - Mikhail Kopelman violin, Elizaveta Kopelman piano, and Cynthia Phelps viola.  The entire recital was extremely rewarding and well appreciated by its enthusiastic audience.