Jupiter Players Perform Hummel, Dvořák and Mozart

Things did not go smoothly for the Jupiter Players while planning yesterday's recital at Good Shepherd Church.  The program which featured works by Hummel, Dvořák and Mozart, was originally to have been performed by members of the ensemble playing alongside guest musicians Seymour Lipkin and Miriam Fried.  I had seen these two great musicians last season when they had played together on the Mozart G minor Quartet and had very much been looking forward to hearing them together once again.  Unfortunately, Seymour Lipkin has canceled several appearances this season due to ill health, and then Miriam Fried recently injured her arm (according to the information given on Jupiter's website) and was also unable to appear at this recital.  Their places were taken by Drew Petersen, piano, and Itamar Zorman, violin.

The matinee began with Hummel's Clarinet Quartet in E flat major, S. 78, WoO 5 (1808).  Though Hummel has been relegated today to a mere footnote in the history of the Viennese Classical period, he was during his lifetime quite famous.  In his youth he was regarded as a child piano prodigy on the same level as Mozart whom he in fact studied under before beginning a tour of Europe in 1788.  Afterwards, he was widely recognized not only for his talent as a pianist but also for his abilities as a composer second only to Beethoven and was even selected as Haydn's successor as Konzermeister at Esterhazy.  Even today, his music is recognized as a vital link between the Classical period and the Romantic era that followed.  Despite all that, the present piece was neglected even during Hummel's own lifetime and was only rediscovered in the twentieth century when a single surviving manuscript was located in the British Library.  Its most interesting feature is the second movement, entitled La seccatura ("The Nuisance") in which each instrument is given a different time-signature, i.e., the clarinet part is in 2/4, the violin in 12/8, the viola in 3/4 and the cello in 6/8.

The next work was Mozart's Piano Trio No. 1 in G major, K. 496 (1786).  This was actually the first of two trios the composer wrote in the key of G major.  The second, the K. 564, was the last of Mozart's works in this genre and was written two years later in 1788.  Mozart's trios have for some reason never received the attention accorded the earlier but much better known piano quartets.  That may be because they were written to be performed by others, very often amateur musicians, rather than by Mozart himself and are consequently less challenging than the quartets.  This particular trio was written at approximately the same time as Figaro, and the demands on Mozart's time are very often put forward as the cause of the unusual number of corrections and emendations, some of them in red ink, that the composer made to the score,  

After intermission, the program concluded with Dvořák's String Quartet No. 10 in E flat major, Op. 51 (1879).  Though the work was written at the request of the Florentine Quartet in 1878, it was premiered the following year in Berlin by the Joachim Quartet.  This was a heady time in Dvořák's life.  He had just won the Austrian Prize competition whose jury had included not only the famous critic Eduard Hanslick but Brahms as well.  Brahms was at the time the most famous composer in Europe and the patronage and friendship he offered Dvořák following the presentation of the award represented a turning point in the young composer's life and raised him to the stature of an internationally known artist.  When shortly thereafter he composed this piece, he was only just beginning to incorporate the Brahmsian influence in his work. (He had already dedicated the previous quartet, the No. 9, to his new mentor.)  This approach can be heard most clearly in the third movement Romanza. Nevertheless, the folk elements that influenced his earlier compositions are still present, most notably in the second movement Dumka.    In fact, Dvořák never lost touch with the folk tradition and went on to transmute it in his most famous "American" works.  Like most of the composer's early quartets, the No. 10 remained relatively unknown.  Its composition was overshadowed by the enthusiastic reception given the Slavonic Dances, a work commissioned by the publisher Simrock on the advice of Brahms.

Even without big name performers on hand, yesterday's recital went extremely well and was thoroughly enjoyable.  The musicianship on the Dvořák quartet, in particular, was exceptional and allowed me to fully appreciate this work which I was only hearing for the first time