WQXR/Carnegie Hall: Hagen Quartet Performs Dvořák, Widmann and Mozsrt

On Friday evening WQXR, New York City's classical music station, broadcast another recital live from Carnegie Hall, on this occasion from its smaller stage at Zankel Hall.  The featured musicians were the Hagen Quartet - consisting of Lukas Hagen and Rainer Schmidt, violins, Veronika Hagen, viola, and Clemens Hagen, cello - joined by clarinetist and composer Jörg Widmann.

The program opened with four selections - "I know that on my love," "Death reigns," "Here gaze I" and "Nature lies peaceful" - from Dvořák's The Echo of Songs, the composer's 1887 arrangements for string quartet of  twelve songs taken from his 1865 cycle Cypresses.  The original song cycle, written when Dvořák was only 24 years old, was not only a youthful first attempt at composition but was also an intensely personal expression of romantic yearning for his pupil Josefína Čermáková who would eventually become his sister-in-law.  While it was understandable that Dvořák never wished to publish these early songs in their original form during his lifetime (they were, in fact, not published in such form until 2008),  he nevertheless retained a sentimental fondness for them and finally reworked them more than twenty years later into the instrumental movements heard at this recital.  Though the songs, more passionate than accomplished, only hint at the genius the composer would display in his maturity, they are much more polished than they first appear.  They also reveal even at this early date Dvořák's deep interest in Czech folk music.

The next work was the American premiere of a new work, a clarinet quintet by Jörg Widmann that had been co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall.  The last time I heard a work by Mr. Widmann was two years ago when I attended a recital given by the great Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida in which she performed a 2016 piece by Mr. Widmann entitled Sonatina facile, a work inspired by Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 16 in C Major, K. 545 that was also performed by Ms. Uchida at the same recital.  While the clarinet quintet performed on Friday evening did not, as far as I know, claim to take its inspiration from Mozart's K. 581, the very fact that it was placed on the same program with it more or less demanded that comparison be made between the two works.  And therein lay the problem.  No matter how talented a contemporary composer may be, it is highly doubtful that his or her work will possess even a fraction of the genius contained in a Mozart composition, whether it be a piano sonata or a clarinet quintet.  In this instance the quintet turned out to be a highly accessible neo-Romantic piece with some New Age sound effects in the higher registers.  Not surprisingly, a great deal of weight was given to the clarinet part.  The audience enjoyed the performance immensely.

After intermission, the recital concluded with a performance of Mozart's late Quintet in A Major for Clarinet and Strings, K. 581 (1789).  This was one of Mozart's most sublime achievements and without doubt the finest work ever composed for clarinet.  1789 had been a very difficult year for Mozart - he was in dire financial straits and suffering from depression - and one wonders if it were the tribulations the composer was then experiencing that inspired him to his best efforts.  As H.C. Robbins Landon wrote in Mozart: The Golden Years:

"If there is any one work that sums up this unhappy year, this [K. 581] must be it – parts of it seem to reflect a state of aching despair, but the whole is clothed not in some violent minor key, but in radiant A major. The music smiles through the tears…"

The quintet was written for the virtuoso Anton Stadler who performed it at its Vienna premiere on an extended range basset clarinet.  As the Wikipedia article points out, the instrument used by Stadler differed significantly from the standard Viennese basset horn.  It was only in 1992, when illustrated programs from recitals given by Stadler in Riga in 1784 were found, that the appearance of this clarinet could be determined.

Jörg Widmann is an amazing clarinetist, a true virtuoso, and the Hagen Quartet a brilliant chamber ensemble.  Their combined talents came together wonderfully in the performance of the Mozart quintet.  It was definitely one of the finest renditiions of this popular masterpiece I've been fortunate enough to have heard.