Allegro Moderato
Andante un poco mosso
Scherzo: Allegro - Trio
Rondo: Allegro Vivace

Schubert was a very sociable man and many well known images show him sitting at the piano in an elegant salon surrounded by eager onlookers. The fact that he was a fine pianist (albeit no virtuoso) who surrounded himself with artistic friends makes it somewhat surprising that he wrote for the piano trio combination only once before the last 18 months of his life. Up until the B flat trio (and the so-called Notturno D897, generally believed to be a discarded slow movement for the trio), Schubert’s only other foray into the genre dates from 1812, fifteen years earlier. And when he did eventually return to the genre to write his two mature trios (the B flat and the E flat, D929 of November 1827), the works were not, ostensibly, for his own consumption. They were written specifically for friends of his: pianist Karl Maria von Bocklet and members of the Schuppanzingh Quartet which had premiered his a minor quartet when it was still fresh from his pen, in March 1824. The technical demands made in the trios are as a direct result of Schubert’s writing them for professional musicians and demonstrate his determination to achieve success not only in the salon but also the concert hall. There has been a certain amount of doubt as to the exact date of the B flat trio’s composition – the manuscript is lost – but it is now generally believed that it and its E flat counterpart were written within a couple of months of one another, at a time when the composer was finishing off his great song cycle, Winterreise.

The opening and indeed the whole of the B flat trio inhabit a world far removed from the wintry landscapes that dominate the contemporaneous song cycle. The first theme, announced proudly by the violin and ‘cello against resolute piano chords, sounds as though it might well have wandered in from a horn part of a Strauss tone poem: it is proud, almost swaggering and martial. The way the theme is presented, though, embues it with a special charm and grace, despite the stern dotted quaver–semiquaver motif in the piano’s bass, which is developed into something of a theme in itself, against which the first subject’s triplets now provide the accompaniment. The precision of the melodic material is reflected in the movement’s taut formal design as the ‘cello calms the precedings down, pausing on a high A and relaxing into a wonderfully natural and lyrical second subject, presented against a lilting arppegios on the piano. Each instrument in turn takes up the theme before the piano, with strident octaves, introduces a note of sternness which dissolves into a cascade of semiquavers. A bar’s pause takes us into a transition passage to the development where the first subject reprised in B flat minor. Triplets and dotted rhythms then come together as the two elements of the first subject are developed simultaneously before the second subject is reintroduced in a dialogue between the violin and ‘cello, its expansiveness contrasted against triplet interjections. The recapitulation starts inconspicuously, marked pianissimo in the score, but gathers momentum coming to a coda where the main theme finally gets to stretch its legs, as the violin and ‘cello stride up their range in octave triplets, answered by the piano tumbling down again.

The slow movement, in E flat major and marked Andante un poco mosso, starts with one of Schubert’s most effortlessly elegant and wistful melodies, as the ‘cello sings with gentle melancholy over rocking quavers the piano. As the violin takes over, the ‘cello slips inconspicuously into an accompanying counterpoint. The central section introduces a modicum of urgency, with pulsing syncopations in the strings, but this does little to affect the relaxed atmosphere before the main theme is reintroduced - this time on the violin - first in A flat major then shifting imperceptably into remote E major. Indeed, the movement’s air of simplicity belies Schubert’s complicated harmonic scheme as he then takes us back to the tonic, E flat, via C major, as the movement draws to a close. Where the slow movement is all long cantabile lines, the Scherzo is all spikey rhythms, sharp corners and jaunty snippets of melody; the elegance of the salon is replaced with the unpredictable joviality of the Beisl – the Austrian equivalent of the local pub. The movement’s more earthy character is taken into the trio section where a contrasting, straightforward melody is gently hummed on the ‘cello and violin against off-beat chords in the piano.

Neville Cardus once remarked that “pure song is tyrannical” and that Schubert’s “melodies move with the heart and blood pulse of familiar song - so instictive with a human spontaneity that its transitions cannot always be anticipated”. While the first three movements of the B flat trio are relatively conventional in their form and development, the fourth movement’s structure – it is not a striclty a rondo, despite Schubert’s naming it so – is dictated by the shear exhuberance of the composer’s melodic genius. Although when Schubert wrote this trio he had just over a year to live and despite the illness that was inexorably pulling him towards a tragically early death, he was still only thirty years old and the finale of the E flat trio is brimming with youthful joie de vivre. Listening to it makes us feel that the composer was enjoying himself and revelling in his melodic gift. The opening theme, which in a rondo should reappear after each episode, is in fact almost subordinated to the other melodic material which is introduced in abundance as Schubert takes us on a whistlestop tour round a bewildering selection of keys, with many felicitous touches of instrumentation. Where in the E flat trio Schubert’s ambition in matters of structure and development would reach its summit in the finale, here we are left to enjoy ourselves as the trio comes quirkily and unpredictably to its close.

Hugo Shirley (2005)

Allegro
Andante con moto
Scherzo: Allegro Moderato
Allegro

The bare statistics of Schubert’s creative life are astonishing: when he died, aged just thirty one, he had written over 700 songs and partsongs, seven symphonies (including one notoriously left unfinished), seven string quartets, some 17 piano sonatas and a whole array of other works ranging from operas to piano miniatures. By an age when Beethoven was making the initial tentative steps on his own symphonic odyssey with his first symphony, Schubert had long since finished his final “Great” C major symphony. The autumn of 1827 saw him produce not only the E flat trio, but also its companion piece in B flat and the extraordinary song-cycle, Winterreise, marking the start of a year of prodigious productivity, in which he produced many of his greatest works including the final three piano sonatas, the string quintet, Schwanengesang (which is not strictly a song-cycle, but rather a selection of songs grouped together by a publisher) and the haunting Fantasia in F minor, for piano duet. Despite the astonishing manifestation of his genius in this final bumper harvest of predominantly instrumental works, the image of Schubert as the innocent child of nature who failed to grow up dies hard . It seems appropriate then that the first Chelsea Schubert Festival, which sets out to offer a balanced view of the composer as a genius in both song and instrumental music, should start with a work in which his ambition as a composer of instrumental music is so explicitly on display.

The trio’s opening positively brims with confidence. But while the earlier B flat trio exudes a breezy youthful confidence, this work, opening with a theme in octaves, displays confidence allied to authority. Although only his second complete work in the genre, Schubert knows exactly what he’s doing. And the rest of the work, with its structural and harmonic innovations shows that Schubert felt relaxed with this combination of instruments while the instrumental writing itself shows how confident Schubert was in the abilities of the professional musicians for whom he was writing: Karl Maria von Bocklet and members of the renowned Schuppanzingh Quartet. Despite the authoritarian character of the opening theme, Schubert typically latches on to the modest, five note motif that comes as a riposte, heard as a lively ‘cello theme that sings away to chugging violin triplets as the movement gets underway. Schubert’s harmonic adventurousness takes us, after chromatic flourishes from the piano, to B minor and a theme characterised by repeated quavers, first heard on the piano, to an accompaniment in the strings on the same rhythm - a crotchet followed by four quavers – a rhythmic cell which, as we shall see, helps bind the whole work together. The ubiqitous five note cello theme reappears once again, at first explicitly and then more subtly in the piano’s rippling triplet accompaniment to an entirely new lyrical idea taken up by ‘cello and violin (that incidentally bears a close resemblence to the first subject of the B flat trio’s opening Allegro). The same theme then reappears in yet another guise, this time slowed down and presented almost chorale-like in all three instruments. It is the theme in this new, haunting guise which forms the basis for one of Schubert’s most ethereally beautiful and harmonically daring development sections, as it is whispered in a duet between violin and ‘cello against delicate, descending triplet arpeggios in the piano. Schubert evidentally appreciated the quality of this inspiration and he sits back as it takes us through an astonishing variety of keys, through a wonderful but slightly mind-boggling process of modulation: the development itself starts in B minor and leads us to a climax in C sharp major, before restarting in F sharp minor, taking us in turn to G sharp major (or A flat major, expressed enharmonically) then from C sharp minor back to the tonic, E flat major, for the recapitulation. It is only now that we hear the opening theme again for the first time as it heralds in a conventional recaptulation: the exposition is repeated more or less as we first heard it.

The melody of the slow movement, in C minor, and its trudging accompaniment come from a Swedish folksong, Se solen sjunker (The sun has set), which Schubert is believed to have heard sung by a young Swedish tenor at a friend’s house in November 1827. As in the first movement, once each instrument has taken up the the melody, punctuated by falling octaves to a quaver-dotted crotchet rhythm, Schubert takes proceedings forward with a new idea that is not based on the melody, but simply on a tiny element of it: falling intervals (variously thirds, fourths, fifths and octaves) to the the same quaver / dotted-crotchet rhythm. This idea then develops into a striding fortissimo in E flat major, stated boldly in octaves in the piano’s left hand against triplet chords in the right, with interjections from the strings. This in turn dissolves back into the main theme, as the ‘cello slips slowly, trilling down to a bottom C. This time the piano takes up the theme and before the other instruments get their chance, we are transported into a world of mysterious tremolandos in the piano, the strings given the chance only to play snippets and Schubert takes us to the emotional heart of the movement: a climax of enormous power, not far removed from the extraordinary outburst in the slow movement of the A major piano sonata D959. The main theme is not heard again in this movement until the final bars. As we shall see, however, this is not its final appearance in the work.

The Scherzo opens with a canon, the piano being shadowed, a bar behind, by the strings. Thematically it soon shows links with both the first and second movements. This is particularly obvious in the second theme in the Trio, which also looks forward to the finale. The finale itself gets underway inconspicously but has a whole array of surprises in store. The first of these comes after some 70 bars when the simple melody and 6/8 time signature of the opening becomes 2/2 and the key slips, without warning, from E flat into C minor. The theme we now hear, on rapidly repeated quavers, is in fact very closely linked to theme first heard at the very opening of the work, almost unrecognisable in a form which incorporates the repeated quaver rhythm that we also heard in the first and third movements. This theme, as we return to 6/8 and a flourish of semi-quavers, is transformed yet again so that it is now reminiscent of the theme in the second movement based on the falling intervals, this material is reprised before the link with the second movement is made explicit: we move into B minor and against cross-rhythm accompaniment on the piano the violin plucks out the trudging accompanying figure of Se solen sjunker, the ‘cello picking up the melody itself a couple of bars later. At this moment it becomes clear both how Schubert has been linking the movements thematically and how ambitious he had become in the art of composition as opposed to just the art of writing tunes. It is pertinant that the theme he should use as the basis for this compositional innovation was not even one of his own. Those who claim that Schubert failed to control his enthusiasm for development in this trio as whole fail to understand the importance of what he was trying to do. As one listens as the finale progresses, with all its unpredictability and inventiveness, towards the final triumph as Se solen sjunker reappears in E flat major, one can’t help admire how, despite or perhaps because of the wonderful detours that Schubert takes us on throughout the piece, its overarching logic suddenly becomes plain for all to see.

Hugo Shirley (2005)

Past Performances at the festival: Ardelle Quartet, 5th August 2005

Allegro
Andante un poco mosso
Scherzo: Allegro - Trio
Rondo: Allegro Vivace

Schubert’s song, der Tod und das Mädchen was written in February 1817 when the composer was 19. It is a setting of a text by Mathias Claudius and is just over 40 bars in length. The quartet that bears the same name lasts nearer 40 minutes and, as we have seen, was written at a point when Schubert’s life had taken a decisive turn. Like some other of Schubert’s instrumental works that carry the name of a song in the title, the relevance of one to the other might not initially be entirely apparent. In this case, the song does not appear until the second movement. By this time it has been well established by the 25-year-old Schubert that he has grown up, regardless of whether through choice or necessity.

The first movement, a fiery and at times almost brutal Allegro launches us into a world of desperation. Schubert’s gift for melody is subordinated to rhythm in the first bars: the first violin and ‘cello hammering out the rhythm on fortissimo octave Ds while what melody there is, a descending motif of four notes, is left to the inner parts.The momentum and power of this outburst is contrasted immediately with a short, lyrical and almost static pianissimo passage before the movement launches into its taut exposition: the melodic fragment introduced in the first bars serves as the basis for the first 60 bars or so and Schubert’s use of it is a marvel of resourcefulness. The more typically Schubertian, lyrical second subject almost comes as a relief when it appears yet this is a highly ambivalent theme which is quickly turned into a powerful counterpart of the first subject, to the accompaniment of a furious semiquaver passagework in the first violin, later taken up by the ‘cello and viola. The two subjects cross swords in the development, the distinctive melodic and rhythmic shape of each pulling against the other in a passage of extreme tension which dissolves into the recapitulation. Schubert has one final surprise in store for us in the coda of the movement, heralded by a held low d on the ‘cello: the ‘cello and violin hold chords while the inner parts repeat the triplet motive that runs through the movement, then a series of dissonant chords followed by a frantic build up (marked Più Mosso) lead to the movement’s pianissimo close.

Without doubt the heart of this string quartet is the slow movement and although it was not Schubert but a publisher who gave the quartet its name it is appropriate that it should carry a name which reflects the importance of this movement. Schubert wrote relatively few sets of variations. The genre was tied closely with the world of vacuous salon showpieces, despite Beethoven’s astonishing achievements in the field. Indeed, it is the soundworld of Beethoven’s own late quartets which most closely resemble that of this movement, whose atmosphere of constriction, tentative melody and harmonic discipline also points forward to Schubert’s other later masterpieces. The theme – more a series of chords than a melody – is taken from the piano accompaniment of two parts of the song: the introduction and the passage where Death addresses the maiden. The intervening episode where the maiden addresses death is not used. This fact alone does not necessarily suggest that Schubert’s mind at the time was preoccupied with death, at the expense of maidens since, musically, the maiden’s address to Death would fit ill with the character of the movement. As it goes from variation to variation the whole movement does, however, seem more like a profound meditation on that theme, rather than a compositional exercise. The theme was originally written as a graphic representation of Death himself so could we, by extension, read the movement as a meditation on Death? However we choose to interpret it, it remains one of the most moving things Schubert wrote.

With the Scherzo we return to the bald sonorities of the opening movement. Strong dotted rhythms, syncopations and angular melodic writing add to the urgency; dissonance and forceful unisons add to feeling of gritty momentum. The lyrical trio which doesn’t rise above a piano dynamic marking, provides a lyrical reply, the dotted rhythms of the scherzo taking on a more consoling character, and the first violin’s high filigree brings a delicacy which is immediately dispelled with the Scherzo repeat.

The finale, a presto 6/8 is has elements of a perpetuum mobile and is forerunner of the furious finale of the C minor piano sonata, D978. The persistence of the of the crotchet/quaver rhythm is broken by second subject, characterised by forceful chords. This second idea is then juxtaposed against fluid quaver runs as Schubert gives his imagination free reign, developing the thematic material of the first and second subjects with extraordinary virtuosity, calling for no mean amount of virtuosity from the players too (we mustn’t forget that this piece was written for the renowned Schuppanzingh Quartet, and not for amateur, domestic performance). For the first time in the piece now we hear moments where Schubert seems to be enjoying himself as the themes intermingle and develop almost mischeviously, the composer relishing his characteristic major/minor switches and the sheer rhythmic bounce of the movement. If death was on his mind, he allows himself to forget it for a while before the final coda, and the furious D minor of the final bars.

Hugo Shirley (2005)

Past Performances at the festival: Liquid Architecture, 18th August 2006

Allegro ma non Troppo
Adagio
Scherzo (Presto) - Trio (Andante Sostenuto)
Finale: Allegretto

The final year of Schubert’s life was a one of extraordinary industry. Alfred Einstein has suggested that Beethoven’s death in 1827 lifted a significant weight off the younger composer’s shoulders; although it would never have occurred to the unprepossessing Schubert to have anything like Brahms’ suffocating sense of being heir to Beethoven’s throne. There is a sense, however, with the final three piano sonatas composed in quick succession in late summer of 1828 that Schubert is asserting himself against the master of that genre (the opening of the first of these pieces, the c minor sonata D958 is among the most Beethovenian things Schubert wrote). If this is the case, though, by the time he came to write the Quintet, Schubert must have felt himself free of all obligations: one cannot imagine a more quintessentially Schubertian creation. If any composer is the model, it would be Mozart, whose G minor string quintet (k516) Schubert admired almost above any other work. Mozart, in his quintets, added a second viola to the usual string quartet configuration, whereas Schubert adds a second ‘cello. The reason for this is immediately apparent at the opening of the first movement. Here, Schubert plays a double trick on us. This sounds like a slow introduction and for the first ten bars, it is a string quartet: the second ‘cello is silent. For the next ten bars, the first violin is silent and the ‘cello’s come into their own: the second ‘cello takes the base line while the first soars high in its register with the melody, playing above both the violin and the viola. As the whole quintet comes together the ‘cellos join together in unison to give a greatly enforced base-line before, as we melt into the lyrical second subject, they join together in thirds and sixths. This second subject is among Schubert’s most inspired melodies and the way he handles the five instruments at his disposal to create an array of sounds and textures that often suggests several more instruments in the ensemble is a marvel. As the development section gets underway, we can almost imagine this as a reduction of a full orchestral score. The furious canon (2nd violin and viola against 2nd ‘cello) punctuated with almost percussive vigour by the first violin and ‘cello pushes the ensemble to its limits, while the sparse unison triplets that follow take us to another extreme of sonority. Indeed, the whole development section alternates between this sparseness and the rich, lush instrumentation of the lyrical episodes in between before the triplets take us back to C major and the recapitulation of the “slow” introduction, this time, however, with the first violin adding steady broken chords reminding us of the true pulse. The coda brings a brief new, forceful idea before the movement dies out on a reminiscence of the second subject.

The Adagio forms the emotional heart of the quintet and achieves a level of rapt, sustained calm the like of which would not really be heard again until the adagios of Bruckner. The sustained trio of the inner instruments (described by Brian Newbould as “courageously slow”) is played against the gentle pizzicato of the second ‘cello’s bass line and the almost painfully truncated and tentative interjections of the first violin which moves us all the more whenever it begins to hint at anything more substantial than a brief fragment of melody. It is very easy to see the stormy middle section of this movement, introduced by a sudden unison trill, as the sudden realisation by the composer of his impending death (he was well aware of the fact that the tertiary and final stages of the fatal syphilis he had contracted in 1823/4 were upon him) but this is to detract from the universality of the emotions portrayed. Whatever the demons are that are roused in this middle section, the return of the opening section puts them to rest. Only now, though, have the tentative first violin and second ‘cello found the confidence to express themselves more fully, slowly weaving intricate filigree around the central instruments. They are both briefly muted by having to play pizzicato before the first violin regains its full expressive means in the final bars and, after harking back to the troubles of the middle section with a brief, threatening trill, the movement comes to its close.

After the calm of the Adagio, the rollocking presto one-in-bar of the Scherzo shows Schubert as a composer of great contrasts. This is further emphasised by the extraordinary Trio section. This section traditionally provides contrast to the Scherzo but it was rare in for the Trio to provide such a pronounced contrast: Schubert not only changes key from C major to D flat major but suddenly drops several gears from the headlong Presto to a steady Andante Sostenuto and switches from the full scoring of the Scherzo to the bare sonority of second ‘cello and viola playing in octaves and much of the section is in keeping with its sparse opening, the instruments often sharing the same melodic material either in unison or octaves; we’re in a completely different world from the genial, harmonically warmer thirds and sixths of the first movement’s second subject. The seeming simplicity of the music of the trio and its “strange, unearthly calm” (J.A. Westrup) are further emphasised by the sheer vigour of the Scherzo which, when it returns, brings us back down to earth.

It is the fact that we supposedly stay earthbound in the finale that has upset several of the quintet’s critics. Why, after so much that is sublime and ethereal must the work finish with light-hearted joviality in the “popular” style? To ask this question though is both to misunderstand the very nature of Schubert’s music and to underestimate the qualities of the finale. Schubert’s music was characterised, throughout his life, by its ability to switch from major to minor and from the sublime to the earthbound, preventing the former from existing in its own aesthetic bubble and raising the latter to a more exalted middle ground; in short: blurring the lines between the two. The movement also reminds us from time to time of what has gone before when, in a couple of transitional passages the joviality is replaced by pianissimo, crotchet broken chords, before launching back into the high spirits that, slowly cranked up couple of notches in the increasingly quick coda bring the work to its rousing conclusion.

Hugo Shirley (2006)

Past Performances at the festival: Liquid Architecture, 3rd September 2006

Adagio - Allegro
Adagio
Allegro Vivace
Andante
Menuetto: Allegro
Andante Molto - Allegro

Schubert’s Octet was written at a time of enormous strain and while this strain would seep through explicitly into the two string quartets (the A minor D804 and D minor D810, “Death and the Maiden”) which he also wrote in early spring 1824, the Octet remains amazingly untouched by the composer’s external circumstances (he was, at this time, coming to terms with the horrific symptoms of primary syphilis). This is probably in no small part due to the fact that the clarinettist for whom Schubert wrote the piece was a certain Count Troyer. The wealthy count is believed to have requested a piece in the vein of Beethoven’s Septet, in the divertimento style. This more or less forced Schubert to suppress the kind of melancholy and anger which features in the two string quartets and replace it with music more suitable for pure enjoyment – on the part of players as well as listeners. That he achieved this aim so beautifully suggests that he enjoyed having to put his fears and anxiety aside to produce what Brian Newbould has described as “a glorious synthesis of relaxed tunefulness, lyrical warmth, poetic depth, and pin-dropping, visionary moments”. Comparing Beethoven’s Septet with Schubert’s Octet helps to underline the differences between the composers’ speed of development. Both works were written at similar times in the composers’ lives yet while Beethoven’s precedes his first symphony and has the feel of an apprentice piece, Schubert’s work precedes his final symphony, the “Great” C major and is undoubtedly the work of a mature master. To Beethoven’s configuration Schubert adds a second violin and as Hans Gal has written “how incredibly he has enriched the palette! This is by no means due only to the sound which, after all is never more than a function of the substance; the colourfulness lies in the invention… With Schubert the form has expanded into the blossoming regions of a romantic landscape whose delights are numberless”.

The work opens with an Adagio introduction to the first movement. The introduction is harmonically ambiguous – incidentally, it resembles the slow introduction to Beethoven’s first symphony in this respect – but introduces one main idea that pervades both this movement and the whole work, the dotted rhythm. This rhythm takes a prominent place as the Allegro itself gets under way, as all the instruments use it to launch the main theme which is based on the F major arpeggio and rises up an octave, answered by a descending figure on the clarinet. We are immediately aware of how creative Schubert is going to be with his instrumentation, using the mini-orchestra at his disposal to create a number of glorious instrumental effects which perfectly compliment the wealth of melody. Perhaps inevitably the clarinet is given slightly preferential treatment; Schubert obviously wanted to give Count Troyer a chance to play most of the tunes ahead of his socially inferior colleagues. (The work was first performed, soon after its completion, by the count at his residence on Vienna’s fashionable Graben with, among others, three members of the famous Schuppanzingh Quartet). The mood of the opening Allegro is on the whole untroubled and the slightly plaintive clarinet theme based on the interval of a sixth on a dotted rhythm and first heard against wonderfully delicate arpeggio accompaniment on the first violin, retains, by dint of its rhythmic buoyancy, a certain jollity.

The clarinet’s prominence is made clear once again by the fact that it gets first chance to sing out the Andante’s glorious melody, against a gentle, lilting semiquaver accompaniment on the second violin and viola. The first violin waits to join in as the clarinet takes on an accompanying role. This is one movement where the “pin-dropping, visionary moments” are many. The first is introduced by three descending quavers on the double bass: all sense of momentum dissolves as the first violin soars up to a high c, its melody answered by slow moving counterpoint on the second violin and clarinet. It is a moment repeated the second time around, this time to even more magical effect as the three wind instruments take up the three way dialogue, to the accompaniment of rising semiquaver arpeggios on the strings before the instrumentation is swapped once again.

The third movement, a Scherzo despite not being marked as such in the score, sees the return of the dotted rhythm that pervaded the first movement. It evokes the exhilaration of the outdoors and has an amazing feeling of momentum, which persists in the more relaxed trio section. The Andante is a set of variations on a theme which Schubert took from a very early stage work: a duet from Die Freunde von Salamanka (D326, 1815). It is amazing how this untroubled set of variations could be written within weeks of the set that form the slow movement of the “Death and the Maiden” quartet; Schubert, who despite everything longed to achieve not only artistic satisfaction but also some sort of material reward for his composing, does a brilliant job in creating music that is so infectiously enjoyable. The Count would no doubt have been thrilled with the wide array of ideas packed into these variations. The slight Menuetto, which makes use of the combination of dotted rhythm and triplet which occurred so often in the first movement, paves the way for the finale.

The finale itself opens with something of a shock: a tremelo low f on the ‘cello and double bass, against which the other instruments intone ominously above. When the movement gets underway though, we are back in unclouded summer landscape of the other movements. This time it with a march, characterised by a kind of mock solemnity, that Schubert drives us towards the work’s close. With so many of his finales, we see Schubert struggling to keep the ideas under control as his imagination runs riot. There is another return to the Andante Molto introduction, before a furious coda brings the work to its breathless conclusion.

Hugo Shirley (2006)

Past Performances at the festival: Andrew O'Brien (tenor); Mark Forkgen (piano) 5th August 2005

Die schöne Müllerin is Schubert’s first song cycle and his melodic gift seems to babble through it much like the stream in the poems and on its banks grow many a musical flower. While each song throws up one glorious melody after another (Graham Johnson has written of an ‘immortal yet seemingly obvious tunefulness’), however, it is the subtle psychological development that goes on as the young man who falls for the fair maid of the title slowly loses his grip on reality which shows another facet of the composer’s genius. In the prologue to his cycle of poems – which was originally conceived for semi-dramatic domestic performance – Wilhelm Müller writes of a new style, “simply fashioned, artlessly arranged / adorned with noble German simplicity”. And, if we overlook the fact for one moment that Schubert was an Austrian, this seems a propitious description of not only the verse, but also the music which Schubert sets it to. As he did with most of the poetry he set, a lot of which is only known now thanks to his musical advocacy, Schubert brings his own superior artlessness and apparent simplicity to the cycle which is only possible to someone who possesses such complete mastery of the genre.

The cycle takes us on a journey both physical and spiritual. And in the first song, we are immediately aware of the physicality of the miller boys wandering. The accompaniment manages the amazing feat of being descriptive of each verse of this strophic song: it evokes the swaggering strides of the confident youth, the rolling of the boulders and the persistent rushing of water. In fact it is one of the most remarkable things about this cycle which mixes so imperceptibly the strophic and the through-composed (the German word is durchkomponiert) so that the listener is often hard pressed to hear which is which. The miller’s wandering has brought us, in the second song, to the stream – heard rippling in the piano - which at first he describes objectively but then, when he seems unsure of where he’s going, he decides to ask the brook to lead him. It's perhaps a little obvious to follow water to find a water driven mill, but this first address to the brook marks the start of a relationship that lasts for the duration of the cycle and beyond. And what starts as a casual question as part of a lazy daydream turns, as we shall see, into an obsession. At the moment, though, things are still going well, and in Halt the mill appears, heralded by the piano’s grinding accompaniment. The boy is convinced that the stream has led him here deliberately and in the next song Danksagung an den Bach¸ offers it his thanks, claiming prematurely that he’s found all he needs and believing now that the stream not only meant him to find this mill but, more importantly, to find the fair maid who dwells there. In the next song, however, the boy is a little disillusioned, by this time he’s aware of the fact that he has very little distinguish himself from the other lads working on the mill: her “goodnight” at the end of the song is painful for him because it is simply directed at the group.

What the boy sees as his special relationship with the brook is articulated in der Neugierige. In one of the cycle’s most beautiful songs he sings, in a recitative like passage, that he isn’t interested in seeking advice from the stars or flowers – those more conventional confidants of Romantic poetry. He has identified the stream as his ally so sings to it instead, and sings it an arietta of heartbreaking innocence and beauty. In Ungeduld, his melancholy and reflectiveness is replaced by urgency: he is eager for her to know how he feels but when, in the next song, he gets the chance to talk to her directly, rather than relying on her ability to infer from his blushes what he feels, she turns away. Nevertheless, in Tränenregen, he has the chance to spend some time with her on the banks of his favourite stream, she doesn’t react to his intensity, however, and takes the first chance, as the rain starts to fall, to return home with a simple “Ade”.

In Mein, he desperately tries to reassert his claim on her, she alone is his focus, the rest of creation seems piffling in comparison to her. From the next song, Pause, we can deduce that the justification for this claim on her – if there ever was any - was short-lived. Now he can’t sing any more, he’s hung up his lute and Schubert manages to evoke this lack of music with a recurring motif in the piano and a faltering vocal line, which is written in such a way to reflect the pattern of pure speech. The girl doesn’t seem to be too bothered about the fact that he’s hung up his lute, rather, in the next song casually remarks to him that it’s a shame about the green ribbon hanging up there with it, which is then immediately dispatched to her as a token of love as the boy ponders the significance of green. The musing is rudely interrupted in the next two songs as the he identifies a rival: the hunter. He is everything the boy isn’t, and in anger the boy tries to persuade himself that the Miller girl will not be susceptible to his manly charms: she is delicate and could never be attracted to such a brute. Apparently his unkempt beard and the dangerous nature of his work are attractive to her (she wouldn’t be the first to fall for the bad boy image either) and the boy rants at the stream for having led him to such an inconstant girl, hoping that its rushing – depicted masterfully in the piano accompaniment – is out of anger for the injustice of it all.

In die liebe Farbe Schubert makes us aware, for the first time, that this cycle is going to end in quiet tragedy. Schubert’s music is extraordinarily intense and persistent pulse of the accompaniment and the obsessive doubling of the vocal line render the boy’s wishes to die almost unbearably poignant. We are now in the final stages of both the cycle and the boy’s life. The attempts, in die böse Farbe, to escape and forget it all are only half-hearted and the easy melody of the early parts of the cycle is now replaced with constricted utterances, to bare accompaniments, as the boy’s will to live fades away. Where Müller himself saw the miller boy’s story with a certain amount of cynicism (he framed the cycle with witty prologues and Epilogues, not set by Schubert), Schubert, in music that approaches the tragic depth of Winterreise, suddenly draws the listener into a state of even greater sympathy with the boy as he decides to escape his sorrow by drowning himself in the bosom of his companion, the stream.

Hugo Shirley (2005)

Past Performances at the festival: Ian Partridge (tenor), Sholto Kynoch (piano) - 23rd August 2006; Eamon Dougan (bar), Gary Cooper (piano) - 12th August 2005

Schubert had seemed for some time moody and run down. To my questioning he replies, you will soon understand. One day he said, come to Schober’s and I will sing over a bunch of ghastly songs to you. I shall be curious, he went on, to hear what you think of them – they have taken more out of me than any other songs I have written. He than sang to us the whole of Winterreise through, with much emotion in his voice. The gloom of the songs quite nonplussed us, and Schober said there was only one he cared for, the Lindenbaum. All Schubert answered was, I like them all more than any of the other songs, and the day will come when you will like them too. He was right; we were soon full of admiration for these mournful songs, which Vogl sang like a master.

This oft quoted reminiscence by one of Schubert’s circle of friends, Josef von Spaun, describes Schubert during the composition of his final true song-cycle, Winterreise (Winter’s Journey). We imagine the composer racked by the images of loneliness and despair in Müller’s poetry and are invited to see his composition of the cycle as a way of coming to terms with the fact that his own journey in life had only one more year to run (Winterreise was completed in October 1827; Schubert was died, aged 31, on 19 November 1828). Johann Mayrhofer, another of the circle of friends, was even more romantic in his view of the period of composition: “the very choice of subject proved an increased seriousness in our musician. He had been long and severely ill, he had suffered one discouragement after another; life had lost its rosiness, winter was upon him.”

Although Schubert was no doubt aware that his life was always going to be shortened by the syphilis which he had contracted in late 1822 or early 1823, it is difficult to reconcile this theory with the fact that Schubert’s other works from the same time – the Eb trio and the D899 impromptus, for example – are, to quote Richard Capell, “all glowing with the spirit of spring.” It is one of the greatest dangers in musicology to draw too much of a parallel between a composer’s outside circumstances and his works. If Schubert really saw the songs of Winterreise as an expression of his innermost fears and longing, he would not have commented to Spaun, with what seems like detached objectivity, that “I like them more than the other songs”. Indeed, the order of the songs which seems calculated to create the greatest possible cumulative emotional impact was probably, as Graham Johnson has pointed out, “one of the greatest examples of necessity being the mother of sublime invention.” Schubert had initially only set twelve of the poems not finding the subsequent twelve until later. Müller, when he published the whole set of poems, changed the order of the original twelve, but Schubert, rather than interfere with the careful tonal structure of his first twelve songs simply set the twelve new poems in the order in which they occurred. Again to quote Johnson (whose notes to his recording of the cycle with Matthias Goerne constitute a one-stopshop for everything one needs to know about the cycle and its creation):

The new order concentrates the dark elegiac poems of Der Wegweiser, Das Wirtshaus, and Die Nebensonnen at the end of the cycle, mitigated by the short, contrasting mood of Mut!. On the other hand, Irrlicht, Frühlingstraum and so on, which break up the screw-turning succession of songs in Müller’s order, belong in Schubert’s Part One; in this earlier position they are not placed to lighten the ever-darkening landscape of the traveller’s mind.

Even if the order of the songs in Schubert’s version was partly accidental, however, Schubert must have been aware that with Winterreise he had achieved a style, which, characterised by a sparse economy of much of the writing (the barren, hibernal landscape of the poetry could scarcely be evoked with the kind of fecund melodic effusions which characterise, say, Die Schöne Müllerin) creates an intensity of emotion new to his work and the medium of song. Indeed, it sounds like several of his friends missed the usual easy melodic charm of his songs. Another great Schubert accompanist, Gerald Moore wrote that “the drudgery of sitting before a blank page, waiting for inspiration, forcing ideas into shapely proportions was unknown to him [Schubert] for the ideas blossomed and sprouted like the springing herb beside the banks of his beloved brook.” For Winterreise¸however, as accounts of Schubert’s mood at the time confirm, the creative process and the product were very different: metaphors of spring-like creativity have to be replaced with finely etched images of the fragile, crystalline beauty of a winter’s landscape.

Whatever the significance of Winterreise as regards Schubert’s biography, the songs remain an extraordinarily potent and evocative description of a man’s descent into desperation. Like Die Schöne Müllerin,the protagonist’s journey is both physical and psychological. But whereas the earlier song-cycle starts with optimism – in the opening song of that cycle, Wandern, the miller boy is confident and purposeful in his strides, the melody he sings full of joy and swagger, the piano accompaniment buoyant – Winterreise starts with lugubrious trudging. In Gute Nacht we can feel the protagonist’s walking impeded by both the physical manifestations of winter – the cold and the thick snow – and the heaviness of his spirit; the falling melodic line expresses exhaustion and destitution. Here we meet the true wanderer of German Romanticism, the resonances of the word becoming apparent: it is not wandering for the pleasure of getting exercise in the great outdoors but to get away from memories and try and find something new to cling onto. The cycle switches between describing the wanderer’s state of mind and the wintry landscape which surrounds him yet both are locked in a downward spiral of cause and effect, there is nothing in the landscape to rouse him from his depression and his depression renders him unable to extract any joy from the admittedly bleak view. Die Wetterfahne is a neurotic address to a rattling weather vane and in Gefrorne Tränen the cold makes him numb to his feelings, in Auf den Flüsse he laments the frozen river. While the boy in die Schöne Müllerin at least had the babbling stream and nature to try and console him, here the wanderer is left to stare forlornly at the frozen, lifeless landscape; the only manifestations of living nature are brutal and foreboding: the barking dogs in Im Dorfe; the crow which hovers threateningly over him in Die Krähe; and the cocks crowing and ravens screeching to disrupt his idyllic dreams of spring in Frühlingstraum.

Der Lindenbaum¸ the only song which “Schober cared for” according to Spaun ist seems to be untroubled, yet even the reverie of this song is disturbed by the icy wind which now swirls mercilessly about. The falling leaves, each one representing a lost hope in Letzte Hoffnung and the feeling of stasis achieved in the music of many of the other songs count among Schubert’s greatest descriptive effects; effects which are clear to the attentive listener but never glaringly obvious or literal. Letzte Hoffnung incidentally contains one of the few passages which come close to a melodic outpouring. The effect of this, similar to the first violin eventually finding its full expressive voice in the melody at the very end of the string quintet’s Adagio, is all the more moving because of the understated, fragmented economy of what has gone before.

Andràs Schiff once claimed that there was more drama in the four minute long song, Der Doppelgänger (from Schwanengesang) than in the whole of Wagner’s ring. Ignoring the hyperbole, Schiff’s point, that the ratio of means to effect is much better balanced in Schubert, points to the greatness of Winterreise as a cycle: there’s the false courage in Mut! (not unlike the false determination of Die Böse Farbe in die Schöne Müllerin), the uneasiness aroused by the crow in die Krähe, the expectation raised and dashed in Die Post. These and the other songs are micro-dramas offering a masterclass of the songwriter’s art. And although the songs of Die Winterreise don’t quite reach the same level of pure desperation and expressionistic modernity as some of the great songs in Schwanengesang, the fact that it is a true song-cycle makes the cumulative effect more shattering; it adds up to more than its already profoundly affecting parts. While the poems in Die Schöne Müllerin (Schubert’s first song-cycle, composed in 1823/4) follow a distinct narrative from optimism to despair to death, Winterreise is far more ambiguous and convoluted. We are exposed to a mixture of reminiscence and experience and, in keeping with the protagonist’s own uncertain trajectory through the landscape of deepest winter, we are not given any concrete narrative to hold onto so that the work can strike the listener as providing a foretaste of expressionism.

The wanderer, in the seventeenth song of the cycle, finds the village (Das Dorf). In keeping with the wanderer tradition, however, he finds no refuge here and continues on his way. In Schubert’s song Der Wanderer D489 (which forms the basis of the Wanderer Fantasy for piano D760) the unending quest of the wanderer is articulated thus: “Dort wo du nicht bist, dort ist das Glück!” which translates roughly as “there where you are not, that’s where happiness is.” As the man stands there in the final song of this cycle listening to the extraordinary, disconcerting strains of the Hurdy-gurdy player (Der Leiermann) we know that wherever he next goes he will not find happiness; the only way out of his torment is the death which now seems inevitable.

Hugo Shirley (2006)

Past Performances at the festival: Cerys Jones (violin); Zoë Beyers (violin), Nicholas Bootiman (viola); Rebecca Knight ('cello); Sholto Kynoch (piano) - 30th August 2006

Allegro Brillante
In modo d'una marcia. Un poco largamente - Agitato
Scherzo. Molto Vivace
Allegro, ma non troppo

There is no instrumental composition by Schumann more universally praised than the Piano Quintet, op44. The first work by a composer of note to be written for the combination of piano and string quartet, it set the bar high for those who followed. Like the piano quartet, Schumann’s quintet was the product of what one biographer has called the “chamber music year”. In 1842 Schumann and his wife Clara – the hugely famous pianist whom he had married in 1841 after a painful and protracted tussle with her father and Schumann’s former teacher, Friedrich Wieck – sat down to study the classics of chamber music. At a time before the classics had really become classics, Schumann realised that in order to succeed in media other than song (he had composed most of his masterpieces in that genre the previous year) and solo piano (most of his piano works had been composed in the 1830’s). Schumann had once claimed to have learnt counterpoint from his favourite novelist, Jean Paul Richter, and his Romantic imagination could express itself fully through aphoristic piano pieces or songs. For larger scale, traditional forms, however, his technical means were not really up to it, as the early piano sonatas show: pieces where the structure is not robust enough to hold his heavy-weight Romantic ideas. Schumann was aware of his shortcomings as a composer, something which can only have been emphasised by his close friendship with Mendelssohn – who as well as possessing the most complete technical fluency as a composer was also an outstanding conductor, something which Schumann, for all his insight, was not – and it was these shortcomings which he set out to address in the first half of 1842.

After his study he composed, in quick succession, his three string quartets, his piano quartet, the piano quintet and the Fantasiestücke for piano trio, op88. The string quartets and the piano quintet achieved immediate popularity. The quintet had first been performed in domestic surroundings with Mendelssohn sight-reading the piano part. Clara, who would take the Quintet into her repertoire performing it many times and for whom the piano part was very probably written, was unwell at the time, and pregnant with their second daughter. Mendelssohn seems to have been highly complimentary, criticising only the second trio of the scherzo which Schumann duly replaced – a sign, if one was needed, of the regard he had for his friend. One contemporary critic wrote of the quintet and its stable-mates: “these compositions are without reservation among the finest that recent times can show in this department… we have to admire anew the freedom and security with which he [Schumann] moves in a branch of composition new to him, as if he had long been accustomed to it.”

Two words in this review do well in summing up the quintet: freedom and security. Schumann’s new found technical prowess allows him more freedom to express himself as he wants and this is immediately apparent in the taut Sonata form structure of the first movement. The confident first subject is presented by all the players in accented chords with an air of defiance before melting into a tender transition theme, presented on the piano then taken up by the first violin which leads into the second subject proper. It is a sign of Schumann’s mastery the way that he uses his aphoristic technique to blur the boundaries of traditional sonata form, creating themes that seem to grow organically from what has come before. There is also a greater feeling of discipline in the writing; there are no superfluous notes. The discipline instilled in him by writing string quartets is carried into the quintet, applied not only to the stringed instruments but to the piano, where Schumann would usually let his imagination run unchecked. The development section takes the end of the first subject, transforming it into quaver runs in the piano as the strings guide us through remote keys before we land back in E flat for the recapitulation.

The slow movement, marked In modo d’una Marcia, takes a brief, fragmentary melodic idea and, in a rondo, develops it with expert economy, passing it from one stringed instruments to another against a sparse accompaniment. The contrast with the slow movement of the piano quartet, with its expansive and generous melody is marked and here Schumann shows greater compositional craft. The first episode, a duet between the first violin and cello against a rhythmically ambiguous cushion of sound from the other instruments (duplets against triplets) is contrasted with the furious agitato second episode, based on a diminution (i.e. speeded up version) of the march theme. The piano sticks with its triplets as the first two ideas return, this time against a far more expressive accompaniment. The lively Scherzo is all triplet scales and syncopation, the piano keeps the triplets going in the first trio section, bringing us into G flat major, while the strings take on a gently melody based on falling intervals of the fifth. The second trio is a furious semi-quaver moto perpetuo. The finale starts of with a resolute c minor theme in the piano against persistant quavers in the strings. An early example of progressive tonality – meaning the movement goes from one key to another, rather than starting from a home key which it returns to regularly – the finale resembles the finale of Schubert’s B flat trio in that analysis is rendered superfluous by music which just seems to flow from the pen. A final coup in this movement, which harks back to a similar device in Schubert’s E flat trio is the surprise reintroduction of the first movement’s theme as the work comes to the close and, in a final virtuosic display of counterpoint, the themes from first movement and finale are developed side by side as Schumann, tying up all melodic loose ends, brings the work to a close.

Hugo Shirley (2005)

Past Performances at the festival: Jonathan Stone (violin); Emmanuelle Reiter (viola); Rebecca Knight ('cello); Sholto Kynoch (piano) - 25th August 2006

Sostenuto Assai - Allegro ma non troppo
Scherzo. Molto vivace - Trio I - Trio II
Andante cantabile
Finale. Vivace

The brief slow introduction gently presents the main thematic germ of the first movement, announced as the Allegro proper gets under way in piano broken chords, backed up by the strings. There is an urgency which runs through the movement, the piano often chugs away busily, and a second theme based around the scale running up the octave accentuates the feeling of forward motion. Unusually the development section is introduced by a return to the slow sostenuto of the opening before the main themes are developed in more mysterious, remote keys. The recapitulation is more or less a full repeat of the exposition before a coda, marked Più agitato, also presaged by a recollection of the slow introduction.

The fleet scherzo reminds of Schumann’s close relationship with Mendelssohn, its lightness typical of the older composer’s works, which Schumann greatly admired. The two trio sections, however, are more typical of Schumann, especially the second with its characteristic off-beat piano chords. The interval of a seventh is prominent in the first trio section and creates a link between this movement and the next, the refreshingly heart-on-sleeve Andante Cantabile. The three bar introduction immediately lets us know we’re in a world of richer harmonies and genuine emotion before the ‘cello launches straight into the melody, one of Schumann’s most gloriously heartfelt. It seems like the composer knew he has stumbled upon a good tune since the development is minimal, it just gets passed from one of the stringed instruments to the next, while the others provide accompaniment. After the middle section, it returns, for example, on the viola, as the violin winds gentle semiquavers above then moves to the violin as the piano takes over the semiquavers and finally, against a more simple accompaniment, back to the ‘cello. The coda is remarkable for introducing the material of the fugal finale in a dreamy anticipation. The finale itself is proof that Schumann’s study in the first half of 1842 sunk in. He once famously said that he learnt polyphony from Jean Paul Richter (the romantic novelist whom he worshipped) but this movement is evidence of a greater seriousness in the composer to achieve a balance between his Romantic sensibility (nicely summed up in the Andante Cantabile) and his desire to create works that hang together in classical form. The piano quartet, although often overshadowed by the contemporaneous quintet, just does that and there is a sense of triumph as Schumann brings the work to a close, revelling in his new found contrapuntal technique.

Hugo Shirley (2005)

Past Performances at the festival: Jonathan Stone (violin); Emmanuelle Reiter (viola); Rebecca Knight ('cello); Sholto Kynoch (piano) - 25th August 2006

Allegro non troppo
Poco Adagio
Scherzo: poco Allegro
Finale: Allegro

If Schumann was only just beginning to revel in his new found technical prowess in his piano quartet, Brahms’ own second essay in the genre immediately has the considered air of a seasoned master, even if Brahms was only in his late twenties when he composed it. The opening motif on the piano immediately points to the fact that what makes much of this work so interesting is the subtle and expert use of rhythm, specifically the interplay between triplets and duplets (interestingly enough, this would turn out to be one of the most characteristic hallmarks of the melodies of Anton Bruckner, one of Wagner’s most avid admirers in a Vienna split down the middle into Wagnerites and Brahmsians). The first movement, which one commentator has described as “one of the broadest and most exquisitely poised sonata designs he ever wrote” is characterised by a lyrical expansiveness and sits in contrast to the first movement of its predecessor (the G minor quartet, op25) in much the same way as the opening movement of the D major symphony does to the opening of the first symphony. The first theme forms the basis for most of the development in the movement, its distinctive rhythm meaning that it can be a constant presence even when other subsidiary themes are being explored. The lyricism which is tautly controlled in the first movement is given freedom to express itself in the glorious poco adagio slow movement. The great violinist and friend of Brahms, Joseph Joachim, when pressed by the composer for constructive criticism of the work as a whole could only say one thing about this movement: “the Adagio is magnificent”. As well as containing some inspired melodic writing, Brahms’ treatment of the four instruments is highly imaginative, even if his tendency, as a pianist himself, to allow the piano to dictate in the most passionate moments occasionally gets the better of him.

The scherzo is remarkable for the very reason that it seems so unremarkable. The whole movement can strike the listener initially as inside out, since the macho, almost boisterous writing of the trio section seems more like the scherzo, while the initially tranquil Scherzo itself has a character more typical of a trio section. In fact, it is a finely planned structure where the steady build up in the Scherzo, leads to the triplet arpeggios in the piano which launch us into the trio in such a way as to suggest a through-composed whole. The finale launches with a lively theme which is first presented with disarming, rustic simplicity. Indeed much of the writing is deliberately understated, Brahms showing enough discipline to hold back and not overdevelop his material. This allows him to sustain the movement and develop the material at a relatively leisurely pace, in keeping with the feel of the whole work, gradually cranking up the pressure until he brings the movement to its rousing conclusion.

Past Performances at the festival: Cerys Jones (violin); Zoë Beyers (violin), Nicholas Bootiman (viola); Rebecca Knight ('cello); Sholto Kynoch (piano) - 30th August 2006

Allegro, ma non troppo
Dumka: Andante con moto
Scherzo: Furiant - molto vivace
Finale: Allegro

In March 1884, Dvořák travelled to England for the first of many visits. Unable to establish himself in Vienna due to political issues (his strong sense of Bohemian national pride did not go down well in the Imperial capital) his several visits to the London and other towns around the country went some way to achieving for him the beginnings of international fame which had, up until then, eluded him (a measure of this was the fact that in 1884 his publisher Simrock offered him for a symphony just a fifth of what had been offered to Brahms). His new found fame also brought with it the reward that all composers long for: enough financial security to be able to compose comfortably without concern for paying rent or putting food on the table. In addition to this, Dvořák now had the money to buy a country house in rural Bohemia (in the village of Vysoká) where he spent several idyllic summers composing for his lucrative English commissions. His Op81 piano quintet was a result of this period of burgeoning fame. It was composed between August 18 and October 3 1887. Regarding this quintet, one of Dvořák’s biographers writes “with all due respect to Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Franck, Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Elgar and Dohnányi it remains, to my mind, the best piano quintet ever written, demonstrating as it does from start to finish some of the most lovable characteristics of a lovable composer”. Despite the ill-advised hagiography in claiming the work as “the best ever” (such a claim should immediately arouse suspicion in a reader), this writer, Gervase Hughes, seems to alight on what makes the Quintet so irresistible – it is without doubt an eminently lovable work, if that’s not to damn it with faint praise.

The work’s character seems to be informed by Dvořák’s new found security; it is not the work of a man racked by anxiety. The easy-going melodies of Bohemia which run through it must, in no small part, have been inspired by the composer’s surroundings in his new country cottage. The technical security are the by-product of Dvořák’s greater confidence in his abilities: the unromantically practical realization in a composer that his or her work can also provide a decent living can often be the catalyst for greater technical assurance. The work’s links to the Czech countryside are immediately apparent in the first movement which starts with a glorious, folk-inspired ‘cello melody over a gentle piano accompaniment. After a passionate outburst this theme - the first subject - returns in a richly scored guise for the whole ensemble. A transition theme of leggiero triplets introduces the second subject, an urgent tune which dissolves, among piano arpeggios, into the development section. Here the first subject is developed in the most exquisite way, exploiting the textures that can only be achieved in chamber music. The second subject is then explored, alongside all the other thematic material heard so far. The recapitulation starts with an unusual repetition of the first subject, first at full power, marked largamente, then in a straight, uncoloured A major. The rest of the movement is based on the second subject, the first returning only towards the end, this time in yet another harmonic guise, before a furious coda.

The slow movement is a “Dumka”. Although it had as its origins a specific folk dance of the Ukraine, the Dumka (or Dumky) became in Dvořák’s time, to quote John Tyrell, “a musical symbol of pan-Slavonicism”. Indeed, Dvořák’s own fourth piano trio – the “Dumky trio” of 1890/1 - consists of nothing but a series of these dances, characterized by lilting melodies and alternating slow and fast sections. The “Dumka” of the piano quintet, however, is one of his most inspired. The opening melody has a sweet melancholy of almost heart-breaking tenderness, which returns as a poignant reminiscence between the contrasting central episodes. Throughout the movement Dvořák shows a masterful control of his instrumental forces, creating a broad array of differing textures such as one would not have thought possible from just five instruments. The “Furiant” scherzo breaks us out of our reverie, launching us immediately into a lively dance which sounds like it has come skipping right out of some idealized, Victorian scene of rustic Bohemian life. Once again Dvořák’s instrumentation is a marvel, in particular in the contrasting mood of the trio section, peppered with brief references to the scherzo’s main theme. The feeling of lively rusticity is maintained in the infectiously joyous finale. The syncopations and bold modulations are characteristics of the fast sections of a “Dumka” and, as Hughes writes, “thanks to Dvořák’s brilliantly skilful and delicate handling of the lively tunes and spirited rhythms, [this finale is] no less perfect a work of national art than the dumka itself”. The whole movement glows with a feeling of the composer enjoying himself in a celebration of what he loves about his country and we can imagine no more fitting end to this wonderful quintet.

Hugo Shirley (2006)

Past Performances at the festival: Liquid Architecture - 30th August 2006

Adagio – Allegro con brio
Adagio cantabile
Tempo di Minuetto
Tema con variazioni: Andante
Scherzo: Allegro molto e vivace
Andante con moto alla Marcia – Presto

Finally, Herr Beethoven was able for once to obtain the use of the theatre, and this was the most interesting Academy held for a long time. He played a new concerto of his own composition that contains many beautiful things, namely the first two movements. Then a septet by him was performed; it is written with a great deal of taste and feeling. He then improvised with mastery, and at the close a symphony of his composition was performed.

Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung – Review of Beethoven’s first benefit concert at Vienna’s Burgtheater on 2nd April 1800. When Beethoven moved to Vienna from Bonn in the early 1790s he was full of plans to conquer what was then the musical capital of the world. He had arranged lessons with Joseph Haydn, the most revered “father of the symphony”, and commenced his tuition with him in the middle of December 1792 almost immediately after his arrival. Haydn took his role as teacher seriously and Beethoven learnt the fundamentals of music theory and harmony (including training in so-called “species harmony”, still taught to first year music undergraduates today), although he recognised Beethoven as obviously immensely gifted, much of his most early music had its form dictated by Beethoven’s pianistic prowess and Haydn instilled in him the sense that no note should be superfluous. Beethoven’s first published piece, however, was a set of variations on “Se vuol ballare”, one of the hit tunes from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Published by Artaria, Mozart’s publisher, this piece apart from showing Beethoven’s admiration for Mozart, who had died in 1791, also reflects the fact that the older composer was now after his death achieving the kind of status that the Viennese had denied him during his life-time.

Throughout the 1790s, the works Beethoven published became more ambitious, whilst also keeping an eye on potential sales; the piano trios of his official opus 1, the string trios, piano sonatas, and ‘cello and violin sonatas were all works which could be performed in the home, thus maximising the potential audience. The success of his published works (all stemming from an audacious strategy for his op1, whereby Beethoven could sell the first 450 copies privately, before handing them over to Artaria to be published at a lower price) grew alongside his burgeoning career as a pianist. In April 1800 it seems Beethoven was ready to properly present himself to the Viennese public in both these roles. He organised a benefit concert at the Burgtheater, the venue of Mozart’s Academies some 15 years earlier, where he presented to the public his first symphony, a piano concerto (probably no1 in C) and his Septet; as soloist in the concerto and in improvisations, he demonstrated his skills as a pianist. By all accounts, the concert was a success but, perhaps surprisingly for us now, the work that was praised above all was the Septet; it immediately became on of his most popular compositions. Listening to the Septet we can easily imagine however why it achieved immediate popularity, even if Beethoven was later dismissive of the piece telling a friend, Cipriani Potter, “in those days I could not compose”. It is a piece in the divertimento style and would have achieved its popularity partly by dint of its suitability for both domestic performance (perhaps, given its general levity of affect, even - dare we say - as background music) and for concert performance. And unlike the op18 string quartets and some of the early piano sonatas, there was nothing in the piece to perplex the predominantly conservative Viennese public.

Cast in six movements and composed in E flat – a convenient key for the wind instruments – the Septet opens with a conventional first movement in Sonata form. One of the first performers was violinist Ignaz Schuppanizingh (whom Beethoven had befriended during his first few years in Vienna, having taken arithmetic lessons from his father immediately upon his arrival - as David Wyn Jones points out in his The Life of Beethoven (Cambridge 1998), Beethoven’s arithmetic when he arrived in Vienna was not exactly in keeping with what one would expect from one of humanity’s greatest geniuses: “To determine how much the maid should be paid for eleven days Beethoven wrote the figure ‘½’ eleven times, added them up and noted the total as 10 ½ gulden!”.) Incidentally, Schuppanzingh would later go on to become friends with Schubert going on – both with and without his renowned quartet – to give first performances of his great works and we can immediately hear the importance of the violin part as it takes the lead in the slow introduction before introducing the Allegro’s main theme, a gloriously buoyant, toe-tapping inspiration with the strings and double bass underpinning proceedings. The second subject is similarly light-hearted and as with the first, is passed mainly between violin and clarinet. The brief development section is introduced by a unison statement of the first subject modulating to the minor before Beethoven gives some of the instruments a chance to shine individually, cleverly working the themes together before bringing the first theme back in the recapitulation, this time experimenting further with the instrumentation.

The Adagio Cantabile slow movement, like the slow movement of Schubert’s Octet which used Beethoven’s work as a model, opens with a reflective clarinet solo, gently accompanied by the strings, before being taken over by the violin as the clarinet weaves a descant around it. Slowly the other wind instruments, silent for the opening section, join in. It is interesting here to note how Beethoven integrates and distinguishes between the wind and string instruments, carefully separating them and then letting them join together to create maximum variety. In keeping with the work’s divertimento origins this movement doesn’t necessarily plumb the emotional depths of some his contemporaneous slow movements, rather it ticks over gently in a mood of amiable reverie. The next movement, a Menuet, is remarkable for its anticipation of the sound world of Schubert’s Octet, especially in its used of dotted rhythms and the insistent reiteration of that rhythm by the clarinet and bassoons. The trio section allows the clarinet and horn a chance to shine in lively arpeggios punctuating the strings’ staccato melody.

The theme of the fourth movement was a popular tune of the day, a ditty from the Rhineland entitled “Ach Schiffer, lieber schiffer”, which Beethoven cannot have chosen for any other reason than its popularity at the time; it is not a great tune. This movement, however, affords Beethoven a good opportunity for instrumental experimentation. Some view the septet as an apprentice piece for the first symphony and here Beethoven tries out all sorts of combinations of instruments, starting with a bare string trio in the first variation, he brings the bassoon into the limelight in the 3rd and the horn is allowed to shine in the 4th against busy violin ornamentation. A mysterious statement of the theme on ‘cello and double bass introduces a coda, bringing the movement to a close. A boisterous horn-call introduces the Scherzo where the first violin is made to work, providing concerto-like commentary. The ‘cello gets a chance to sing out in the trio section before the Scherzo’s repeat. Like Schubert’s Octet, written 25 years later, the finale is presaged by a slow introduction – an extremely brief but extraordinary slow march which anticipates the funeral march of the Eroica symphony of four years later. When the presto finale gets underway, it recreates much of the character in both instrumentation and melody of the first movement. After a tightly argued, contrapuntal middle section a violin “cadenza” brings back the main theme and the violin part becomes more and more and more prominent and virtuosic as the work approaches its end, culminating in a finely worked coda.

Hugo Shirley (2006)