The Friday night concert at the Festival gave two of the greatest and most popular chamber works of Schubert in harness. These were the Death and the Maiden string quartet in D minor, D. 810, and the Trout piano quintet in A major, D.667.
I've chosen to take these two pieces separately from the rest of the Schubertiade for personal reasons, and beg your indulgence, dear readers.
When I first met the man who would become my husband, Massi Tanaka, I quickly found out that (like me) he loved the music of Schubert. We spent many happy hours together listening to Schubert, at concerts, or in the car while driving around to various places, or just at home. These two particular works were special favourites of his.
In 2012 he was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus, and he died on Christmas Day, December 25, 2013. I very quickly decided that I would like to sponsor a concert at the Festival of the Sound in his memory, and dropped into the Festival office to talk to the Executive Director, Jennifer McGillivray, an old friend of mine. I told her that any concert with Schubert would be ideal. She showed me this one in the upcoming season programme, and I knew instantly that this was -- had to be -- Massi's concert. So for me it was a special, personal privilege to be allowed to sponsor this performance of two of Massi's favourite pieces in his honour and memory.
The common feature of these two wonderful works is that each contains a slow movement, theme and variations, based on the melody of a Schubert lied (art song). We heard both of those lieder in the afternoon concert (see my previous post). But it's important to park the text of the lied somewhere else when listening to these chamber works. For purposes of this music, I don't think the texts serve any kind of subtextual purpose at all. These simply become beloved melodies which the composer wished to use in a new way.
Having said that, though, the predominant mood of the D minor quartet is one of darkness of emotion. The quartet opens in a mood almost of anger. The opening phrases remind me of a person in a boiling rage, biting and snapping off the ends of words. There is a kind of raw emotional outpouring at work throughout this lengthy movement. The slow movement theme and variations based on the song Der Tod und das Mädchen takes the sadness of that famous lied and amplifies it until it becomes a universal threnody of tragedy, sorrow and loss, ranking for power right alongside the funeral march of the Eroica symphony. The vehement scherzo brings scant relief -- even the major key trio seems to be struggling for a breakthrough. Only in the vigorous finale does the quartet finally win through -- after three-quarters of an hour -- to a kind of acceptance that this sadness and loss is an integral part of life.
I'm writing about this piece in such terms because that was the nature of the incredibly intense performance we heard from the Brodsky Quartet. Gripping from first to last, this interpretation reached a peak of almost overwhelming power and intensity in the variations, taken at the slowest possible tempo and with every note laden with meaning and significance. It was certainly long past time that this ensemble appeared at the Festival, and I definitely hope to hear them again soon.
Then, after the intermission, a most necessary contrast to the emotional depth and power of the first half. It's no wonder that the Trout Quintet has become one of the two most frequently performed works in the history of the Festival of the Sound. It would be hard to imagine a sunnier, more genial, more summer-like piece of music. That's not to say that the piece is without excitement, only that the mood is predominantly jolly and joyful. So is the eponymous song, even though it ends with the fish caught on the baited hook!
There are two curious facts about this particular work: one is that it is in 5 movements, rather than the more usual three or four, and the other is that it is scored for violin, viola, cello, double bass, and piano. Much of the sunny character of the music comes from the fact that the piano part is often placed very high on the keyboard, with melodies played in parallel octaves or occasionally in parallel sixths. It's a common procedure in Schubert's works for piano 4-hands (where it serves the purpose of keeping the pianists from killing each other with their fingernails), but here its effect is more to reinforce the overall lightness of tone.
The very opening is a rising 6-note arpeggio from the piano, the same which forms the continuous rippling accompaniment of the lied. Here, played once, it acts almost like a fanfare summoning our attention. As the movement rolls on, it continues to appear as a frequent signal at breaks between phrases. This movement is a great example of Schubert's ability to spin out a long stream of melody, where each phrase grows out of the one before in the most natural way. The slow second movement is a gentle, almost pastoral interlude. The third movement scherzo comes across as more of a rustic peasant dance than anything else. The fourth movement variations follow a typical 19th-century scheme: simple melodic variations, a variation built only on the bass line, a minor key variation, and then return to the major and finally back to the original tune to finish. The finale is a lively summing-up of all that has gone before, and ends with a series of downwards arpeggios in the piano that somewhat come across as a mirror-image of the rising arpeggio at the start.
For this joyful work, the Magellan Ensemble were joined by Jeffrey Stokes on the double bass, and this team turned in a lively performance (the scherzo taken at an especially brisk clip). There was lovely lyrical playing in the second movement andante, and the variations were delightful. In all this music the piano part was nicely scaled to match the strings. All in all, a delightful performance of a time-honoured favourite.
I know Massi would have loved it.
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