Chamber Sunday with Maxim Emelyanychev

29 MARCH 2020

CHAMBER SUNDAY WITH MAXIM EMELYANYCHEV –––––

2019/2020 PROGRAMME NOTE SCO.ORG.UK

WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR –––––

ROSSINI (1792–1868) Duet for Cello and Double Bass in D major (1824) Allegro Andante molto Allegro

BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) Clarinet Trio No 4 (1797) Allegro con brio Adagio Tema con variazioni

SCHUBERT (1797-1828) ‘The Trout’ Piano Quintet in A major (1819)

––––– There are certain chamber works that set out to plumb deep emotions and grapple with weighty philosophical issues of life, death and the meaning of it all. Just think of Beethoven’s late quartets, or even Shostakovich’s heartbreaking Eighth Quartet. And then there are works that achieve something similar by stealth.

In its purest sense, of course, chamber music is a meeting of players to share music for pleasure and satisfaction, even a bit of fun and entertainment. And if the music they play can embed genuine beauty and meaning inside an attractive, even frivolous exterior, well, so much the better. And the three pieces in this afternoon’s programme fall firmly into that second category.

Rossini’s Duet for cello and double bass is one of the chamber repertoire’s most unusual pieces. Duets for stringed instruments of any kind are pretty rare, and when they do exist, they’re usually intended for educational purposes, as a collaboration between teacher and pupil, or perhaps for domestic performance. Rossini, however, is having none of that: his Duet is a fully fledged concert work, designed to engage, entertain and enthrall. And it does all three magnificently.

It comes from early in Rossini’s career, when he was still a breathtakingly successful opera composer, before renouncing that position aged just 37. He was already a star when he arrived in London in 1823, and it was there that he met the double bass virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti (also a composer of note, who once famously duetted with Beethoven) and also the banker, MP and former Lord Mayor Sir David Salomons. A gifted amateur cellist, Salomons asked Rossini to write him a duet to play with Dragonetti,

and Rossini duly obliged, with a work that shows off the virtuosic potential of both instruments. Following the jaunty opening movement, the second movement is an elegant aria whose songful melody begins on the cello and is later passed to the bass, while the finale is a virtuosic romp full of dramatic flair, in which cello and bass take turns with its Italianate theme.

Beethoven’s Trio in B flat, Op 11, for the unusual combination of clarinet, cello and piano, has gained the equally unusual nickname ‘Gassenhauer’, meaning popular song or street song. That’s a reference to the theme of the work’s third movement, the bass trio ‘Pria ch’io l’impegno’ (or ‘Before beginning this awesome task, I need a snack’) from Josef Weigl’s comic opera L’amor marinaro (‘Love Among the Sailors’), virtually forgotten today, but which took Vienna by storm in the 1790s and was indeed undoubtedly sung and whistled in city’s byways.

According to Beethoven’s pupil Czerny, a request came from a clarinettist (probably Franz Josef Bähr, who performed regularly with the composer) for a set of variations on the tune. Beethoven, perhaps wanting to explore somewhat lighter repertoire than the weighty, symphonic-scale piano trios of his Op 1, duly obliged, providing not just variations but instead a full-scale trio for clarinet, cello and piano – with the option to replace the clarinet by a violin to keep potential amateur performers happy. But, the story goes, Beethoven didn’t know where the tune had come from, and was furious when he found out its origins.

Gioachino Rossini

theme than it really deserves – a format that would reach its climax in Beethoven’s monumental Diabelli Variations. His Op. 11 variations are preceded by a delicate opening movement full of catchy tunes and surprising key changes, then a slow movement full of uncomplicated lyricism, its material exchanged between clarinet and cello.

Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet is, of course, one of the best-loved and best-known works in the entire chamber repertoire. And its origins lie

Nonetheless, what he achieves in the Op 11 Trio’s finale is really rather miraculous. And it established a trend for later sets of variations

in another request for variations on a popular song – this time, one of the composer’s own.

In the summer of 1819, the 22-year-old Schubert embarked on a walking holiday in upper Austria with his friend Johann Michael Vogl, a renowned baritone at the Vienna Court Opera. One of their stops was in Steyr, southeast of Linz and Vogl’s birthplace, and it was there that Vogl introduced Schubert to Sylvester Paumgartner, assistant manager of the area’s iron mines, wealthy music patron and keen amateur cellist (yes, another one).

Paumgartner asked Schubert to write a new chamber work that he and his Steyr buddies could play, with two specific requests. First, it should be for the somewhat unusual combination of violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano (the same instrumentation

that make quite a bit more of their innocuous

as Hummel’s Piano Quintet, which they’d

Ludwig van Beethoven

Franz Schubert

thoroughly enjoyed and which handily matched the musicians they had available).

And second, it should somehow include the melody of ‘Die Forelle’ (‘The Trout’), a Schubert song that Paumgartner particularly enjoyed.

untroubled disposition. Not only was Schubert in his element during his hiking trip, but this was also a period in his life before the darkness of illness and mortality began to cast its shadow. Adding to the work’s remarkable buoyancy, too, is the Quintet’s scoring, which is invariably transparent, never thick, with the piano often playing an unadorned melody in simple octaves – a technique later picked up

by Shostakovich in his own chamber music.

Schubert did more than simply include his song tune, however. And he did more, in fact, than even write a whole movement’s worth of variations on it – the fourth of the Quintet’s five movements – since the song’s distinctive, bubbling, rising arpeggio accompaniment crops up in all of the work’s movements apart from its third.

Paumgartner was overjoyed with the work, and he and his friends are known to have played it in Steyr at the end of 1819, and doubtless in subsequent performances too.

But it remained unknown to the wider world until after Schubert’s death, when publisher Joseph Czerny advertised it thus: ‘The quintet having already been performed in several circles at the publisher’s instigation, and declared to be a masterpiece by the connoisseurs present, we deem it our duty to draw the musical public’s attention to this latest work by the unforgettable composer.’

Its opening movement is the spiritual twin to its ‘Trout’-themed fourth, beginning with a distinctive upward flourish and with several ‘Trout’-like melodies swimming through it. The serene second movement begins with one of the piano’s distinctive octave melodies against string accompaniment, and the fizzing, spiky scherzo that follows is offset by a quieter, more thoughtful trio section.

One of the reasons for the ‘Trout’’s enduring

Schubert pulls off quite an enjoyable trick with his fourth-movement ‘Trout’ variations, too, which not only showcase all five of the Quintet’s instruments, but also work backwards towards what’s essentially a restatement of the song in its original form as its sixth ‘variation’. Following a chime-like call to attention, the Quintet ends in rather modest fashion with a charming but gracious finale.

popularity is undoubtedly its sunny,

©David Kettle

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