Mozart & Fauré

MOZART & FAURÉ With Susan Tomes Piano Thursday 11 March 2021, The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh –––––

PROGRAMME NOTE

SCO.ORG.UK

PERFORMERS

Introduced by Philip Higham and Susan Tomes

VIOLIN Maria Włoszczowska VIOLA Felix Tanner CELLO Philip Higham PIANO Susan Tomes

4 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh EH7 5AB +44 (0)131 557 6800 | info@sco.org.uk | sco.org.uk

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WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR Mozart (1756-1791) Piano Quartet in G minor, K478 (1785) Allegro Andante Rondo

FAURÉ (1845-1924) Piano Quartet No 1 in C minor, Op 15 (1876-79, revised 1883 (new finale)) Allegro molto moderato Scherzo: Allegro vivo Adagio Allegro molto

––––– Mozart wasn’t the first composer to write for a piano quartet. Indeed, the teenage Beethoven had written three pieces for violin, viola, cello and piano in 1785, and several others had dabbled before then. Earlier composers, however, had tended to view the quartet’s three stringed instruments as not much more than an accompaniment serving a flashy, soloistic piano, almost creating a miniature keyboard concerto. In his own piano quartets, on the other hand, Mozart saw things rather differently, writing demanding and crucial parts for all four instruments, who take turns to slide in and out of the spotlight as the music develops.

And therein lies one of the issues with his First Piano Quartet, K478 in G minor.

It was commissioned in 1785 as the first of a proposed set of three, by newlyestablished Viennese publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister (also a composer himself), who intended the works for amateur Viennese musicians to entertain themselves and their friends at home.

Mozart, it seems, had far loftier ideas, creating a turbulent, demanding work that would have stretched the abilities of all but the most gifted of domestic musicians. Concerned that amateur players wouldn’t purchase the score because it was simply too difficult for them, Hoffmeister swiftly cancelled the remaining two works they’d discussed.

He even wrote to Mozart: “Write more popularly, or else I can neither print nor pay for anything of yours!” Nonetheless, he honoured the advance payment he’d promised to Mozart, and the composer went ahead and wrote the second work he’d planned anyway – K493 in E flat –

Nonetheless, to 21stcentury ears more used to variety and complexity, Mozart’s G minor Piano Quartet sounds passionate, dramatic and heartfelt, rather than particularly difficult.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

and had it published the following year by a competitor, Artaria.

increasingly complex and elaborate music separating modern listeners from Mozart, we tend to think of him now as

A description of the K478 Piano Quartet in the Weimar Journal des Luxus und der Moden in June 1788 seems to confirm Hoffmeister’s reservations. The rather perplexed reviewer noted that, if performed by amateurs, “it could not please: everybody yawned with boredom over the incomprehensible tintamarre of four instruments that did not keep together for four bars on end, and whose senseless concentus never allowed any unity of feeling; but it had to please, it had to be praised! What a difference when this much-advertised work of art is performed with the highest degree of accuracy by four skilled musicians who have studied it carefully.”

a model of clarity and simplicity. The Emperor Joseph II’s notorious comment about his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail – “Too many notes, my dear Mozart” – is almost certainly spurious, but it nonetheless points to an important truth. During his own lifetime, Mozart’s music was considered consummately beautiful, expertly crafted, daringly expressive in its emotional richness, but also exceptionally difficult, complex and intricate. A possibly more reliable remark from Joseph II was made at the Vienna premiere of Don Giovanni: “Mozart’s music is certainly too difficult to be sung.”

With more than two centuries of

Mozart’s G minor Piano Quartet sounds

Nonetheless, to 21st-century ears more used to variety and complexity,

It’s tempting to think of the piece – which undeniably has its fair share of turmoil and drama – as a musical diary of his turbulent emotions at the time.

Gabriel Urbain Fauré

passionate, dramatic and heartfelt, rather than particularly difficult (though today’s four performers may offer a

blithe G major in his finale, with an amiable main theme that really comes into its own when the three strings bustle

different perspective). G minor is the key the Mozart reserved for his most dramatic, turbulent creations, and the brusque, unison call to attention in the work’s opening bars doesn’t disappoint in that respect. His second main theme – first heard in the piano, sweetly harmonised but with a disconcerting rhythm – is far more lyrical, and the composer introduces an entirely new, slow-moving theme at the beginning of his brief central development section.

in to join the piano. He returns to it between and following two contrasting episodes – the first carefree, the second far stormier – and keeps one last surprise in store before wrapping things up with exuberant good humour.

The heartfelt slow movement opens with the solo piano before the strings join in their lower registers. The effect is an uncanny combination of solemnity and ornate refinement. Unusually, Mozart

With its clipped rhythms and its unison strings (though the piano adds offbeat harmonies here), the opening of Fauré’s own First Piano Quartet, Op. 15 in C minor, bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the earlier Mozart Piano Quartet. The 32-yearold composer wrote it at a particularly turbulent time in his personal life. In the early 1870s, under the watchful guidance of fellow composer Camille

launches straight into a sunny, bright,

Saint-Saëns, he’d been introduced to

fashionable Parisian society, joining the newly established Société Nationale de Musique Française, where he got to know

offsets his passages of pastel-hued prettiness with material that’s far more extrovert and demonstrative – notably

Franck, d’Indy, Lalo, Bizet and others.

He also frequented the soirées hosted by celebrated mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot, where he met some of the most eminent writers of the time – and where he developed passionate feelings for Pauline’s daughter, Marianne. After five years of patiently cultivating her affections, in 1877 Fauré and Marianne became engaged. Less than four months later, however, the young woman called things off. She later confessed that she had found Fauré more intimidating than endearing.

the section that leads back to the return of the opening theme, though he finds a certain serenity in the movement’s calm conclusion.

Fauré began the Piano Quintet during their relationship, and completed it in 1879 – after they had gone their separate ways. He revised it, rewriting the finale entirely, in 1883. It’s tempting to think of the piece – which undeniably has its fair share of turmoil and drama – as a

The scampering, lighthearted second movement is a quicksilver scherzo in which Fauré seems intent on giving full rein to his playful humour, swapping restlessly between time signatures, keys and even material that’s by turns raucous and barely audible. Legendary French pianist Marguerite Long, who championed the composer’s piano works, described the slow third movement as “the sorrowful echo of the break of Fauré’s engagement with Marianne Viardot”, claiming that she couldn’t help weeping when she played it. And if anywhere, it’s here that Fauré may betray the depths of his feelings – even if he does so with his characteristic noble

musical diary of his turbulent emotions at the time. Despite its minor-key tonality, however, it’s a generally upbeat, energetic work, one that even borders on optimism, and its undeniable intensity of feeling is offset by an emphasis on formal clarity and elegance of utterance.

There’s a certain darkness, however, to the first movement’s expansive opening theme, partly due to the rich, low octaves that Fauré assigns to the pianist’s left hand. The theme is developed extensively across all four instruments before the viola introduces the more lyrical second theme, quickly copied by the violin and cello. The central development section begins with the expansive opening theme transformed into something

restraint. The composer’s biographer and friend, Émile Vuillermoz, however, disagreed entirely, writing: “Fauré’s reserve always prevented him from following the example of Romantic artists who allowed the whole world to witness their personal frustrations.”

more languorous and exotic, but Fauré

© David Kettle

Fauré continues the dark C minor tonality into the opening of the fourth movement, but its bottled-up energy is soon released in a wash of furious activity that seems to spiral inexorably upward towards the light. Accordingly, the Piano Quartet ends with an effusive outpouring of positivity and power in a brilliant C major.

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