Saturday, May 30, 2020

Seldom-Heard Quintets from Takács and Ohlsson

courtesy of PIAS

Yesterday Hyperion Records released its latest album of the Takács Quartet, consisting of violinists Edward Dusinberre and Harumi Rhodes, violist Geraldine Walther, and cellist András Fejér (the only remaining member of the quartet that was there when it was formed in Budapest in 1975). The album is devoted to two piano quintets, both of which get far less attention than they deserve. It begins with Amy Beach’s Opus 67 quintet in F-sharp minor, composed in 1907. This is followed by Edward Elgar’s Opus 84 quintet in A minor, which he completed in 1919. The pianist for these recordings is Garrick Ohlsson.

Given how difficult it is to encounter either of these compositions, I should consider myself lucky to have experienced both of them in recital before having the chance to listen to either on a recording. Furthermore, both of those encounters were here in California. (New Yorkers take note!) I first heard the Elgar at a chamber music recital in Santa Rosa in the late Eighties, when my wife and I were living in Los Angeles but had no trouble driving some distance to a promising performance. Not long afterwards I found a Meridian Records CD of the quintet performed by The Medici Quartet with pianist John Bingham, and it has remained one of the more frequently played CDs in my collection.

I have the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) to thank for my first encounter with the Beach quintet. This took place in the fall of 2008 at a time when the San Francisco Public Library had prepared an exhibit organized around the time that Beach had spent living in San Francisco. Actually, SFCM provided an opportunity to listen to the quintet two times in close succession. The first occasion was a recital by pianist William Wellborn performing with the Ives Quartet. This was followed, one month later, by a String and Piano Chamber Music student recital. Ironically, I did not have a recording of this quintet until this new Hyperion release.

As a performing pianist, Beach was familiar with Johannes Brahms’ Opus 34 piano quintet in F minor, and the notes for the Hyperion booklet by Nigel Simeone suggest how that earlier piece may have influenced Beach’s composition. To evoke a metaphor I acquired from pianist Peter Grunberg, Brahms may be down there in “the engine room” of Beach’s quintet; but what she was doing with the music up on deck is an entirely different matter. For one thing there is an “Adagio rhetoric” that permeates the entire quintet, allowing more intense rapidity to emerge only in the last of the three movements. Furthermore, Simeone’s suggesting “elements of the ‘Brahms’ theme” most likely tells us more about Simeone than about Beach. There are more than enough reasons for the attentive listener to take her Opus 67 quintet on its own terms and reap all the satisfaction derived from that approach; and this recording provides ample opportunities to experience that satisfaction.

The Elgar quintet, on the other hand, is unquestionably Elgar through and through. Over the course of his life, the composer had to contend with dark moods; and the quintet was composed at a time when he was coming out of one of those moods. Having the advantage of more encounters with this quintet than I have experienced with Beach’s, I have come to the opinion that, while Elgar’s mental state may have improved, the shadows of darkness permeate all three of the composition’s movements.

From that perspective, the Hyperion recording left me with the impression that the performers were trying to shy away from the darkness, perhaps out of a shared desire to keep the emotions from going over the top. I definitely sympathize with that objective. One does not want a reading of a piano quintet that “out-herods Herod,” as William Shakespeare had Hamlet put it. Nevertheless, there is an emotional tension that cuts across this quintet’s three movements; and this recording seems to be so focused on being true to the letter of Elgar’s text that such tension never really reveals itself.

Nevertheless, there is much to be gained from listening to Beach’s music on this album; and, for those unfamiliar with Elgar’s quintet, the performance definitely has value for a “first encounter.”

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