Traditional Music; Unconventional Circumstances

courtesy of Naxos of America

Once again my interest in the German Profil label has departed from my usual pursuit of archival recordings. This time the content is a single CD presenting the two string trios composed by Anton Arensky. The release of this album in the United States seems, once again, to have been impeded by Amazon.com ineptitude. However, the album is available from Presto Classical through a single Web page that supports both downloads and the purchase of the physical CD itself.

Mind you, Amazon.com provides a generous supply of albums of both of these piano trios. They have probably worked their way into standard repertoire over the past few decades, perhaps as a result of a kick-start from the Beaux Arts Trio. In my own concert experiences, I have encountered the first of these trios, Opus 32 in D minor, several times; but I have yet to attend a performance of Opus 73 in F minor.

This particular album, however, seems to have been produced under circumstances that border on the peculiar, if not crossing it. It appears to be the 23rd release in a series produced by the Hilfswerk Lions Club in Munich. Granted, my knowledge of the Lions Club is pretty meager; but this is the first time I have associated any Lions Club with chamber music. The recordings themselves were made in the studios of Bayerischer Rundfunk in 1992 between March 23 and March 26. The performances are by the Münchner Klaviertrio, whose members are violinist Adrian Lazar, cellist Gerhard Zank, and pianist Hermann Lechler.

Arensky tends to be regarded as a minor figure anywhere outside of Russia. His composition teacher was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; and, in later years, his pupils included Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin. While he had a solid reputation, a proclivity for drinking and gambling ultimately took its toll. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 44.

Regardless of his lifestyle, both of his trios have much to offer the attentive listener. The same can be said for the interplay among the three performers on this recording. The recording itself thus stands out as providing an excellent way in which to become familiar with Arensky’s approach to composition.

Chamber Music for Two Cellos at Old First Concerts

The title of last night’s program in the Old First Concerts series at Old First Presbyterian Church was Cello++, so titled because the selections consisted of two chamber music compositions, both of which required two cellos. Both of the cellists are members of local piano trios, Brady Anderson in the Alden Trio and Michelle Kwon in the Delphi trio. The other performers were the violinists of those trios, Yuri Kye (last seen at Old First at the beginning of this month playing with Tangonero) and Liana Bérubé, respectively, and violist Aaron Rosengaus. The compositions themselves were written by, in order of performance, Anton Arensky and Franz Schubert.

The jewel in last night’s crown, so to speak, was definitely the Schubert selection, the D. 956 quintet in C major. Those aware of Schubert’s almost superhuman productivity during the months leading up to his death in November of 1828 should bear in mind that this quintet was composed between August and October of that year. (Those who have followed this site for some time probably know by now that all three of Schubert’s final and monumental piano sonatas were composed during that September, and many believe he worked on all three of them simultaneously.) His decision to write a quintet with two cellos, rather than two violas (as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had done), definitely biased the lower sonorities; but, regardless of its biographical context, there is nothing dark about this quintet.

Instead, there is very much a “sunny disposition” (as John Cage would have put it) to the four movements, each of which explores different combinations of the instruments, allowing those combinations to play off of each other. In addition, the second (Adagio) movement is definitely a candidate for providing the most sublime moments in the entire repertoire (of all genres, not just chamber music). The prevailing rhetoric is one of under-spoken minimality with themes that are little more than gestures. Yet each of those gestures seizes the attention of the listener, who willingly allows self to be transported to the quietude of an alternative reality. (For what it is worth, I personally tend to associate this movement with John Donne’s poem “The Ecstasy.”)

Last night’s performance definitely lavished D. 956 with all the attention it deserves. Each of the five performers was always acutely aware of the other four, thus endowing each subgroup of players to dazzle with its own characteristic sonorities. Expressiveness was never short-changed, but the group consistently knew how to balance the intensity of the rhetoric against the syntactic nuts and bolts of the score itself. Precision never took a back seat to emotion. This monument to the intensity and elegant structure of Schubert’s passions could not have been given better execution.

Sadly, the Arensky selection came off as rather pale when placed alongside D. 956. His Opus 53 is a quartet in A minor, and Kye was the one violinist in the performance. Arensky composed the piece as a memorial to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. However, his effort is little more than a pale shadow, particularly to those familiar with Tchaikovsky’s own chamber music compositions. Last night’s execution did its best to do justice to the piece, allowing the group’s own polished rhetoric to compensate for thematic material that had more to do with extra-musical influences than with the nuts-and-bolts of harmonic and contrapuntal syntax. Nevertheless, the score “is what it is;” and the musicians cannot be faulted for making the best of the cards dealt to them.

Influence Without Anxiety in SFS Chamber Music

This afternoon in Davies Symphony Hall, members of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) presented the latest program in their Chamber Music Series. That program was structured around two substantial piano trios, each the product of a composer that clearly knew how to draw upon influences from the past while still managing to create music that allowed for a generous expression of his own personal voice. Those composers were, in order of performance, Anton Arensky and Antonín Dvořák.

The more impressive of these was the playing of Dvořák’s Opus 65 in F minor by violinist Melissa Kleinbart and cellist Amos Yang, joined by pianist Eric Zivian. Dvořák had the advantage of having made a deep impression on Johannes Brahms, whose encouragement included recommending Dvořák to his own publisher, Simrock. It is therefore easy to image that Dvořák would have taken an interest in Brahms’ chamber music. Thus, in 1883, when Dvořák began work on his Opus 65, it would not be out of the question that he would have been exposed (on paper if not in performance) to Brahms’ own second piano trio (Opus 87 in C major, originally published in 1882) and his first string quintet (Opus 88 in F major, also published in 1882). For that matter, by 1883 Brahms had published all three of his piano quartets.

This is not to suggest that Dvořák was explicitly trying to imitate Brahms, nor was he using any of these earlier chamber music compositions to serve as a model. Nevertheless, one encounters enough surface-level gestures, even in inner voices, that are likely to resonate with those who know their Brahms chamber music well. At the same time, however, the overall rhetoric positively vibrates with many of the Czech influences we tend to expect in Dvořák’s music; and it is through those influences that Dvořák vigorously establishes the identity of his own expressive voice as a composer. This afternoon’s performers clearly grasped the nature of that identity and could not have done a better job of presenting it compellingly to the audience.

1910 postcard photograph of Anton Arensky (photographer unknown, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Arensky’s first piano trio (Opus 32 in D minor), on the other hand, probably reflects a richer variety of influences. The strongest of these probably came from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (which seems not to have gone down very well with Arensky’s teacher at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov). Certainly, it is not difficult to detect a “family resemblance” between Opus 32 and the elegiac tone of Tchaikovsky’s Opus 50 piano trio in A minor. (For that matter Sergei Rachmaninoff had composed his Opus 9 “Trio élégiaque” in D minor at the end of 1893, the year before Arensky composed his Opus 32.) The notes for the program book by James Keller also detect the presence of Camille Saint-Saëns (the scherzo from the Opus 22 piano concerto in G minor) and Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 49 (first) piano trio in D minor. I might also account for a soupçon of Alexander Scriabin in the third movement.

Nevertheless, even with all of those influences, Arensky was as capable as Dvořák at finding his own voice in those layers beneath surface-structure similarities. Unfortunately, this afternoon’s account by violinist Diane Nicholeris and cellist David Goldblatt, joined by pianist Gwendolyn Mok, never rose to as compelling a level as that of the Dvořák performance. Much of the problem was that Mok could not keep her dynamics under control and tended to drown out the better part of the cello part. (Given that Goldblatt has at least two successful performances of the music of George Crumb under his belt, I cannot imagine that he is shy about his dynamics!) This resulted in little justice being done to the surface structure and even less to the deeper levels. With another pianist both Nicholeris and Goldblatt would probably have been more effective as advocates for Arensky.

On the other hand pianist Britton Day deserves to be singled out for his disciplined command of dynamic levels during the opening selection on the program, a trio for flute, violin, and piano composed by Nino Rota in 1958. This was written long before Rota was tapped to provide music for Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather films; and, for that matter, the trio also predates almost all of Rota’s work with Federico Fellini. Nevertheless, all three of the movements of this trio serve up a rich diversity of approaches to wit, a deft command of the rhetoric that probably did not escape Fellini’s notice.

For this performance Day accompanied flutist Robin McKee (who happens to be his mother) and violinist Mariko Smiley. Both of them appreciated Rota’s capacity for wit but also saw the virtues of taking an understated approach to it. The piano part, on the other hand, had a rather generous share of raucous rhetoric, which ran the risk of overwhelming the other two instruments.

Fortunately, Day seems to have caught on to a technique that I recently encountered while reading Theodor W. Adorno’s Towards a Theory of Music Reproduction (actually a scrupulously edited account, provided by Henri Lonitz, of a rich collection of notes and draft versions that Adorno had been compiling before his death). Adorno observed that a loud passage can be identified by its very first notes, after which the player is free to drop the dynamic level in the interest of balancing with the other players. Day exercised a solid command of this approach, allowing those of us on audience side to enjoy the full scope of Rota’s wit.

Late Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music from SFCM Students

If Tuesday night’s Graduate Composition Recital at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) offered an impressive account of things to come, then last night’s Graduate Chamber Music Recital by violinist Yuqian Zhang can be taken as a sign that the past will be in good hands. The program was firmly coupled in the last decades of the nineteenth century, coupling César Franck’s 1886 sonata in A major with Anton Arensky’s Opus 32 (first) piano trio in D minor, written in 1894. Zhang’s accompanist for the Franck sonata was pianist Mengni Tang, while her trio partners were cellist Chiyuan Ma and pianist Xin Zhao.

Arensky was about two decades younger than Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and one decade older than Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninoff. His music tends to be overlooked by those who do not specialize in the history of Russian music; and, while it would be unfair to accuse him of carrying on Tchaikovsky’s torch, it would not be unfair to approach his two piano trios as reflections on Tchaikovsky’s only piano trio (Opus 50 in A minor, composed in 1882, the year of Scriabin’s birth for those who like to seek out connections). Even the overall architecture of Arensky’s Opus 32, which concludes by reflecting on how it began, recalls Tchaikovsky’s Opus 50, as does the preference for elegiac rhetoric.

Nevertheless, last night’s performance made a case for the assertion that one can still perform Arensky’s trio as a journey of discovery. Zhang’s account of the virtuosic bowing techniques in the second (Scherzo) movement served up sonorities that one seldom (if ever) encounters in Tchaikovsky; and the group as a whole knew how to balance technique and expressiveness to deliver the elegiac without letting it sound maudlin. It is also worth noting that this was, indeed, a “chamber music” group with just the right balance of individuals engaged with their parts and individuals engaged with each other. The problem with Graduate Chamber Music recitals is that one wonders if the members of a group that works well together will end up going their own separate ways.

The Franck selection, on the other hand, was far more familiar. Indeed, it would be almost impossible for chamber music aficionados to avoid it in the course of concert-going. This is a case in which the attentive listener expects the technique to be solid and considers whether the expressiveness has its own sense of uniqueness. This particular account did not serve up any particularly striking surprises; but, as was the case with the trio, it still shone as the product of the close collaboration of two performers for whom awareness of each other counted for as much as awareness of Franck’s demands.

The program as a whole was given an enthusiastic reception upon its conclusion. It did not take much to encourage Zhang to play an encore. She turned to Jascha Heifetz’ arrangement of Claude Debussy’s song “Beau Soir.” This was one of Debussy’s earliest compositions, so early that it predates Franck’s sonata by about a decade! The music reflects the quietude of the poem by Paul Bourget that Debussy was setting, and Heifetz’ arrangement basically preserves that quietude in the absence of the words. Zhang clearly appreciated the spirit behind this arrangement and was rewarded with the stillness of keen attention on the part of her audience.