Schubert: Complete String
Quartets. Diogenes Quartet (Stefan Kirpal and Gundula Kirpal, violins; Julia
Barthel and Alba González i Becerra, viola; Stephen Ristau, cello). Brilliant
Classics. $34.99 (7 CDs).
Weber: Complete Piano Sonatas;
Rondo brillante; Invitation to the Dance. Michelangelo Carbonara, piano.
Piano Classics. $18.99 (2 CDs).
Schumann: Complete Symphonic
Works, Volume VI—Symphony in G minor, “Zwickauer”; Overtures—Manfred, Scenes
from Goethe’s Faust, Goethe’s “Herrmann und Dorothea,” Genoveva, Schiller’s
“The Bride of Messina,” Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” WDR
Sinfonieorchester Köln
conducted by Heinz Holliger. Audite. $18.99.
The complete works of a
composer in a particular form offer pleasures beyond the individual ones: a
full cycle allows listeners to hear each piece in context and to trace the
composer’s development over time. Cycles also provide, frequently, the
opportunity to hear unfamiliar music that has been overshadowed by better-known
pieces created by a particular composer in a particular form. That is certainly
the case with regard to Schubert’s String Quartets: a few late ones have so
overwhelmed his earlier productions that the chance to hear the earlier ones is
not to be taken lightly. The chance to hear them played as well as they are by
the Munich-based Diogenes Quartet is even less to be missed: the seven-CD
Brilliant Classics repackaging of individual performances by these musicians,
recorded between 2012 and 2015, is a splendid experience on every level. It is
tempting to suggest that if this quartet, named for a Swiss publisher, were
actually the famous Greek Diogenes and were searching not for an honest man but
for an honest musician, it would need to seek no further: all four performers
are strong, both individually and collectively, and their handling of phrasing,
legato vs. staccato, and dynamics is well-thought-out in every single work. As
always in an extended compilation, individual listeners familiar with the repertoire
may or may not consider the Diogenes Quartet the “best” in a given work, but
the reality is that there is no “best” for this music – there are only
differing ways of viewing it, and that of the Diogenes Quartet is careful,
consistent and beautifully played throughout. The string tone and excellent
ensemble work of the four players shine through in every piece here.
The set also provides a
series of bonuses – one of the lovely things about an urge to completeness.
Sprinkled throughout the CDs are short and little-known works, including some
receiving their first performances ever thanks to completions by producer,
engineer and digital editor Christian Starke, who also provides particularly
well-done booklet notes on the music. There are also some chances here for listeners
to hear alternative versions of music that Schubert approached more than once.
In truth, the arrangement of material on the discs can be a touch confusing:
the apparent aim was to provide contrast of later, better-known Schubert with
earlier, less-often-played material, and while this works quite well from a
programming standpoint, it does make it hard to make chronological sense of the
quartets. Thus, the first CD includes String Quartet No. 7 in D major, D94
(probably misnumbered in the Deutsch catalogue and more likely the composer’s
second quartet); a Starke-completed Andante in C, D3; and the famous String
Quartet No. 13 in A minor, D804 (“Rosamunde”), here played particularly interestingly,
with a touch more edginess than this supremely lyrical music usually receives.
The second disc starts with the Overture in B-flat, D470, completed by Starke
in quartet form and showing evidence through its unison writing and fanfares
that Schubert was thinking orchestrally when he wrote it; continues with String
Quartet No. 8 in B-flat, D112, originally a string trio; and then moves to
String Quartet No. 11 in E, D353. On the third disc are the very first quartet,
D18, written in a mixture of G minor and B-flat; 5 Minuets and 5 German Dances, D89, plus later versions of a couple
of the items – a clear example of completeness-seeking; and String Quartet No.
5 in B-flat, D68. The entirely early focus of this CD contrasts strongly with
that of the fourth disc, which includes the justly famous String Quartet No. 14
in D minor, D810 (“Death and the Maiden”) and contrasts it with the early String
Quartet No. 6 in D, D74, and a short Menuet in D, D86. On the fifth CD are String Quartet No. 4 in C, D46;
the rather Haydnesque Overture in C minor, D8a; String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat,
D87; and String Quartet No. 12 in C minor, D703, the fragment known as the
“Quartettsatz.” The sixth disc includes the String Quartets Nos. 2 in C, D32, 3
in B-flat, D36, and 9 in G minor, D173. On the seventh CD is the always-amazing
pinnacle of Schubert’s work in this form, String Quartet No. 15 in G, D887,
interestingly paired with Starke’s completion of a quartet movement in C minor,
D103. Clearly this is a very rich and multifaceted release, reflecting the
richness and wide artistic range of the composer whose music it proffers and
celebrates. The interspersing of later works with earlier ones increases a
listener’s appreciation of Schubert’s genius while also showing how early it
developed: there are already hints in the earliest of these works, which
Schubert wrote in his early teens, of the harmonic exploration and unending
lyricism that he would produce in later music. There are also some fascinating
what-might-have-been moments here, parallel to those found in Schubert’s many
unfinished symphonies. For instance, the single “Quartettsatz” movement is
played rather frequently, but here it is coupled with a three-and-a-half-minute
smidgen of what would have been an Andante second movement, and clearly a
lovely one – but this breaks off as abruptly and tantalizingly as does the tiny
bit of the third movement of the Symphony No. 8 (“Unfinished,” although
scarcely the only such in Schubert’s symphonic oeuvre). The excellence of playing and strong musicianship of the
performers shine through everywhere in this cycle, and every reading is
convincing on its own terms while also making sense as part of the larger
whole. The overwhelming brilliance of the later quartets of course outshines
the comparatively modest successes of the earlier music heard here – yet not to
the point of totally eclipsing some beautiful, sometimes imitative but
sometimes innovative quartet writing that shows Schubert, again and again, to
be taking these four-voice musical conversations in new and highly personal
directions that culminate at last in the great quartets that have become so
familiar.
There is a touch of Schubert
in the piano sonatas of Carl Maria von Weber, too, in the expansive opening
movement of the fourth and last of these works. But the issues of completeness
with regard to these little-played pieces are different from those relating to
Schubert’s quartets. Weber was a forward-looking figure in many areas,
including opera and wind concertos, and a carefully backward-looking one in others,
as in his two deliberately Haydnesque symphonies. But in his piano sonatas, he
was a transitional figure, and this has done him and them little good with
performers and listeners. Like Hummel, another fine composer positioned between
the Classical and Romantic eras and not fully a member of either, Weber in
these sonatas requires great technical skill of pianists but does not repay
their work with the sort of emotional outpouring available to them from
Beethoven, Chopin or Liszt. The difficulty of the Weber sonatas should not be
underestimated. No. 1 in C (1812) starts like a Beethoven sonata and then
forces the performer to jump around the keyboard with truly Romantic-era
abandon and a series of trills that hover on the edge of impossibility, and the
same work’s concluding perpetuum mobile
zips up and down the keys with an almost equal level of amazement. No. 2 in
A-flat (1816) is much closer to Romanticism in its introspection, with a
particularly inward-looking slow movement – although the following Menuetto is
playful enough. No. 3 in D minor (1816) is even more serious and is the most
operatic of the sonatas, with an insistent darkness that not even the somewhat
flashy finale fully dispels. And No. 4 in E minor (1822), with that
proto-Schubertian opening movement, offers a genuinely strange Menuetto with
dark, almost demonic overtones, and a finale that also has bizarre moments and
ends in an inconclusive and rather disquieting manner. Italian pianist
Michelangelo Carbonara certainly has the technique for these sonatas, and for
the most part he has the interpretative ability to put them across well, too. The
first movements of Nos. 3 and 4 are especially well done, with decisiveness
held in close control, and Carbonara nicely balances sections of these works
where Weber requires contrast between smooth lines and biting chords. The
fourth sonata’s final movement is not taken as fast as its Prestissimo tempo indication suggests it should be, but Carbonara
brings plenty of bounce to it and embraces its oddities. As in his operas,
Weber brought drama and passion aplenty to his piano sonatas, mixing them with
some of the wit and elegance of Classical times. The result is a sound that may
not be to the taste of all performers or listeners, being “neither here nor
there” in terms of its place in musical history – but it can also be looked at
as a sound that combines elements of two types of composition and
communication, and does so effectively more often than not. Carbonara’s
inclusion of well-played versions of Weber’s Rondo brillante and Invitation
to the Dance, the former at the end of the first CD in this Piano Classics
release and the latter at the end of the second disc, results in pleasantly
virtuosic encores after the much greater length and complexity of the sonatas
themselves.
The sixth and final volume
in oboist/conductor Heinz Holliger’s survey of Schumann’s symphonic works also
combines some better-known music with some that is less familiar. Most of the
works here are overtures, all of them written fairly late in the composer’s
life (after 1847) and all of them reflecting on the symphonies much as
Schumann’s Konzertstücke
reflect on his concertos. Like the concert pieces, the overtures are more
compressed and more directly communicative than the longer works they help
elucidate. They are, in a word, more focused, and perhaps for that reason,
Holliger’s handling of this final CD in the Audite series is among the
sequence’s very best. The overtures were seen by Schumann partly as opera,
oratorio or stage-work preludes and partly as independent concert pieces
intended to give the audience, in brief and clearly accessible form, the
emotional kernel of a particular story. The better-known overtures, to Genoveva and Manfred, certainly do this effectively, but so do the other works
here, which are heard much less frequently. Indeed, all the overtures bear
testimony to the influence of literature on Schumann’s musical production – he
was, after all, a fine writer and critic as well as a composer. Holliger pulls
out all the stops in the overtures, with the result that each of these
10-minute-or-less works (only Manfred
is longer, at 13 minutes) packs a genuine emotional punch and shows listeners
very clearly just how intensely communicative a composer Schumann could be. The
completeness element comes through here not only thanks to the presentation of
the six overtures but also because Holliger offers the two-movement “Zwickau”
symphony, which was Schumann’s first symphonic work to be performed publicly,
even though it was never finished. Actually, only the first movement was
performed – and in addition to the completed but
unperformed-in-Schumann’s-lifetime second movement, there exists a fragment of
a scherzo and a sketch of a finale. What survives in finished form and is heard
here has some ingenious elements but is rather shapeless, its emotion clearer
than its formal means of expression. It is good to have the work as part of
this survey of Schumann’s complete symphonic output: one of the consistent pleasures
of all these full cycles is the chance to hear music that is admittedly not at
a composer’s highest level but that clarifies, through comparison with
better-made and better-known works, how Schubert, Weber and Schumann eventually
attained the quality for which they deservedly remain famous.
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