Dvořák, Piano Quintet in A Major, Op.81
May 3rd, 2009Antonin Dvořák, 1841-1904
Piano Quintet in A Major, Op.81, 1887
Dvorák’s sublime Piano Quintet in A Major occupies a lofty place in the chamber music canon shared perhaps only by two other works for the same ensemble from Schumann and Brahms. All three works feature the mighty sounds of a string quartet paired with a grand piano, a sonic grandeur matched only by the magnificent scale and span of these mountainous masterworks, epic in their expressiveness. It is always impossible, if not in poor taste, to suggest that one of your children is your favorite, but it is tempting to name Dvořák’s as the finest of these three astonishing siblings. His dynamic handling of the ensemble is superb in terms of color, the fluid intermixing of vivid, individual parts with a transparent texture using a brilliant range of scoring techniques. Throughout, the muscular drama freely intermixes with numerous sections of pure, euphoric beauty with a constant interlacing of magical dance music « More »
Alexander Borodin was, like many of his now famous Russian composer friends, a composer by avocation; he had a day job. Borodin pursued a distinguished career as a physician and chemist first while composing only when he could in his truly precious spare time. Generally, it would require years for Borodin to finish a work yet he succeeded in writing some astonishing music of great originality and influence including two symphonies, tone poems such as In the Steppes of Central Asia, the opera Prince Igor featuring the now famous Polovetsian Dances, and a handful of chamber works including the equally beloved String Quartet No. 2 in D Major. This last work was, unlike the others, written in a rapid flush of activity lasting only a few months during a summer vacation. 
Faurés chamber music is dominated by ensembles with piano. In fact, only one work excludes it: the string quartet of 1924 written when he was 79, Fauré’s final chamber composition. In addition to the numerous works for piano and soloist including violin and cello sonatas and a treasure trove of precious miniatures mirroring his gift for song, Fauré wrote two piano quartets, two piano quintets and a piano trio, all of them superb works of the highest order. The Piano Quartet No. 1 in c minor, Op. 15 begins the series of larger ensemble works. Written in 1883 (with a revised finale substituted the following year), it falls neatly between the music of César Franck and Ravel suggesting appropriate and revealing comparisons. Fauré had a very distinct musical personality, somewhat aloof from the intoxication of Wagner as well as the modern leanings of the Impressionists. 
Dvořák composed his first piano quartet in 1875, the same year that Brahms composed his third and final work for the same ensemble. Dvořák was 34 with still merely a local reputation despite all his hard work. He was yet a few years away from his international “breakthrough” with the Slavonic Dances and even more years from what in hindsight are regarded as his mature chamber masterworks. Yet still, within a few measures of the opening, one can recognize Dvořák’s distinctive musical personality. The initial themes of the first movement already suggest the folk-like modal simplicity some would associate with his “American” phase nearly two decades hence. Along with Dvořák’s gift for lyricism and color, this early quartet demonstrates numerous evocations of Slavonic national character that give nearly all of Dvořák’s work a special, novel cast when compared with every composer that preceded him (save Smetana). 
“The “pianoforte”, the world’s very first piano, was conceived and built by Cristoforti around 1700. The first piano sonatas appear in print in 1732, the year of his death. But the practical, noteworthy arrival of the piano along with music written specifically for it does not really occur until the mid 1760’s, the same time that this new-fangled instrument was first featured in public concerts. Yet another decade passed before strong evidence of a true compositional style for piano or ensemble works demanding the piano rather than a more “generic” keyboard such as the more common harpsichord. Ultimately, the great first watershed of mature piano music in history falls in the generous middle of the 1780’s including Haydn’s later sonatas and Mozart’s unparalleled piano concertos, the mighty set of 11 works written between 1784 and 1786. 
Many regard Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 3 in f-minor as a milestone. It is uncharacteristically serious, stormy and fraught with tragic conflict, unusual for a man generally regarded as sanguine, uncomplicated and most un-neurotic. It is supposed that Dvořák was venting his grief after recently losing his mother. But the trio seems to have arisen from another crisis as well: the pleading of friends and colleagues to move beyond his obsession with folk-oriented Slavic nationalism in music, to achieve a more cosmopolitan European style and a reputation beyond provincialism. Yet a third aspect of this turning point was surely Dvořák’s “natural” development: because of or simply simultaneous with these other events, Dvořák, at forty-two, achieved a new level of maturity as a composer. 
In 1795, a twenty-five-year-old Beethoven decided to publish his very first opus, a set of three piano trios, Op. 1, dedicated to Prince Carl von Lichnowsky. The choice of piano trio was safe and practical. Safe, because the piano trio was thus far a generally lighter genre with a less daunting history than the string quartet. Practical, because Beethoven himself was a brilliant pianist in need of performance material favoring his participation and leadership. Haydn had written a large number of wonderful piano trios that were essentially piano sonatas with string reinforcements. Mozart had written a handful, at least two of them masterworks worthy for three independent players. But both composers wrote trios with three or fewer movements, never exceeding around twenty minutes in length and hardly ever broaching the profundity of their more distinguished genres. With his three new piano trios, Beethoven raised the stakes 
Edvard Grieg is known primarily for his orchestral works, his songs and his numerous piano miniatures. His completed chamber music output was quite small: one complete string quartet, three violin sonatas and a cello sonata. Grieg left a few other salon pieces and two fragmentary works: two movements of an unfinished string quartet and a lone movement for an unfinished piano trio. Grieg’s powerful String Quartet in g minor was completed in 1878 when he was in his mid-thirties. Apparently during the same year he began work on a piano trio but only managed to complete one movement, the Andante con moto in c minor. The manuscript was discovered posthumously by Grieg’s Dutch colleague and close friend of many years, Julius Röntgen. Röntgen was elated by the discovery and communicated his reaction to Grieg’s widow Nina: 
A great adage attributed to Malraux insists that an artist paints a tree not because he has seen a tree, but because he has seen a painting of a tree. A musical style is born not with its first pioneer but with the first follower. Joseph Haydn was the original string quartet pioneer, establishing the genre in a remarkable series of works that reached first maturity in 1771. Mozart was the first follower. Around the age of 28, freshly relocated to Vienna, he plunged into a multi-year study of Haydn’s quartets (along with Bach’s counterpoint) and with significant labor, produced his six masterworks dedicated lovingly to Haydn himself. There were slews of Haydn imitators, but history has winnowed our awareness down to the few of startling originality and expressive power. First Mozart. Then Beethoven. 
Beethoven produced his second set of string quartets, Op. 59, in 1806, just about six years after Op. 18. Without intending any injustice to Op. 18, moving to Op. 59 is like Dorothy, erstwhile inhabitant of a black-and-white Kansas, crashing down into the colorful Land of Oz. With Op. 59, we alight into the land of middle-period Beethoven and meet the crème-de-la-crème: The Op. 59 quartets stand next to the august tradition of Viennese chamber music quartets by Haydn, Mozart and earlier Beethoven like the Rocky Mountains rise above the central plains. They are longer, more technically challenging, dramatically and psychologically far more intense and they mark in more ways than one the elevation of quartet performance culture to its first plateau of daunting professionalism. The massive triptych of quartets comprising Op. 59 is the precise chamber music analog of the revolutionary Symphony No. 3 within the category of orchestral music.