Autobiographical chamber music is a conspicuously Czech accomplishment, pioneered by Smetana in the nineteenth century and sustained by Dvorak before reaching its apogee in Janacek’s two string quartets, the second of them an expression of romantic love unrivalled among other works of its kind.
Though modern research has suggested that the object of his adoration - a young married woman who inspired his operas Jenufa and Katya Kabanova as well as the quartets - did not return his love, the music of Intimate Letters, the second of his quartets, written just before his death at the age of 74, certainly speaks for itself.
With the voice of a viola d’amore sensuously replacing that of an established viola, it is a quartet like no other, though it will share Monday’s New Town Concert at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh with something that equals its intensity, Berg’s Lyric Suite, written just across the border in Austria two years earlier in 1926.
As Berg’s first venture into all-out Schoenbergian atonality, it makes perhaps tougher listening than the Janacek, but the passion it expresses for a married woman other than his wife is direct and unmistakable, and, as its six movements progress, increasingly desolate. Since the two works, written almost simultaneously, complement each other, it is surprising how rarely they are placed side by side in the same programme.
But on Monday, thanks to Berlin’s sensational young Armida Quartet, this will happen, and the opportunity is something to seize. Whatever difficulties it may contain, Berg’s Lyric Suite was adored by George Gershwin, who discussed it with its composer at their famous meeting in Vienna, when Gershwin played Berg some samples of his own form of lyricism and Berg responded with the words, “Mr Gershwin, music is music.”
The composer of An American in Paris took the score of the suite with him to France, studying it on the train before persuading the Kolisch Quartet, who had just given the work its premiere, to play it from memory at various Parisian parties given in his honour, though what the listeners thought of it is not hard to guess.
Yet although Berg’s was a different sort of lyricism from Gershwin’s, his influence on the American composer ran deep, and his first opera, Wozzeck, was clearly responsible for the composition of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. His second opera was Lulu, which he died - of an insect bite, tended by his wife - too soon to complete. Like the Lyric Suite it commemorated his doomed love affair, and though its completion was quite easily achieved from his detailed notes, its publication in completed form was blocked by his widow as long as she lived. Its eventual premiere, conducted by Pierre Boulez, revealed it to be a masterpiece as great as - perhaps even greater than - Wozzeck.
So do not miss Monday’s performance of the string quartet, and do not fail to spot the touching reference to the prelude to Act One of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde amid the desolation of the last movement, a moment similar to the quoting of Bach’s Es ist Genug by the soloist near the end of his late, great Violin Concerto.
At present, in preparation for the performance, I am re-reading Bird in the Apple Tree, Raymond Monelle’s novel about Berg in its Kindle edition. Employing the mature violin concerto as its framework it is an enthralling study of the composer’s early life, though the author - a dear friend of mine who taught at Edinburgh University - died too soon to savour any fruits of its success.
30 January 2016
Though modern research has suggested that the object of his adoration - a young married woman who inspired his operas Jenufa and Katya Kabanova as well as the quartets - did not return his love, the music of Intimate Letters, the second of his quartets, written just before his death at the age of 74, certainly speaks for itself.
With the voice of a viola d’amore sensuously replacing that of an established viola, it is a quartet like no other, though it will share Monday’s New Town Concert at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh with something that equals its intensity, Berg’s Lyric Suite, written just across the border in Austria two years earlier in 1926.
As Berg’s first venture into all-out Schoenbergian atonality, it makes perhaps tougher listening than the Janacek, but the passion it expresses for a married woman other than his wife is direct and unmistakable, and, as its six movements progress, increasingly desolate. Since the two works, written almost simultaneously, complement each other, it is surprising how rarely they are placed side by side in the same programme.
But on Monday, thanks to Berlin’s sensational young Armida Quartet, this will happen, and the opportunity is something to seize. Whatever difficulties it may contain, Berg’s Lyric Suite was adored by George Gershwin, who discussed it with its composer at their famous meeting in Vienna, when Gershwin played Berg some samples of his own form of lyricism and Berg responded with the words, “Mr Gershwin, music is music.”
The composer of An American in Paris took the score of the suite with him to France, studying it on the train before persuading the Kolisch Quartet, who had just given the work its premiere, to play it from memory at various Parisian parties given in his honour, though what the listeners thought of it is not hard to guess.
Yet although Berg’s was a different sort of lyricism from Gershwin’s, his influence on the American composer ran deep, and his first opera, Wozzeck, was clearly responsible for the composition of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. His second opera was Lulu, which he died - of an insect bite, tended by his wife - too soon to complete. Like the Lyric Suite it commemorated his doomed love affair, and though its completion was quite easily achieved from his detailed notes, its publication in completed form was blocked by his widow as long as she lived. Its eventual premiere, conducted by Pierre Boulez, revealed it to be a masterpiece as great as - perhaps even greater than - Wozzeck.
So do not miss Monday’s performance of the string quartet, and do not fail to spot the touching reference to the prelude to Act One of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde amid the desolation of the last movement, a moment similar to the quoting of Bach’s Es ist Genug by the soloist near the end of his late, great Violin Concerto.
At present, in preparation for the performance, I am re-reading Bird in the Apple Tree, Raymond Monelle’s novel about Berg in its Kindle edition. Employing the mature violin concerto as its framework it is an enthralling study of the composer’s early life, though the author - a dear friend of mine who taught at Edinburgh University - died too soon to savour any fruits of its success.
30 January 2016
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