Milton Court Concert Hall
Piano Quartets nos 1-3
I remain sceptical about this
sort of programming. Performing, say, Beethoven’s three final piano sonatas in a single recital makes a great deal of sense,
although so likewise does performing them separately with other works,
attempting to suggest, even to draw, connections. Performing all five of Prokofiev’s piano concertos does not, however much that combination
of works might be helpful to collect as a 2-CD set. This concert, part of Leif
Ove Andsnes’s LSO Artist Portrait series (albeit without any members of the
LSO!), fell somewhere in between. It made for a long evening, especially when
programmed in chronological order, with a single interval separating the first
and second quartets. On the other hand, we do not hear these works nearly so
often as we should – much the same might be said for any piano quartet – and hearing
Brahms’s development is always interesting. If I should have preferred two or
three concerts, including works by other composers, that was no reason to look
a gift-horse in the mouth, for these were excellent performances from beginning
to end, much as one might have expected from Andsnes, Christian Tetzlaff, Tabea
Zimmermann, and Clemens Hagen.
First was the First, in G
minor, op.25, as orchestrated, unforgettably, whether you like it or not, by
Schoenberg. It was a strength of this performance, the first movement opening
straight away with an echt-Brahms
sound, that one did forget, and indeed I am now still hearing the original, not
Schoenberg’s version, in my head. Strings, and then piano, sounded ‘right’ –
which is not to say that there is only one ‘right’, of course, although there
are surely many ‘wrongs’. It was not just the sound, though; phrasing and,
cumulatively, paragraphs evinced a similar sense of ‘rightness’, all richly Romantic.
(The disjuncture between literary and philosophical Romanticism and its musical
counterpart, if counterpart it be, means that we cannot really call this ‘late
Romanticism’. We probably should, but it would only serve to confuse.) A viola
solo from Zimmermann, rich-toned and beautiful in itself, also brought so much
more, heralding not only Andsnes’s elaboration, but, so it seemed, the whole of
the second group, even the development. The development section itself brought half-lights
(yes, this ‘early’ in Brahms’s career) and, of course, vehemence; both
propelled the music. So, fundamentally, did the composer’s motivic working,
which surely must have been the greatest attraction of all for Schoenberg, here
heard meaningfully throughout, quite without pedantry. This was indeed ‘Brahms
the Progressive’.
Romantic unease (earlier?) from
Hagen’s underpinning cello characterised the second movement, permitting of great
ambivalence, great ambiguity. Andsnes’s way with rhythm and its relationship,
inextricable, to harmony assured motivic integrity, not that that was ever in
doubt! Much the same might be said of the Andante,
despite its different character. Menacing currents made their point without
cheap exaggeration, for they had been prepared and understood harmonically by
all concerned; this was true chamber music-making. There was vehemence in those
martial rhythms later on, but harmony remained the ultimate mover. They cast
their shadow over the return of the opening material, just as they should.
There was likewise no doubting the urgency of the finale, taken at quite a
lick, nor the astounding virtuosity of the players, but that was not at the
expense of chiaroscuro. Contrasting episodes certainly contrasted, but within a
greater unity to which they contributed.
The A major Quartet, op.26
followed. If I found this slightly less compelling, that is more a reflection
of my response to the work than to the performance, which again was of the
highest quality. Andsnes opened the first movement in intriguingly neutral
fashion, having us wonder where it might lead. There was certainly a lightness
to what immediately followed, underlining the vehemence that followed that, and so on. But ‘difference’ never
seemed in retrospect to have been for the sake of it. From Teztlaff’s golden-
or silver- or various other- hued violin line – no all-purpose ‘beauty’ here – to the
twists, turns, and pedal points of the bass, in whichever part, this
performance knew where it was heading. The spirit, and not just the scale,
seemed to owe as much to Schubert as to Beethoven, which is surely right in
this particular work. The second movement progressed similarly – yet in
difference, with more than the occasional hint of Brahms’s Mozartian
inheritance (highly welcome!) Nostalgia and distance seemed thereby evoked and dramatized,
grief in response all the more heightened. In the third movement, tendencies
from both predecessors seemed united, played off against one another: form here
was dynamic, never a mere framework. The finale, taken attacca, sounded very much a finale (not always as evident a
quality as one might expect). If the ghost of Beethoven had sometimes been
placated, here he returned with a vengeance; he
had never gone away.
The first movement of the
Third, op.60 in C minor, registered a very different character from the outset.
Internalised anger of an almost Webern-like concision, tension screwed up, at
times almost unbearably: this was a performance (as it is a work) still more
dialectical in quality. There was nothing appliqué
to this terror: it emerged from musical necessity. Rhythm was the
progenitor, at least at first, of the different character to the scherzo, as
one might expect. Relative rhythmical relaxation was predicated upon what
it was relaxing from. The changing
relationship between piano and strings, the latter sometimes ‘led’ by Teztlaff,
at other times in quite a different formation, proved a crucial element to the
drama unfolding. The movement came to a close with such fury that it might
almost have been the close of the work; except… The cello sonata-like opening
to the Andante thus came as relief
(not unlike the Andante to the Second
Piano Concerto). Then a piano trio, in perfect balance; then the full quartet,
transformed by experience, melancholy heightened. Again, the changing
relationship between parts, between ensembles, was very much of the essence. In
context, we heard the opening to the finale almost as part of an ‘additional’
violin sonata; in the hands of Andsnes and Teztlaff, how could it not, if only
momentarily? So subtle were the entrances of viola and cello, one hardly
noticed them. The intensity, emotional and intellectual, of what followed,
could not, however, have been missed by anybody.
