Johann Nepomuk Hummel
George Onslow
PIANO QUINTET OPUS 74 IN D MINOR
PIANO QUINTET OPUS 70 IN B MINOR
Johann Nepomuk Hummel
George Onslow
PIANO QUINTET OPUS 74 IN D MINOR
PIANO QUINTET OPUS 70 IN B MINOR
RIKO FUKUDA fortepiano FRANC POLMAN violin ELISABETH SMALT viola JAN INSINGER violoncello PIETER SMITHUIJSEN double bass 2
The NEPOMUK FORTEPIANO QUINTET was founded in 1999 by Riko Fukuda and Pieter Smithuijsen to play music for the unusual combination of fortepiano, violin, viola, cello and double bass. For most listeners this instrumentation is associated primarily with Schubert’s Trout Quintet. But Schubert was not the only composer to write for this combination, nor the first; it is believed that he was inspired by a piano quintet of Johann Nepomuk Hummel, in whose honour the Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet is named. Research by members of the quintet in various European libraries has so far brought to light more than twenty-five little-known (or completely unknown) quintets from the 19th century. The Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet is convinced that the best way to bring these works to life is by performance on authentic instruments, to stay as close as possible to the composer’s original intentions. The string players play on gut strings, and a permanent collaboration with piano restorer and collector Edwin Beunk enables the ensemble to play with any type of piano that is suitable to the pieces. Therefore the instruments played by Riko Fukuda each correspond to the time and place in which the music was written and performed. The listener travels back in time to when the pieces first were played, in an intimate 19th century salon, with the composer’s ink still wet on the page.
RIKO FUKUDA fortepianos: Hummel: Walter & Sohn (Vienna 1822) Onslow: Pleyel (Paris 1842) 3
The Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet has recorded seven quintets for the Brilliant Classics label: by Ferdinand Ries and Franz Limmer, the latter a world premiere recording (92200), and by Jan Ladislav Dussek (the earliest composition known for this instrumentation), Johann Nepomuk Hummel and George Onslow (93203). Both CDs were awarded a 10 out of 10 rating by Luister magazine in The Netherlands, and received international acclaim. In 2008 a third CD was released with a quintet of John Baptist Cramer, another world premiere recording, and Schubert’s Trout Quintet (93771). RIKO FUKUDA studied piano and oboe at the Toho-Gakuën conservatory in Japan. A grant from the Dutch government enabled her to study with Stanley Hoogland at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where she specialised in fortepiano. Her solo recordings of works by Pinto and Dussek on the Olympia label have met with great acclaim, and in 2001 she released two CDs with piano sonatas of Haydn on Brilliant Classics. Other recent recordings are of Mendelssohn solo works (Aliud Records, 2009), a piano concerto by Sigismund Neukomm and piano concertos by Anton Eberl with the Kölner Akademie conducted by Michael Willens. On harpsichord she made a CD with Sonatas of Johann Sebastian Bach with recorder player Ronald Moelker. Riko is a dedicated chamber musician, and is a founder member of the Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet. She is co-director of Eruditio Musica, an ensemble whose concerts bring to life nineteenth-century music in a historical framework informed by musicological research. She has performed frequently at the Early Music Festival in Utrecht and appears regularly at other festivals throughout Europe and America. FRANC POLMAN studied at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam with Bouw Lemkes. He attended masterclasses with Sandor Végh and Berl Senofsky 4
and, in early music, with Jaap Schröder, Lucy van Dael, Elisabeth Wallfisch and Fabio Biondi. He is concertmaster of Musica ad Rhenum and first violinist in the Orchestra of the 18th Century; also he plays regularly in projects of the Apollo Ensemble and Musica Amphion. He has performed with Baroque orchestras like Musica Antiqua, Les Musiciens du Louvre and The Raglan Baroque Players, and has given masterclasses at the Handel Academy in Karlsruhe and at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. As a chamber musician, Franc Polman is active in several formations besides the Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet, such as a duo with Riko Fukuda, and since 2006 as a member of the Schuppanzigh Quartett based in Germany. He is artistic leader of the Baroque ensemble Eik en Linde in Amsterdam. ELISABETH SMALT works primarily as a chamber musician, in styles varying from period instruments to extremely new music. Besides the Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet, her present commitments are the Prisma String Trio, ensemble Oxalys (Brussels), the Amsterdam Bridge Ensemble and Trio Scordatura. She is the musical director of Amsterdam’s KlankKleurFestival (Sound-Colour Festival), a collaboration between chamber musicians and visual artists. She is regularly invited to festivals all over the world, such as IMS Prussia Cove in England, the Festival Resonances in Belgium and the Microfest in both the US and UK. In 2007 she found letters of Robert and Clara
Franc Polman violin: Hendrik Jacobs (Amsterdam, 1701) 5
Schumann in correspondence with her great-great grandfather, a concert organiser in Rotterdam. This inspired her, together with Riko Fukuda, to found Eruditio Musica, a new ensemble in whose programmes music and musicology are combined. JAN INSINGER studied with Lenian Benjamins, and later with Elias Arizcuren at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam. He completed his studies with Dmitri Ferschtman. During this time he became a member of the European Community Youth Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Jan Insinger has performed on several occasions as soloist with various ensembles and orchestras in Holland. He played for several years with the Giotto Ensemble and was a member of the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. Presently he is principal cellist of the Holland Symfonia. His interest in historical performance practice led him to play with the Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet, the Nederlands Baryton Trio and the Van Swieten Society, an ensemble which specialises in classical and early romantic repertoire. He also performs regularly on the viola da gamba, with the Aeole Broken Consort amongst others. PIETER SMITHUIJSEN studied double bass with Anthony Woodrow at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. He is a member of the Asko-Schönberg Ensemble, with whom he recorded the complete chamber works of Ligeti and Varèse with the conductors Reinbert de Leeuw and Riccardo Chailly respectively. He also performs with other ensembles such as Musikfabrik, based in Düsseldorf. He plays regularly with the Nederlands Kamerorkest. Pieter Smithuijsen has been involved for some years with historical performance practice, and is a founder member of the Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet. 6
Johann Nepomuk Hummel “The reputation of J.N. Hummel as a composer is as fully established here in Vienna as it is in all of Germany . . . a student of Mozart, he is now considered a preeminent pianist, in fact one whose ability is only surpassed by Beethoven.” This quotation illustrates the high esteem in which Johann Nepomuk Hummel was held in 1816, the year in which the Piano Quintet op. 74 was composed. The 38-year old composer was a successful concert pianist, had been married to an opera singer for 3 years and was the father of a 2-yearold son. For Hummel, the year 1816 was a period of freedom between the stifling court life he led as a Kapellmeister in Esterházy and his later appointment in Stuttgart. He enjoyed the metropolitan life of Vienna. His earlier performances as a pianist in the Schönbrunn palace for the international audience of the Congress of Vienna had served to spread his fame far beyond the boundaries of the Habsburg Empire.
ELISABETH SMALT
The Piano Quintet op. 74 was published shortly hereafter. It was originally composed as a septet for flute, oboe, horn, viola, cello, double bass and piano. The first performance of this work took place on the 28th of January, 1816, with the composer himself at the piano and his father on the viola.
viola: Andrea Postacchini (Fermo, ca. 1830) 7
The work was an immediate success; it was performed frequently and discussed extensively in the press. Hummel arranged this work for violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano. Both the septet and quintet versions were published in 1816. The quintet version would serve as a model for Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Hummel’s desire to combine the security of a fixed income with the life of a touring concert pianist could only be fulfilled when he was appointed Kapellmeister at the court of Weimar. This ‘enlightened’ court’s policy was a liberal one and the composer was granted three months leave every year. Hummel’s tours to Paris in 1825 and London in 1830 were perhaps the highlights of his career. He was the talk of the town months before his arrival: “The celebrated pianist Hummel will arrive in Paris in the month of March, and from here will move on to London, where he will spend the season.” (La Revue Musicale, 6 November 1829). The public did not realise that this publicity came from the pianist himself. Hummel was extremely adept at manipulating the press. He carefully instructed Ferdinand Hiller, his best ex-student, to put out conveniently timed press releases in the London papers. When he arrived in Paris, an atmosphere of great expectation surrounded this ‘famous pianist from Weimar’. Whether this was the result of the publicity or Hummel’s playing, the public in these two European capitals received him with enormous enthusiasm. From the very first performance, Hummel’s opus 74 became a showpiece for the composer and was performed with fellow virtuosi in both cities. During Hummel’s second London tour in 1831, his reputation as a pianist suddenly disintegrated. The reason was Paganini. This diabolical violinist was also on tour in London at the time, and attracted all the attention of the press. 8
Hummel’s concert halls remained empty. In a city where he had previously been so enthusiastically received, he now experienced a fiasco. After this failure he decided to pursue a career as a conductor, and he returned to London in this capacity two years later to great acclaim. Hummel’s Opus 74, in both the quintet and the septet versions, began to take on a life of its own. Prominent pianists such as Clara Schumann, Louise Farrenc and Felix Mendelssohn included this piece in their repertoire. This was unusual at a time when musicians, especially violinists and pianists, would usually only perform their own works. Performers would only play the work of another composer if the piece was very popular. This is comparable to the modern pop music world today. Only extremely popular songs will be ‘covered’ by other groups. Franz Liszt was so delighted with this piece that he arranged it both for piano solo and piano duet and performed it often in many European cities.
JAN INSINGER
George Onslow and the double bass The Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet currently counts 24 piano quintets in its repertoire. These are all scored for violin, viola, cello, double bass and fortepiano, and were composed between 1799 and 1882. A piano quintet can be composed for different combinations of instruments: violin, viola and two cellos, or, as was often the case in the second half of the 19th
violoncello: from the workshop of Joseph Panormo (London, ca. 1820) 9
century, two violins, viola and one cello. The combination including double bass that the Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet employs was used mainly in the first half of the 19th century. The first piano quintet to include double bass was Jan Ladislaus Dussek’s opus 41, which was premiered in 1799 with the legendary double bass virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti. This Venetian musician lived in London from 1794 and would reside there for half a century. His technique was phenomenal. An anecdote about his visit to Beethoven describes an impromptu performance at the composer’s request of his cello sonata opus 5. Beethoven was so impressed by the double bassist’s marvellous playing that he leapt from the piano in the middle of the piece and threw his arms around both player and instrument. Dragonetti’s unusually large hands were the secret of his virtuosity. Francesco Caffi spoke of a ‘mano monstro’ (monster hand) and described Dragonetti employing all five fingers to fly up and down the fingerboard. It is probable that Dragonetti often played cello parts on the double bass. The following anecdote is of great importance to the Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet. George Onslow composed a number of string quintets with two cellos. At one performance one of the cellists did not arrive and Dragonetti, who was by chance present, suggested that he replace the absent cellist. The composer resisted at first, fearing that the resulting sound colour would be unpleasant, but the performance was such a great success that he was immediately convinced. Once back in France, Onslow asked Achille Gouffé to arrange the lowest cello part of his quintets for double bass. Gouffé was a double bass player at the Opéra and the Concerts du Conservatoire and wrote etudes and a method for the double bass. He was also active as an organiser of concert series, including his own series 10
in the Salle Pleyel and in his private salon. These series were mostly devoted to the promotion of ‘classical’ music by composers such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven as well as contemporary chamber works. The classical style of Onslow, which earned him the nickname the ‘French Beethoven’, fitted perfectly in Gouffé’s concert series. After his death in 1853, Onslow’s fame faded rapidly, and his works fell out of favour. Fortunately there has been an increase in interest in his works in recent times, and his compositions can be heard frequently in concert halls today.
Jean Baptiste Camllie Corot (1796-1875): Chemin de Sèvres (1858-1859) Pianos from the collection of Edwin Beunk Recordings: 5-7 juli 2009, Westvestkerk, Schiedam Recording engineer: Peter Arts Text: Riko Fukuda, translation Felicity Goodwin Pictures: Annelies van der Vegt
PIETER SMITHUIJSEN double bass: anonymous Hungarian maker (late 18th century) 11