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Schumann: Piano Quartets In March 1828, the 17-year-old Schumann enrolled as a student at Leipzig University, ostensibly to study law in obedience to his mother’s wishes but in reality, as he himself put it, ‘in accordance with my own still vaguely formed intent to devote myself entirely to music’. True to his word, he never attended a single law lecture but spent many hours each day practising and improvising at the piano, and began lessons with the celebrated teacher Friedrich Wieck (which is when he made the acquaintance of his eight-year-old daughter Clara, already a keyboard prodigy). In early November 1828 he formed a quartet with three fellow students, and over the next few months this amateur ensemble performed informal, late-night ‘read-throughs’ of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Dussek, and Prinz Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, among others. Schumann immediately saw its potential for his own experimentation in chamber composition and began work on his Piano Quartet in C minor. At about the same time, he first heard a work that was to have a profound influence on his own recently-begun composition: Schubert’s Trio in E flat D929 (Op.100). Schumann idolised ‘the one and only’ Schubert and was devastated by news of his death a short time later, when his diary entry read ‘my quartet – Schubert dead – dismay’. This reveals how closely he identified the piece he was working on with Schubert and the E flat Trio, which he subsequently described as the ‘master trio of its age’ and his ‘most independent and original work’; the work was regularly performed by him and his friends during the period he was working on the C minor Quartet. It is therefore unsurprising that the Quartet displays many of the E flat Trio’s characteristics, both formal and informal: the mirror imaging of its C minor and E flat tonality, its obsessive rhythms (particularly in the Finale whose ‘jovial ferocity’ is driven by a dactylic pattern common in Schubert and ultimately derived from the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony), the canonic writing of the Minuetto
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movement, and the recall of thematic material from previous movements in the Finale (particularly that of the Minuetto’s trio, whose return in C major launches the coda). Yet although the spirit of Schubert hovers over the quartet – particularly the first movement’s mysterious first and lyrical second subjects – Schumann successfully manages to avoid pastiche. And while his inexperience is revealed in many ways – an overly formulaic adherence to sonata form in the first movement; awkward transitions and passages where repetition substitutes for invention – the C minor Quartet is an astonishingly confident work for someone who had received little or no formal musical training. Schumann later noted that in the second part of the Minuetto’s trio ‘a spirit different from that of my early music opened up for me, a new poetic life appeared to reveal itself’: evidence that in this piece he was beginning to find his own musical voice. It received its first complete performance on 28 March 1829, which was also probably its last in Schumann’s lifetime. The following year he stated his intention to ‘cobble it together into a symphony’, with several indications in the score of ideas for potential orchestration, but nothing came of this scheme and the work disappeared from view. In 1974 the library of the University of Bonn acquired the manuscript, missing several pages and certain passages of the left-hand piano part, from which performing editions have been created, firstly by Wolfgang Boetticher in 1979 (on which this performance is based) and then in 2009 by Joachim Draheim. Thirteen years after this first attempt at chamber music, Schumann returned to the genre in a concentrated burst of creativity in which he completed six works for chamber forces between June and December 1842. However, the year had not begun auspiciously. He had reluctantly agreed to accompany Clara – now his wife and a celebrated performer in her own right, whose reputation and earning power far exceeded his – on a concert tour of north Germany and Denmark; being unable to play the subordinate role of ‘Mr Clara Wieck’, he returned alone to Leipzig where he sank into one of his increasingly frequent depressive moods made worse by heavy drinking. As an antidote,
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he threw himself into the study of the string quartets of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, and between June and July completed three quartets, followed by a piano quintet between 23 September and 12 October and the piano quartet Op.47 between 25 October and 26 November. The two works for piano and strings share the same key of E flat (and are thus further offspring of the Schubert Trio) and are often regarded as twins, although they differ markedly in character – the quintet being more exuberantly joyous and the quartet more rigorously ‘classical’. The quartet was premiered in December 1844 by the prestigious forces of Clara, Ferdinand David (who was to give the first performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto), Niels Gade (viola) and Count Mateusz Wielhorski, a gifted amateur cellist to whom the work was dedicated when it was published in 1845. Wielhorski had given the Schumanns invaluable support during their 1844 tour of Russia, but Schumann is known to have admired his playing in Leipzig in 1840, and thus it is possible that he had him in mind when writing the prominent cello part (Wielhorski’s Stradivarius cello – known as the ‘Davidov’ after a later owner – was subsequently owned and played by both Jacqueline du Pré and Yo-Yo Ma.) The work opens with a mysterious Sostenuto assai introduction in the manner of Beethoven’s Op.74 and Op.127 quartets, with the first four notes taken up as a recurring motif in the Allegro ma non troppo first theme (these notes are also identical to those that begin the Presto section of the Op.130 quartet, although whether as a conscious reminiscence or simply a by-product of Schumann’s immersion in Beethoven’s quartets is unknown). This passage is repeated before the development and coda, punctuating and providing moments of reflection within the general bustling activity of the movement. The quicksilver passagework of the Scherzo (in which the cello follows the piano line closely for much of the time) is rightly termed Mendelssohnian. As in the quintet, there are two trios, the first characterised by a stately, lilting melody, the second by a series of syncopated chords. The B flat Andante cantabile movement is in ternary form, the outer sections comprising variations in assorted duet combinations on 4
the lush melody introduced by the cello, framing a meditative chorale-like inner section in G flat. Towards the end of the movement, Schumann instructs the cellist to tune the C string down a tone to B flat (giving the player 15 bars’ rest to do so), in order to allow it to sustain a prolonged B flat octave drone as the other instruments quietly intone a three-note falling/ascending motif which recalls the chord sequence of the second trio. This three-note tag is taken up immediately in the opening bars of the Vivace finale, and in combination with a running-note pattern forms the basis, together with a second, more lyrical theme derived from one of the Andante’s variations, of a complex contrapuntal scheme which culminates in some magisterial Bach-like passagework in the closing pages. Matteo Fossi
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Quartetto Klimt Formed in 1995 at the Scuola di Musica in Fiesole, Quartetto Klimt is one of the most interesting chamber music groups in Italy today. Since its foundation it has performed in numerous concerts and prestigious festivals, both in Italy and abroad. Between 1997 and 1999 the quartet attended masterclasses held by the Trio di Milano in Fiesole, and since 2000 they have studied with Pier Narciso Masi. In April 1998 the quartet won first prize at the ‘Gaetano Zinetti’ International Chamber Music Competition in Sanguinetto, Verona. A few months after its foundation, the quartet was invited to perform at the ‘Rencontre Internationale des Enseignements Artistiques’, an event organised by the Institut de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mézières, France; this was in addition to invitations from the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana in Aosta, the ATER Festival in Rimini, and the Elba Isola Musicale d’Europa festival (where it captured the attention of the great Yuri Bashmet). More recently the group has performed in prestigious concert seasons including the Associazione Lingotto Musica in Turin, the Ravello Festival, Musica Insieme in 6
Bologna, the Bologna Festival, Amici della Musica in Florence, Amici della Musica in Perugia, the Accademia Filarmonica Romana, the Serate Musicali in Milan, Festival Mozart in Rovereto, and the Biennale in Venice (where they gave the Italian premiere of Morton Feldman’s final work). The quartet has also played a leading part in numerous live television and radio performances for the Italian broadcaster Rai. During these years of intense activity, the quartet has benefited from the advice and support of artists such as Carlo Maria Giulini, Natalia Gutman, Krzysztof Penderecki (whose Sextet was given its first performance in Italy by the quartet in 2012) and Maurizio Pollini (who invited them to perform during the Una Vita nella Musica award ceremony in 1999 in Venice, also awarding them the ‘Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli’ scholarship in 2001). In April 2001 the quartet inaugurated the first of the I Concerti del Quirinale in Rome, and in July of the same year they were invited to the prestigious Internationales Musikfest Kreuth in Tegernsee, Germany, and the Santander Festival in Spain. In 2010, Amadeus magazine released the ensemble’s recording of Dvorˇák’s two quartets for piano and strings. In recognition of Quartetto Klimt’s unfailing and passionate commitment to the promotion of contemporary music, various composers such as Alessandro Solbiati, Francesco Antonioni, Matteo D’Amico, Giancarlo Cardini and Ivan Vandor have dedicated compositions to them. All members of the group teach both solo and chamber music at the Scuola di Musica in Fiesole.
Recording: 2–5 December 2009, Montevarchi, Arezzo, Italy Sound engineer, recording & editing: Valter B. Neri Piano: Steinway & Sons, from the Bussotti & Fabbrini collection, Florence, Italy Piano technician: Claudio Bussotti & 2015 Brilliant Classics
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