Three, Four and Five….
Yesterday was another cold and rainy day, so a perfect opportunity to stay indoors exploring more lesser known pieces of chamber music for strings. Tony and Hannah (both cellists) were due to arrive at 4pm, so before lunch we got going with some pieces written for two violins and viola. As the range of instruments in this combination are so close, it takes great resourcefulness on the part of the composer to make a piece work. It could be that some pieces were written out of necessity or circumstance for this less usual line up of string trio.
We began with four miniatures (Op. 75a) by a composer of great resourcefulness, Antonin Dvorak. The story goes that Dvorak wrote his Terzetto for two violins and viola so that he and his flat mates could play together - however the piece was too technically demanding for one of the players, so he quickly penned these four miniatures instead. It has to be said after playing it, we began to doubt this story on account of some passages being still quite difficult! The collection of pieces is called ‘Drobnosti’ (miniatures) and starts with a lyrical Cavatina with a chord progression reminiscent of easy listening. The second piece: Capriccio, is a jaunty, rustic type dance with awkward passage work and accented staccato bowing, it is followed by a pleasing romance and concludes with a bizarre Elegie. This final movement is disproportionate in size and suddenly plunges one into a mood of the darkest and deepest depression. It’s character is traumatic and conjured up images of the three flat mates in a dank and dingy apartment room, drinking brandy whilst contemplating their own mortality. The Elegie is written in 9/8 and goes on and on and on…. It may well have been conceived for larger forces (such as a string sextet) yet scored for trio - with each part containing ample double stoppings throughout.
We followed this with a trio by the flamboyant character Antonio Bartholomeo Bruni - this composer held the position of conductor at the comic opera in Paris for many years and his ‘comic opera’ leanings shine through in many of his compositions. Never one to shy away from inappropriate musical contrast, Bruni sets different moods with a pantomime quality. The first movement marked Allegro Maestoso started like an operatic overture with some dolcissimo, lyrical themes contrasted against the forceful dotted rhythms that characterise his work in general. This movement goes without a break into an Adagio and the piece concludes with a grazioso allegretto con moto whose lyrical sheen is set against sudden attacking chords that strike the player and the listener as rather surprising.
After lunch, our cellists arrived and we delved straight into some quartet miniatures (courtesy once again of the Merton Music library). We started with ‘Variations on an original Theme’ by Francis Purcell Warren (1895 - 1916). This composer perished at the age of 21 during the battle of the Somme. His variations show much promise and offer a fascinating insight into a certain idiom of that particular time. In a way, the melodies have a sense of “Britishness” that is so typical of songs which were popular in the First World War. The theme (marked Allegro Deciso) possesses a swagger as well as a feeling of civic responsibility that seems to say ‘we’re doing this for Blighty’. This quickly morphs into a variation which despite being marked ‘tranquil’ seems to be anything but… with most of the parts rapidly changing from bowing to pizzicato, making the musicians rather comic visually during performance. Variation two has all the stiff upper lip of Elgar at his Edwardian best and we launched into this with vim and vigour until we realised it was marked ‘piano‘! This reaches a dramatic hiatus before some sustained chords written high up in the instruments registers lead to an Andante espressivo third variation. A jaunty and rather off kilter fourth variation leads comically into variation five - this one conjures up images of an amble down a country lane with a simple tune that could well lend itself to being whistled. The finale is a dramatic affair which leads into a reprise of the main theme that romped home leaving us all wanting to play the piece again immediately!
Sticking with British composers who died young, we plucked another work from the pile, this time by William Yeates Hurlstone (1876 - 1906) who was acclaimed as the favourite pupil of Stanford. Hurlstone suffered from terrible health problems and died at the age of 30 and the work we chose was his Phantasie for String Quartet. It’s fair to say this did not immediately grab us as much as the piece by Warren did. It seemed that Hurlstone had not fully recovered from hearing Richard Strauss for the first time and the late romantic harmonies with chromatic, Viennese melodic writing seemed to re-live the great master in every bar. When Strauss wasn’t being recalled, Liszts piano sonata certainly was with an almost note for note rendition of it’s first theme putting in an appearance in the first violin part. We played a good amount of this work, but despite the pieces obvious passion and conviction, we decided to leave the rest of it for another day - although our Viola player (Adrian) did fall in love with the piece.
Warming to our theme of British music, we quickly went onto a piece by Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie (1847-1935) and his Ancient Scots Tunes (Op. 82). This was one of the worst, cobbled together pieces that we have ever played and we savoured the awfulness for a few minutes before quickly moving on.
Next we moved outside the British isles to explore an Elegie by Michael Kourbanoff who apparently was a professional electrical engineer who wrote this piece as a memorial to Alexander Borodin. It takes a theme from one of Borodins’ Quartets but generally seems to meander and didn’t really have much sense of direction.
We followed this with an Andante by Reinhard Frederik Bokelmann (1851-1939) who was a Dutch violinist composer and writer on musical subjects. It is possible that as this work was Opus 2, it may have been written when the composer was very young. It’s first theme which seems to be taken from Beethoven’s violin concerto is simple in character and very little interest seems to happen in any of the other parts.
With two cellists present, we grabbed the opportunity to dedicate the last two hours of our rehearsal to playing string quintets and once again explored the first movement of the Schubert quintet before taking a break to take the dogs for a walk. Coming in from the freezing rain, we wanted to warm ourselves up with something lively and upbeat so picked out three String Quintets by Boccherini - these are given the opus number 37 which is not too helpful as catalogues of Boccherini’s works generally begin with the letter G. These pieces were just lovely, evenly spread among all the instruments but with the distinctive high cello writing that Boccherini always seems so good at. We very much enjoyed playing these and are keen to explore more of these good natured, spirited and warm hearted works - with 141 String Quintets written by this composer we will certainly have our work cut out for us.
Overall, another lovely day which was full of fun and interest - we are very much looking forward to next week when we aim to delve further into quartet miniatures with the possibility of recording a disc of them at some point. Here is a photograph of us enjoying the Boccherini quintet - Adrian is modelling a brand new woolly hat, quickly knitted for him during the rehearsal as he had got so cold whilst out walking Eric (the dog).
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