Information
Composer: Edward Elgar; Amy Beach
- Beach - Piano Quintet in F sharp minor, Op. 67
- Elgar - Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84
Garrick Ohlsson, piano
Takács Quartet
Edward Dusinberre, violin
Harumi Rhodes, violin
Geraldine Walther, viola
András Fejér, cello
Date: 2020
Label: Hyperion
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I have often wondered why the music of Amy Beach is not more loudly acclaimed. As part of a late 19th-century movement of American composers who looked unapologetically for stimulus from Germany – and I am thinking primarily of George Whitefield Chadwick, Arthur Foote and Horatio Parker – Beach stands as probably the most accomplished of the group (a notable point since she did not study in Europe), or at least within the province of chamber music. Her Piano Quintet, the most widely performed of her chamber works, and in which she appeared as pianist on many occasions, is a highly developed work which should be considered part of that canon of quintets led by Schumann and Brahms, and accompanied by other major masterpieces including those by Franck, Dvořák, Stanford, Fauré, Sinding, Reger, Elgar, Suk and Dohnányi.
By way of the imposing nature of the resources – string quartet and piano – the approach to the genre is inevitably one of an epic nature, almost orchestral in its bold sound and texture, fluctuating between the intellectual demands of the symphony and the ‘competition’ of the grand concerto. Beach’s magisterial work, with its hugely demanding piano part, its plethora of thematic material and its coherent handling of form, meets both these conceptual demands (and which Ohlsson and the Takács Quartet serve with vivid colours and a vital energy). Conceived as a work in three cyclic movements, the outer movements are especially muscular in their gestures and dynamics, while the central slow movement is elegiac and brings the quartet to the fore in the first subject in which the piano plays an inner contrapuntal role. Only with the second subject does the lower part of the keyboard play a more prominent role as the ‘bass’ of the harmony switches to the piano. This is highly accomplished writing and reveals Beach’s true imagination as a master of instrumental form.
Elgar’s Quintet of 1918, also in three movements, is of a different vintage of inspiration. Written after that miraculous decade before the First World War when the composer produced his orchestral masterpieces in the idiom of concerto, symphony and oratorio, the quintet bears witness to a more ascetic, wiry creative impulse which he adopted during the latter years of the war, when, perhaps, he was searching for a new direction for his musical voice. This is evident in the strange disjunction of the plainsong-like opening idea (akin to ‘Salve regina’), the first Brahms-like idea of the Allegro, the enigmatic ‘Spanish’ (or at least Phrygian) second subject (played with admiral character by the ensemble) and the searching third idea (more orchestral in character). In fact, this predominance of thematic material has much in common with the Violin Sonata and the String Quartet, where the notion of form seems to rely more on the fecundity of melodic ideas and their juxtaposition than on their development. The slow movement, one of Elgar’s greatest, is played with true profundity. Here Elgar seems to return to those distinctive characteristics of his earlier works, to themes full of sequence and modal inflection, though the central paragraph reminds us that this is Elgar of a later vintage. The finale makes much of the cyclic restatement of earlier themes, especially those of the first movement, a feature which lends the conclusion of this remarkable work a ghostliness and introspection that Elgar revisited in the last movement of his Nursery Suite of 1930. Ohlsson and the Takács are to be congratulated for the warmth of their interpretation and for their ability to encompass the challenging range of Elgar’s complex moods.
-- Jeremy Dibble, Gramophone
More reviews:
ClassicsToday ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9
https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/Jul/Elgar_quintet_CDA68295.htm
https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/Jul/Elgar_quintet_CDA68295.htm
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Edward Elgar (2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of acoustic recordings of his own works.
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Amy Beach (September 5, 1867 – December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. Beach's other compositions include an opera, a piano concerto, choral and chamber music. Her writing is mainly in a Romantic idiom. Despite her fame and recognition during her lifetime, Beach was largely neglected after her death in 1944 until the late 20th century.
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Garrick Ohlsson (born April 3, 1948) is an American classical pianist. Born in New York City, he studied with Sascha Gorodnitzki and Rosina Lhévinne at the Juilliard School. In 1970 Ohlsson became the first, and remains the only, competitor from the United States to win the gold medal awarded by the International Chopin Piano Competition, at the VIII competition. His repertoire includes no fewer than 80 concertos. Among his many recordings, Ohlsson performed Chopin's entire musical output on Hyperion Records, Busoni's five-movement Piano Concerto, as well as all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas for Bridge Records.
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The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai and András Fejér. Current members include Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins), Richard O’Neill (viola) and András Fejér (cello). All members are Christoffersen Fellows and Artists in Residence at the University of Colorado, Boulder. For their CDs on Hyperion and Decca labels, the Quartet has won four Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the BBC Music Magazine Awards, and Presto Music Recording of the Year Award.
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