Sándor Veress; Béla Bartók - String Trio; Piano Quintet (Vilde Frang; etc.)

Information

Composer: Sándor Veress; Béla Bartók

• Veress - String Trio
• Bartók - Piano Quintet in C major, Sz. 23

Vilde Frang, violin

Barnabás Kelemen, violin

Katalin Kokas, viola

Lawrence Power, viola

Nicolas Altstaedt, cello

Alexander Lonquich, piano

Date: 2019

Label: Alpha

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Review

If you pan back to 1954 in search of the year’s finest music, Vaughan Williams’s Tuba Concerto and Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra are among the best-known highlights. But what about Sándor Veress’s only String Trio? It flirts with atonality much as Alban Berg did, except that, whereas Berg echoed Mahlerian expressionism, with Veress experimentation encircles Hungarian folk music. Even the Trio’s slow-fast binary form recalls the rhapsodies of Liszt and Bartók, though music near the start of the second section recalls the firefly Scherzo from Prokofiev’s Third Symphony (here Frang and her colleagues really do play up the resemblance – whether consciously or not I couldn’t tell you).

The level of invention is startling throughout, with the players being instructed to rap on the bodies of the instruments with their knuckles. The principal rhythmic ‘riff’ appears in various guises, bowed, plucked and drummed. But what’s most amazing is the work’s high level of concentration: although a mere 20 minutes in length, by the time you’re through with it you feel as if you’ve experienced an entire Mahler symphony. So much is said, so many varied sounds shared between three. The only work I can think of that has a similar effect is by Veress’s principal creative guide, Bartók, his Third Quartet. I’d say with some degree of confidence that this Trio approaches that same level of attainment, vying with Schoenberg’s Trio in its profound effect, while Vilde Frang, Lawrence Power and Nicolas Altstaedt grant it a superb performance, the best I’ve yet heard in fact.

Memorable rival recordings include members of the Merel Quartet (Cybèle Records), which, though well played, isn’t on quite on the same level, while Ensemble Equilibres (Hungaroton) underline the work’s Bartókian roots. Neither threatens the supremacy of Frang et al, though it’s useful to know that both are programmed in the context of other chamber works by Veress.

Bartók’s Piano Quintet, a product of 1903 and an altogether more modest affair, summons Brahms and Strauss as obvious influences. The composer was in his early twenties when he wrote the work but a couple of decades later, when he performed it as part of a programme including more characteristic pieces, Bartók was incensed by audience members who rated the Quintet highest of all. He even hurled the score to the ground in disgust and was thought to have destroyed it, though fortunately for us the Quintet, an enjoyable piece by any standards, survived his anger. At times the brooding Adagio suggests Bluebeard’s shadow before giving way to the temperamental finale, which accelerates gypsy-style (the principal theme harbours a sure reference to Brahms’s Zigeunerlieder), and surveying numerous expressive techniques and tempo changes, including a trim fughetta. Barnabás Kelemen and friends keep the camp fires alight with playing that is both intense and dynamic, whereas the slower music has a dreamily rhapsodising quality about it.

Runners-up on CD include Jenő Jandó with the Kodály Quartet (Naxos, 10/95), a good performance though nowhere near as vivid or fiery as the performance under review. Nor does Hungaroton’s worthy recording with Csilla Szabó and the Tatrai Quartet prove a formidable contender. So I think it fair to say that Kelemen, Frang, Katalin Kokas, Altstaedt and Alexander Lonquich sell this lovable product of youthful creative excess more securely than any of their predecessors on disc, certainly any that I have encountered. But what makes this CD unmissable is the Veress Trio, a masterpiece and a performance to match. I’ve already pencilled it in as a potential contender for next year’s Gramophone Awards. The annotation is excellent, including a fine essay on the Trio by Sándor’s son Claudio, also a composer.

— Rob Cowan

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Sándor Veress (1 February 1907 – 4 March 1992) was a Swiss composer of Hungarian origin. Born in Klausenburg, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Cluj-Napoca, Romania), he studied and later taught at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. Among his teachers were Zoltán Kodály, with whom he studied composition, and Béla Bartók, with whom he studied piano. Among the composers who studied under him are György Ligeti, György Kurtág and Heinz Holliger. As a composer, Veress wrote numerous chamber music pieces and symphonic works, as well as an opera named Hangjegyek lázadása (1931).

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Béla Bartók (25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist who is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century. As an ethnomusicologist, his fieldwork with the composer Zoltán Kodály formed the basis for all later research in the field. Bartók employed folk themes and rhythms into his own music, achieving a style that was nationalistic and deeply personal. His notable works include the opera Bluebeard's Castle (1911), 6 string quartets (1908–39), the Mikrokosmos piano set, Concerto for Orchestra (1943), and 3 piano concertos (1926, 1931 & 1945).

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Vilde Frang (born 19 August 1986) is a Norwegian classical violinist. Born in Oslo, she studied at Barratt Due Musikkinstitutt, with Kolja Blacher at Musikhochschule Hamburg, and with Ana Chumachenco at the Kronberg Academy. In 2012 she was awarded the Credit Suisse Young Artists Award which led to her acclaimed debut with the Vienna Philharmonic under Bernard Haitink at the Lucerne Festival. Frang is an exclusive Warner Classics artist and her recordings have received numerous awards, such as the Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d'Or and Gramophone Award. She plays the 1734 "Rode" Guarnerius.

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