Emánuel Moór (1863-1931)
Music for Viola
Prelude and Fugue for string quartet, P182 (1917)
Prelude in E major for viola and piano, Op 123 (1910–12; arr. Hegemann, 2021)
Pičces lyriques for string quartet, Op 139
Romanze for viola with piano accompaniment, P202 (1895)
Concertstück in C-sharp minor for viola and piano, P166
Concertstück in C-sharp minor for viola and orchestra, P167 (orch. Beraldo, 2020)
Dirk Hegemann (viola), Dávid Báll (piano)
Rosenstein String Quartet
Anima Musicae Chamber Orchestra/Mátyás Antal
rec. 2021, Budapest, Hungary
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0650 [62]
Emánuel Moór’s peripatetic life-story militated against his music being cherished by any one country. He fell between borders. He was Hungarian-born, Viennese-trained (with Bruckner), a UK citizen and domiciled in Switzerland. Others led such lives by choice or adventitious compulsion but their music has flourished better than that of Moór. He wrote symphonies, concertos, chamber music, songs and an opera Hertha. He also busied himself industriously with inventing a sort of super-piano and similar developments for the stringed instruments. Neither caught on but the piano “The Duplex Coupler” had some success, even if ultimately it faded into the footnotes of history.
To push the programme out further than purism would permit, on this disc we have works in which Moór merely ‘included’ the viola rather than having the instrument as solo or principal. The first and third pieces are of that ilk. The string quartet Prelude and Fugue of 1917 is thicket-dense and yet lyrical withall. Written while Europe was convulsed, the diptych resembles a collision - a most agreeable collision - between the styles of Brahms and Othmar Schoeck. The Prelude is a pleasing confection and if the Fugue has the inevitable downside of suchlike its lyricism is redemption enough.
The Prelude for viola and piano pre-dates the Great War and is an arrangement; but a refined one. It rings with sultry Bachian congeries and Bruch-like lyricism. It has a rather basic recessed piano part; there is never any doubt about where the limelight shines. The invention and tendresse lies in the viola part which, had this been heard in a version for violin, would have suited Arthur Grumiaux like a velvet glove. The four Pičces lyriques for string quartet are highly civilised essays - a little like the string quartets by Smetana and even the one by Kreisler. They break no new ground but trade adeptly in charm and in touchingly unfading and unbruised poetry.
The Romanze is an emotional work which threatens to ignite the kindling at any moment. The viola Concertstück P166 is a serious, extended work with some lovely, if unremarkable, invention that stops short of getting airborne. There is a surprising diffidence about it. The orchestral Concertstuck P167 is different. It is thoughtful but has some temperament and spark about it. The orchestration - nice work - feels faithful to the era and is by Andreas Luca Beraldo. It was made in 2020.
Mátyás Antal, who conducts the Anima Musicae Chamber Orchestra, has appeared in these pages before. There’s a review of his conducting of the Vianna da Motta Symphony with the Hungarian State Orchestra in 1988 for Portusom.
The performances and recordings (firsts for all these works) are warm and the players’ essential advocacy for such unfamiliar music is never in doubt.
The booklet commentary, in English only, which is supportively fulsome, is by Doro Gersin and Dirk Hegemann.
Rob Barnett
Previous review: Jonathan Woolf
