It may well be Brahms Rediscovered but this brace of recordings
has itself been hanging around undiscovered for over a decade
until now. Recorded back in 1997 the Amati Chamber Players have
thereby lost the opportunity to introduce a world premiere recording
of the reconstruction of the String Quintet, which was made by
Sebastian Brown in 1946. That honour fell to the Divertimenti
Ensemble in a disc from Cello Classics that I reviewed
last year.
The history of the
reconstructed Quintet is complicated. Robert Pascall’s notes
for Biddulph go into the details surrounding the early complexities
of the original’s reception and rejection but rather bizarrely
omits altogether the role of the English “reconstructor” Sebastian
Brown, whose 1946 effort is the one performed. I delve into
the complexities of all these matters in my previous review
so for those who are interested that’s the place to look for
fuller detail.
So we now have two
competing versions of a reconstruction. The first thing to note
is the considerable discrepancy in timings. The Amati players
are much faster in the opening movement – 13 minutes to Divertimenti’s
16. But the latter group is faster in the slow movement by some
minute and a half and by a minute in the finale. The proportions
of both performances thus differ noticeably. The Divertimenti
team were recorded in an acoustically rather echoing location.
And their sonority is very much the more rich, with the viola
and cellos sounding darker and more resonant. As a result their
performance is rather mellower. The Amati is more febrile and
violin-centred tonally with a less homogenised corporate sound.
I certainly prefer the Divertimenti performance of the slow
movement, which does sound laboured in this Biddulph performance.
Coupled with the
reconstruction is a work that no one has ever shown definitively
to be by Brahms at all. The Piano Trio in A major is likely
to be an early work, and received its first performance as late
as 1925 as a work by “an as yet unknown composer.” A decade
later a case was made for Brahms being that composer in an article
– citing Schumannesque influence, Brahmsian textures and themes
and the similarity in part with Brahms’s Op.8 trio. It’s been
tentatively dated to around 1853. There are some strong arguments
pro and contra – the manuscript is now lost regrettably – but
stylistic traits have been pursued by critics in favour and
equally against. The first movement is rather clotted, but the
Scherzo is striding and masculine whilst the Lento is relatively
powerful alternating contrasting faster passages. Nothing terribly
distinctive is going on.
Still you might
want to give this a listen for yourself. If so I recommend the
alternative version of the Sebastian Brown reconstruction of
the Quintet. The rival Cello Classics disc also has another
novelty in the shape of Joseph Miroslav Weber’s Quintet – a
rollickingly fine and enjoyable discovery.
Jonathan Woolf
Amati Chamber
Players (Leo Debono (piano), Igor Gruppman (violin); Simon Morris
(cello))¹; Igor Gruppman (violin); Steven Smith (violin); Vesna
Gruppman (viola); Simon Morris (cello); John Heley (cello)² 
