These is a long and honourable tradition of transcribing string
quartets for performance by string orchestra which dates back
to the nineteenth century. There are many listeners who find
the sound of a solo quartet grating, and it is certainly true
that the quartet medium mercilessly exposes the slightest errors
in intonation while a string orchestra can smooth over any such
technical imperfections. Naxos already have a very good recording
of the Grieg quartets in original form in their catalogue, and
have now turned their attention to these arrangements by Alf
Årdel who himself contributes a note in the insert booklet explaining
what he has done to the scores. He has done a very good job,
only amplifying Grieg’s original textures by the addition of
a double bass line where appropriate and adapting the writing
for orchestral players where necessary.
The players of the Oslo Camerata do a very good job, too. Their
admirably precise playing sparkles with electricity, and they
bring a delightful warmth to the music. Grieg himself scored
a number of his piano pieces for string orchestra, including
the Holberg Suite, and the first movement of the completed
quartet he published during his lifetime has the same sort of
quick energy that is to be found in that arrangement. Just before
the end of the movement (at around 11.24) the writing for string
orchestra sounds like a similarly haunting passage in Elgar’s
Introduction and Allegro where in the original quartet
version it sounds rather less sure of its bearings. The playing
in the intermezzo is superb, and the greater breadth of a string
orchestra brings a marvellous earthiness to the scherzo-like
halling rhythms. The thick chordal writing in the finale
benefits enormously from the additional weight that an orchestra
can bring to the music.
Grieg’s incomplete second quartet originally opened with a slow
introduction calling for triple-stopping by the violin. This
cannot be played by any modern instrument at less than forte,
and the lower notes cannot be sustained. Grieg’s friend Julius
Röntgen edited out these parts when the score was prepared for
publication after Grieg’s death. With a string orchestra Grieg’s
original scoring can easily be restored – another positive advantage
of these arrangements. The skirling opening to the second surviving
movement is given a delightfully wistful flavour by the Oslo
Camerata’s poised and delicate bowing.
Naxos’s recording of these quartets in their original version
came coupled with a very interesting and otherwise totally unknown
work by David Monrad Johansen. Here we are given another transcription
for string orchestra, this time made by the composer himself,
of a work originally written for string quartet by Arne Nordheim.
He is described in the booklet as the “leading Norwegian composer
of his generation” and on the back of the disc as the “leading
Norwegian composer of the twentieth century” (not quite the
same thing). Grieg himself survived into the twentieth century;
but if we disregard his claim, there is surely another Norwegian
composer of the twentieth century who has a much more serious
entitlement to this accolade in the still disgracefully under-known
Geirr Tveitt, whose music Naxos themselves have admirably done
so much to promote.
Nordheim, we are told, after study abroad in the 1950s “was
able to pioneer new techniques in Norway, a country that musically
had remained generally conservative in taste.” Presumably this
conservative taste was considered to embrace Grieg: for at the
time his large-scale music, apart from the ubiquitous piano
concerto, was totally unknown and his most dramatic music –
the superlatively sinister Night scene from Peer
Gynt, or the scenes from the unfinished opera Olaf
Trygvason – was yet to be rediscovered by the musical world.
In any event it seems an odd choice to complete a disc of Grieg’s
music with a piece from a composer who would presumably have
regarded himself as diametrically opposed to everything that
Grieg symbolised. The booklet cites the main influences on Nordheim
as Sibelius, Mahler and Bartók; but the principal point of similarity
would appear to be more with Hindemith. There is nothing at
all objectionable or unpleasant about this music, but nothing
very memorable either; it falls into the category of so many
worthy well-constructed academic pieces written during that
era. Even the slow and long-drawn final Nachruf does
not raise the emotional temperature despite some delicacy of
idiom. The quartet, originally written in 1956, was re-scored
for string orchestra in 1986; but by that time the idiom of
the writing was long past its sell-by date. Nordheim appears
to have done little or nothing to alter it during the process
of revision. In short, the music is grey and colourless even
in its livelier passages, unlike its “conservative” companions
on this disc. Even the sincerely felt and technically assured
playing of the string orchestra cannot bring it to life.
All that said, the two Grieg quartets work well in this format,
and well repay investigation both by Grieg enthusiasts and those
who have an allergy to the medium of the string quartet. The
Lommedalen Church is spacious and nicely resonant, and the recorded
sound is very rich and detailed.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Oslo Camerata/Stephen Barratt-Due
