Walter BRAUNFELS (1882-1954)
String Quintet in F sharp minor, Op. 63 (1944/45) [39:26]
Richard STRAUSS (1864-1949)
Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings (1945) arranged for string septet [24:59]
Gringolts Quartet (Ilya Gringolts (violin); Anahit Kurtikyan (violin); Silvia
Simionescu (viola); Claudius Herrmann (cello)); David Geringas (cello); Ryszard
Groblewski (viola) (Metamorphosen); Dariusz Mizera (double bass) (Metamorphosen)
rec. 28-30 January 2012, Radio Studio, Zurich, Switzerland
PROFIL EDITION GÜNTER HÄNSSLER PH12053 [64:28]
This is an enterprising release containing a work each from close German contemporaries
Walter Braunfels and Richard Strauss. The fortunes of each composer took very
different paths. Up to 1933 Braunfels’ career had progressed extremely
well especially with the success of his opera Die Vögel (The
Birds) premièred in 1920 in Munich. This was followed by his being
dismissed from his official roles and withdrawing from public life, He was
half Jewish and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany scuppered any chances
he had of making further progress in music together with the fear of his life
being in peril. His music is all but forgotten today whereas the music of
the older Richard Strauss didn’t really suffer under Nazi rule and has
flourished internationally ever since.
The first work Braunfels’s String Quintet, Op. 63, composed in
1944/45 in the midst of the terrible war years. It was initially conceived
as a quartet before a second cello was added in the manner of the famous Schubert
Quintet in C major. Cast in four movements it is a substantial work
lasting almost 40 minutes. Squally music marks the lengthy opening Allegro
with a distinct undercurrent of dark agitation. The intensity tightens and
the weight increases as the music becomes ever more melancholy. An atmosphere
of cheerless desolation suffuses the Adagio - maybe a representation
of war-time destruction and emotional pain. Rather disjointed and irregular
in rhythm the Scherzo speaks of bewilderment and anxiety. The Finale,
Rondo feels like a sardonic country dance; unruly and often bitter.
Metamorphosen,a study for 23 solo strings with its compositional
date of 1944/45. is contemporaneous with the BraunfelsQuintet.One
of Strauss’s most deeply felt works it could be described as a personal
outpouring reflecting the terrors of the world war. Here the arrangement for
seven strings was prepared by Rudolf Leopold. The score is fundamentally a
large-scale lament - an Adagio with a contrasting central section marked
Agitato. Bleak and despondent this wretchedly melancholic music feels
like a depiction of a world in ruins with meagre shafts of light shining through
the anguish. Gringolt and his players bring a cool, steely and achingly intense
beauty to their interpretation.
The Zurich-based Gringolts Quartet was founded in 2008 at Schloss Elmau following
connections made at the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove, England.
These two fascinating works are well worth getting to know: one obscure from
Braunfels and the other by Strauss in an unfamiliar guise. These are deeply
felt and impeccably prepared performances rendered in excellent sound: cool,
clear and well balanced.
Michael Cookson
Deeply felt and impeccably prepared performances of two fascinating works
in excellent sound.
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