Amoroso
Leoš JANÁČEK (1854-1928)
String Quartet No.1 (The Kreutzer Sonata) (1923) [17:40]
Alban BERG (1885-1935)
Lyric Suite (1925-6) [28:13]
Anton WEBERN (1883-1945)
Langsamer Satz (1905) [8:16]
Cecilia String Quartet (Min-Jeong Koh, Sarah Nematallah (violins), Caitlin
Boyle (viola), Rachel Desoer (cello))
rec. Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada, December 2012.
ANALEKTA AN 2 9984 [54:09]
The title of the disc Amoroso derives from the theme of love that gave
rise to all three works.
In his later years Janáček’s life and work was dominated
by the unrequited love he had for Kamila Stösslová. Love was very
much on his mind when he wrote the first of his two string quartets. It was
motivated by the Tolstoy novella The Kreutzer Sonata which tells of
the brutal domination of a woman by her husband whose jealousy ends with him
murdering her. The title comes from the Beethoven sonata that the wife was
working on with a violinist with whom her husband suspected she was having
an affair rather than a purely musical partnership. The music is unmistakably
Czech and unmistakably Janáček; it could be by no other composer
since his musical signature is so clearly recognisable. The achingly pleading
opening theme represents the wife but the domineering husband is soon characterised
by a more powerful and insistent one that takes over the movement. The second
with its polka rhythm introduces us to the violinist. Then again there is
an interruption by a more aggressive theme sounding like the husband confronting
the couple. The third alludes to the Beethoven sonata of the quartet’s
subtitle. The final movement recapitulates themes from the previous movements.
The pleading and poignant theme from the opening is interspersed with increasingly
violent sounds representing the husband’s jealousy. It ends with the
wife’s tragic death.
It was as late as 1977 that material was discovered by musicologist
George Perle that left no doubt that Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite
was to all intents and purposes a miniature wordless opera that had as its
motivation a hitherto unknown love story. Berg notated a score with overt
references to it and gave it to the woman in question Hanna Fuchs-Robettin,
the wife of a Prague industrialist incorporating his own and Hanna’s
initials in the heart of all six movements as A-B flat-B natural-F. He wrote
on the score “I have secretly inserted our initials into the music.
May it be a small monument to a great love.” He also included many other
cryptographic and numerological references that were meaningful to the couple
and considered it among his most successful works saying that it was “the
large unfolding ... of an overall programmatic concept: ‘Subjection
to Fate.’”
Once one knows the back-story the titles of each movement become much more
significant, entitled as they are: jovial, amorous, mysterious, passionate,
delirious and desolate. These together with references to Wagner’s Tristan
und Isolde and to Zemlinsky confirm the overall concept. As the booklet
notes quote George Perle as writing “Like anyone who commits a perfect
crime Berg was proud of his accomplishment and wanted us to know about it.”
The 90 page score unfolds over almost half an hour and the music is as lyrical
as the work’s title describes though to some ears it may still sound
“modern” despite it having been written nearly ninety years ago.
The final work on the disc Langsamer Satz is by Anton Webern who in
1905, as the notes explain, “was head-over-heels in love with his cousin,
Wilhelmina Mörtl.” At the age of 21 love often seems more all-consuming
than it does later in life. The diary entries Webern made following a walking
holiday he took with her show how enraptured he felt including the phrase
‘two souls had wed’. Wilhelmina did in fact become first his fiancé
and later his wife. The music is so very lushly romantic with a degree of
natural warmth to it that is almost tangible and with the richest sounds opening
the work. Those produced by the lower register of the cello are particularly
sumptuous. Though he would leave this romantic sound world well behind it
occasioned this line written to his brother-in-law: “Quartet playing
is the most glorious music-making there is.” I say three cheers to that!
This is a very fine disc of three heartfelt love inspired works played most
beautifully by this young all-female Canadian ensemble.
Steve Arloff
Played most beautifully by this young all female Canadian ensemble.
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