I suspect that Joseph Marx is a generally unfamiliar name but his music
prompted Furtwängler to declare that, “
Joseph Marx is the leading
force of Austrian music.” and Riccardo Chailly to say “
How
could such a major composer fall into oblivion?”
Born in Graz, Austria, Marx according to the website
www.joseph-marx.org
was during World War 2 the most frequently performed composer in Austria.
Marx’s reputation rests mainly on some 150 songs in the late-Romantic
style that he wrote whilst still in his twenties. His music has enjoyed
quite a change of fortune as Marx’s name is not even mentioned in most
music books - try Mark Morris’s ‘A Guide to 20th-Century Composers’.
Only recently has a handful of Marx recordings appeared in the catalogue.
By comparison the star still shines bright on Marx’s younger contemporary
and friend Erich Korngold. A child prodigy born in what is now the Czech
Republic, Korngold found fame and fortune writing Academy Award-winning
film scores for the Hollywood studios during the heyday of the silver
screen. His music has been undergoing a resurgence and is becoming increasingly
well represented both on disc and in the concert/recital hall. Twice
already this year I have attended concerts that have included Korngold’s
Violin Concerto.
The first work on the present release is Marx’s
Klavierquartett
in Form einer Rhapsodie (Piano Quartet in rhapsodic form) for piano,
violin, viola and cello. It was completed in 1911 when Marx was aged
around 29. The same year he wrote two further works for piano quartet
- a
Scherzo in D minor and a
Ballade in A minor. I
know that Goldmark and Reger had recently written piano quartets although
I’m not sure of the inspiration for this sudden interest in the piano
quartet medium. We are told that the performers on this release, the
New York Piano Quartet, gave the American première of the
Rhapsodie
which it seems was at Washington, DC in 2010. Cast in four continuous
sections the score of the
Rhapsodie for Piano Quartet with
the exception of the opening section marked
Mäßig contains
only bar numbers. The work comes across as one gigantic swathe of intense
and squally outbursts of Romantic passion. This contrasts with the second
section with its sense of yearning. The introduction to the third section
has an attractive extended piano part splendidly played by Linda Hall.
Korngold’s
Suite for piano left hand, two violins and cello
from 1930 was written for Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein who had
lost his right hand in the Great War. This is one of a number of works
that Wittgenstein commissioned for his own use. There’s a video clip
of the eminent American pianist Leon Fleisher describing the score as
“
an amazing work, by an amazing composer.” Cast in five sections
the
Präludium und Fuge begins with an extended introduction
for solo piano. This is followed by an abundance of blustery and exciting
writing. Evoking a haunted ballroom the
Waltz section could
easily have come from the pen of a wistful Richard Strauss. The central
section, marked
Groteske is vibrant and at times witty. A mood
of melancholic yearning at 3:22-6:45 is followed by stormy, rather jagged
writing. The
Lied alternates calm and emotional intensity while
the
Finale, with its solo cello introduction, is highly
melodic. Fleisher felt that the
Präludium und Fuge; Groteske
and
Rondo:
Finale movements were strongly evocative
of the scores to Korngold’s swashbuckling Errol Flynn adventure movies.
In both the Marx and Korngold I was overall extremely disappointed by
the string playing. This, I found not at all unified and also beset
with intonation problems. I had to stop listening to the
Rondo:
Finale (track 9) of the Korngold
Suite as I found
it excruciating
. The sound is generally unsatisfactory being
rather congested, a touch cloudy and with an unsympathetic balance.
These attractive late-Romantic scores are certainly worth hearing but
deserve to be recorded with much improved playing and more satisfactory
sonics.
Michael Cookson
