Hermann GOETZ (1840-1876)
Quartet in E major, for piano, violin, viola and cello, Op.6 (1867) [37:41)
Quintet in C minor, for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass, Op.16
(1874) [25:55]
Oliver Triendl (piano); Marina Chiche (violin); Peijun Xu (viola); Niklas
Schmidt (cello); Matthias Beltinger (double bass)
rec. April 2015, Studio Britz, Berlin
TYX ART TXA15061 [63:54]
Hermann Goetz, seven years Brahms’ junior, was admired
by the older man. His piano music and, in particular, his comic opera based
on The Taming of the Shrew drew Brahms’ sympathetic enthusiasm
and Goetz even had plans for Brahms to complete his (posthumous) opera Francesca
da Rimini. In the event the job went to the Mannheim music director,
Ernst Frank.
There’s something immensely appealing about Goetz’s music. His
piano concerto, recorded on Hyperion CDA67791 by Hamish Milne and coupled
with the G minor concerto of Józef Wieniawski, has some especially delightful
moments and its indelibly romanticist spirit is faithfully reflected in these
two large-scale chamber works. The Piano Quartet, Op.6, composed in 1867 and
perhaps inevitably dedicated to Brahms, is a work couched in early romantic
lyricism. Elegantly stormy, it has certain affinities with Brahms but as many
with Schumann. The piano has a primus inter pares role, most explicitly
so in the slow movement, a theme and series of five variations of assured
elegance. The jolly and unabashed scherzo emerges seemingly straight out of
this slow movement and once past an intense opening section the finale trades
in lyric melancholia as well as ebullience and avuncular dynamism.
Seven years later, shortly before his sadly premature death, Goetz turned
to the medium of the Piano Quintet, inevitably summoning up reflections on
Schubert’s Trout Quintet, with which its shares the same instrumentation.
This is the more passionate work, and possesses a storminess for which the
earlier work never strives. It’s also the more tenderly explicit, with
a ripely confessional quality in the Andante con moto, and a dance-like
scherzo to follow. The finale unleashes a bristly fugato but whilst the music
– at least in this excellent performance anchored by the ever watchful
Oliver Triendl – is not quite the rage-against-death that the notes
allege, the work as a whole is the more comprehensively accomplished of these
two big chamber pieces. Given that it is a very late work, inasmuch as any
Goetz can be said to be late, that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.
The helpful booklet note is in German and English, whilst the performances
are sympathetic - sweetly sensitive in the Quartet, and tougher and more pronounced
in the Quintet.
Jonathan Woolf
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