Louis SPOHR (1784-1859)
Violin Duets 2
Duets for Two Violins, Op. 39 (1816)
No.1 in D minor [19:58]
No. 2 in E flat major [21:12]
No. 3 in E major [25:33]
Jameson Cooper and James Dickenson (violins)
rec. 2018, Joshi Performance Hall, Indiana University, South Bend, USA.
NAXOS 8.573918 [66:49]
During much of Spohr’s career as violinist, composer and conductor, his reputation stood very high indeed. So, for example, an anonymous writer in The Musical World (London, July 1843, Vol. 18, issue 27) declared: “We think of Spohr … as of one already and surely canonized to immortality. We hail his presence as we should that of Haydn, or Mozart, or Beethoven.” This was stellar company to keep, but Spohr’s star soon began to decline. Only 16 years later, writing in the year of the composer’s death, another unnamed English writer, this time in The Athenaeum, November 1859) observed that “when we begin to consider whereabouts the pedestal of Spohr will be amongst the great musical poets of Germany” it was necessary to remember that “the public delight in the mass of his music has been an evanescent thing”. The writer made, however, one interesting exception: “As a king and ruler among violin players Dr. Spohr can never be forgotten, so long as the violin lasts.” He (given the date and the journal it must surely have been a male author) goes on to say that “[Spohr’s] violin Duetts [belong] among the classics for the instrument”.
The following hundred years did little to enhance Spohr’s fallen reputation. I quote from two pieces included in The Musical Companion of 1934, edited by A. L. Bacharach. The first brief passage comes from an essay by Edwin Evans. Writing of Spohr’s chamber music, he tells the reader that “the somewhat sickly sentiment of his slow movements would meet with little response from the twentieth-century audience”. In the same book, in the course of an essay on ‘The Virtuoso as Composer’, Ferruccio Bonavia, violinist and critic, sees Spohr as “a sturdy technician” and, while he too is critical of what he calls Spohr’s “heavy sentimentality”, declares that “Spohr is best remembered by his duets for two violins – clever compositions that explore the effects of sonority in a way never before attempted”.
As these few quotations show (many more could be cited to confirm this picture), the trajectory of Spohr’s reputation as a composer is strikingly clear. What is also striking is that two of the writers quoted should single out Spohr’s Violin Duets as having an enduring value absent from much of Spohr’s work. Certainly much of Spohr’s music seems to be effectively ‘dead’ now. (Still, reputations and tastes can change – perhaps we shall see revivals of some of these works; there have, after all, been recent recordings of his symphonies.) His violin concertos are still played and, I hope, enjoyed; the same can be said of the best of his chamber music, most of them works which contain significant roles for the violin.
Gretchen Madson Sherell wrote a thorough modern study, The Violin Duets of Louis Spohr, a 1996 doctoral dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin. The author concludes: “The violin duets of Spohr have still retained their freshness and originality and rightly deserve to be known by all serious violinists. They are truly perfect gems of their kind.” The present disc (along with Volume 1 by the same violinists, NAXOS 8.573763, which seems not have been reviewed in these pages) certainly demonstrates in these committed performances (both disciplined and energetic) the enduring interest of Spohr’s work in this genre. It would be hard, on this evidence, to argue with Sherell’s another judgement: “Spohr’s innate understanding of the violin and its capabilities … makes his compositions for the violin so particularly effective.”
Although there is a clear distinction between the roles given to the two violins in these duets, the distinction does not consistently subordinate one to the other. Both musicians are required to make important contributions to the success of the music. These Opus 39 duets, all in three movements, are works of some substance, in terms both Spohr’s musical ideas and their length. The shortest (No. 1) is, in this performance, just under 20 minutes long; the longest (No. 3) takes more than 25 minutes. There are some fascinating individual movements. Consider the adagio of No. 1, with its attractive sustained melody, under which semiquavers (played pizzicato) and demisemiquavers (arco) provide the changing accompaniment. Or take the andante which opens No. 2, where both violinists use double stopping for much of its length, creating an unexpectedly dense texture. The menuetto of No. 2 has something of the baroque about it, not least in its extensive use of echoing between the two instruments. In No. 3, the central andante is made up of a theme variations. Spohr does not seem very often to have used variation structure, but here there are six variations. Some of them, such as the fourth and the sixth, are particularly virtuosic, while others, such as the first and the third, have a simpler gravity of mood.
Cooper and Dickenson are very persuasive performers of these interesting pieces. They complement one another very well, creating a genuine sense of musical conversation as they treat Spohr’s writing with what seems to be just the right degree of seriousness.
Glyn Pursglove
