Egon KORNAUTH (1891-1959)
Viola Sonata in C-sharp minor, Op 3 [26:42]
Robert FUCHS (1847-1927)
Sechs Phantasiestücke, Op 117 [24:31]
Viola Sonata in D minor, Op 89 [21:13]
Traditional
Arirang (Korean folk song, arr. Stephen Hough) [2:21]
Litton Duo
rec. October 2020 Henry Wood Hall, London, UK
Hybrid SACD Multi-channel/Stereo
BIS-2574 SACD [75:45]
American conductor and pianist Andrew Litton, Music Director of New York City Ballet, refers to this release as a Pandemic Project. He was marooned in New York, all future concerts cancelled, with Katharina Kang Litton, his wife since 2020. Katharina suggested that they play through some works for violin and piano to help fill the time during lockdown. They greatly enjoyed the experience, so they decided to do the same with works for piano and viola, since Katharina is equally accomplished on both instruments.
The repertoire for viola and piano is far more restricted than that for the violin. The pair played through the almost mandatory works of Brahms and Schumann, and the started looking further afield for inspiration. They came across two nearly forgotten pieces, the first two here, and were struck by ‘how lovely and unjustly neglected they were’. They flew to London where, after statutory quarantine, they recorded this album. They included an arrangement of the traditional Korean folk song Arirang, a wedding gift from pianist Stephen Hough. As Andrew Litton concludes, ‘thus the Litton Duo was born’.
Egon Kornauth must be a new name for most of us. A cellist and pianist from his youth, he was born in the Moravian city Olmütz (Olomouc) in what is now Eastern Czechia. He went to Vienna in 1909, where he studied with Robert Fuchs, Franz Schmidt, Guido Adler and Franz Schreker. He taught music theory at Vienna University from 1919, and then embarked on an international career as pianist, accompanist and conductor, which took him to Indonesia and to South America. In 1940 he resumed a teaching career in war-time Vienna and Salzburg, joining the Nazi-sponsored Reichsmusikkammer, but continued to support his former teacher Adler, who was being held under house arrest as a Jew. In post-war Austria, Kornauth became director of the Salzburg Mozarteum, was elected to the Austrian Arts Senate in 1954, and died five years later, still in Vienna.
Kornauth has a surprisingly extensive output, and he won a number of prizes, including the Austrian State Prize for his Viola Sonata, Op 3. His musical style was considered conventional. When English composer Humphrey Searle visited Vienna in the 1930s, he was unhappy to find that the only modern music played by the main orchestras was that of Schmidt, or, as he commented at the time, ‘lesser composers like Kornauth’. To be fair, in his 1958 autobiography, Kornauth did recognise that epigonism – the conscious imitation of an earlier generation – was an inherent personality trait. He wrote Lieder, chamber music and piano pieces, as well as five orchestral suites and other larger-scale works.
The booklet notes say that Kornauth, as Brahms did before him, published a version of his Viola Sonata for clarinet. But, unlike Brahms’s works, his piece is very much geared for the viola. That is not surprising: a fine cellist in his youth, he would have counted violists among his musical colleagues, so he could have picked up a good deal of vital ‘inside information’. The work appeared in 1912, at a time when some of the composer’s more extreme Viennese contemporaries were becoming increasingly involved in more revolutionary musical techniques. Schoenberg’s atonal Pierrot lunaire, Op 21, for example, appeared the same year.
If you were to name a tempo marking for the opening movement, you might get close in spirit, even if the actual term is the unusual Fest und bestimmt (firm and determined). The first theme has, I feel, a strong hint of Dvořák about it: no surprise, since Kornauth often employed aspects of Czech and Moravian folk music. The dynamic balance between the two instruments marks Kornauth as a past master, especially considering the viola’s overall range and projection versus the full might of a grand piano (a Bechstein Model D here). After a somewhat sombre opening on the viola, the piano has the opportunity to announce the eminently more romantic-sounding second subject, before the exposition is conventionally repeated. There are some lovely lyrical moments in the shared development, where passions rise, before leading into a reprise of the opening, again textbook sonata form. In the recapitulation the second subject is initially re-introduced in the tonic minor key, but apart from a temporary switch to the major, this absolute gem of a movement calmly comes to rest in the home key.
The second movement Langsam, sehr ausdrucksvoll (slow and very expressive), as the booklet suggests, is more a wistful waltz than a slow movement as such. It is cast in simple ternary form ABA, with a particularly charming middle section in the major. The opulently shifting chromaticism of the writing very much suggests a composer totally in his comfort zone, and more than happy not to explore atonality or serial technique. I feel, therefore, that this unknown viola sonata can more than hold its own against anything by Brahms or Schumann, and deserves to be far better known, if only for this alone.
Again, it would not be difficult to guess the finale’s tempo marking. From the cataclysmic piano octaves of the first two introductory bars, and the almost hammer-like main theme on the viola, Wild und stürmisch (wild and stormy) should not surprise. Despite the bravura writing, the composer is always mindful that this is first and foremost a sonata for viola and piano, and not the other way around. It is conceived as a regular sonata form rather than designed as a rondo. Such is Kornauth’s skill in thematic development that he makes a few themes go a long way, although, to be fair, each one, whether lyrical or dramatic, is a potent musical entity in its own right. If there was anything positive to emerge from the pandemic, then this perfectly formed gem of a work would certainly count as one.
Putting Kornauth’s work first on the disc has obvious advantages, of course, but it also is an especially hard act to follow. That task falls to one of Kornauth’s valued pedagogic mentors, Robert Fuchs, who, we are informed, numbered Gustav Mahler, Hugo Wolf, Franz Schmidt, Franz Schreker, Jean Sibelius, Alexander Zemlinsky and Erich Korngold among his students at the Vienna Conservatory. His music has been described as ‘unfailingly tuneful and enjoyable’, and he was greatly admired by Brahms, who hardly ever praised the works of his contemporaries. Fuchs was a prolific composer, but his works were not widely known, simply because he chose to do little to promote them. As the booklet suggests, while he clearly composed in the shadow of Brahms, he was perfectly happy in so doing. That is why his 1909 Viola Sonata in D minor is patently more Brahmsian than Kornauth’s.
The disc does not, actually, juxtapose two substantial minor-key sonatas. We first hear Fuchs’s Sechs Phantasiestücke (six fantasy pieces) from 1927. The title links back to Schumann in terms of poetic conviviality. It soon becomes clear, however, that Fuchs’s attitude is far from Schumann’s playful and sometimes mischievous sense of humour, often manifested in unusual formal designs or quirky rhythmic elements.
The set begins with Ländler Tempo (in the time of a Ländler – a precursor of the waltz). Sometimes these can be very lively dances of Bavarian or Tyrolean origin, but here there is a lullaby-like Brahmsian calm. Ruhig und ausdrucksvoll (quiet and expressive) follows much in the same vein, apart from the change from triple to duple meter, but the music does build to a passionate climax before returning to the tranquillity of the opening. Leicht bewegt (with light movement), as the title suggests, almost has the feel of a one-in-a-bar scherzo, but without any sense of real urgency. As his student Kornauth, Fuchs has the dynamic balance just right, and both instruments have virtually a fifty-fifty share in the thematic material. I think Brahms would have been especially pleased with this piece.
The fourth piece is marked Andante sostenuto con espressione (sustained, and at a walking pace, with expression). Fuchs was a fertile song-writer, and this delightful little miniature could easily appear with words, considering its simple beauty of expression. It is back to German with Mäßig bewegt (mostly at a moderate speed), for what could be a Viennese Waltz in a minor key. Fuchs adds a little rhythmic spice with his occasional use of two against three, but otherwise the origins are clear even if it is a stylized dance. The final piece is marked Allegretto con delicatezza (fairly quick, with delicacy). With the use of ornamentation (turns) heard at the start in the viola part, this piece seems to be a glance back to the rondo-style that prevailed around 100 years earlier in Vienna of Hummel and his contemporaries, both in the innate style of its main theme and the variety in each episode.
The Viola Sonata appeared much earlier, in 1909. The first movement is marked Allegro moderato, ma passionato (moderately lively, with passion). There are indeed some passionate elements present, but they appear more restrained than in Kornauth’s sonata, as perhaps befits a long-established academic who was also a composer. As the booklet says, the middle movement Andante grazioso (gracefully, at a walking pace) opens somewhat in the manner of a slow minuet, with a Trio that cleverly creates the impression of a faster metronome marking, simply by introducing semiquavers (sixteenth-notes) for both instruments, the first time, in fact, they have appeared in the movement until then. The opening section then returns in its entirety, save for the two final cadential chords played fortissimo, as if to alert the listener that the spirited finale is about to kick off, marked Allegro vivace (lively and quick), in the tonic-major key of D.
Bravura returns to this impressive finale which, as was the case with Kornauth, provides the perfect close to some twenty minutes of energetic and joyous music-making. As the booklet concludes, and I make no apology for repeating, Fuchs’s Viola Sonata was first heard in the same year and city as Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, the premiere of which was greeted with hissing, catcalls and threats of physical violence. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it seems easier to accept both works on their own merits, however different the language might be.
The disc ends with Stephen Hough’s lush arrangement of Arirang, a Korean folk song. Simple in concept and lasting less than two-and-a-half minutes, it is a most fitting conclusion to what has been one of the most enjoyable recitals I have had the pleasure of hearing for some time.
The Litton Duo made the most of what can only be described as a God-given opportunity in far from ideal circumstances. The result is more than capable of offering real musical solace to those who were affected by the pandemic in any way. Suffice it to say that the performances are simply stunning; they attest not only to the individual skills of the two performers, but to the obvious total empathy between them – clearly a musical marriage made in Heaven.
If you love the viola, then this is compulsory listening. If , however, you are not yet convinced about the instrument’s capabilities, then this is a sure way to become an overnight fan. At times you really have to pinch yourself, lest you think you are listening to a cello in the lower notes or to a violin at the top. But at the same time Katharina Kang Litton produces an amazingly rich viola sound, on a modern instrument made in 2014 by Robert Clemens from St. Louis.
With the usual superlative recording credentials of the Swedish BIS label, it was certainly no hardship to audition this Hybrid SACD disc on my trusty and dependable traditional CD player, to which the high-end presentation overall made an equally impressive contribution. Ultimately, though, it is the sheer musical quality and attractiveness of the works themselves that should ensure the success of this release. And let us not forget the absolutely invaluable contribution of the newly-formed Litton Duo, who brought their original Pandemic Project to the recording studio and now to the global musical public.
Philip R Buttall
