I’ve been reviewing this unfolding series with considerable
interest. It’s now the turn of Koppel’s chamber music – the next volume
will give us his vocal works. I do subscribe to the prevailing orthodoxy
regarding Koppel’s compositional lineage, which is broadly an axis of
Bartók, Stravinsky and Nielsen (with an admixture of Prokofiev
of whose music he was a noted exponent) but this is I think to underestimate
the range of his ambition and the technical skill he employs, to say
nothing of the sophistication of his thematic material. As well as being
an especially fine pianist (several examples here – and his concerto
performances in a previous edition gave us indisputable proof of the
bigness of his technique) his brother Julius was the violist in the
Koppel Quartet (led by Julius’s wife Else Marie Bruun). Koppel was thus
perfectly placed to dedicate works – five of his quartets amongst other
things – to his brother’s quartet and to take advantage of intimate
discussions surrounding them.
If in general I am more immediately attracted to his
larger scale works it’s not to imply that these are negligible works
– far, far from it. He wrote widely for chamber forces and always with
idiomatic understanding; nothing here is forced or crude. He wrote about
ten each of trios, quartets, quintets and sextets and an equal number
of sonatas for violin, cello and woodwinds. The works in this double
set clearly reflect his interest in and relative absorption of other
models, such as those noted above, but there is always a consonance
about Koppel’s music that is a measure of his integrity. The set begins
with the Second Quartet. The hints at folk influences, a Bartókian
heritage, become increasingly explicit in the opening movement marked
Allegro fresco, con espressione with some free wheeling
thematic development and a sense of generous flux. The slow movement,
the longest of the three is sweetly melancholic; the cello – as so often
in Koppel – has a strongly independent line and the first violin has
a part tailor-made for expressive soaring. And in this performance,
recorded by Danish radio in 1962, Bruun does just that. The chugging
rhythms of the finale impart a breathless animation to a movement that
seems to be getting nowhere (deliberately so). The registral disparities
between the string instruments are very well exploited in this knowing
and well-judged movement.
The third quartet was recorded by the national radio
in March 1957 in Copenhagen. It’s in Koppel’s best organically interweaved
style, sometimes sinewy, sometimes tough but always explicable – the
texture remains light. The initial severity of the long opening Allegro
soon relaxes into a more solid and avuncular mien, Koppel cleverly simmering
his material in preparation for a quietly propulsive section full of
energy and drive. His muse here is one of stern affection, his means
those of furtive scurry, lyrical melody emerging with effortless logic.
With mutes on the string players’ rocking sweetness gives the Andante
a very particular texture before mutes now removed the central section
becomes animated by a songful, perhaps over insistent drive, flecked
by a sinuous cello line and rhythmically propulsive energy. The finale
is once more active and full of momentum – I liked the violin’s rather
cocky little tune accompanied by pizzicati and humorous drone cello.
The Piano Quintet was recorded in Copenhagen commercially
by EMI in 1956. A twenty-five minute, three-movement work, it is ingenious
in conception and thoroughly splendid in execution. The driving, rather
implacable opening leads to the emergence of themes in different keys
(a Koppel trait); the tone is ruminatively brusque at times. I’d hesitate
to call it Brahmsian in that sense, but it is a big-boned and strong
work. The slow movement opens rather strangely – four pizzicati over
the piano’s descending chordal line (it lends the opening a strangely
sweet melancholy) – and the movement as a whole seems occasionally fractured
and withdrawn; wounded almost. The scurrying finale is imaginatively
voiced, with some almost disembodied lines for the string players, the
piano announcing a distinct air of unresolved tension before all pull
themselves together for a decisive finale. A big work, difficult to
judge quite in respect of its emotional temperature, but deeply worth
getting to know and quite splendidly performed by the dedicatees.
Since the works are given chronologically, from the
Second Quartet Op. 34 to the Op. 88 Trio we can trace Koppel’s development
the better. It would have helped to have dates of composition but unfortunately
they are absent. Ternio – for cello and piano – is a three-movement
suite, short and pithy, ranging from skittish interplay (graced with
neo-classical impulse) through a curiously involving Passacaglia second
movement, not unmindful of humour, to a brio laden giocoso finale. The
Cello Sonata was recorded for Louisiana Records in 1959 and I liked
it. There is real lyric intensity in the cello writing (the excellent
Koppel associate Erling Blöndal Bengtsson). The marcato section
is especially appealing. The self-styled "Bartók variations"
second movement Chaconne (both Koppel and Bengtsson apparently referred
to it thus) opens in interior fashion but soon blazes into life before
returning to a mordant keening. The finale is full of quixotic rhythm
– flighty, hinting at the Iberian and generally lightening the emotional
explosiveness and breadth of the slow movement. The solo Cello suite
is in five movements – the first is meditative and reflexive with hints
of incipient agitation, the central Molto Tranquillo is spare and elliptical
and the finale begins uneasily but ends with decisive blows.
Danacord give brief notes about the compositions in
general but have line-by-line descriptions of the music, which are exhaustive,
and happily have track timings in the margin so one can relate the description
to what one actually hears. The brief synopsis of the Trio says that
it reflects Koppel’s experience of the then avant-garde – principally
Boulez and Stockhausen – and this is undeniable. But despite the abrasions
and the intervallic lacunae Koppel’s lyricism remains intact. The unsettled
opening ends, indeed, with a brand of stern and unyielding neo-classicist
drive. Rightly the detailed notes point out the chain writing for piano
and the repetitions, allusions and general density of the writing of
the second movement, a fast and concentrated drama. The third movement,
a Theme with Variations lasting six minutes, is the pellucid heart of
the work, an intensely expressive and complexly structured movement.
Sparse sometimes to the point of ellipsis it assumes greater and greater
weight as the variations succeed each other. The finale opens in martial
fashion but fractures almost immediately - and contrary to all musical
expectation - into scurry and broken lines before ending in something
approaching convincing resolution.
Danacord’s devotion to Koppel shows every sign of restoring
him "in the round." With modern recordings of his symphonic
works available this historical series expands the breadth of his works
and performances, allowing us to hear the composer-performer at work.
It does so, needless to say, with as much intelligence and attention
to detail as before.
Jonathan Woolf