The more I listen to
the music of Ernst Toch the most fascinated
I become. His output is mainly represented
by string quartets and symphonies which
CPO have been making available to us
now for some eight years. Yet for years
I only knew of him by his clever and
typically original piece ‘Geographical
Fugue’ which is laid out for speaking
chorus.
A Jewish émigré
to America, Toch was successful for
a brief time in Germany in the 1920s
and early 1930s. He read the times wisely
and escaped Hitler’s Germany at just
the right moment. Unable to revive his
earlier success he scratched a living
as a film music composer and teacher
before retiring,. This permitted him
a golden final twenty years when the
symphonies appeared in a rush as well
as more quartets. His music displays
a very singular and experienced composer
with something to say but in a language
sometimes difficult to grasp.
Anyway I leap ahead.
We should start with the 7th
Quartet. Actually it’s the second to
have survived; the first five, which
must all date from before 1907, have
disappeared. It is a romantic work but
also influenced by classical models.
As a youth Toch would copy out Mozart
quartets, he was so fascinated by them.
In the process he taught himself how
they were structurally put together
and how ideas were formulated. Strangely
enough it is Haydn that I hear as a
direct model in this work. The third
movement beginning with a motif which
returns in a classical type of Rondo
form is marked Vivace. The fourth
movement begins with typically Haydnesque
rhythms and then continues to develop
them in a playful manner. Romantic harmonies
peculate throughout. One can quite see
why that arch-academic (would you forgive
me if I call him an ‘old fart’) Max
Reger thought so highly of the work
that he awarded Toch the Mozart prize.
This conferred a lucrative scholarship
to study in Mannheim and was enough
to convince the Toch family that music
should be his career.
It was only a question
of time before Toch would start to discover
his voice and move off in new directions.
He was a late developer, not technically
but personally and its only in the last
twenty years of his life that his unique
musical voice emerged. This factor has
been largely overlooked until now.
Before I move onto
the 10th Quartet a brief
word about the single movement four-minute
‘Dedication’ which comes between the
two main works. It is slow, delicate
and lyrical and is dedicated to Toch’s
daughter Franzi on the occasion of her
marriage in 1948. It is a work impossible
to place within the context of a concert
but well worth exploring and repeating.
The 10th
Quartet now comes as a surprise. Its
aggressive unison opening immediately
demands your attention. For the quartet’s
entire thirty minutes I was firmly held
by this music. It dates from 1923 and
must have appeared quite modern at the
time. The material uses the name ‘Bass’
his cousin’s surname. This was the same
cousin who gave him a complete Mozart
edition. The quartet was composed as
a thank-you to him. The work allows
for a group of four notes (Bb A Eb Eb)
or just a three note group to act as
a recurring motif. These notes are sometimes
transposed. Not surprisingly the first
movement marked ‘Energisch’ is almost
Bergian in it obsessive intensity focused
on this single figure. The captivating
second movement is a very long Adagio
but I have found it most beautiful and
superbly crafted for a string quartet.
His third movement is marked ‘Kotzenzhaft
schleichend’ which I believe can be
translated ‘slinking, like a cat’. Lasting
less than four minutes it is a muted
scherzo which inhabits a sinister nocturnal
landscape. The finale inhabits more
the air of the first movement and brings
the work to a gripping conclusion. I
was reminded somewhat of the string
music by that tragic Terezin-based composer,
Gideon Klein.
There are thirteen
Toch quartets and this, my first experience
of them, will lead me to investigate
them further.
The Buchberger Quartett
is given a useful biographical sketch
by the excellent booklet annotator Constanze
Stratz. They are a fine and well respected
group, established as long ago as 1974.
However I do find that the first violin’s
intonation in high passages is occasionally
grating and the recording a little lacking
in space. I found it best to turn the
treble well down which might be generally
recommendable.
As mentioned the booklet
is helpful with a biography of Toch
and just the right kind of analysis
of the music movement by movement.
Highly recommended.
Gary Higginson
See also
Ernst
TOCH (1887-1964)
String
Quartets – No. 11, Op. 34 (1924); No.
13, Op. 74 (1953).
Buchberger String Quartet.
Recorded
in the Evangelische Kirche, Köln-Rondorf
on March 22nd-24th, 1999 (Op. 34) and
May 10th-12th, 1999 (Op. 74). [DDD]
CPO 999 687-2 [55.35]
