The
Mandelring Quartet is formed around the members of the Schmidt
family, Sebastian and Nanette, violin and Bernhardt, cello.
On the present recording the violist is Michael Scheitzbach,
although their violist today is Roland Grassl. The Mandelring
Quartet has an extremely wide-ranging repertoire and is probably
best known to CD listeners for their series on CPO of the
quartets of Georges Onslow. They are also known for their
close association with the composer Berthold Goldschmidt,
who dedicated his fourth quartet to them. The present recording
is one of three produced in 1999 in a series entitled Brahms
and Contemporaries and only released recently. Each CD
pairs one of Brahms’ quartets with one by a friend or associate
of his. This disc features the second quartet of Friedrich
Gernsheim, a friend of Brahms and one of the few composers
whose music Brahms actually liked.
Gernsheim
was six years younger than Brahms and occupied successively
more important positions as a conductor and pedagogue in Cologne, Rotterdam, and Berlin, where he died in 1916. In all of
these positions he was a strong promoter of the music of Brahms.
As a composer he wrote a lot of orchestral music, including
four symphonies that have been recorded as a set on Arte Nova
conducted by Siegfried Kohler, as well as concertos,
choral works and much chamber music. Although on the surface
a minor Brahmsian character he possesses a personality of
his own and a geniality that Brahms sometimes lacked. Gernsheim
wrote five string quartets, of which the second, in A-minor,
is recorded here. It was published in 1875 and shows some
influence of the Brahms Op. 51 quartets written two years
earlier.
In
comparison to the Brahms quartets, the Gernsheim A-minor has
both more rhythmic push and more serenity.
The development in the first movement is well done, if not
fascinating, and the composer shows great imagination in the
use of tonal relationships. The recapitulation is ably done.
The second movement is in D-flat major and again Gernsheim
handles tonal relationships well. The second section of the
movement and the overall development impressed me more than
anything else in the entire work, especially at 6:30
through to the end of the movement. The scherzo struck me
as too Brahmsian, although the trio was much more individual
and another highlight of the whole work. The quasi-rondo final
movement features a recap of the opening material from the
first movement and strains at the bonds of the home key. It
also strains at the boundaries of chamber music and almost
seems to require an orchestral texture in its last minutes.
In all, a work not deserving of the obscurity it has received
in the last century.
The
three Brahms string quartets are well-known and well-recorded,
although they have not received the affection accorded some
of the other Brahms chamber works such as the piano trios
or the piano quintet. The Op. 51, #1 is a tightly constructed
work with the opening material generating all that comes after
it. At the same time the piece thrives on counterpoint, frequently
to the exclusion of all else. The Mandelrings begin at too
brisk a tempo for my taste, but settle down before an excellent
playing of the recapitulation. They are fine in the lovely
and tentative slow movement, with it’s intricate counterpoint,
and continue so in the third movement, with fine work by the
violist. They do best with the feverish fourth movement, sustaining
the tempo, the atmosphere and the counterpoint steadily throughout
the movement. This is their finest playing on the disc.
It
may have been noticed that while I spoke of the performers’
playing as a whole, I hardly mentioned any solo work. This
is not accidental - the Mandelring plays as such a cohesive
unit that one hardly notices individual players. All are fine
when called upon individually, but it is the total sound of
the group that one remembers. Perhaps this is to be expected
from a quartet where three of the four instrumentalists have
been playing together since infancy and where all four members
are devoted to playing chamber music almost exclusively. In
any event, it works very well in most of the Brahms, although
there were times in both composers’ quartets where I felt
that the Mandelrings sacrificed tempo control for smoothness
of ensemble. I would say that this is the factor the quartet
most needs to address
All
three of the discs in this series were recorded as part of
the Mandelring’s own Hambacher Festival in the St. Bartholomäus-Kirche
in Birkweiler in the southern Rhineland. The church lends itself better
to the sound of the Brahms than the Gernsheim, but the presumably
live performance mikes both works much too closely. There
is also some smudging of the individual lines in certain passages
in the Brahms. The close ensemble sound of the Quartet is
not always well served by the acoustic in the church which
sometimes blunts what should be a taut sound. However, any
sonic imperfections are outweighed by the chance to hear a
more than interesting quartet by a friend of Brahms. I look
forward to the other two recordings in this series.
William Kreindler
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