If the Salzburg Hagen Quartet excels in fastidious precision and
extraordinary detail, the Petersen Quartett might broadly be considered
their Berlin analogue for grit and drive. Once you have heard
them in concert or on one of their CDs it is difficult not to
be enthralled by them.
Had
the Petersen Quartett a bigger, more international record company
behind them, they would be better known outside Germany – although
two tours in the US in 2005 (including a stop in Washington)
have spread the word about their mix of technical excellence,
emotional commitment, and challenging, stimulating programming.
Most
unfortunately their label of 16 years, Capriccio, has just been
dragged into bankruptcy by its parent company Delta Music. One
can only hope that the unofficial successor label to Capriccio,
Phoenix Edition (apt name), will continue to record them,
make available back catalog, and perhaps even finish their Beethoven
cycle-in-progress.
The
second-to-last recording the Petersen Quartet issued is indicative
of their strengths: It’s the second part of an unofficial Ernst
Krenek String Quartet cycle containing Quartets nos. 3 and 5.
Although the music takes getting used to for all but those ears
deeply steeped in the harsher examples of 20th century
string quartet writing, it whets the appetite for the other
four quartets of Krenek they have not yet recorded.
Krenek
is a composer who has achieved a permanent place in the pantheon
of music through historic importance, more than awareness of
his work. His opera “Jonny Spielt Auf” defined a musical schism
in Europe and rang in a new era of music when it shocked and
fascinated audiences in 1927. “Jonny” was pitched against Korngold’s
sumptuous, romantic opera Das Wunder der Heliane, a cigarette
(still available) named after it, and plays a prominent role
in the chapter on Berlin in the 1920s of Alex Ross’s “The Rest
is Noise”. All that makes Krenek seem a far-away composer, part
of the pre-World War II past in the way Korngold or Joseph Marx
or Franz Mittler
are thought of – not a composer who lived until 1991 and who
covers about as many musical styles as the 20th century
offered, and who retraced the musical development of pre-War
Europe in a post-Schubertian sort of Winterreise (Reisebuch,
op.62, 1929).
On
the Petersen’s recording we are faced with Krenek the youthful
composer of string quartets, starting with his Third Quartet
from 1921, written at a time when he was (briefly) married to
Alma Mahler and moving away from the “mercilessly dissonant
style of [his] youth” (Krenek). Superficially it resembles the
Bartók quartets, but without the whipping, driving rhythms of
his Hungarian colleague. There is not much that would remind
of his teacher Schreker or his mentor Zemlinsky, who was fascinated
when he heard this work premiered by the dedicatee Hindemith’s
Amor Quartet.
For
ears less attuned to structural and compositional qualities in
‘difficult’ music than Zemlinsky’s, it will take repeat listening
to unlock the severe beauty and the wealth of ideas that the Peterson
Quartet so arduously advocates. Perhaps better turn to the Fifth
Quartet first: “The highpoint of Krenek’s use of the Schubertian
aesthetic” is a common description of his op.65, but not terribly
meaningful to these ears. What I do hear is a highly chromatic
lament and farewell to tonality. It’s a bear of a quartet, about
40 minutes long, opening with a sonata-form Allegro, meandering
through 10 thematic variations for its second movement and closing
with a 12 minute Phantasie. This is wistful, intense stuff
and sounds more than three years apart from Krenek’s first dodecaphonic
opera Karl V (see
review) that would follow in 1933 (preceding Lulu by
one year). Jarring and sweet, lyrical and wondrously twisted,
these 40 minutes are like a last panoply of a dying musical style.
A beached whale of tonality, strange and out of place and continually
fascinating: another example that Krenek cannot be pinned down
to any style or even stylistic trajectory.
The
first Krenek disc of Conrad Muck & Daniel Bell (violin),
Friedemann Weigle (viola), and Henry-David Varema (cello) –
was a prize-winning effort. This one should be, too.
Jens F Laurson
