Wilhelm STENHAMMAR (1871-1927)
String Quartets - Volume 1
String Quartet No.3 in F major, Op.18 (1897-1900) [32:13]
String Quartet No.4 in A minor, Op.25 (1904-09) [33:15]
Elegy and Intermezzo from the incidental music to
Lodolezzi sjunger, Op.39 (1919) [7:27]
Stenhammar Quartet
ec. April and October 2011 (No.4), and June 2012 (No.3 and
Lodolezzi sjunger) Petrus Kyrkan, Stocksund, Sweden
BIS SACD-1659 [73:47]
This is the first SACD from BIS in a projected complete survey of
Stenhammar’s six string quartets; a seventh, in F minor and composed
in 1897, was withdrawn. He had written an extensive amount of music in that
year, which is when he began work on the Third Quartet, but was soon to
suffer a crisis and depression after the premiere of his opera
Tirfing which, whilst a critical success, was not a work with which
Stenhammar was happy. The artistic malaise that assailed him was not to be
lifted until several years later, and in 1900 he resumed work on the
quartet.
It’s remarkable how much Stenhammar looked to Beethoven for
inspiration in this and the companion Fourth Quartet. The Third shares an
opus number with the first series of Beethoven’s own quartets, but
it’s to the middle - the Razumovsky set and in particular to Op.59
No.1 - and to the Op.135 quartet that Stenhammar looked in this work. What
he sought is perhaps less easy to define. Motifs are deliberately recalled
and refashioned, the shard-like and rhythmic impulses that drove
Beethoven’s quartets are immortalised in Stenhammar. At times though,
he recalls Brahms too, so that there is no sense of pastiche, more of an
inheritance being both honoured and transformed in the light of its new
context. The context is one of flowing lyricism that admits fragmentary
development, that almost quotes - embodies, enshrines, codifies, call it
what you will - Beethoven’s elemental impulse. Yet not everything is
steeped in a Beethovenian aura. The moto perpetuo scherzo has great
vitality and a personal quality and the slow movement is a theme and
variations of warmly textured and technically accomplished writing.
Dedicated to Sibelius, the Fourth Quartet was begun in 1904 and
completed five years later. Its long germination was as a result of both
changing compositional direction and a change in location - he travelled to
Florence - and he was also performing widely. The clear references to
Beethoven’s Op.132 Quartet are as striking as the allusions in the
preceding quartet. Overall however this quartet offers a richer palette of
influences than Op.18; the subtle and often unexpected modulations are
accompanied by hints of folk dance but these are so seamlessly interwoven
that they could easily escape notice. The music flows sonorously and
organically, fluidly argued. An expressive slow movement - complete with
mordant suspensions - is riven by a vital B section, full of contrast and
colour. Once again, Stenhammar proves a master of scherzo vitality. That he
vests so much time with theme and variations in his quartets is another
quality in his favour. This one, that ends the Fourth, is full of change and
colour, and also a strangely quixotic, almost quizzical quality too. One
feels as if the composer considered the composition almost provisional.
Certainly there is little element of emphatic assertion.
The later Elegy and Intermezzo come from incidental music for
the stage play Lodolezzi sjunger and were written in 1919. They come
from a later period in the composer’s development, therefore, but they
contain a full complement of immediacy and characterisation. The
Elegy is genuinely melancholic and it contrasts with the extrovert
and warmly-textured Intermezzo.
With beautifully rich recorded sound, this volume makes a very
strong case for the two quartets and the eponymous Stenhammar Quartet plays
with rapt devotion and splendid tone.
Jonathan Woolf
Rapt devotion and splendid tone make a very strong case.
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