Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Piano Quartet in G minor, Op 25 (1861, orch. Schoenberg) [39:51]
Sir Hubert PARRY (1848-1918)
Elegy for Brahms (1897) [12:43]
Gälve Symphony Orchestra/Jaime Martin
rec. 2017, Gälve Konserthuset, Sweden
ONDINE ODE1314-2 [53:13]
It is a testament to the stature and achievements of Johannes Brahms that two composers as diverse in every possible respect as Arnold Schoenberg and Hubert Parry should strongly admire his music for very different reasons. Schoenberg respected ‘Brahms the progressive’, as he famously described him, whilst in the words of annotator Anthony Short, Parry was drawn to Brahms as “the ne plus ultra of Romantic composers.” Both views are entirely tenable. This latest disc from the Gälve Symphony Orchestra and their principal conductor (since 2013), Jaime Martin may offer a short playing time but it’s very rewarding in that it offers this most unusual coupling of a highly contrasted pair of tributes to Brahms.
Martin and the Gälve orchestra have already made a couple of Brahms discs for Ondine, though I’ve not heard them. They paired Brahms’ two Serenades on a disc that was liked by Des Hutchinson (review). A second disc, which we don’t appear to have reviewed, offered a programme of choral/orchestral works, including Shicksalslied and Nänie (ODE 1301-2).
Schoenberg made his orchestration of the G minor Piano Quartet in 1937 at the suggestion of Otto Klemperer, who conducted the premiere in Los Angeles the following year. I don’t know precisely the forces for which Schoenberg scored his transcription – it would have been nice if the booklet had included that information - but he included several instruments that didn’t feature in a Brahms orchestra, such as E flat clarinet and, I think, bass clarinet and cor anglais. A fairly extensive percussion section was also utilised, including xylophone and glockenspiel. It’s the use of the percussion that has always made me thoughtful about Schoenberg’s orchestration. I hasten to add, though, that I think he was right to implement his own ideas about scoring – most of which work very well; had he restricted himself solely to instruments used by Brahms he would have created nothing more than a mere pastiche. Despite Schoenberg’s additions to “traditional” Brahmsian scoring, I think the results convey the spirit of Brahms very well, particularly in the first three movements.
In the substantial first movement the orchestral colourings seem to me to be wholly successful and they shed a different light on the original music. Though he was a good few years off resolving his struggles to write a symphony Brahms shows a symphonic reach in this movement and clothing the music in orchestral dress accentuates that. In this movement Schoenberg’s use of woodwind and strings seems to me to be especially successful.
The second movement is an Intermezzo and this movement was much liked by Clara Schumann, who played the piano in the Quartet’s first performance. Indeed, it was she who suggested to Brahms that he should entitle the movement Intermezzo. The present performance benefits from neat, precise playing by the Gälve orchestra. The recording through which I first got to know this work was Sir Simon Rattle’s 1984 CBSO performance, which I bought years ago, coupled with his Bournemouth recording of the Cooke performing version of Mahler’s Tenth. I haven’t heard Rattle’s subsequent Berlin remake of the Brahms/Schoenberg (review) but in his Birmingham version he takes a rather different view of the third movement as compared with Jaime Martin. The marking is Andante con moto and Martin pays rather more heed to the con moto part of that injunction. At his fleeter core tempo, the movement plays for 9:00 compared with Rattle’s 10:49. If I were to generalise, I’d say that in this movement Martin is closer to the world of the Serenades while Rattle perhaps has the symphonies more in view. I actually like both approaches but perhaps by a short head I prefer the Rattle way; the extra breadth seems just a bit more like my idea of Brahms. That said, Martin is highly persuasive and his performance is a very good one. From around 3:50 Schoenberg introduces percussion – snare drum, bass drum and cymbals – for a while. This gives the music a slightly martial feel, I think, and possibly that’s more apparent at Martin’s swifter tempo. It’s not a detail of the scoring that I greatly like although in all other respects I appreciate Schoenberg’s approach to the music.
It’s always been the finale that has given me grounds for reservation about Schoenberg’s work. Perhaps things aren’t helped because this movement is a Rondo alla zingarese and I’ve never been a great fan of Brahms in his Hungarian mood. As Anthony Short observes, Brahms used the piano to ape the sound of the cimbalom in this movement and Schoenberg took this a stage further by deploying a xylophone. I get that, but the exotic percussion that is used in this movement just seems to jar with Brahms’ music, even if it is Brahms refracted through the lens of a very sincere twentieth-century admirer. That objection aside, the present performance is very good indeed. Martin and his orchestra invest the music with infectious drive and gaiety. The performance exudes brio and good spirits, while in the fast passages the players demonstrate genuine athleticism. Whatever I may think of the use of percussion is irrelevant; it’s Schoenberg who is in charge of the proceedings and I greatly admire the way he uses a great variety of orchestral skills for the different episodes in the Rondo. He demonstrates great skill and flair in his orchestration and, indeed, that’s true of all four movements.
Sir Hubert Parry wrote his Elegy for Brahms in 1897 as a direct response to the death of the German master. However, I agree with Anthony Short’s judgement that the piece “dwells little on the sadness of the great man’s passing”. He’s surely right to say that Parry’s composition is more “a conscious celebration of Brahms’s life.” Indeed, the piece is quite passionate at times and to my ears it definitely stresses the (wholly beneficial) kinship between Brahms’ music and Parry’s. It’s not an especially long piece but it is clearly written from the heart and I think it’s a very impressive composition. Unfortunately, Parry never got to hear it. Only in 1918, at a memorial concert for Parry, did the Elegy achieve a first performance. After that performance, conducted by Stanford, it fell into total neglect until Sir Adrian Boult revived it in the late 1970s, recording it in 1978 (review). The present excellent performance demonstrates that the decades of neglect were wholly unjustified.
As I commented at the start of this review, one can’t ignore the short playing time of this disc. However, I think the musical rewards offer ample compensation. Here are two very different musical homages to Brahms, both of which are well worth hearing, and to find them coupled together is unique. The performances are first class: on this evidence the Gälve Symphony Orchestra is a very good ensemble and Jaime Martin conducts them very well. Ondine’s recording is ideal and Anthony Short’s notes are very useful.
John Quinn
