Maria Bach (1896-1978)
Piano Quintet in A minor, ‘Wolga Quintet’ (1928)
Cello Sonata in C minor (1924)
String Quintet (1936)
Christine Busch (violin), Elene Meipariani (violin), Klaus Christa (viola), Mathias Johansen (cello), Conradin Brotbek (cello 2)
Akiko Shiochi (piano: Quintet), Yukie Takai (piano: Sonata)
rec. 2019/20, SWR Stuttgart, Funkstudio
CPO 555341-2 [75]
As I noted in my review of a competitor recording from Hänssler (HC21051), divergencies in performances of unfamiliar music offer lucid departure points. Their readings of the Piano Quintet and the Cello Sonata – the two works that overlap – are strongly expressive and recorded in a suitably rich acoustic; amplitude and richly vibrated commitment are the watchwords. Whereas CPO offers a more subtle, modest approach in an appropriately scaled recording acoustic in SWR’s Stuttgart studio.
But who was Maria Bach? I think it’s appropriate to copy briefly what I wrote in my Hänssler review. She was from an aristocratic, moneyed and musical background – her mother had sung under Brahms and Mahler - and was born near Vienna. She was clearly a formidable pianist and studied in the city with Joseph Marx, having been earlier encouraged by Julius Korngold. Though she left the Academy for Music without a formal qualification she was soon to make her way in musical life in the city. She was frequently heard on the radio in the 1930s and many of her works were performed, though the Second World War – allied to insolvency (not her fault) – led to a sad decline.
The approach of the CPO group is very much more modest and detailed than the Hänssler team. The string players use less weight of bow pressure and less pressing vibrato. Theirs is a more refined, more Franco-Belgian approach in orientation though it’s not without a sense engagement, it’s simply a more clarity-conscious stylistic approach. The ‘Wolga’ Quintet is named after the long – here nearly 19-minute – sequence of Theme and Variations on The Song of the Volga Boatmen. This trend to slower tempi in all three movements means that the CPO group takes nearly three minutes longer than their rivals; theirs is the more detailed and scrupulous performance, giving the music a slight sense of distance, as opposed to the late-Romantic commitment of the Hänssler team. Both approaches seem to me to be valid responses to the music though I will say that the greater speed of the competitors makes the long second movement seem marginally more dramatic.
There is far more uniformity as to tempi in the Cello Sonata but a similar divergence in matters of tonal breadth and, of course, the inescapable acoustic. Mathias Johansen and Yukie Takai bring a real sense of innocence to the Romanze, allowing it to speak with unfettered refinement, rather than forcing the issue. Theirs is, if you like, a more ‘salon’ than concert hall interpretation but without any pejorative meaning, as it suits the music.
The bold 20-minute String Quintet dates from 1936 and here her sound world is at its most obviously Debussian. Bach’s mellifluous control of her material is well judged and evenly distributed across the three movements and, yes, there’s a Theme and Variations in the central one; she seems to have been addicted to the device. Its lilting theme is accompanied by a rather ‘discrete’ sequence of variations that don’t flow into each other but rather stop and restart. The rugged dance of the finale releases variational matters, and here Bach is at her most skittish in this sacral dance with its exoticisms that gather in intensity. You might imagine Stravinsky is the influence, though I don’t really hear it.
Competing versions of little-known works do turn up from time to time but it’s still worth mentioning. If you fancy your (Maria) Bach refined and elegant choose the CPO, but if you prefer a richer and more expressive experience you will need the Hänssler, which also has the superior notes.
Jonathan Woolf
Previous review: David Barker
