Maria Bach (1896-1978)
Piano Quintet “Wolga” (1928)
String Quintet (1936)
Cello Sonata (1924)
Akiko Shiochi, Yukie Takai (piano)
Christine Busch, Elene Meipariani (violins)
Klaus Christa (viola)
Mathias Johansen, Conradin Brotbek (cellos)
rec. 2019/20, Funkstudio, SWR Stuttgart
First recording: String quintet
CPO 555341-2 [75]
Her dates tell you that this is not a very unexpected release of music by
Johann Sebastian’s first wife, Maria Barbara. In fact, Maria Bach (or to
give her her full name and title, Emilie Marie Baroness von Bach) would
appear to have no connection to the famous Thuringian family.
She was born into a wealthy and very artistic family, which encouraged her musical talents. She was taught composition by Joseph Marx and studied violin with the concertmaster of the Vienna Court Orchestra and piano with the virtuoso Paul de Conne. After the First World War, she established a reputation as a composer in and beyond Vienna. However, her star faded quickly, partly I’m sure because of her gender, but also because she stuck to tonal music, when the world was changing.
I was totally unprepared for how beautiful the opening of the Piano Quintet would be. It brings to mind the opening of Fauré’s first Piano Quintet. Despite her background, there is a delicacy in her music that is more French than German/Austrian. The second movement is a set of fourteen variations on “The Song of the Volga Boatman”, and very ambitious at almost nineteen minutes, pushing the Quintet to well over thirty minutes. There is a marvellous diversity in the moods of the different variations: one of the early ones, with the cello given a solo role and the violins playing pizzicato is just
glorious. The finale is a splendidly joyous dance. Through this very substantial work, I can’t recall a moment when I felt the inspiration faltering. I don’t feel that it is an overstatement to describe this work as not far short of a masterpiece, and one that should be in the standard repertoire for piano quintets.
The String Quintet is a much harder nut to crack, and certainly the most “modern” of the three works by some margin. The opening movement’s busyness isn’t especially ingratiating, and the jagged folk rhythms of the Sacred Dance finale would have had Bartók nodding with approval. The middle movement – theme and variations again, this time using a Brittany fisherman’s song – is, however, much more to my taste, bittersweet melancholy for much of it, but with widely differing writing in the variations. While I wasn’t entirely convinced by the work, at just over twenty minutes, it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
The Cello Sonata is another cracking work. Its opening movement has the same tempo marking as that of the equivalent movement in the String Quintet: Energisch bewegt (energetic and emotional). While the Quintet seems to concentrate almost exclusively on the energetic part, the Sonata is much more deeply felt. The middle movement this time doesn’t involve variations, but rather a rhapsodic Romanze. The restless and heavy-footed rhythms that recur in the rondo Finale create a mental picture (for me) of two cartoon figures engaged in a pursuit, though there are moments of repose.
Performances of totally unknown music are always difficult to judge, but these seem entirely satisfactory to me. Certainly, the impression made on me by the Piano Quintet would have not been the same had the performance been below par. There were times when I would have liked a slightly warmer violin tone, but that is something I tend to say frequently. Cellist Mathias Johansen, who is an ever-present across the three works, is very impressive in the sonata.
The booklet notes are not entirely satisfactory. For such a little-known composer, I would have thought that there was justification for a substantial essay. However, it occupies just over two pages (about the same as given to the player biographies) of which half a page is a quote from her autobiography. That is not to say that this was not interesting, as it tells of her times spent as a young child with her near contemporary Erich Korngold during visits with his father to the Bach family. It was his “enchanting and brilliant piano playing” that provided the inspiration for her to begin composing music. But the existence of an autobiography means that the rest of her long life could have occupied more than one page. Similarly, the discussion of the three works is relatively brief – the Cello Sonata is barely mentioned. What is most problematic is the English translation of the original German notes. These seem in places to have been done by someone whose first language is not English (though his name would suggest otherwise). By way of example (and there are several others), we have “... Italian painter Artur Ciacelli, whom she met in 1951 and already married a year later ...”. The mention of her artist husband leads me to comment that it is disappointing that the cover artwork is not one of her paintings, as she developed a reputation in that field later in life.
This recording was released on April 1 this year. In doing some research for this review, I found that by some extraordinary quirk of coincidence, Hanssler Classics released a disc of her music with two works in common (the Piano Quintet and Cello Sonata) on the very same day!! Would the labels have known of each other’s recording schedule? The CPO sessions were a year earlier than those of Hanssler. The Hanssler booklet notes (which I accessed through the Naxos Music Library) are streets ahead of CPO’s – four times as long, far better written/translated and much more informative. I’m aware that a colleague is reviewing both releases, so I will just make a brief comment about the two versions of the Quintet. The Hanssler is three minutes quicker overall - 31:52 versus 34:50 - and often this is a positive in music from composers of the second rank, but I felt the CPO ensemble provided much more poetry and feeling, especially in the first movement. The Hanssler ensemble’s performance of the exquisite opening to the work felt a little rushed by comparison. The two releases have one work not in common: the Hanssler includes a Suite for solo cello. I preferred the String Quintet (just), mainly because of the slow movement.
So you will gather that I very much enjoyed this. When I began writing the review, I wasn’t expecting to say that you had a choice between two recordings. Which you choose may come down to a preference for solo cello or string ensemble, but if you love tonal chamber music from the first decades of the twentieth century, you certainly should choose one.
David Barker
