Schumann Quartett CHIAROSCURO

CHIAROSCURO

Vilde Frang BARTÓK Violin Concerto No. 1 ENESCU Octet

Bela Bartók and George Enescu were born in same Year - 1881, Bartók in the Austrian-Hungarian city of Nagyszentmiklos (today Romania), Enescu in the Moldovian town of Liveni-Botosani (today Romania). 

Both pieces on this recording are youth works of theirs - 1900 (Enescu's Octet) and 1907 (Bartók's first violin concerto). Both works were neglected - Enescu's Octet for nearly a decade due to the challenges of the piece (being premiered in 1909) , and Bartók's concerto was neglected by its dedicatee, the violinist Stefi Geyer (who was also his young love), and was published only after her death, in 1956 (being premiered in 1958). Bartók and Enescu both died in self-chosen exile - Bartók 1945 in New York, Enescu 1955 in Paris - yet both were respected and admired for being contributors to the development of their countries’ culture and art, particularly as great ambassadors for the folk music.

Schumann Quartett / Anna Lucia Richter INTERMEZZO

Their point of departure and focus is his String Quartet no. 1 in A minor. Robert Schumann always had difficulty with this particular genre, and in 1842 he brought his "attempts at writing quartets" to an end in a headlong burst of creativity that produced his opus 41, comprising three quartets. The Schumann Quartet musicians concentrate unconditionally on the vocal part-writing, and rather than merely overcoming the technical challenges choose to simply ignore them. The music of Felix Mendelssohn is suffused with what Schumann envied as "ease" or "facility". 

The String Quartet no. 1 in E flat major was written in the late summer of 1829, when the younger composer was not yet 20. The correlations, corresponding references and tributes are all in evidence – Mendelssohn's string quartet is the perfect match for Schumann's equivalent work. There is a kind of cross-fertilization between the attention to detail and fresh approach taken by the Schumann Quartet and the modernity of the almost youthful Mendelssohn; the result is encapsulated in the unrestrained joy of music-making in the fourth movement. Schumann and Mendelssohn provide the framework into which Aribert Reimann then sets "his" Schumann. Reimann is one of today's most successful composers and is linked to the composer of the Romantic era born in Zwickau, Saxony, by more than music. He is in fact a direct descendant of the physician who treated Schumann at the psychiatric hospital in Endenich and has therefore had access to the patient file detailing the precarious balance of Schumann’s emotional state. His attitude to Schumann is therefore a reflection of those impressions. The Adagio zum Gedenken an Robert Schumann (adagio to the memory of Robert Schumann) based on two unfinished chorales without words was composed as a result of intensive and personal cooperation between the quartet and Reimann.

In Reimann's arrangement of the 6 Gesänge op. 109, the ensemble succeeds, in harmony with the soprano Anna Lucia Richter, in fulfilling Schumann’s wish for an "additional, fully-formed accompanying instrument". Reimann's skill in handling the original brings out the fine features and nuances of the lyrics. The quartet and singer complement each other so effortlessly that the unusual combination sounds like a quintet that has been working together for many years.

Schumann Quartett LANDSCAPES

 “Four fundamentally different works merge into a musical whole by virtue of our deep and personal relationship with them – like a quartet.” (Schumann Quartet)

When the Schumann Quartet took stock of the selection of works for this recording, they realised that they had, completely intuitively, put together a concept album, without ever having planned to do so. The pieces had to be ones that are close to their hearts, ones that they often play. (...) Ultimately, they are works from four different parts of the classical-music world: an Estonian piece, a Japanese piece, a Hungarian piece and an Austrian-German piece. And contrasts, differences and contradictions also dominate within the works themselves. This is what Christopher Warmuth relates in the booklet text, after a conversation with the quartet. 

This recording thus represents the kind of pure antithesis that gives life to every great whole. Alongside Joseph Haydn's “Sunrise Quartet”, op. 76, No. 4, a homage to “the father of the string quartet”, Béla Bartók's String Quartet No. 2, a ne plus ultra of the quartet repertoire, provides a striking contrast with its “imaginary folklore” flavour. It is set off in its turn by Arvo Pärt's evocative, meditative “Fratres”, which exists in versions for very different instrumental combinations, including, as here, for string quartet. The composer – who like violist Liisa Randalu comes from Estonia – has clearly formulated what he sees as the task of music: “For me, the greatest value of music goes beyond its tone colours (...) Music must exist through itself (...) Mystery must be there, whatever the instrument.” The Schumann Quartet prepared this work together with him and recorded it in a church in Viimsi, near Tallinn. And finally, with the title composition, “Landscape I” by Tōru Takemitsu, the Schumanns (who incidentally speak fluent Japanese) forge a connection to their mother's native land – an exotic sound-landscape of noble delicacy that sets wonderful contrasts.