Schumann Quartett CHIAROSCURO

CHIAROSCURO

Ensemble Schmuck FROM CLASSICAL TO TANGO

Since its founding in 2009, Ensemble Schmuck has been praised by audiences and the press for its charismatic performances. The ensemble appears in around 50 concerts across Germany every year, presenting attractive programmes in a way that is both original and skillful. The intriguing range of genres, from Classical and Romantic works through gripping tango arrangements to staged concert formats with drama, appeals to listeners of all generations, thanks in no small part to the adaptability of the trio’s formation, with three members able to switch effortlessly between violin and viola. Ensemble Schmuck is centered around clarinetist Sayaka Schmuck, who has gathered together a number of outstanding young artists in pursuit of the great passion they all share: chamber music. In the process, each musician contributes experiences, energy and ideas from his or her own musical practice, thus giving manifold impetus to the ensemble’s work in rehearsals and concerts and instilling color and flexibility into its performances.

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.