
CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL 2022
4th Concert
Wed 31.8
Brahms' Piano Quartet occupies a prominent place in the concert repertoire, thanks to its combination of the dynamic and the melodic. His Quintet has always been equally popular; it actually inspired the Italian composer Aurino Respighi to write a quintet of his own (1902) entirely within the spirit of Brahms' music. Still, no tribute to Brahms would be complete that failed to turn the spotlight onto the composer’s great rival, Franz Liszt. Brahms would transcribe Obermann's Valley, one of his most frequently played piano works, into an alluring piano trio towards the end of his life.
FRANZ LISZT - Tristia (3rd version of Obermann's Valley) for piano trio, S.723a
OTTORINO RESPIGHI - Piano Quintet in F minor (1902)
JOHANNES BRAHMS - Piano Quartet no.1 in G minor, opus 25
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Concert
Works
CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL 2022

FRANZ LISZT
The epistolary novel Obermann (1804) by the French Romantic author Senancour describes the journey of a lone traveller in the Swiss Alps. It inspired Franz Liszt's piano work Vallée d'Obermann [Obermann’s Valley], which he wrote while living in Switzerland (1835-1836) with his lover, Countess Marie d'Agoult. Both this and other piano works from this period were published after extensive revisions by the composer in 1855, making up the first volume (Switzerland) of the piano cycle “Years of Pilgrimage”. Obermann's Valley undoubtedly forms the crux of Switzerland, expressing as it does in unique fashion the loneliness, nostalgia and feverish intensity experienced by Senancour’s protagonist and, by extension, the composer himself. Many years later, in the 1870s, Liszt's successor as Kapellmeister of the Weimar court, Eduard Lassen (1830-1904), arranged Obermann's Valley as a piano trio. Liszt himself not only approved of his protégé’s work, he actually supplemented it with extensive interventions of his own—to such an extent, in fact, that the transcription is now rightly regarded as essentially his own. In this form, the work was given the title Tristia, probably in reference to Ovid's poem of the same name.

OTTORINO RESPIGHI
The case of the great Italian composer Ortorino Respiggi comes to dispel a (not unfounded) feeling that Italian music is often limited to the realm of opera. Although Respighi also wrote operatic works (and a lot of them), his fame rests primarily on his symphonic music and instrumental output in all its forms. He started out studying the violin and later composition in his home town of Bologna (under, among others, the great—and now unjustly neglected—composer Giuseppe Martucci), in Berlin under Max Bruch, and in St. Petersburg under Rimsky-Korsakov, who instilled in him a superb feel for orchestration. His music was influenced to an extent by French impressionism, though the influence of the early music of the Italian Renaissance and the baroque, which Respigi loved and had studied in depth, is also evident.
Just a year after he completed his studies in composition in Bologna, and while working as a violist at the St. Petersburg Opera, Respighi composed his Piano Quintet (1902), a youthful work clearly inspired by Johannes Brahms' Quintet. The two works are written in the same key, but also share a very similar romantic harmonic idiom. The first movement is by far the longest, and is written in sonata form. It is mostly left to the strings to present the lyrical main themes, with the piano providing a background of near-undiminished intensity and energy with a host of impressive, virtuosic passages (arpeggiated chords, octaves, etc.) across its full range. The slow movement is just a short intermezzo in which a melancholy melodic idea takes shape. Then, without a break, the piano introduces the finale, creating a light, bright atmosphere from the start. Over the course of the movement, the melody of the slow movement reappears fleetingly, first in the strings and then more slowly still on the piano. In the concluding coda, the speed gradually picks up until the piece reaches its stormy climax.
MOVEMENTS
1. Allegro
2. Andantino
3. Vivacissimo – Andantino – Lentamente – Presto – Prestissimo

JOHANNES BRAHMS
Johannes Brahms first had the idea of composing a Piano Quartet in around 1856-1857; one shouldn’t underestimate the originality of the thought, given that only two works—one by Mozart and one by Schumann—had ever been written previously for this combination of instruments (Beethoven had written three at a very young age, but never published them). However, it wasn’t until July 1861 that Brahms began work on his two first quartets (opus 25 and opus 26, respectively). He was in Hamm, a suburb of Hamburg at the time on the left bank of the River Alster, and specifically at the home of the widow Elisabeth Rösing, with whom Brahms lived for a time. In November 1862, the composer played the piano part at the premiere of the First Piano Quartet in Vienna, which was a great success; it was the first of many occasions on which he would play his own chamber music in public.
Although Brahms' compositional focus remains centred around classical forms, in marked contrast to the innovative musical language of a Liszt or Wagner, his music was anything but anachronistic. This is because the way the composer implemented his musical ideas bestowed new dimensions and perspectives on old forms, proving that they could serve new musical ideas and perceptions very well indeed, given that they were looked at with fresh eyes. The First Piano Quartet provides a good example of this in practice: the close thematic affinity between seemingly disparate musical ideas is subject to the same logic of "evolutionary variation" which would later play an important role in the formulation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone system. A contemplative mood prevails in the first movement, which is distinguished by the great variety and expressiveness of its melodies. The second, though structured as a scherzo with a trio section, was aptly described by the composer, in light of its peculiar melancholy, as an ‘intermezzo’. Two diametrically opposed ideas collide in the slow movement: a sensual melody and a bombastic march. The finale, a rondo based on a gypsy-style melody, is undoubtedly one of Brahms' most vivid and extroverted moments, with the element of virtuosity coming powerfully to the fore.
MOVEMENTS
1. Allegro
2. Intermezzo: Allegro, ma non troppo – Trio: Animato
3. Andante con moto
4. Rondo alla Zingarese: Presto