Sunday Classics flashback, including Friday night Britcom harkback: Schubert's "Trout" Quintet and "Waiting for God" revisited

Part 1 of "The Funeral," the third-season opener of Michael Aitkens's brilliant Britcom Waiting for God

by Ken

I explained the genesis of this post in my post earlier this evening, "Two personal markers in the Relentless March of Time (plus timeless words of wisdom from the Rev. Dennis Sparrow)." It all goes back to my Sunday Classics post a Sunday or two ago, "At 22, Schubert knew just where he was aiming in the irresistible Trout Quintet." As it happens, the Trout post was one of the not-that-frequent ones that left me feeling, well, if not satisfied, exactly, then at least feeling that I'd accomplished pretty much what I set out to.

Which is probably why I found myself listening again to the complete performance of the quintet I'd included both in the Friday night preview post (devoted to Schubert's song, "Die Forelle," which is to say "The Trout," and the theme-and-variations movement he concocted from it for the quintet to which it gave its name) and the Sunday main post, a French EMI recording by pianist Georges Pludermacher, the Trio à cordes Français (which is to say, French String Trio), and double bassist Jacques Cazauran. Once again I was really admiring this really pleasant performance, when I was shocked to notice that I had breeched a basic Sunday Classics principle by failing to credit the members of the trio. It wasn't much comfort to discover that they don't seem to be credited in my source for the recording, a 50-CD Schubert anthology assembled by French EMI. So? Normally I don't let malfeasances like that stop me.

It took me awhile to track the information down, but we'll come back to that later, when we'll re-present the recording, properly credited (I think) -- with, indeed, yet another, "bonus" complete Trout Quintet. But what set me off on tonight's tangent is that, as long as I had that Sunday post open, I ventured to watch the Waiting for God episode I'd found online and embedded for demonstration purposes, namely demonstrating the use made of a sensational recording of the finale of the Trout Quintet by the Nash Ensemble as the show's opening and closing theme music.

And, as I mentioned in that post earlier this evening, I was utterly delighted by the episode, with its eventually conjoined plotlines concerning the respective meltdowns of the vicar, the Rev. Dennis Sparrow (Tim Preece) and of the infamous daughter-in-law of of Bayview Retirement Home resident Tom Ballard (Graham Crowden). The sublime rediscovery for me in the episode was the indignant declaration made by the Reverend Sparrow -- known to Bayview resident Diana Trent (Stephanie Cole) as "Reverend Vulture" -- following his complete botch of the funeral of an 88-year-old former insurance salesman who had been resident at Bayview for a mere two days, just long enough for the sociopathically greedy, self-absorbed manager, Harvey Bains (Daniel Hill), to cash the check and then explain sadly to the bereaved family that he was prevented by terms of the contract from returning any of the money. Descending from the pulpit, Dennis declared: "It's not my fault. It's somebody else's fault.

Dennis, I was reminded, is offered shelter by Harvey (following his suspension as vicar after christening a baby "Ugly Baby Jones") at Bayview, where he's offered advice on how to ingratiate himself with the ladies by the unrelenting lecher of the superannuated Bayview set, Basil Makepeace (Michael Bilton), who quickly realizes the inappropriateness of such counsel: "Fancy me telling a vicar where to get his jollies. Coals to Newcastle."

It's in this same scene that, at table with Tom and Diana, Dennis tries to explain his paralyzing crisis of faith. Tom, however, as is often the case with him, isn't quite following, leading to the following exchange:

DIANA: I think we're on the Damascus Road here.
THE REVEREND SPARROW: Yes, in a perverted sort of way, it is the Damascus Road. But instead of, like St. Paul, looking up and seeing the blinding light of faith, I have looked up and seen the outer darkness, the empty chasms of the soul, the snakes rising in the bowels of Hell.
TOM: Is he talking about Glasgow?

And I had forgotten that this is probably the ultimate episode for Tom's hapless son Geoffrey (Andrew Tourell), surely a finalist in any World's Dullest Human competition. There's that gorgeous scene where he's dragged the near-catatonic Marion to his beloved DIY store, where he fondles specimens of kitchen shelving made from a newly arrived supply of Norwegian pine --

GEOFFREY: It's beautiful, Gavin. It sort of adds a whole new dimension to the concept of pine shelving. It'd be an honor to have this in one's kitchen. Every time you put a mug on it you'd hear the echo of the Norwegian lumberjack calling for his loved ones at the frozen fjord.

utterly oblivious of the fact that Marion has snapped out of her spell long enough to all but ravish a hapless shop clerk right in front of him. When he's finally forced out of his obliviousness by cold, hard reality, he takes a classically Geoffrey-like stand: "Marion, please, this is shelving and plasterboard!" It's worth recalling that Geoffrey's father noted the coincidence that Marion lapsed into her "state" right after Geoffrey assured her that he would always be there for her.

Anyway, I just thought I would make it as easy as possible for you to watch the whole of this episode. We've got a repeat of part 1 up top, and here's the conclusion.


Part 2 of "The Funeral"


NOW AS TO THE TROUT QUINTET

What proved surprisingly difficult to ascertain in my quick research -- shockingly so, I thought, for such a long-lived ensemble -- was whether the membership of the Trio à cordes Français had changed during its 32-year run, which began in either 1959 or 1960, depending on whether you go by the bare-bones French Wikipedia bio of violinist Gérard Jarry or the English-language Wikipedia bio of violist Serge Collot (strangely, much expanded over the French one! but then, cellist Michel Tournus doesn't rate even a bare-bones bio in either language). I'm pretty confident about Jarry and Collot and think we're okay with Tournus for 1974, when the Trout recording was made. If anyone can confirm or correct this information, I would be grateful.

Meanwhile, here's the recording again, now correctly (I think) credited.

SCHUBERT: Quintet for Piano and Strings in A, D. 667 (Trout):
i. Allegro vivace
ii. Andante
iii. Scherzo: Presto
iv. Theme and Variations: Andantino; Allegretto
v. Finale: Allegro giusto


Georges Pludermacher, piano; Trio à cordes Français (Gérard Jarry, violin; Serge Collot, viola; Michel Tournus, cello); Jacques Cazauran, double bass. EMI, recorded April 1974 [audio link]

AND NOW, AS PROMISED ABOVE,
WE'VE GOT A BONUS TROUT

It suddenly occurred to me that I've got a recording I totally forgot when I was combing my collection for Trout Quintets. It's buried in one of the three three-LP sets that RCA made in the late 1960s with the then-new Boston Symphony Chamber Players. The string players are all BSO principals of the time, and a splendid group they are, while of course the pianists heard in this series are necessarily "guest artists." In the first two sets the guest artist was the distinguished pianist Claude Frank, then in his 40s. For this third set, Frank gave way to the already-accomplished young (25-ish) Richard Goode, a splendid musician of whom quite a lot has been heard in the decades since. (Perhaps needless to say, the photo is not from 1968.)

I went ahead and made audio files of the BSCP Trout, cleaning up the surface noise of my ancient LPs as best I could with my lame technical skills. I think it's a terrific performance, quickish but almost achingly songful and at the same time envelopingly warm -- no more "definitive" than the Pludermacher-Trio à cordes Français-Cazauran one, but like the latter wonderfully successful in following through on its own interpretive quite plausible outlook. The principals of a symphony orchestra are poised somewhere between ensemble players and soloists -- they really have to be both -- and this is kind of the way Schubert's part-writing in the Trout Quintet works. (One performance note: If you remember the "9-minute/13-minute" rule for the first movement, you can tell from the BSCP's 8½-minute timing that the repeat isn't taken.)

It seems a shame that such a fine performance should have vanished from sight, and perhaps I should have saved it for some grander occasion. But what would a grander occasion at Sunday Classics be? Without further ado, then, I present the Boston Symphony Chamber Players. (I've already redone one movement, which had a major skip, after a more thorough cleaning of the LP. Come to think of it, I don't believe I even cleaned the LPs for the original dub; I really only meant to listen to the performance. I probably should redo the other movements as well. But I've already lost one night's sleep over it.)

SCHUBERT: Quintet for Piano and Strings in A, D. 667 (Trout):
i. Allegro vivace
ii. Andante
iii. Scherzo: Presto
iv. Theme and Variations: Andantino; Allegretto
v. Finale: Allegro giusto


Boston Symphony Chamber Players: Richard Goode, piano (guest artist); Joseph Silverstein, violin; Burton Fine, viola; Jules Eskin, cello; Henry Portnoi, double bass. RCA, recorded c1968 [audio link]

NOTE: If you have trouble getting the 2nd movement (that's the revised file) to play, as I've been having, try the "audio link" -- the thing seems to play fine onsite. Sigh.
UPDATE: Okay, so I made a whole new file, which seems to play correctly here as well as on the server site. It seems a shameful waste of resources, not to mention confusing (there's no way I know of to delete the previous file), and a waste of my time and energy, but sometimes you just do what you gotta do. Arg.

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