Sunday Classics: Is the slightest of them perhaps the mightiest of Brahms's piano quartets?

Pianist Menahem Pressler, violinist Salvatore Accardo, violist Antonine Tamestit, and cellist Gautier Capuçon play the gorgeous third-movement Andante of Brahms's C minor Piano Quartet, at the 2008 Verbier Festival.

by Ken

As I wrote when I brought up the subject of the third of Brahms's three piano quartets, and wound up presenting only his Second Cello Sonata, the performance of the C minor Quartet I heard in Ian Hobson's New York Brahms piano series, with violinist Andrés Cárdenes, violist Csaba Erdélyi, and cellist Ko Isawaki, finally pushed the piece over the top for me.

The first thing to say about that performance was that it was loud. Oh, not all the time, but when the piece heated up, so did the musicians. (Hobson himself seems more comfortable playing loudly than playing softly, which is harder.) And the first thing to say about the piece is that it is enormously physical. A lot of the melodic material lends itself, even cries out for, real vehemence. It's not just a matter of playing loudly, of course, and certainly not of playing fast -- it's an issue of musical energy, the sort of thing we've heard described so well in pianist Elisabeth von Herzogenberg's letter to the composer regarding the Second Cello Sonata (quoted in the program book for Professor Hobson's series), and the way she imagined he would have played the Scherzo -- better than anyone else -- "agitated without rushing, legato, yet inwardly restless and propulsive."

The piece is so greatly compressed; how it surges forward! The concise development is so exciting, and the augmented return of the first theme is such a surprise! Needless to say, we reveled in the beautiful warm sounds of the Adagio, and especially at the magnificent moment when we find ourselves again in F-sharp major, which sounds so marvelous. I'd like to hear you yourself play the scherzo, with its driving power and energy (I can hear you snorting and grunting in it!). No one else would succeed in playing it as I imagine it: agitated without rushing, legato, yet inwardly restless and propulsive.

In Friday night's preview we heard the scherzo movements of the three Brahms piano quartets, and I think von Herzogenberg's description could serve as an inspiration for performers. That phrase "inwardly restless and propulsive" seems to me to apply equally well to most of the composer's writing.

I thought we would start today by extending Friday's experiment, and hearing the same two sets of performers play the slow movements ot the three Brahms piano quartets. Like the C minor Quartet as a whole, the Andante is written on a noticeably more intimate scale than its predecessors, but I think you'll agree that all three are stunners.

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Sunday Classics preview: It's Hungarians vs. Russians in three Brahms scherzos

Arnaud Sussmann, Jonathan Vinocour, Michael Nicolas, and Orion Weiss play the Scherzo of the Brahms Third Piano Quartet at the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, July 29, 2012. (Not much snorting and grunting here, not to mention inward restlessness or inward propulsion.)

by Ken

Or, to be more accurate it's a Brahms intermezzo and two scherzos, though the Intermezzo in question clearly functions as the scherzo, or at any rate scherzo-equivalent, of the work in question. ("Intermezzo" is a term that Brahms came to use to describe, well, pretty much anything, as witness the assorted intermezzos for solo piano.)

And the works in question are the three Brahms piano quartets. We've devoted a fair amount of attention to this extraordinary chunk of the composer's output, but always focusing on either the First or Second, the haunted and haunting G minor and the luscious, discursive A major. As I mentioned two weeks ago in connection with Brahms's Second Cello Sonata (preview, "Brahms in snorting-and-grunting mode," and main post, "Thinking of the 'snorting and grunting' Brahms's 'inwardly restless and propulsive' piano playing"), the work I really wanted to get to was the last and most compact of the three piano quartets, the C minor. I don't think the C minor Quartet is often accorded the same respect as the G minor and A major, but as I also said, I've had my eye on it for a while now, suspecting that, just as the grander, friendlier A major Quartet had earlier overtaken the grimmer, more brooding G minor as my favorite, the C minor Quartet was fixing to make its move.

Ths "snorting and grunting," I should explain for the benefit of those just joining us, comes from a description of the composer's piano playing by the pianist Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, who had been playing his Second Cello Sonata with the same cellist, Robert Hausmann, with whom the composer had recently given the first public performance, and wrote a fascinating letter to the composer, of which a chunk was quoted in the notes that accompanied Ian Hobson's recent series of the complete Brahms solo and chamber works for the piano, including this about the Scherzo:

I'd like to hear you yourself play the scherzo, with its driving power and energy (I can hear you snorting and grunting in it!). No one else would succeed in playing it as I imagine it: agitated without rushing, legato, yet inwardly restless and propulsive.

THIS WEEK WE'RE GOING TO TAKE A CLOSER
LOOK AT BRAHMS'S THIRD PIANO QUARTET

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Seven questions about the Charlie Sheen "show." PLUS, going from the ridiculous to the sublime: a special Brahms chamber bonus

KERPLUNK! GOES THE MARKET FOR CHARLIE SHEEN TIX

source: WNYC News Blog

"Day-to-day average prices paid for shows in New York on StubHub (from March 16 to April 4)": Is this a new leading economic indicator, the price of Charlie Sheen tickets? It sure seems like an indicator of something.


"On Saturday, the audience in Detroit booed Sheen and many walked out of the Fox Theater. Media coverage of the disastrous performance and the poor reviews that followed led to a significant price decrease for the New York shows, said [StubHub spokesperson Joellen] Ferrer."

-- Mirela Iverac, on WNYC News Blog

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "People bought tickets to see a train wreck, and now they're off-loading them because they heard that it's a train wreck?"

-- commenter John from Brooklyn, on the above blog

by Ken

This morning I logged onto the WNYC website to check the details of a free lunchtime performance by members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center of Brahms's wonderful G minor Piano Quartet. Before I could get to that, I was waylaid by the, er, unexpected news of a crash in the price of tickets for Charlie Sheen's upcoming "shows" here in New York at Radio City Music Hall. This was all the more unexpected in that I was blissfully aware such a thing was happening, let alone that it's been rolling in from Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and Columbus like some sort of slow-moving landlocked tsunami.

I have some questions about the Charlie Sheen "show," but first perhaps we should all get up to speed on this breaking -- if not actually broken -- news, as reported by Mirela Iverac on WNYC News Blog.

Winning? Charlie Sheen Fans
Shedding Tickets to Live Show

Monday, April 04, 2011 - 03:21 PM
By Mirela Iverac

Tiger blood might be running through Charlie Sheen’s veins, but it is not helping him win over New Yorkers.

Many of those who bought tickets for his live show "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option" at the Radio City Music Hall -- scheduled for coming Friday and Sunday -- are trying to get rid of them after the production got panned following its opening over the weekend.

On Monday, there nearly 2,800 tickets available on StubHub for the two shows, with the cheapest priced at $24.



"Much of this has to do with supply pacing out demand," said Joellen Ferrer, spokeswoman for StubHub. "Because of bad reviews in Detroit, the demand dipped to this low level."

A rep for Sheen said he "wouldn't know" why there are nearly that many tickets available on StubHub -- some significantly under face value.

On Saturday, the audience in Detroit booed Sheen and many walked out of the Fox Theater. Media coverage of the disastrous performance and the poor reviews that followed led to a significant price decrease for the New York shows, said Ferrer. Overall average price for the shows last week was $130, said Ferrer, but it dropped to $50 on Sunday. 



Nano Tissera, 22, a college student in New York, said he bought two tickets for the Sunday show about two weeks ago, but decided to sell them on Craigslist after reading reviews of the show in Detroit.



"I just got a really bad feeling from what I was reading," said Tissera. "It seemed like people were being ripped off, like they were not getting what they paid for. I thought, 'I should probably get rid of these.'"



He paid $150 for two tickets and posted an ad on Sunday asking the same amount of money. Tissera said he only received two inquiries and doesn't believe he will manage to sell them. He is less worried, though, about keeping the tickets after reading about Sheen’s Sunday performance in Chicago, which received better reviews. 



Ferrer thinks that many fans will act similarly and whatever happens with ticket prices for New York's shows will depend on how Sheen performs this week in Cleveland and Columbus.



"It has potential to go either way," she said. "Maybe the prices will drop further. Or maybe he will get raving reviews, and people will want to pay more."

Yes, I suppose it's always possible that our Charlie could get "raving reviews." And apparently this will make people want to pay more? Add this to the list of things I don't understand, which leads us right smack into --

MY SEVEN QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CHARLIE SHEEN "SHOW"

(1) Charlie Sheen is doing a "show"?

(2) Who would buy tickets to a Charlie Sheen "show"?

(3) Um, just what do you suppose a Charlie Sheen "show" would consist of? (Please God, no nudity. No one wants to see that.)

(4) Why would anyone buy tickets to a Charlie Sheen "show"?

(5) "Overall average price for the shows last week was $130." Huh???

(6) What would the expectations be for a Charlie Sheen "show"?

(7) How would you tell the difference between a "good" Charlie Sheen "show" and a "bad" Charlie Sheen "show"?


FREE-BRAHMS POSTSCRIPT

Greene Space was packed to the rafters for the free performance of the Brahms quartet, and the performance -- by the Chamber Music Society's co-director, pianist Wu Han (who offered some sensibly targeted introductory remarks), and three suave young string players -- violinist Arnaud Sussmann, violist Lily Francis, and cellist Nicholas Canellakis -- was fine. It's such a treasurable piece that I can't resist sharing it:

BRAHMS: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25

i. Allegro
ii. Intermezzo: Allegro ma non troppo
iii. Andante con moto; Animato
iv. Rondo alla zingarese: Presto; meno presto; Molto presto

Tamás Vásáry, piano; Thomas Brandis, violin; Wolfgang Christ, viola; Ottomar Borwitzky, cello. DG, recorded January 1982

There are more free performances this week in the Greene Space (44 Charlton Street, in SoHo): Thursday, the trio Janus (flutist Amanda Baker, violist Beth Meyers, and harpist Nuiko Wadden) playing works by Debussy, Treuting, and Negron; and Friday, the Escher String Quartet playing Zemlinsky's Fourth Quartet and Brahms's Second.

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Sunday Classics: In the piano trios and piano quartets, Brahms puts it all together

The American violinist Isaac Stern (who, as I've noted, had an uncanny affinity with Brahms), cellist Leonard Rose, and pianist Eugene Istomin, in addition to maintaining their busy solo careers and extensive teaching and other kinds of work with young musicians, found time to conertize extensively as a piano trio. Here they play the alternately driving and soulful second-movement scherzo of Brahms's First Piano Trio.

by Ken

It may be possible to play Brahms successfully without tapping into the extraordinary depth of his generosity of spirit, but it would be sort of like trying to do it blindfolded with both hands tied behind your back.

Already I feel bad for exposing this wonderful trio movement on its own, when it was designed so brilliantly to provide a change of pace from the soaringly songful opening movement of the Op. 8 Trio. By Brahms's time, not only had the scherzo (Italian for "joke") squeezed out the statelier minuet of Haydn's and Mozart's, but it was far from novel to position the scherzo second rather than third in the common four-movement layout of symphonies and chamber works. Haydn did it as early as No. 32 of his 107-odd symphonies, and even more frequently in his string quartets, especially earlier in his quartet-writing career. (By the way, he wrote scherzi rather than menuetti for all six of his Op. 33 quartets, four of them placed in the No. 2 slot, and such hardly-stately tempos markings as "allegro," "molto allegro," and "presto" became incrasingly common for his minuets.)

Obviously consideration has to be given to the overall plans of the work, though here as always you have to trust the composer's instincts. You might think, for example, that if ever a piece called for scherzo-second placement, it would be in Brahms's Second Symphony, with its gloriously rich, ruminative opening movement. Yet the composer chose to follow it with an Adagio (okay, an Adagio non molto). There's even an extreme cases where the composer himself couldn't quite work it out: Mahler's Sixth Symphony, where the composers instincts for the ordering of the middle movements, a scherzo and perhaps the most searingly beautiful conventional slow movement he ever wrote, at different times when opposite ways.

For Brahms's First Piano Trio (not quite as early a work as its Op. 8 numbering would suggest, since we normally hear it in a revision done some 45 years after the fact, a couple of years in fact after he wrote his third and last piano trio, the C minor, whose opus number is 101) it's a no-brainer, since the opening movement is one of the composer's supremely songful first movements. So the hushed, mysterious staccato murmuring of the opening of this second movement steals in as an utterly unexpected and delightful contrast to the great, expansive movement it follows. But then note the gorgeous contrast of the "trio" section at 2:13.

In the previous installments of this series, It wasn't easy being Brahms (June 28) and Could Brahms be underappreciated? (July 5), I went on a lot about the barely imaginable effort that composing cost Brahms, because of the high standard he set for himself, a standard clearly related to the deep understanding his own genius allowed him of the achievement of Beethoven. It's an unusual combination, to say the least: that degree of genius and that degree of humility.

Brahms's musical seriousness and generosity of spirit are evident most everywhere in his life. He took his musical history more seriously even than his esteemed predecessor Mendelssohn, devoting a great deal of time and effort to supporting musical scholarship and to overseeing, and personally editing reliable published editions of a slew of the great composers, and he was a great champion of younger composers and performers. (At some point we have to look at the remarkable career boost as well as the incalculable inspiration he provided for a talented Czech composer named Antonin Dvorak.)

Of course human admirableness is all, well, admirable in its way, but it doesn't by itself produce decent let alone enduring art. For that matter, neither does genius. There is, I think, more of it floating around out there than we normally reckon. The trick is that unless you figure out how to harness it, and ideally harness it for worthwhile purposes, it doesn't count for much.

Hard as the effort may have been for Brahms, this he managed to do with an eerily high success rate. And in the end, he managed to make it sound close to effortless. That is, unless, the performers get the misimpression that it's their job to open the music up and pull all the stuffing out.

In the earlier pieces I've offered my view that an awful lot of Brahms performances distort the music beyond recognition by reenacting all of the composer's struggle and suffering, showing off what they take to be his -- and therefore their great artistic seriousness. The reality is that by the time Brahms finished a piece, the heavy lifting was done. Performers who can master their often-considerable technical demands have only to tap into the spirit of the music to cash in big-time.

In this spirit, although we've still left a fair amount to say about Brahms (my goodness, we haven't even touched on the German Requiem (whose radiance tends to be obliterated by the phony sentimentality of pretend-serious performers), I thought it might be appropriate to close with this bracing performance of the Gypsy-flavored finale of the first of his three piano quartets, the G minor. It has been fascinating to watch over the last several decades as the piano quartets, once relatively neglected among the composer's output, came to be among his most-performed works. And I think there is something quintessentially "Brahmsian" about them.

(That devoted Brahmsian Arnold Schoenberg (yes, Schoenberg loved Brahms) produced an orchestral rendering of the G minor Piano Quartet which he hoped would become effectively a fifth Brahms symphony. Along with great love for and understanding of the piece, Schoenberg's orchestration is filled with naughtily zany bits of excess.)

This performance is hardly "definitive," a concept I don't believe in anyway for music of any compexity or range, and there's a lot about the movement that goes unexplored here. But the consistently fleet, energetic voice brings this wonderful quartet to a rousing conclusion:


Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is joined by (as identified by YouTube commenters) violinist Lisa Batiashvili, violist Vladimir Mendelssohn, and cellist Sonia Wieder Atherthon. If you're curious how the movement sounds in Schoenberg's loving and slightly over-the-top orchestration, there's a clip by Paavo Järvi and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony from the 2007 Proms.


QUICK HITS: SOME RECORDINGS OF THE
BRAHMS PIANO TRIOS AND QUARTETS

I have no hesitation in recommending the spacious, impassioned Borodin Trio performances of both the piano triosand the piano quartets.

For the lovely Stern-Rose-Istomin recordings of the piano trios, you want to find the set that couples them with the two majestic Schubert triosrather than the one that joins them with the oafish Stern-and-Friends performances of the Brahms piano quartets disfigured by the clunking of Manny "The Butcher" Ax. (I don't know if this is the place to mention it, but in the Beethoven bicentennial year of 1970, when Stern, Rose, and Istomin were performing the composer's chamber music for their instruments all over the world, it was the people at French television who sat them in a studio and videotaped all the piano trios -- in color and in stereo! Unfortunately no color tape of two of the trios could be found, but fortunately that didn't stop EMI from issuing a DVD setof these invaluable musical documents. It seems to me shocking but not surprising that nobody in this country thought to undertake such a recording project.)

The Szeryng-Fournier-Rubinstein performances of the First and Second Piano Trios are available as Vol. 72 of the Rubinstein Edition, and the Third Triois available as Vol. 73, coupled with half of the same trio's even more dazzlingly beautiful recording of the Schubert trios, No. 2 in E flat. (Of course then you still need Vol. 76for their performance of No. 1 in B flat.)

It's not hard to find the performances by violinist Josef Suk, cellist Janos Starker, and pianist Julius Katchen of the First and Second Piano Trios. Unfortunately,you won't easily find reasonably priced copies of the companion CDwith the Third Piano Trio and the Starker-Katchen Second Cello Sonata. If you see a reasonably priced issue of Suk's Supraphon setwith his regular trio partners, cellist Josef Chuchro and pianist Jan Panenka, filled out with a splendid performance of the beautiful Horn Trio, which we talked about in the first Brahms installment in this series), grab it.

I've already mentioned Philips' maximum-value twofer setthat supplements the fine Beaux Arts Trio performances of the three piano trios with excellent Grumiaux-and-friends performances of the Horn Trio and Clarinet Trio.

For the piano quartets, in addition to the above-noted Borodin Trio set with violist Rivka Golani, I find the performances by Arthur Rubinstein and members of the Guarneri Quartet of the First and Third Quartets, Vol. 65 of the Rubinstein Edition, a lot more appealing on CD than I ever have on LP. Unfortunately, Vol. 74, coupling the Second Quartet with the delightful Fauré First Piano Quartet, has become an expensive collector's item. I wound up doing Amazon's MP3 download, and I have to say that, while lyrical passages are lovely, the performance of the Brahms A major has much of the stodginess I associate with the experience of the LPs. The Fauré, which I don't think I ever owned on LP, is better, but still on the ponderous, decidedly unsparkling side. (I wonder whether better-than-MP3 sound would make a difference.)

An excellent bargain is the Vanguard twofer setof the lovely recordings by violinist Alexander Schneider, violist Walter Trampler, cellist Leslie Parnas, and pianist Stephanie Brown.

The performances of the piano trios (by the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio) and piano quartets (by violinist Isabelle Faust, violist Bruno Giuranna, cellist Alain Meunier, and pianist Derek Han) in the budget-priced Brilliant Classics set I mentioned of the complete Brahms chamber music are outstanding.


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

Here is the updated list.

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