Northern and Southern Quartets
with JOHN HAYWARD-WARBURTON
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(Please explore the links in this page, which should open in a separate
window. If this article disappears altogether, click 'Back' on your browser
to return. The biography of Nielsen is particularly outstanding.)
To describe our world at the close of the 20th century as 'The Age of
Change', as we already have 'The Age of the Enlightenment' and other such
terms, might seem to lead toward little controversy. Yet all educated listeners
know that musical development anticipated this 'Change' by over a hundred
years, and such new records as the two discussed here supply potent examples.
For a complete musical novice, a disc containing two String Quartets by Carl Nielsen (1865 - 1931) might be expected to share
many similarities with a
record of Quartet music by Giacomo Puccini (1858 - 1924) and Alfredo Catalani (1854 - 1893). Certainly, all three
composers were born within the space of thirteen years (the same gap that
separates Busoni (page in Italian) and Respighi), but even a cursory first hearing reveals
a distinct polarisation of technique and outlook flowing along lines which
continue today. What is more, by fortune or design, the performances help
to delineate this further; the artistes on these discs enjoy close geographic
ties with their respective composers. The Nielsen quartets opp.14 and 44 are performed by the
Oslo String Quartet,
while the Quartetto Puccini play several small but often gripping works
by the Italian composers.
Puccini versus Catalani
The individual qualities of each group of pieces are as worthy of comment
as the contrasts in performance, instrumental timbre and recorded sound.
To this listener, some of Puccini's juvenelia, in the form of three fugues,
a string quartet movement and a scherzo (click
here to play the scherzo), show undoubted maturity, though not
the style more familiar to audiences today. Little information exists about
the three fugues (were they exercises?); their provenance is neither Bach
nor Mendelssohn, but both show a clear Italian post-Classical genesis, and
their place at the start of the disc of Italian quartet music is a masterly
stroke of programming. The well-known Crisantemi, heard most famously
in Manon Lescaut, holds its own emotional tenderness well in its
original string-quartet version which dates from 1890, three years before
the opera. Three more seeds for Manon Lescaut, the minuets composed in 1892, are
included in their first incarnations too. It is important to hear these
pieces (especially the Quartet movement in D, composed between the ages
of 22 and 25) for the light they shine on the early stages of Puccini's
career, when he was no doubt strongly aware of the four generations of professional
musicians that preceded him. Click
here to listen to part of the Quartet.
Perhaps even more revealing of the Italian musical nature at the end
of the 19th century are the rarely-heard pieces by Catalani, again, a composer
better-known for operas such as La Wally (1891-2). The two composers were linked,
though not favourably, in several ways, for Catalani shared publishers with
Puccini. Ricordi neglected,
for at least two years, one of the less-famous composer's operas while busy
promoting Puccini's career, and Catalani was prompted to describe himself
as Puccini's 'understudy' in Ricordi's catalogue. Verdi showed ambivalence;
during his life, the younger composer was dismissed as a 'maestrino', and
only after his death could the elder label him 'an excellent musician'.
Of the works on the disc, two are occasional pieces, being his own quartet
arrangements of earlier piano works; his Serenatella which combines
simplicity with reminiscence of a brightly-lit ballroom (click
to hear part of this), and the melancholic A Sera which, like
so much Italian instrumental music, found its way into operatic score, this
time as the prelude to the last act of La Wally. However, the more serious String Quartet
in A unfortunately lacks character in its first movement; the lyrical
second-subject fails to inject the interest so badly needed after the promise
of the work's first four bars. Flavours of the staged emotion so necessary
in opera are strongest in the gently mournful second movement (click here to listen),
but the freshness of the scherzo does not balance its rigid nature,
nor does the Haydnesque signature of the finale serve to mark the movement
with greatness.
Having said that, the sound of the Quartetto Puccini might concentrate
a listener's mind on matters other than the shortcomings of these works.
The players, whose biographies show consistent employment in both their
ensemble and other work, are accurate in intonation, and seem particularly
to enjoy their instruments which are all, with the exception of the Hill
viola, Italian-made. The instruments and recording give a warmth to this
disc which I recommend to both the keeper of a wide-ranging record collection
wishing to explore the small field of Romantic Italian instrumental music,
and to a listener seeking pleasant diversion. However, it also shows that
a composer's fame does not lead invariably to each of his works being a
great masterpiece rather than merely competent and free from error.
Copyright © John Hayward-Warburton,
May 5th 1999
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