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
And I thought we'd start by listening to the scherzos -- or rather the Intermezzo and two Scherzos -- of all three of the quartets. Already we're going to hear a dramatic difference in scale, with the Scherzo of the Third Quartet about half the size of its predecessors.
Although a case could be made for searching out performances that home in especially sympathetically on one or another of these pieces, I thought it would be more interesting (not to mention easier for me) to hear the same musicians tackling all three quartets. And at the risk of spoiling the suspense, I can say that we're going to hear these same ensembles playing the slow movements of the three quartets in Sunday's main post. We'll hear much more dramatic contrasts in those performances, but even in the scherzos I think it's fair to contrast the performing styles as leaner and tauter (our Hungarians -- Bartók Quartet members with three different pianists) vs. weightier and more expansive (our émigré Russians -- the Borodin Trio, which longtime readers will know is one of my favorite ensembles, with a guest violist).
BRAHMS: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25:
ii. Intermezzo: Allegro ma non troppo
Csilla Szabó, piano; Bartók Quartet members: Péter Komlós, violin; Géza Németh, viola; Károly Botvay, cello. Hungaroton, recorded 1972-74
Borodin Trio (Luba Edlina, piano; Rostislav Dubinsky, violin; Yuli Turovsky, cello); Rivka Golani, viola. Chandos, recorded in Colchester (England), July 14-16, 1988
BRAHMS: Piano Quartet No. 2 in A, Op. 26:
iii. Scherzo: Poco allegro
István Lantos, piano; Bartók Quartet members: Péter Komlós, violin; Géza Németh, viola; Károly Botvay, cello. Hungaroton, recorded 1972-74
Borodin Trio (Luba Edlina, piano; Rostislav Dubinsky, violin; Yuli Turovsky, cello); Rivka Golani, viola. Chandos, recorded in Colchester (England), July 14-16, 1988
BRAHMS: Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60:
ii. Scherzo: Allegro
Sándor Falvai, piano; Bartók Quartet members: Péter Komlós, violin; Géza Németh, viola; Károly Botvay, cello. Hungaroton, recorded 1972-74
Borodin Trio (Luba Edlina, piano; Rostislav Dubinsky, violin; Yuli Turovsky, cello); Rivka Golani, viola. Chandos, recorded in Colchester (England), July 14-16, 1988
IN THIS WEEK'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST
As noted, the focus is on Brahms's C minor Piano Quartet.
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