CATOIRE Piano Quintet in g, op. 28. FRIEDMAN
Piano Quintet in c
Bengt Forsberg (pn); Nils-Erik Sparf (vn); Ulf
Forsberg (vn); Ellen Nisbeth (va); Andreas Brantelid (vc)
BIS 2314 (SACD: 62:08)
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New classical music releases reviewed in detail by Gavin Dixon
Friday, 12 April 2019
Catoire and Friedman Piano Quintets Forsberg
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This disc presents two attractive
but largely forgettable piano quintets of the late Romantic era. Neither
composer is particularly famous—at least as a composer; Ignaz Friedman had a
more compelling claim to fame—but their piano quintets seem to be considered
their finest works. So this recording offers an intriguing taster of their
respective soundworlds. And, despite hailing from different countries, Catoire
from Russia, Friedman from Poland, their styles are remarkably similar, making
for a logical and complementary pairing.
Georgy Catoire (1861–1926) was as
Russian composer (of French descent, hence the name) working in the same milieu
as Taneyev, Glière and the young Rachmaninoff. But Catoire was largely
self-taught, and isolated himself from cosmopolitan musical life, at least
until 1915, when he was appointed Professor of Composition at the Moscow
Conservatoire. As with many composers working in Moscow in the years
immediately before the Revolution, Catoire sounds a lot like Rachmaninoff, but
without the memorable tunes. So in the Piano Quintet, we hear deeply sighing
melodies in the strings, with just a touch of folk flavor, supported by
rippling waves of arpeggiated accompaniment in the piano. Catoire’s development
techniques are more distinctive than his melodies, and the opening of the first
movement bears a striking resemblance to the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio. But he
soon goes his own way, with densely contrapuntal and harmonically complex
elaboration, reminiscent of Taneyev but less focused and directed. The results
feel structurally loose, as if the form of each movement is an afterthought, an
impression supported by the casual and relaxed ending to each of the three
movements.
If Catoire begins with
Rachmaninoff, Friedman begins with Brahms, his quintet opening with a
three-note motif taken from the Scherzo of Brahms’s Third Piano Quartet, with
which it shares the key of C Minor. Catoire’s rambling movements seem
positively concise compared to Friedman’s—whose quintet, also in three
movements, is almost half as long again. Friedman is more dour than Catoire,
more serious and intense. The Larghetto second movement offers some relief,
with delicate and varied melodic textures from the string quartet supported by
more modest textures in the piano. The last movement is titled Epilogue, but it
is just as knotty and involved as the first. Given Friedman’s itinerant career
as a concert pianist, it is little surprise that the stylistic profile of his
music is complex and variegated. The Piano Quintet dates from 1918 (three years
after Catoire’s), soon after Friedman’s studies in Leipzig with Hugo Riemann
and Berlin with Busoni. Certainly, the approach to development and counterpoint
feels Germanic, even if the rhapsodic form suggests a distance from those traditions.
Of the two, the Catoire comes across as the more accomplished work: Neither is
a lost masterpiece, but both are distinctive enough to be worth hearing.
These recordings were made at the
Allhelgonakyrkan, a church in Stockholm that also hosts a chamber music
festival, led by Bengt Forsberg, the pianist here. He seems to be the
motivating force behind the project, although the most famous name amongst the
players is cellist Andreas Brantelid. All of the players are up to the demands
of this music, although the extended climax of the Friedman first movement
taxes the violin intonation in the upper register. The recording quality is up
to BIS’s usually high standards. Both works, and the Friedman in particular,
pose challenges of balance, and the engineers seem to have recessed the piano
to prevent its huge textures from the dominating the ensemble. The strings, by
contrast, are very close, and we hear the players breathing in silences, and
some extraneous bow noise, though none of it a distraction to this adventurous
and frequently beguiling program.
This review appears in Fanfare
magazine issue 42:6.
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