Heinrich von Herzogenberg - Piano Quintet Op. 17; String Quartet Op. 63 (Oliver Triendl; Minguet Quartett)

Information

Composer: Heinrich von Herzogenberg

• (01) Piano Quintet in C major, Op. 17
• (05) String Quartet in F minor, Op. 63

Oliver Triendl, piano
Minguet Quartett
Ulrich Isfort, violin
Annette Reisinger, violin
Irene Schwalb, viola (op. 17)
Firmian Lermer, viola (op. 63)
Matthias Diener, cello

Date: 2009
Label: cpo

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Review

Cpo continues apace with its series of releases dedicated to Heinrich von Herzogenberg. If you're searching for these discs at arkivmusic.com, you will find only four of them listed under the composer's last name. That's because the remaining entries, as of this writing, are filed under the composer's first name, Heinrich. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Since most of the previous releases in this series have already been reviewed in prior Fanfare issues, I will dispense with the usual biographical background. By now, regular readers know that Herzogenberg was a close friend of Brahms--perhaps a little too close for Brahms's comfort--and that his own compositional efforts were perhaps a little too imitative of his icon's musical vocabulary and style. Expectations are thus confounded by Herzogenberg's early Piano Quintet in C-Major, a work dating from 1875 that sounds nothing like Brahms. Herzogenberg was already 32 at the time the piece was published, by no means a youth. But what he had been doing up until then was genuflecting to Wagner and the New Germans. His "Odysseus" Symphony and, in particular, his 1870 dramatic cantata, Columbus, with its echoes of The Flying Dutchman, had set Herzogenberg on a very different path from the one he was about to take. The year of this Quintet seems to have been a crucial one for him, for it was in 1875 that he joined forces with Alfred Volkland and Philipp Spitta to found the Leipzig Bach Society, and it was around this same time that the process of latching onto his replacement guru was complete. Wagner was out; Brahms was in.

It's hard to describe the Quintet. Hermann Kretzschmar, successor to Volkland as conductor of the Bach Society, was highly critical, writing, "At last somebody again dares not to write a sonata-form movement." He went on to complain of the virtual non-existence of a secondary theme and of irregularities in the structure of the recapitulation. Clearly, Herzogenberg was in a transitional period, and in the years to follow, he would learn much from Brahms. The main problem with the Quintet, however, is not its formal weakness, for even if it were perfect in form, nothing can disguise the extended note spinning that goes on at great length while saying little. It's not that there are no thematic ideas on which to hang a strong development, but rather that once having presented them, Herzogenberg seems at a loss as to what to do next; without its captain at the helm, the ship begins to go adrift. Still, the one thing you can't take away from him was that he had a definite talent when it came to scoring for this combination of instruments. The piano does not dominate as it does in so many piano quintets of this period, and the sound of the music, if you don't mind its waywardness, is quite lovely.

If the Quintet is an example of Herzogenberg's writing just before he came under the heavy influence of Brahms, the String Quartet in F-Minor, op. 63, is an example of what became of Herzogenberg after his Brahms infatuation had pretty much passed. By 1885, Herzogenberg found himself in Berlin, heading up the composition department at the Royal Academy of Music, where he advised Ethyl Smyth to go study with Max Bruch. The Quartet, in only three movements, was written in 1889, and was his last in the genre. If there's anything about it that's suggestive of Brahms, it's in some of the more excitable gestures that rise to moments of passionate intensity. But apart from the gestural language, there are few remnants of Brahms's melodic or harmonic vocabulary. Again, as with the Quintet, the piece is well written and has its passing charms, but you may find it a bit of a chore to stick with it all the way through without your attention wandering.

Both the Minguet Quartett and pianist Oliver Triendl seem to be new to cpo's Herzogenberg series, though Triendl has appeared in other repertoire on cpo, and the Minguet Quartett has recorded for other labels. At present, there do not seem to be alternative versions of either of the works on this disc, but that needn't be a deterrent if you have an interest in this late-German-Romantic composer, for the performances and recording are quite fine. I doubt this will be a CD you will play repeatedly until the little laser beam burns a hole in the disc; but it is recommended to those who have not yet had their fill of Herzogenberg from previous releases.

-- Jerry Dubins, FANFARE

More reviews:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Herzogenberg-Piano-Quintet-String-Quartet/dp/B002985NNA

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Heinrich von Herzogenberg (10 June 1843 – 9 October 1900) was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was attracted to the music of Richard Wagner early on, but after studying J. S. Bach's works, became an adherent of the classical tradition and an advocate for the music of Brahms. In 1874, Herzogenberg founded the Leipzig Bach-Verein and became its artistic director for 10 years. From 1885, he was Professor of Composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. While considered by many as a mere epigone of Brahms, many of Herzogenberg's compositions show little or no overt Brahmsian influence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_von_Herzogenberg

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Olivier Triendl (born 1970 in Mallersdorf, Bavaria) is a German pianist. He studied with Rainer Fuchs, Karl-Heinz Diehl, Eckart Besch, Gerhard Oppitz and Oleg Maisenberg, and is winner of several national and international competitions. As a soloist as well as a chamber musician, Triendl established himself in recent years as an extremely versatile artist, with about 100 CD recordings demonstrate his commitment to the unknown repertoire of the classical, romantic and contemporary music. In 2006 he founded the International Chamber Music Festival “Classix Kempten” in Kempten, Bavaria.
http://www.icmf.nl/en/musician/oliver-triendl/

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Minguet Quartet was founded in 1988. The group takes its name from Pablo Minguet, an eighteenth-century Spanish philosopher who attempted in his writings to make the fine arts accessible to the masses, and this idea is a chief artistic concern of the Minguet Quartet. The ensemble concentrates on the Classical-Romantic literature and modern music in equal measure, and has proven its commitment to compositions of the 21st century through numerous premieres. The quartet's current members include: Ulrich Isfort, Annette Reisinger (violins), Aroa Sorin (viola), and Matthias Diener (cello).
http://www.minguet.de/

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