Karl Weigl - String Quartets Nos. 1 & 5 (Artis-Quartett Wien)

Information

Composer: Karl Weigl

• (01) String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 20
• (05) String Quartet No. 5 in G major, Op. 31

Artis-Quartett Wien
Peter Schuhmayer, violin
Johannes Meissl, violin
Herbert Kefer, viola
Othmar Müller, cello

Date: 2000
Label: Nimbus Records
https://www.wyastone.co.uk/weigl-string-quartets-1-5.html

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Review

A late romantic and a fine craftsman, Weigl has a curiously understated style, reflected here in forceful yet unemotional performances

These recordings were made last year after a series of concerts commemorating the 50th anniversary of Weigl’s death. The protagonists are perhaps best known for their fine Zemlinsky series, also on Nimbus, and the present issue offers similarly high technical standards. The performances are cogent, well played and forcefully paced, though not over-endowed with human warmth. And, arguably, this is precisely what the music needs. The disc comes emblazoned with the posthumous endorsement of Pablo Casals: ‘Karl Weigl’s music will not be lost. We will return to it after the storm has passed. We will return to those who have written real music.’

So far the Artis Quartet, distinguished proteges of the LaSalle, are the only world-renowned string quartet to have championed this composer, whose music was admired by Strauss, Schoenberg, Walter, Furtwangler and Stokowski, but whose substantial oeuvre has fallen into relative obscurity. This may be an accident of history: Weigl escaped Nazi persecution in 1938, finding work in the USA as an academic without building a substantial following for his own music. That said, I suspect that the explanation lies partly in the benign character of Weigl’s composing. This is not quite what you would expect from a pupil of Zemlinsky and an assistant to Mahler. The technical facility and traditional Viennese virtues of the First Quartet (1904) were acclaimed by Schoenberg, no less, and yet its emotional world is already curiously circumspect.

Weigl was a late romantic who, like Korngold, saw no reason to change. Unlike Korngold, however, his nostalgia is both amiable and ultra-discreet. The Fifth Quartet (1933) throws a few (very few) cryptic gestures to the modernist wolves, but deploys them in quasi-ironic fashion as if to pre-empt criticism of a harmonic language that is avowedly anachronistic, closer to Brahms or Dvorak. One early critique cited in the booklet-notes mentions Schubert and Hugo Wolf – Weigl was also a prolific writer of songs. While the clarity, elegance and certainty of the invention cannot but impress, the results are in some ways disturbingly low-key, and the melodic ideas do not draw much attention to themselves. Only the Larghetto (track 7) shows much in the way of emotional generosity, and even this has no truck with the angry spirit of the age. Does this matter in the face of such consummate craftsmanship? The choice is yours. This is a most intriguing release.

-- David Gutman, Gramophone

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Karl Weigl (6 February 1881 – 11 August 1949) was an Austrian composer. Weigl was born in Vienna and was a private pupil of Alexander Zemlinsky. He continued his studies at the Vienna Music Academy, where he became a composition pupil of Robert Fuchs, and also enrolled at the University of Vienna, studying musicology under Guido Adler. When the Nazis occupied Austria, in 1938, Weigl emigrated to the United States of America with his family. Weigl wrote many compositions including symphonies, chamber music pieces including string quartets, and songs for solo piano.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Weigl

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Founded in 1980, the Artis Quartet studied at the University of Music in Vienna, and with the LaSalle Quartet at the College Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati, USA. In 1985 the ensemble began its international career, performing in the most important venues and centres of music. Their cycle of concerts at the Wiener Musikverein has been an annual event since 1988. The Quartet has been welcomed at prestigious international festivals, such as Salzburger Festspiele and Wiener Festwochen. They have recorded more than 30 CDs for Nimbus Records, Sony Classical, CBS/Sony, Orfeo, Accord and Koch/Schwann.
https://www.artis-quartett.at/e/main.html

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