Josef Labor - Piano Quintet & Quartet (Various Artists)

Information

Composer: Josef Labor

• (01) Piano Quintet in E minor, Op. 3
• (05) Piano Quartet in C major, Op. 6

Nina Karmon, violin
Pauline Sachse, viola
Justus Grimm, cello
Niek de Groot, double bass
Oliver Triendl, piano

Date: 2019
Label: Capriccio
http://capriccio.at/josef-labor-1842-1924

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Review

Poor Josef Labor (1842-1924), blind from the age of three, known to us now almost entirely through his use to others. Labor’s praise set the young Schoenberg on his path. He must have been a patient man as well as teacher, in service to blue-blooded royalty as well as the musical kind, including the princesses of Hanover and Alma Schindler. Not without reward: after the death of his patron, George V of Hanover, in 1865, he became a kind of house musician to the Wittgenstein family. Paul commissioned several left-hand works from Labor after losing his right arm in the First World War, but these chamber works date from the 1890s.

Labor himself studied with Simon Sechter, Viennese paragon of contrapuntal instruction, and so given his obscurity you might anticipate a fluent command of ultimately undistinguished material. This is true of the blustery outer movements of the Piano Quintet but the Scherzo’s first Trio is a happy and spacious episode, evoking the same twilit atmosphere as Schumann’s fantasy pieces, while the second is a rustic affair making the most of the unusual instrumentation with double bass (Labor wrote the part with the principal bassist of the VPO in mind).

The opening theme of the Quintet’s Andante finds Labor at his most Brahmsian, but nominative determinists should hold fire: he makes light work of the slow movements in both pieces, and so do the performers. However, their fine balance between confidence and restraint is not matched by the close recorded sound, which does no favours to an idiom at its most inspired in a mood of wakeful dreaming. The Quartet’s high point is a third-movement Quasi allegretto, another nocturne which taps the introverted vein of Labor’s better-known organ music. It clears like mist before the proud, anthem-like first subject of the finale, which strikes sparks off a scampering, Mendelssohnian second theme towards an intently plotted climax of well-earned high spirits. Labor took pains to bridle and harness Alma’s teenage creative powers, ‘to derive various moods from a single theme’, and unlike some teachers, he practised what he preached.

-- Peter Quantrill, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2019/Oct/Labor_chamber_C5390.htm
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2019/Dec/Labor_chamber_C5390.htm
https://www.wtju.net/josef-labor-piano-quintets-late-romantic-gems/
https://www.amazon.com/Piano-Quintet-3-Nina-Karmon/dp/B07VGTWBWQ

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Josef Labor (29 June 1842 – 26 April 1924) was an Austrian pianist, organist, and composer of the late Romantic era. At the age of three, he was left blind due to contracting smallpox. After studying with Simon Sechter (composition) and Eduard Pickhert (piano), Labor toured Europe as a pianist and, in the process, formed a lasting friendship with King Georg V of Hanover, who was also blind. In 1904, he received the title Royal and Imperial Court Organist and is today best known for his organ works. Labor taught many notable musical personalities including Alma Schindler, Paul Wittgenstein and Arnold Schoenberg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Labor

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Born in Stuttgart, Nina Karmon studied with Silvia Marcovici, Vladimir Landsman, Radu Bozgan and in Berlin with Werner Scholz, before going to New York to studied with Pinchas Zukerman and Patinka Kopec. Performances have brought her onto major concert stages across Europe, as well as Singapore, Japan and Korea. In 2008, she started the Chamber Music Festival at Schaubeck Castle in Steinheim, which takes place every spring. Karmon's recordings include piano quartets by Finnish composers Ilmari Hannikainen and Helvi Leiviskä, as well as Piazzolla's Histoire du Tango for violin and guitar, among others.
https://www.nina-karmon.com/german/index.php

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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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