Edward Elgar; Amy Beach - Piano Quintets (Garrick Ohlsson; Takács Quartet)

Information

Composer: Edward Elgar; Amy Beach

• (01) Beach - Piano Quintet in F sharp minor, Op. 67
• (04) Elgar - Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84

Garrick Ohlsson, piano

Takács Quartet

Edward Dusinberre & Harumi Rhodes, violins

Geraldine Walther, viola

András Fejér, cello

Date: 2020

Label: Hyperion

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68295

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Review

I have often wondered why the music of Amy Beach is not more loudly acclaimed. As part of a late 19th-century movement of American composers who looked unapologetically for stimulus from Germany – and I am thinking primarily of George Whitefield Chadwick, Arthur Foote and Horatio Parker – Beach stands as probably the most accomplished of the group (a notable point since she did not study in Europe), or at least within the province of chamber music. Her Piano Quintet, the most widely performed of her chamber works, and in which she appeared as pianist on many occasions, is a highly developed work which should be considered part of that canon of quintets led by Schumann and Brahms, and accompanied by other major masterpieces including those by Franck, Dvořák, Stanford, Fauré, Sinding, Reger, Elgar, Suk and Dohnányi.

By way of the imposing nature of the resources – string quartet and piano – the approach to the genre is inevitably one of an epic nature, almost orchestral in its bold sound and texture, fluctuating between the intellectual demands of the symphony and the ‘competition’ of the grand concerto. Beach’s magisterial work, with its hugely demanding piano part, its plethora of thematic material and its coherent handling of form, meets both these conceptual demands (and which Ohlsson and the Takács Quartet serve with vivid colours and a vital energy). Conceived as a work in three cyclic movements, the outer movements are especially muscular in their gestures and dynamics, while the central slow movement is elegiac and brings the quartet to the fore in the first subject in which the piano plays an inner contrapuntal role. Only with the second subject does the lower part of the keyboard play a more prominent role as the ‘bass’ of the harmony switches to the piano. This is highly accomplished writing and reveals Beach’s true imagination as a master of instrumental form.

Elgar’s Quintet of 1918, also in three movements, is of a different vintage of inspiration. Written after that miraculous decade before the First World War when the composer produced his orchestral masterpieces in the idiom of concerto, symphony and oratorio, the quintet bears witness to a more ascetic, wiry creative impulse which he adopted during the latter years of the war, when, perhaps, he was searching for a new direction for his musical voice. This is evident in the strange disjunction of the plainsong-like opening idea (akin to ‘Salve regina’), the first Brahms-like idea of the Allegro, the enigmatic ‘Spanish’ (or at least Phrygian) second subject (played with admiral character by the ensemble) and the searching third idea (more orchestral in character). In fact, this predominance of thematic material has much in common with the Violin Sonata and the String Quartet, where the notion of form seems to rely more on the fecundity of melodic ideas and their juxtaposition than on their development. The slow movement, one of Elgar’s greatest, is played with true profundity. Here Elgar seems to return to those distinctive characteristics of his earlier works, to themes full of sequence and modal inflection, though the central paragraph reminds us that this is Elgar of a later vintage. The finale makes much of the cyclic restatement of earlier themes, especially those of the first movement, a feature which lends the conclusion of this remarkable work a ghostliness and introspection that Elgar revisited in the last movement of his Nursery Suite of 1930. Ohlsson and the Takács are to be congratulated for the warmth of their interpretation and for their ability to encompass the challenging range of Elgar’s complex moods.

-- Jeremy Dibble, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/Jul/Elgar_quintet_CDA68295.htm

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/chamber/beach-elgar-piano-quintets/

https://www.thestrad.com/reviews/takacs-quartet-elgar-beach/10854.article

https://www.allmusic.com/album/elgar-beach-piano-quintets-mw0003369390

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/30/elgar-beach-piano-quintets-review-takacs-quartet-garrick-ohlsson

https://www.amazon.com/Elgar-Beach-Quintets-Garrick-Ohlsson/dp/B085K9FQYT

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Edward Elgar (2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, whose many works have entered international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, chamber music and songs. Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Elgar was the first composer to take the gramophone seriously, and made recordings of most of his major orchestral works between 1914 and 1925.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Elgar

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Amy Beach (September 5, 1867 – December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Beach

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Garrick Ohlsson (born April 3, 1948 in New York) is an American classical pianist. Ohlsson was the first American to win first prize in the International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition, in 1970. Ohlsson is an avid chamber musician and has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Takács and Tokyo Quartets, among other ensembles. Ohlsson possesses an unusually vast repertoire that ranges over some eighty concertos, range from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin to Busoni, Copland, Gershwin and contemporary. He is also known for his exceptional keyboard stretch (a 12th in the left hand and an 11th in the right).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrick_Ohlsson

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Takács Quartet is a string quartet, founded in Hungary, and now based in Boulder, Colorado, United States. In 1975, four students at the Music Academy in Budapest, Gábor Takács-Nagy (first violin), Károly Schranz (second violin), Gábor Ormai (viola), and András Fejér (cello) formed The Takács Quartet. Current members include: Edward Dusinberre & Károly Schranz (violins), Geraldine Walther (viola), and András Fejér (cello). The quartet has recorded extensively for Decca and Hyperion, and has received several nominations and awards such as a Grammy Award and a Gramophone Award.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tak%C3%A1cs_Quartet

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