ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Good afternoon and thanks for tuning in to Little Rock Public Radio, KLRE-FM, 90.5. I'm Eric Harrison, I write about arts and culture at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and I’ll be your host for the next two hours.
You're listening to our new show, ‘Major and Minor Masterpieces,’ where we will focus each week on a broad range of classical music, from chamber music to choral works to full symphonies and maybe even a touch or two of opera.
If you’re joining us for the first time- just a bit of background to introduce me to you, and to give you a reason why I, and the folks that run this radio network, feel like I’m qualified to host a public classical music radio show.
I’ve been listening to classical music all my life. My dad, who always insisted that the musical instrument he played best was the stereo, had a limited collection of old 78s and a couple of LPs, flimsy Camden Records “pirates” of legitimate orchestras playing Brahms’ First Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth, which we played until the needle literally went through the grooves to the other side. We even somehow came up with a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth on nine 45rpm singles, which had to be loaded onto a spindle, played through, then turned over to hear the entire work.
I grew up in Philadelphia, which at the time had a thriving commercial classical radio station, WFLN-FM, and I took the opportunity to attend, whenever possible, concerts by the renowned Philadelphia Orchestra, while it was still being conducted by the legendary Eugene Ormandy.
I took piano lessons as a kid, proceeding to simpler sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven before giving the keyboard up in the ninth grade to concentrate on the viola. I picked that up in the fifth grade as part of my elementary school’s instrumental music program.
I played in orchestras all the way up through high school and college — Haverford College, in suburban Philadelphia, in part because of its chamber music program — my coaches were my former piano teacher, Sylvia Glickman, who was on the faculty there, and the fabled DePasquale String Quartet, all Philadelphia Orchestra first-desk players. So I got to not only hear but study great works of chamber music from the best.
After I graduated I moved to Little Rock — officially to take a job at what was then the Arkansas Democrat — and began writing classical music reviews as a sideline to my job on the copy desk. Within 18 months I had moved up the ladder to entertainment editor, and started building the paper’s award-winning arts and cultural coverage. At the conclusion of the newspaper war, I converted to writing full time, nowadays covering restaurants, theater and — yes — classical music.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
Today’s program focuses on chamber music, and in particular, the piano quintet, which reached the peak of its development in the late 19th century. You’ll hear piano quintets by Johannes Brahms and Antonin Dvorak, and a little bit of music by Bela Bartok and Sergei Prokofiev.
Brahms struggled for most of his early career with the concept of writing a symphony, inhibited by the titanic shadow of Beethoven’s and his nine. En route to finally completing his Symphony No. 1 in 1876, he wrote two serenades for small orchestra, his variations on the St. Anthony Chorale (a melody incorrectly attributed to Haydn) and his German Requiem. He also redirected some of the music he originally planned to include in the symphony into his first piano concerto and several pieces of chamber music.
His op.34 Piano Quintet in f minor went through several stages before he settled on this format. It started out life in 1863 as a string quintet — he composed two later, op.88 and 111 — but Brahms’ friend and colleague, violinist Joseph Joachim, declared it lacking in charm. So Brahms tried first to rewrite it, then retooled it in 1864 as a sonata for two pianos (which still exists, in the catalog as op. 34b, and is sometimes performed and even recorded). But he still wasn’t satisfied. On advice from Clara Schumann, who suggested it was so full of ideas that it required an orchestra for its interpretation, he re-adapted it in four movements for piano and string quartet, the version we know today.
Listen now to this classic RCA recording by pianist Arthur Rubinstein and the Guarneri Quartet.
(JOHANNES BRAHMS’ “PIANO QUINTET”)
That was pianist Arthur Rubinstein and the Guarneri Quartet playing Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quintet in f minor, op. 34.
You’re listening to “Major and Minor Masterpieces” on Little Rock Public Radio and KLRE.
—PROGRAM BREAK—
[EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
SARAH BUFORD, PRODUCER:
Hey guys, welcome back to Major and Minor Masterpieces. I’m your producer, Sarah Buford and it's time for our show’s little educational session in which we break down some of the terminology we use when describing classical music and its history.
So, Eric, today as I was looking through our script, I saw the word “sonata”... which maybe sounds Italian or Spanish. I speak a little Spanish. I know between the two of us we speak a few languages (or at least, have studied them). So, could you kinda explain what exactly a sonata is and is it in fact, Italian? Or Spanish?
ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Sure, Sarah! Brittanica defines sonata as “a musical composition, usually for a solo instrument or a small instrumental ensemble, that typically consists of two to four movements, or sections, each in a related key but with a unique musical character.”
You’re right when you say it sounds Italian, which is the language of many, if not most, musical terms. It derives from the past participle of the Italian verb sonare, “to sound,” and originally denoted a composition played on instruments, as opposed to “cantata,” or “sung,” by voices.
A sonata can be for a single instrument, as in the piano sonatas of Mozart, Beethoven, or Chopin, or the solo violin sonatas of Bach and Eugene Ysaye; or for two instruments, usually one of which is a piano either as an accompaniment or as an equal partner — violin and cello sonatas by Beethoven and clarinet, viola, violin and cello sonatas by Brahms represent only a tiny number of examples; the repertoire has any number of sonatas for flute, bassoon and even tuba.
Sonatas are typically in two, three or four movements, but that doesn’t have to be the case. There are single-movement sonatas by Scarlatti, Liszt and Scriabin; Brahms’ Third Piano Sonata has five.
Some composers, deeming that they’ve written works that aren’t really large enough to warrant the title “sonata,” call them “sonatinas,” or “little sonatas.” Youngsters learning to play piano are likely to have encountered the six sonatinas by Muzio Clementi; other examples include the three violin sonatinas by Franz Schubert and the piano Sonatine by Maurice Ravel.
SARAH: Alright, thanks Eric! Let's get back to the rest of the show!”
[END OF EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
ERIC: Czech composer Antonin Dvorak was a friend and protege of Brahms, who mentored him, sponsored him to his music publisher and introduced him to prominent musical figures of the day.
The Piano Quintet in A major, op.81, which Dvorak wrote between August and October 1887, is actually his second work in this form — his first attempt, now listed as op.5, composed nearly a decade earlier, remained unpublished during Dvorak’s lifetime and largely ignored.
Dvorak, as he did in many of his works, employs Czech dance rhythms, including alternating slow and fast sections and contrasting moods and, right from the opening bars, sudden shifts between major and minor keys. The second movement is a Dumka; the third is a furiant, both Czech dance forms. And there’s no mistaking Dvořák’s “folkiness” or exuberance in the finale.
Once again, pianist Arthur Rubinstein and the Guarneri String Quartet playing Antonin Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A major, op. 81.
(ANTONIN DVORAK’S PIANO QUINTET)
You’ve been listening to Antonin Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A major, op. 81, in a classic RCA recording with pianist Arthur Rubinstein and the Guarneri Quartet, on this week’s edition of Major & Minor Masterpieces.
Béla Bartók wrote his early Piano Quintet in C major in 1903-04, and you can hear the influences of Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss, while Bartok was also starting to develop a strong Hungarian identity.
He himself played the piano part in the 1904 premiere in Vienna and it was popular with the audience — it received three curtain calls — though it garnered mixed reviews, one of which lavished praise on its young composer and noting the work’s debt to Liszt’s piano rhapsodies. Another cited the success of the finale, but raised doubts about the first three movements. And a third was even less kind, noting that "an unmistakable talent wrestles with a questionable addiction to distinctive effects, which are not infrequently downright repulsive.” (That information, by the way, comes from the program notes for the recording you’re about to hear.)
Bartok later revised the work for a 1921 performance, but apparently wasn’t pleased with its success with audiences and withdrew the work; colleagues, including composer Zoltan Kodaly, thought he had destroyed it. A Bartók scholar rediscovered it in 1963.
Let’s listen to that final movement, marked poco a poco più vivace, full of csárdás-inspired rhythms and contrasting keys. This is the Chilingirian String Quartet with pianist Stephen de Groot.
(BELA BARTOK’S “PIANO QUINTET”)
You’ve just heard the Chilingirian String Quartet and pianist Stephen de Groot play the last movement of Bela Bartok’s Piano Quintet in C major, on this week’s edition of Major & Minor Masterpieces.
And our final piece on today’s program is not strictly a piano quintet — it’s a sextet, adding a clarinet to the piano quintet lineup — but it’s also one of the most fun pieces of chamber music I know (and have even played).
Sergei Prokofiev wrote his “Overture on Hebrew Themes” in 1919 (and 15 years later, arranged it for chamber orchestra) while in temporary residence in the United States from 1918-1922, a refugee from the Communist Revolution and the unsettled conditions it produced in Russia.
A group of former classmates from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, then living as refugees in New York City — a clarinetist, pianist and a string quartet who had formed an ensemble called Zimro — asked him to write a piece for them based on Jewish themes. Prokofiev was not Jewish and had no first-hand knowledge of Jewish folk songs, but the musicians supplied him with a collection of traditional Jewish melodies, a couple of which inspired him to start improvising upon them at the piano; two days later he had completed the score.
The music spreads the two themes around the string players; the clarinet line in particular gives it a certain Klezmer character.This recording features pianist Yefim Bronfman, clarinetist Giora Feidman and the Juilliard String Quartet.
(SERGEI PROKOFIEV’S “OVERTURE ON HEBREW THEMES”)
That was Sergei Prokofiev’s “Overture on Hebrew Themes.” Pianist Yefim Bronfman and clarinetist Giora Feidman joined the Juilliard String Quartet for this performance.
To vary our theme a little bit, we have single movement piece written by a very young Gustav Mahler. Not a piano quintet, but a piano quartet (piano, violin, viola, cello). Mahler is primarily known for his nine titanic symphonies of almost staggering length but as a teenager as a piano student at the Vienna Conservatory, he composed several pieces of chamber music (much of which has been lost). This piece too, which had its performance 1876 with Mahler at the piano, was rediscovered by his widow, Alma, in the early 1960s. It had its second premiere in 1964. Here is DOMUS — Krysia Osostowicz, violin; Timothy Boulton, viola; Richard Lester, cello; and Susan Tomes, piano — performing the Piano Quartet in one movement in a minor by Gustav Mahler.
(GUSTAV MAHLER’S PIANO QUARTET)
You’ve been listening to the DOMUS performing the single-movement Piano Quartet in a minor by Gustav Mahler on this week’s edition of Major and Minor Masterpieces.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
Thanks for listening this week! I’ve been your host, Eric Harrison of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. You’ve been listening to Major and Minor Masterpieces on Little Rock Public Radio and classical station KLRE FM 90.5. Many thanks to Operations Coordinator and Producer Sarah Buford for all her hard work making all this sound good as well as a big thank you to Wojciech Cieslinski for our transition and credit music. Tune in next week for more Major and Minor Masterpieces.