ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Good afternoon and thanks for tuning in to Little Rock Public Radio and Classical 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 ‘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.
This week we’ll look at two major chamber works — two quintets, in fact — by Austrian composer Franz Schubert.
Schubert died young — in 1828, one year after the death of Ludwig van Beethoven, at age 31. Born in 1797 near Vienna, Austria, he was a prodigy, helped in part by his growing up in a musical home (young Franz played viola in the family string quartet). He subsequently studied organ and musical theory and won a scholarship in 1808 that gave him a place in the imperial court chapel choir in Vienna. He subsequently studied with Antonio Salieri (best known, of course, as Mozart’s antagonist in the movie “Amadeus” but a prestigious composer during his lifetime).
To call Schubert a prolific composer would be an understatement; he wrote nearly a thousand works, though he was best known in his own time for his songs — some sage once said that everything Tchaikovsky wrote can be danced to, and everything Schubert wrote can be sung. But his output encompassed nine symphonies, a number of operas and a wealth of chamber music. Much of his music had its debut in get-togethers in his home, known as “Schubertiades.”
Schubert was especially productive in the last year and a half of his life, a period 20th century composer Benjamin Britten described as arguably “the richest and most productive 18 months in our music history.” It includes the “Winterreise” song cycle, the Great C Major Symphony, two massive piano trios, Four Impromptus for piano, a Mass in E-Flat, his last three piano sonatas and the String Quintet you will hear shortly.
So much of Schubert’s music, however, was unpublished and unperformed in his lifetime; pieces that are now considered part of the standard repertoire, including his Eighth, unfinished, Symphony were only discovered years after his death. That includes this quintet, his last work for chamber ensemble and last instrumental work of any kind, completed in the late summer of 1828, just two months before his death. He submitted it to a publisher, who demurred — he told Schubert he was only interested in getting his hands on more Schubert songs. As a result, it languished until its first public performance in … 1850.
Schubert modeled it on similar string quintets by Mozart, his K.515, and Beethoven, his op. 29 — in fact, all of them are in the same key, C major — but unlike those quintets, which added a second viola to the string quartet, Schubert chose to add a second cello, making possible considerably greater sonority and richness of tone.
Like the Great C Major Symphony, the work is massive — nearly an hour long — and indicates what Schubert, had he lived longer, might yet have produced, to our musical benefit.
Let’s hear the Brodsky Quartet — Krysia Osostowicz and Ian Belton, violins; Paul Cassidy, viola; and Jacqueline Thomas and Laura Van Der Heijden, cellos — perform the String Quintet in C major by Franz Schubert in this 2022 recording on the Chandos label.
(FRANZ SCHUBERT’S “STRING QUINTET”)
You’ve been listening to the String Quintet in C major by Franz Schubert, performed in this 2022 Chandos recording by the Brodsky Quartet with cellist Laura Van Der Heijden.
This is Major and Minor Masterpieces on Little Rock Public Radio and Classical KLRE-FM, 90.5.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
—PROGRAM BREAK—
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
[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.
After looking at our notes for this episode, I noticed that we have used the word “opus” a couple of times. Is opus just a number or name for the musical pieces by composers, Eric?
ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Opus usually describes the order in which the pieces were published, not necessarily the order in which they were composed. For example, Ludwig van Beethoven actually wrote his Second Piano Concerto first, and his First concerto second, but the “first” concerto is the one that got published first.
Some composers’ works are identified, not by opus number, but by an alphabetical reference. For example, Mozart’s pieces carry the designation “K,” — for example, his C major String Quintet is K.515. That’s a reference to a catalog compiled by Ludwig Ritter von Köchel in 1862.
SARAH: So what I’m hearing is original composers will put opus numbers on their works, but those cataloguing will use a different organization system for their works? They usually use letters?
ERIC: What happens is the composer doesn’t usually assign an opus number. It is usually assigned by the publisher. It deals with the order it is published, not the order it is composed. In a lot of these cases, in the cases of Schubert or Mozart, Mozart’s works were not usually published during his lifetime.
So judging the order in which those pieces should be presented wouldn’t be easily identified by the order they were published. So, along came this gentleman named Köchel in 1862 said, ‘well we need a way of cataloguing Mozart’s works. I’m going to take them and figure out in which order they were composed. And I’ll assign each of them a number so the works in his early years are low numbers and works in his final years would be the high numbers.’
SARAH: Interesting, okay. Thank you Eric!
[END OF EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
ERIC: I mentioned earlier that Schubert, one of music’s great melodists, was known for his “lieder,” the German word for songs. One of his most famous is “Die Forelle” (“The Trout”), not just for the song by itself but for Schubert’s subsequent use of the song in another chamber work you’ll hear in a few minutes.
Let’s hear the song, sung by soprano Caroline Melzer, soprano with Ulrich Eisenlohr, piano, on a 2009 Naxos recording.
(FRANZ SCHUBERT’S “DIE FORELLE”)
You’ve heard “Die Forelle” (“The Trout”), by Franz Schubert, sung by soprano Caroline Melzer, soprano with Ulrich Eisenlohr, piano.
Schubert on five occasions recycled his song tunes into other works; for example, his song “Tod und das Madchen” (“Death and the Maiden”) was the theme for the second movement of his String Quartet No. 14, which bears that subtitle. Let’s hear that song with legendary baritone Dietrich Fischer Dieskau and pianist Gerald Moore.
(FRANZ SCHUBERT’S “TOD UND DAS MADCHEN”)
That was baritone Dietrich Fischer Dieskau and pianist Gerald Moore performing Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden.
Schubert used “Die Forelle” as the basis for a set of variations in the fourth movement of his Quintet in A major for the unusual combination of piano, violin, viola, cello and bass. Like his string quintet, it was published posthumously, in 1829.
Let’s hear it now — Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet, op.114, Deutsch 667 — performed by the all-star lineup of Emanuel Ax, piano, Pamela Frank, violin; Rebecca Young, viola; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; and Edgar Meyer, bass, on a 1996 recording from Sony Classics.
(FRANZ SCHUBERT’S “TROUT”)
You’ve heard Emanuel Ax, piano, Pamela Frank, violin; Rebecca Young, viola; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; and Edgar Meyer, bass, perform Franz Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet on Major and Minor Masterpieces on Little Rock Public Radio and KLRE-FM, 90.5.
And now for a musical lagniappe.
Schubert composed the first movement and 41 bars of a second movement of what he apparently intended as a complete c-minor string quartet in December 1820, but never completed.
It was not the only work in that time frame that he left unfinished — he wrote two movements and a few bars of a third for his Eighth Symphony, known forever as “the Unfinished,” before he shoved it into a drawer, from which it emerged only 40 years after the composer’s death.
Like that work, the single quartet movement, Deutsch 703, didn’t have its premiere until the 1860s.
This, once again, is the Brodsky Quartet, playing Schubert’s c-minor “Quartettsatz,” also known as his String Quartet No. 12.
(FRANZ SCHUBERT’S “QUARTETTSATZ”)
You’ve heard the Brodsky Quartet perform Franz Schubert’s c-minor “Quartettsatz” on Major and Minor Masterpieces.
And let’s wrap up our radio schubertiade with another single movement work written by young Franz when he was just fifteen years old, Piano Trio in B flat major D28 nicknamed “Sonatensatz”or sonata movement. He began the piece in July 1812 under the tutelage of Mozart’s ex-colleague/competitor, Antonio Salieri, right about the time his voice broke. Ending his career as a singer with the Vienna imperial chapel choir. As with the Quartettsatz, he may have meant it as the first part of a full-scale work but if he did, other movements did not survive. Let’s hear The Busch trio play it in a 2020 recording on Alpha Classics.
(FRANZ SCHUBERT’S “Sonatensatz”)
You’ve heard the Busch trio play Franz Schubert’s single movement Piano Trio in B flat Major D28 nicknamed “Sonatensatz” on Major and Minor Masterpiece on Little Rock Public Radio and Classical KLRE FM 90.5.
(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.