Chostakovitch était a l'avantgarde par ses structures melodiques et conservateur par son attachement a la mélodie, a une époque ou l'on était volontiers a-melodique Dans le splendide Troisième Quatuor (1946), l'intelligibilité instantanée de l'architecture et le mariage de structures très fines (passacaille de 1 « Adagio » en ut dièse mineur) et d'une expression sombre evoquent le dernier Beethoven. En même temps, l'œuvre est mozartienne par sa transmutation de la souffrance en grâce. Après un début quasi désinvolte, ce Troisième Quatuor surprend par sa plongée dans le drame. Moins exigeant sur le plan de la dynamique, l'allègre – et longtemps néglige – Sixième Quatuor (1956) habite un monde limpide et pastoral, différent de celui de ses prédécesseurs. Plus souvent joue a lui seul que les quatorze autres, le Huitième Quatuor (1960) possède un aspect autobiographique qui vient de la citation d'elements empruntes a des œuvres précédentes du compositeur, mais il s'agit avant tout d'une œuvre âpre, conflictuelle, déchirante.

Pour ce deuxième volume d'une future intégrale, le Quatuor Mandelring – jeune formation allemande qui a déjà signe de remarquables CD consacres a Brahms et surtout a Schubert – fait montre d'appréciables qualités factuelles, particulièrement dans une lecture sobre et raffinée du Sixième Quatuor. Si la vision un rien trop « constructiviste », du Troisième Quatuor peut séduire, elle manque de profondeur. L'interprétation du Huitième Quatuor vaut pour sa maîtrise instrumentale, malgre un jeu un peu trop uniforme.

Wer die Geigen-Professorin an der Lübecker Musikhochschule, Christiane Edinger kennt, weiß, dass die international gefragte Solistin eine besondere Vorliebe für das Werk des Mendelssohn-Schülers Eduard Franck hat. Die beiden Violinkonzerte, die drei Streichquartette und die beiden Streichsextette hat sie in den letzten Jahren aufgenommen - jetzt ist, zusammen mit James Tocco, eine Einspielung der vier Violinsonaten erschienen.

Robert Schumann hat Eduard Franck geschätzt. Er fand für ihn zwar nicht die Worte höchsten Lobes, die er in seinem legendären Aufsatz mit dem Titel "Neue Bahnen" für Brahms hatte, erkannte aber den "Ernst der Ansicht" der Werke Eduard Francks, die "Kunstmäßigkeit des Satzes" und "Leichtigkeit der Kombination".

Eduard Franck möge "auf diesem Wege weiter und vorwärts arbeiten", das wünschte Felix Mendelssohn dem 21-jährigen Komponisten nach vierjähriger Lehrzeit in Düsseldorf und Leipzig. Eduard Franck arbeitete weiter. Der Zeitgenosse Brahms' und Wagners konnte nach Stationen in Köln und Bern in Berlin die Klavierklasse am berühmten "Stern'schen Konservatorium" übernehmen.

Schlichte Interpretation eines Zweiflers

Die ersten beiden Violinsonaten wurden kurz nach ihrer Entstehung veröffentlicht, die beiden späteren allerdings nicht, und das ist symptomatisch: Obwohl Franck zum Beispiel mit seinem e-moll-Violinkonzert Erfolge feiern konnte, zweifelte er an seinem Können. So blieb Vieles der Öffentlichkeit zunächst verborgen - posthum gedruckt, galt sein Stil als veraltet.

Christiane Edinger und James Tocco, beide seit vielen Jahren Professoren an der Musikhochschule Lübeck, interpretieren die Werke schlicht und gefällig, ansprechend. Seit Mendelssohn und Schumann und vor Brahms und Dvorak hatte niemand etwas Wesentliches zur Gattung der Violinsonate beigetragen. Eduard Franck schließt gerade mit seinen späten Sonaten eine Lücke, die zwischen 1850 und 1880 klafft.

Diese geschlossen zu haben, das allein ist ein Verdienst.

Neu ist an der folgenden Aufnahme zweierlei: Erstens ist mir der Name der...

A fine recording of an esoteric composer, recently unearthed in...

Sind die Lyrischen Stücke von Edvard Grieg Salonmusik? Jedenfalls stehen sie...

Grieg's Lyric Pieces lend themselves to a wide variety of approaches, from the...

Worth a strong recommendation for Brahms A minor alone and the Dessoff is immediately and lastingly enjoyable ...

I am, reluctantly, convinced of the merits of the Brahms String Quartet in A minor op.51, no.2. I just have yet to be touched, charmed or moved by it. I’ve tried to let the Emerson and the Takács Quartets do that for me, but they only offered excellence, not grit or inescapable passion. Three’s a charm though, and the third recording of the A minor quartet I’ve come across this year may have done it for me.

When Brahms develops a 35 minute quartet out of just a few basic musical building blocks, the result is - or can be - an expressive stringency of which Hugo Wolf declared Brahms the “undisputed master of composing without ideas”. Even Britten quipped that it wasn’t bad Brahms that he minded, but good Brahms that he couldn’t stand.

Usually I’d snicker with delighted, if embarrassed agreement – at least where Brahms’ string quartets are concerned. But the combination of cohesion and energy of the Mandelring Quartett (who played Brahms at the Library of Congress in 2006) makes for an unusually compelling, indeed spellbinding performance. Brahms, for once, seems successfully to reach the pinnacle of a composer’s ambition that is the string quartet with op.51/2. This is a string quartet that fascinated Schoenberg for its economy of means and made him famously declare Brahms ‘a progressive’. I will have to explore the other two volumes of their Brahms traversal – made only more attractive by their inclusion of string quartets of (forgotten) contemporaries of Brahms. If ever issued as a set – hopefully retaining the ‘fillers’ – it might well vie for the reference recording spot with the Alban Berg Quartet’s EMI recording.

This disc is worth a strong recommendation for the Brahms A minor alone. But there is more. Rather than point out that the ‘filler’ on the Brahms is “this neat, unknown F.O. Dessoff”, the performance and the quartet deserve to be mentioned, praised, and recommended separately. In fact, I’d give this disc the same two thumbs up even if it only included either of the two quartets.

That’s not only because the playing is outstanding but also because Dessoff’s op.7 is much more than just an afterthought to the Brahms quartet. It’s a wonderful work that deserves to be smack-dab in the middle of the string quartet repertoire of more groups than just the Mandelring. Brahms himself, a friend of Dessoff’s, found to have “such an unassuming face that one hardly dare praise it out loud … It would greatly please me to have my name printed on the front page of this quartet that is amiable smiling at me …”.

Holger Best’s liner-notes mention that Dessoff did not want to sully his reputation as a great performer with a second-rate composition. He need not have worried in this case. The F major quartet smiles amiably, indeed. All four movements are ear-catching, a joy to listen to, unpretentious, simple but not simplistic, full of joy but not silly.

What makes it so immediately and lastingly enjoyable is perhaps that skilled but still not so very seriously well crafted Brahms element in it, or the fact that it is perfectly romantic without being burdened with dreamy portentousness - Schumann, some may say.

The delicate pizzicato theme running through the opening Larghetto merges with beautiful lyrical lines for an exquisite slow movement. The Poco andantino has Viennese café-house mood and gaiety running through its veins … and that from a cool northern German! The outer movements, a driving Allegro ben moderato and a busy Allegro con brio have less of a personal touch to them but are more than adequate opening and closing statements. What else did this Dessoff compose?

Quite why it took nine years for this disc to be released I do not know.

Einen interessanten Querschnitt von Bizets „Carmen“ hat Ferenc Fricsay 1951...

Mit einer Doppel-SACD schließt das Detmolder Label audite seine nunmehr achtteilige Eduard Franck-Reihe fürs Erste ab. Zumindest auf dem CD-Markt ist der Mendelssohn-Schüler, der in Köln, Bern und bis zu seinem Tod 1893 dann in Berlin lehrte und komponierte, wieder angemessen vertreten. Auch die vier größtenteils in den Jahren um 1860 entstandenen Violinsonaten sind eine willkommene Bereicherung des Repertoires. Der Einfluss Beethovens und Mendelssohns ist unüberhörbar, und auch formal ging Franck bewährte Wege. Der thematische Erfindungsreichtum und die kunstvolle motivische Arbeit geben den Werken aber ein eigenes Gepräge – es ist schlichtweg schöne, geigerisch effektvolle Musik, engagiert vorgetragen vom Franck-bewährten Duo Edinger/Tocco.

The interesting thing on this CD is the Stravinsky, a composer we do not readily associate with Böhm, and one that actually, at least in my mind, represents a pole of antipathy to the type of music he excelled at. This is a fairly early recording (1963), and is the only one I have come across that has this particular composer-conductor combination. (Any intrepid Fanfare reader that knows of another, please write. There may be some broadcast performances lurking out there.) I don’t know the ins and outs of Böhm’s interest in Stravinsky (and when will we get a good biography of the conductor?) but I would like to hear some of the history, as this Firebird is simply delightful. We do know that he supported Stravinsky; he conducted Le chant du rossignol in Munich in 1923, and gave the German premiere of Jeux de cartes. But there were never any studio recordings. Böhm jumps in with both feet first and never looks back. I would have liked to hear the 1947 version instead, but will take what I can get. The recording does show its age—these are not stellar sonics, stereo though they are, but any concern regarding sound is dissipated rapidly because of the uniqueness of this recording to Böhm’s discography.

Mozart and Strauss form a different tale, Böhm-fodder if ever there was any. His Mozart has long been considered a staple of his repertoire, and his way of doing Mozart has been taken in years past as the way of doing it. Böhm approached Mozart not unlike the way he approached Strauss, with a sense of form and lyricism in his mind foremost, and tried to bring out the inherent drama in the music, especially with considered attention given to the melodic line. Bruno Walter gave Böhm the philosophical basis for his Mozart-methodology, and first brought the composer alive for him. But Böhm must also have been well aware of the relationship between the music of Mozart and Strauss, and of the highest regard Strauss held for the Salzburg composer. This Symphony No. 28, recorded only by Böhm in the context of his complete set of the symphonies in 1969, is here selected from a radio broadcast in 1973, and is a wonder, the medium-sized orchestra still valiantly trumpeting style and substance over the emerging period dogma by Harnoncourt and others at the time.

Strauss is, of course, bread and butter to this conductor. The two hit it off famously, and Böhm was in essence a collaborator with his mentor in Dresden for the details and structure of the later operas. Though 30 years his senior, Strauss relied heavily on the advice of the younger man, and in return helped him to firmly establish his artistic legacy at Dresden, by then the definitive place to hear the composer’s music. This 1976 Don Juan , sounding really fine in this transfer, is I believe the fourth recording the conductor made of this music, though I can’t really term a radio broadcast a recording as such. But it is certainly competitive with any of the others, and the interest peaks even higher because of this orchestra. Audite has given us a fine, and in many ways important addition to the Böhm discography. Warmly recommended.