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PACM010:
Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 - Brahms
MP3
price
Quintetto
Chigiano
Originally released in 1952 as Decca LXT2687
(Duration
38'32")
Sergio
Lorenzi (piano)
Riccardo
Brengola (violin I)
Mario
Benvenuti (violin II)
Giovanni
Leone (viola)
Lino
Filippini (cello)
Play
sample movement:
It
may be assumed from the sheer quantity and breadth of Brahms' writing
for small ensembles that Chamber Music was his favourite mode of expression.
He uses a wide variety of instrumental combinations and numbers, but only
once used the combination of piano with string quartet: the Piano Quintet
in F minor, written between 1861 and 1864.
During
this time the piece took at least three forms. Beginning life as a string
quintet, it was also reworked as a Sonata for Two Pianos, but neither
form fully satisfied the composer or his close friends and confidantes,
Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim.
Yet
when one listens to this rich masterpiece as a Piano Quintet it is impossible
to guess that its final form was the result of so much chopping and changing
and such a long gestation. One specialist website includes it in their
list of the 15 greatest works of Chamber Music ever written!
This
superb performance was issued in 1952 by Decca. The Quintetto Chigiano
(also known as the Chigi Quintet) was formed in 1939 by musicans from
the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, founded by Count Guido Chigi Saracini
in 1932 with the aim of organising Master Classes for the principal musical
instruments.
This
prestigious academy listed amongst it's tutors Pablo Casals, Antonio Guarnieri,
Alfredo Casella (Count Chigi Saracini's supporter at the time of the creation
of the Accademia Chigiana), Arrigo Serato, Sergiu Celibidache, George
Enescu, Andrés Segovia, Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud, Nathan
Milstein, Yehudi Menuhin and many others, whilst the list of pupils is
equally stratospheric, including Carlo Maria Giulini, Zubin Mehta, Daniel
Oren, Roman Vlad, Nino Rota, Claudio Abbado, Salvatore Accardo, Uto Ughi,
Daniel Barenboim, Alirio Diaz, etc.
Once
again, Peter Harrison of disk2disc has produced a superb remastering
job which really does full justice to this marvellous recording.
REVIEW
of BRAHMS: Piano Quintet in F Minor
(Quintetto Chigiano, 1952)
Brahms
wrote 24 works of chamber music, each of them masterpieces.
His greatest chamber music work, the one in which the dual
sides of his musical nature-his dark, turbulent romanticism
and his rigorous classicism-were in the most fruitful conflict
and balance is the F Minor Piano Quintet. It is a special
favorite of mine and after Beethoven, I believe it to be one
of the four great masterpieces of 19th century chamber music:
the other three being the Schubert Quintet for strings, the
Schumann Piano Quintet, and Brahms own Clarinet Quintet. I
have heard the F Minor Quintet countless times in concert
and I probably have 25 or 30 recordings of it.
How
then do I explain that this obscure recording by this almost
unknown quintet is one of the greatest if not the greatest
recording I've ever heard of the work? The only way is to
send out the music which is possible these days of Internet
downloads. Describing music with words is akin to having a
blind man describe the color blue or proving the binomial
theorem with only rocks and sand. What you really do is describe
how the music makes you feel. Well, I'll do what I can. First
the quintet sounds like a loving and contentious family. Most
groups have a famous pianist plus a famous quartet or string
players. The Chigiano sound like string players plus one guy
who just happens to play the piano, but when its his turn,
wow! The strings constantly challenge the pianist, yet they
are very integrated and sometimes you only know the piano
is playing because of treble glints. There are just five voices,
five elements of musical tissue - this is not a mini-concerto
- plenty of conflict - but always forward movement.
In
the development of the first movement, the romantic conflict
is almost overwhelming and barely contained and then suddenly
everybody closes ranks and the recapitulation is prepared
as if nothing happened. There is calm at the end preparing
for the utter Schubertian peace of the second movement. The
Chigianos play this movement with such sweetness, unanimity
and calm that one realizes that Brahms was a great lover of
Schubert (he edited the Great C Major Symphony for publication).
The opening measures of the movement seem to place us in a
calm, dark, peaceful pool that is only occasionally disturbed
during the movement. Here Brahms finds serenity. The Scherzo
is overarchingly violent beyond anything else in Brahms I
know and the Chigiano heighten the effect by accenting the
cross-rhythms. Here the piano and the strings are really doing
battle with each other and then quickly subsiding to get ready
for the next assault. The strings, as they do throughout,
really hold their own against the piano. The ending of the
third movement is exhausting and I paused. One needs the mysterious,
pianoless beginning of the last movement to recover and then
the rather hearty but calm first theme enters. It doesn't
stay calm long. The movement and the quintet ends in a fit
of rage but with the Chigiano everything is musical if not
serene.
Only
38 minutes, but I feel I have never heard so much of the work
before. I have never heard the work as such a single entity
before. I have never before heard the strings present such
a solid front.
I
have to say something about the restoration and re-mastering.
The sound beggars my ability to praise it. To have captured
what I have heard from some early 1950's LP took more than
just supreme audio expertise; it had to take love and risk-taking
in the service of love.
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