Franz Schmidt (1874-1939)
Clarinet Quintet in A Major
The Austrian composer Franz Schmidt has been strangely
neglected abroad, in part through his own conservatism and in part through the
vagaries of history and of progressive musical taste. He was born in Pressburg
(the modern Slovak capital Bratislava and former Hungarian capital Pozsony,
where Liszt made his début and Bartók went to school) in 1874 and had his first
music lessons there from the cathedral organist. In 1888 his family moved to
Vienna, where he was able to continue his musical studies, but only by earning
money as a dance-school pianist. He took lessons with that most remarkable of
piano teachers Leschetizky and two years later entered the Conservatory, where
his composition teachers were Bruckner and Robert Fuchs, the latter teacher of
Mahler, Sibelius, Wolf, Schreker, Zemlinsky and a whole generation of Austrian
composers. At the same time he studied the cello with Ferdinand Hellmesberger,
a member of a remarkable Vienna dynasty of string-players. In 1896 Schmidt
joined his teacher in the cello section of the Court Opera, conducted from 1897
by Gustav Mahler, who at first favoured him over the existing front-desk
players. According to Schmidt Mahler soon dismissed two thirds of the players
in the orchestra, and the two principal cellists would never play when Mahler
conducted, leaving the front desk to Schmidt and a colleague, an arrangement
that Mahler accepted. The intervention of Arnold Rosé, the concert-master and
Mahler's brother-in-law, who moved him without warning from the front desk,
caused difficulties, particularly when Schmidt later refused Mahler's order to
resume, unpaid, the position of principal cellist, risking threatened
dismissal. He continued as a rank-and-file player until 1911, when he
eventually resigned, to become a piano professor at the Vienna Staatsakademie.
There he later taught harmony and composition, serving as director from 1925 to
1927, when he was appointed director of the Vienna Musikhochschule, a position
he relinquished in 1931.
Something of the enmity that arose between Schmidt and
Mahler was attributed by the former to the attention critics gave the first of
his four symphonies, awarded the Beethoven Prize in 1900 and first played in
Vienna two years later, to the expressed approval of the redoubtable Hanslick,
former champion of Brahms against the Wagnerians. Schmidt played his opera
Notre Dame through to Mahler, who found it deficient in melodic invention,
although he listened to the work to the end. The opera, completed in 1904 and
based on Victor Hugo's novel, won considerable success when it was first staged
at the Vienna Court Opera in 1914, after Mahler's death. As a composer he won a
significant contemporary reputation not only with his symphonies but also with
his 1937 apocalyptic oratorio, Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln. Schmidt's chamber
music includes two string quartets, a piano quintet and two quintets for
clarinet and piano quartet.
The second Clarinet Quintet was written in 1938, a year
before Schmidt's death. The piano part of this quintet, like that of the
Clarinet Quintet in B flat major of 1932 and of the E flat Piano Concerto, was
written for Paul Wittgenstein, a pianist who had lost his right arm in the
early days of the 1914-18 war and thereafter developed a remarkable command of
left-hand piano technique, commissioning works from Ravel, Britten, Richard
Strauss and Prokofiev among others. The piano part in both quintets and other
piano works for left hand by Schmidt was subsequently arranged for two hands by
the pianist Friedrich Wührer, who also played them in this form, adopted in the
present recording.
The A major Quintet opens with a movement that displays the
beauty of melodic line and clarity of texture that might be associated with the
Vienna of an earlier generation, an extension of the tradition of Schubert and
of Bruckner into the age of Schoenberg, but akin rather to Max Reger in its
subtle chromaticism. The instruments are skilfully deployed in material that
suggests at times the textures of César Franck, at least in the central
development, with its virtuoso piano writing. A relatively short Intermezzo
follows, for solo piano, its lay-out cleverly devised for one hand, a fact that
remains apparent in Wührer's two-hand version. The other four instruments
return for the lively Scherzo, a busily active melodic line set against an
occasionally angular countermelody. The clarinet starts the gently evocative
lilting Slovak trio section of the movement.
The B minor/B major slow movement proper allows the piano to
introduce the principal material, joined by the other instruments, in music
that hints at tragedy, dramatically intensified by the piano and later in a
Brucknerian sequence by the string instruments, before tension relaxes into a
major key conclusion. The clarinet begins the graceful final movement with a
melody of classical proportions, borrowed from the blind Austrian organist and
composer Josef Labor, former court pianist to the blind King of Hanover and
Wittgenstein's teacher in Vienna. The romantic potentialities of the theme are
dexterously explored in the variations that follow, a tribute both to Paul
Wittgenstein and his teacher.
Aládár Janoska
Aládár Janoska is one of the finest Slovak clarinettists. He
was a member of the Accademia Ziliniana until 1984 since when he has performed
widely as a soloist and in chamber music.
Stanislav Mucha, Alexander Lakatós and Ján Slávik
Stanislav Mucha, Alexander Lakatós and Ján Slávik are members
of the Moyzes Quartet established in 1975 while the members were still students
at the Bratislava Conservatory. The Quartet has won prizes in Bratislava,
Florence, Evian and elsewhere and has performed in countries throughout Europe.
Daniela Ruso
Daniela Ruso had her early training at the College of Music
in Bratislava, later continuing her studies at the conservatory in Leningrad.
She won distinction at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1969 and
has pursued an active career as a recitalist, soloist and chamber-music player.
She is a member of the ensemble Musa Antiqua.
