Born December 16, 1770, in Bonn.
Died March
26, 1827, in Vienna.
Composed in 1797.
Duration: 24 minutes
Among
the works with which Beethoven sought to establish his
reputation as a composer after arriving in Vienna in 1792 was a series of
pieces for wind instruments — the Trio for Two Oboes and English Horn (Op. 87),
the Trio for Piano, Clarinet, and Cello (Op. 11), the Sonata for Horn and Piano
(Op. 17), the Septet (Op. 20, by far his most popular composition during his
lifetime), and the Quintet for Piano and Winds (Op. 16) — which enabled him to demonstrate his skill
in the traditional modes of chamber music without broaching the genre of the
string quartet, then still indisputably dominated by Joseph Haydn. The Op. 16
Quintet drew its inspiration and model from Mozart’s exquisite Quintet for
Piano and Winds of 1784 (K. 452), which Beethoven heard performed in Prague
in spring 1796 during a concert tour that also took him to Dresden and Berlin.
He apparently began the Quintet in Berlin and completed the score later that
year in Vienna. The piece was first given at a
concert organized by the violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh on April 6, 1797 at the palace of Prince Joseph Johann von Schwarzenberg, which was also to be the site of the
premiere of Haydn’s The Creation the following year and The
Seasons in 1801.
Beethoven’s
Quintet for Piano and Winds opens with a slow introduction whose stately tread
and pompous rhythms recall the old Baroque form of the French overture. With
its sweeping figurations and full scoring, the piano announces its intention to
be primus inter pares in the music to follow, and, indeed, appropriates
for itself the principal theme of the main body of the movement, a sleek
triple-meter melody made from a quick upward leap and a gently descending
phrase. The winds are allowed to dabble in this melodic material before more bold piano scales
and arpeggios lead to the subsidiary subject, a lovely, flowing strain in even
note values. The development section busies itself with some piano figurations
before settling down to a discussion of the main theme. A long scale in the
piano reaches its apex at the recapitulation, which returns the earlier thematic materials to lend this handsome
movement balance and formal closure. The Andante is a richly decorated slow rondo (A–B–A–C–A) which touches upon some poignant
proto-Romantic sentiments as it unfolds. The finale
is a dashing rondo based on a galloping theme of opera buffa
jocularity.
Born May 23, 1912, in Le Mans, France.
Died September 25, 1997, in Paris.
Composed in 1947.
Duration: 11 minutes
Jean
Françaix, the French composer, pianist, and advocate
of Debussy’s artistic philosophy of “faire plaisir” (“giving pleasure”), was born into a
musical family in Le Mans in May 1912. His father, Alfred, was a
pianist and composer and director of the Le Mans Conservatory; his mother
taught voice and founded a local chorus. Jean
received his earliest training from his parents, but showed such precocious
talent that he was regularly commuting to Paris for private lessons at the
Conservatoire by the time that he was nine. Françaix’s
earliest published work, a suite for piano, appeared the next year. He settled
in Paris a few years later for regular study at
the Conservatoire, where his tutelage was entrusted to Isidor
Philipp for piano and Nadia Boulanger for
composition. Françaix won the Conservatoire’s first
prize in piano when he was just 18, and two years later he gained recognition
as a composer with a symphony that was premiered in Paris by Pierre Monteux
in November 1932. He played the first performance of his Concertino for Piano
and Orchestra with much success in 1934, and came to international prominence
when he presented the work at a festival of contemporary music in Baden-Baden two years later. He subsequently made
numerous tours throughout Europe and the United States as composer and pianist. The 1933
ballet Scuola di
ballo, choreographed by Léonide
Massine for the Ballets Russes
de Monte Carlo, marked Françaix’s entry into the
genres of musical theater, for which he produced five operas and a total
of 16 ballets, as well as many film scores before his death in Paris on September
25, 1997. His
large output also includes some four-dozen orchestral pieces (many calling for
one or more solo instruments), numerous chamber works (for which he favored wind instruments), songs,
an oratorio (L’apocalypse de St. Jean),
and a considerable amount of music
for accompanied chorus.
A
divertissement is a musical
confection meant to divert, to delight, to amuse, and Françaix’s
Divertissement for Oboe, Clarinet,
and Bassoon of 1947, bubbling with the composer’s distinctive insouciance and
wit, more than lives up to its title. The Prélude
begins as a sweet pastoral but certain disagreements among the participants as to rhythmic coordination and wayward pitches give
the music an invigorating piquancy. These
disparities are discussed in a more animated manner in the center section
before the pastoral music, little changed from before, returns
to close the movement. The collegial contention carries into the Allegretto
assai, which the oboe and clarinet start as a
dapper quick march while the bassoon tries out the
accompaniment for a waltz. The trio eventually settles on a cheerful metric common ground and celebrates its
unanimity with a few phrases reminiscent of a tango. The opening music is more amicable when it returns, and fades away on
rising, intertwined arpeggios. The Elégie,
thoughtful rather than tragic,
is a plaintive, wordless song led by the oboe. The Scherzo juxtaposes
tart phrases of spiky rhythms and leaping intervals with sweet episodes of
limpid motion and smooth contours.
Francis Poulenc
Born January
7, 1899, in Paris.
Died there on January 30, 1963.
Composed in 1926.
Premiered on May 2, 1926 in Paris.
Duration: 15 minutes
Of
Francis Poulenc’s 13 chamber works for various
instrumental combinations, only three are exclusively for strings. “I have
always adored wind instruments,” he once stated, “preferring them to strings.”
Though it was preceded by the Sonatas for Two Clarinets, for Clarinet and
Bassoon, and for Horn, Trumpet, and Trombone, the Trio for Piano, Oboe, and
Bassoon is generally regarded as the earliest of Poulenc’s
chamber works to reflect the full flowering of his particular genius. The composer’s friend and
biographer Henri Hell wrote that the Trio “is indeed music in which the claims of the mind and the heart
are adjusted with surprising skill.... The very heart of Poulenc
is in this adroit little work.” The Trio opens with a slow introduction which is serious (or, in Poulenc’s case, perhaps mock-serious) in mood. Without
pause, there follows a splendid Presto with a wealth of melodic material that is disposed so as to
outline a traditional sonata exposition, but the middle of the movement is
occupied not with a thematic working-out but with a tender melody
of elegant shape and sentimental mood. A condensed traversal of the earlier
themes rounds out the delightful first movement. Poulenc’s
superb lyrical gifts are abundantly evident in the Andante,
which exhibits an almost Mozartian clarity and restraint while being distinctly
modern in its richly expressive harmonic palette. The closing rondo is music of elfin rhythmic élan.
Quintet in
E-flat major for Piano, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, and Horn, K. 452
Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart
Born January
27, 1756 in Salzburg.
Died December
5, 1791 in Vienna.
Composed in 1784.
Premiered on April 1, 1784 in Vienna.
Duration: 23 minutes
Mozart’s personal happiness and public popularity were at their
zeniths in 1784. He shared a comfortable apartment with Constanze,
and they were looking forward to the birth of a baby in September. He had been
settled in Vienna for nearly three years, and had acquired a reputation as the finest
pianist in town as well as a talented composer. So great was the demand for his
performances in the city’s concert halls and the
houses of the aristocracy that he played 22 concerts between February 26th and
April 3rd. This hectic schedule alone would be enough to fully occupy any solo performer,
but the Viennese audience also expected that “I must play some new works and
therefore I must compose,” he wrote. In addition, many of his mornings were
given over to teaching, with the remaining cracks in his schedule devoted to
carrying on a quite merry social life. “Have I not enough to do? I do not think
I can get rusty at this rate,” he wrote in a letter to his father Leopold with
which he proudly enclosed a list of his performances. For his program of
April 1st at the Burgtheater, which also included the Concertos
Nos. 15 and 16 (K. 450 and K. 451) and the Symphonies No. 35 (“Haffner”) and No. 36 (“Linz”),
Mozart composed the Quintet for Piano and Winds (K. 452), completing it just
the night before the concert.
The Quintet’s opening
movement, bursting with melody, begins with a slow introduction followed by a
sonata-form essay with a tiny development section. The Larghetto, also
in sonata form, is sweet and limpid. The finale is a perky rondo with a
written-out cadenza near the end marked by entrances in close imitation.
©2007 Dr. Richard E. Rodda