Dvořák: Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, Op. 81

Although the best-known examples are among their composers’ greatest works, the quintet for string quartet and piano was never widely cultivated: Robert Schumann composed one; Johannes Brahms one; Gabriel Fauré two; even Luigi Boccherini’s dozen—composed around 1800—have to be measured in relation to his 300 or so string trios, quartets, and quintets. Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) wrote two, apparently because, having set out to revise the early first one, he decided to write a new one, which may also explain why they are both in the same key, though musically distinct.

Introduction

Before Schumann composed his brilliant Piano Quintet for piano and string quartet in 1842, the more normal combination (Boccherini apart) was for piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. (This is the combination in Franz Schubert’s A-major Trout Quintet, Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s E-flat-minor piano quintet, and Louise Farrenc’s two piano quintets.) Schumann, a pianist, had just composed three string quartets, so the combination probably fell naturally into place. Dvořák was both an accomplished string player and a trained keyboard-player, who also composed a pair of piano quartets and four piano trios. The profoundly relaxed character of his second piano quintet surely reflects his close familiarity with both types of instruments.

History

Up to the age of 36, Dvořák’s name and music were virtually unknown outside his native Bohemia (modern-day Czech Republic). As the Czech-speaking son of a village butcher, he suffered for a long time from the cultural dominance of German music. But in three consecutive years of the mid-1870s he won awards under the Austrian State Stipendium scheme, and his music was taken up by Brahms, who was on the stipendium panel, and who recommended Dvořák to his Berlin publisher, Fritz Simrock. Dvořák’s fame outside the Czech lands dates from this time, and was eventually considerable in his lifetime, especially in England—which he visited many times, and for which he composed several major works—and later the US—where he was, for three years (1892–95), director of the (now-defunct) National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City, and where he composed some of his most beautiful music late in life.

The second piano quintet was composed rapidly, in six weeks of August and September 1887. He was already a prolific composer of chamber music: he had written no fewer than 11 string quartets, three piano trios, a piano quartet, and an assortment of other chamber works. But he had destroyed the manuscript of his early piano quintet and seems to have been wary of revisiting the form. He hardly needed to have been; the new work is one of his most successful and individual works, and certainly one of the finest of all works for this combination.

The first performance was given in Prague on January 6, 1888, after which the work quickly entered the repertoire.

Dvořák: Quintet in A major for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello, Op. 81

Form

The piano quintet is outwardly orthodox in form, though various internal details tend to locate it as Slavic rather than Classical German. On the first page of the first movement the sudden change from major to minor and the drastic contrast of dynamic and texture are already characteristic. The Dumka slow movement refers to a specifically Slav genre, and the Furiant scherzo is nominally a Czech dance. The rondo finale is also dance-like, somewhat in the manner of a fast polka or a skočná (a Slavic dance), like the one in the final act of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride (1863–70).

Unlike Smetana, however, Dvořák never used actual folksong, and his adoption of Czech folk idioms is discreet. Local color, such as it is, comes out in the songlike character of many of the melodies—in their tendency to start, like the Czech language, on an accent or downbeat, but also in certain harmonic twists. Unorthodoxies of key sequence, like the first movement’s second theme in C-sharp minor (the relative minor key of what would be the more orthodox E major, or the dominant in the tonic-to-dominant sequence of theme keys), may hint at the melancholy of a downtrodden people, but are probably just an individual preference of the composer.

Analysis

Dvořák knew how to capture his audience’s attention with a striking initial idea, and the beautiful cello theme that opens this quintet is a prime example. But the crucial thing about it is the almost immediate contradiction of its languid eloquence—first by an abrupt switch to A minor (still within the opening theme itself), and then by a violent subito forte (sudden loudness), as if the music were angry with itself for indulging in Romantic dreams. This conflict wakes the main theme up and galvanizes the whole movement. It probably determined the minor key of the second theme, and it certainly invigorates the development section, up to the point where the main theme returns in the form of a grand peroration, on all five instruments.

As a genre the dumka can seem puzzling to Westerners. In origin the term refers to a vocal lament, but in instrumental music, it also often involves a sectional form with contrasted elements or moods. Dvořák’s other well-known example is his Dumky trio, Op. 90 (1890–91), which has six comparatively short movements. The Dumka of the A-major piano quintet is effectively in seven sections, made up of a slow first part in A–B–A form, a “Vivace” (very fast) middle section on a sped-up version of the main theme, and a reprise of the first, A-B-A part. The key sequence reflects that of the first movement—this time with F-sharp minor matched to D major (the reverse of the first movement’s A major to C-sharp minor sequence).

The third movement, in A major, is labelled Scherzo (Furiant), though the description is open to question. The furiant is typically a fast triple-time dance incorporating a hemiola rhythm—a rhythm in which the six beats of a pair of bars are phrased or accented as 2+2+2 (instead of 3+3), making a slow triple time that crosses the barline. (There is a good example in The Bartered Bride.) The Furiant in Dvořák’s quintet lacks this rhythmic oddity, and is more like a fast waltz in regular triple time, with a slightly slower, F-major trio section (“Poco tranquillo”), in which a fragmentary discussion of the same material is accompanied by chorale-like chords.

The skočná Finale varies its pace not by changes of tempo, but by variations of notation—longer notes for slower music. This is actually a feature of Dvořák’s writing throughout the piano quintet. Another feature is the tendency of themes to gravitate from a major key opening (A major, then E major) to the relative minor (F-sharp minor, then C-sharp minor), once again a reflection of the relationship that dominated the first two movements. By avoiding the strong tonic-dominant relationship of Viennese Classicism, it gives the music a discreet modal feeling (as in much folk music), a faint flavor of rusticity.

Critical Thoughts

Dvořák’s music blew through the concert halls of Germany, England, and the US like a fresh wind from the Bohemian forests and meadows. He was by no means an eccentric from the far corners of the empire: he respected Classical models, composed mainly in textbook genres and forms, and wrote competently (by the standards of the Paris Conservatoire). Brahms, who was not sympathetic to oddballs, praised him from first to last. In recommending him to Simrock in 1877, he called the younger composer “a very talented man,” adding “Moreover, he is poor!”; then, years later, writing about Dvořák’s New World Symphony (Symphony No. 9), he observed “Just as it stands it is so unspeakably gifted, so healthy, that one must rejoice in it.”

The Second Piano Quintet might well have prompted such a comment. Its richness of invention is by any standards remarkable. But it also reflects Dvořák’s insistence that “to have a fine idea is nothing special… But to develop the idea well and make something great of it, that is the hardest part—that is art.”

Legacy

The work has been a repertory staple (in a far from oversubscribed genre) ever since its first performance, and recordings have also been plentiful. There are famous recordings by Clifford Curzon with the Vienna Philharmonic Quartet, Stephen Kovacevich with members of the Berlin Philharmonic Octet, and (especially famous) Sviatoslav Richter with the Borodin Quartet. Richter’s is the most testing since it carries such authority. In this recording, the players consistently ignore Dvořák’s tempo markings, changing tempo drastically, for example, at the subito forte in bar 17, so that the composed contrast is grossly exaggerated. The tempo at the start of the slow movement is little over half the marked figure (36 bpm rather than 60), moving to 60 bpm only at the point that Dvořák marks “Un pochettino più mosso” (“very slightly quicker”). These details merely stress the fact that Dvořák’s music is damaged by distortions of this kind, since the intended contrasts are already present in the way the music is composed. No doubt it’s the price of popularity—and a backhanded tribute to the work’s stature.

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Article by Stephen Walsh