Frank-Michael Erben violin, Anton Jivaev viola, Valentino Worlitzsch cello, Yulianna Avdeeva piano: Gustav Mahler — Quartet for Piano, Violin, Viola and Cello in A minor; Alfred Schnittke — Quartet for Piano, Violin, Viola and Cello in A minor; Johannes Brahms — Quartet No. 1 for piano, violin, viola and cello in G minor op. 25
The Mahler Quartet is a – dare one say it – fairly anodyne work, only about 11 minutes in length, sounding vaguely Brahms (and Mahler did know Brahms and there are accounts of the two going out for walks together. So anodyne was it that I drifted off to sleep after about 8 minutes and then woke up to some fairly frantic violin screechings, which was a short piece by Schnittke entitled ‘nach einem Fragment von Gustav Mahler;, which as far as I could make out from the German-only programme was a discarded piano piece. I can’t say I had my head round this. The major work then was the Brahms, which I found I really didn’t know at all but much enjoyed, and have it on again as I am writing this on my computer. The Quartet players seemed to enjoy it hugely and so I did I. I realise that I know the 2nd Quartet for Piano and Strings reasonably well, the others not at all. I must give Brahms’ chamber music a concentrated listen when I get back home
Before going to this afternoon concert I had spent about an hour in the Mendelssohn house Museum. As our guide yesterday said, it is indeed a model of what a music-based museum should look like, and had many interesting exhibits – including a special section on Fanny, Mendelssohn’s sister. Beautifully presented, there is enough English summaries to know what you’re seeing. There is also an interesting extract from a book by a music critic about the history of music, writing in the 1930’s about Mendelssohn, fully and enthusiastically endorsing the Nazi line – ‘Un-German’ etc. There is then an updated music history book from the SAME author in the 1970’s. The obviously anti-Semitic lines have been removed but there is still the fundamental Wagner-based anti-Semitic trope that Mendelssohn could not write ‘music of the soul’, and was fundamentally un-serious.
John's musical journey 