Ilya Shterenberg, clarinet
Vadim Gluzman, violin & leader
Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998): Suite in the Old Style (arr. Spivakov)
Instrumentation: Scored for pairs of oboes and horns, strings, and harpsichord
Composed: 1972, arranged in 1987
Duration: 15 minutes
There is little indication within the score of Alfred Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style to suggest it sprang from the pen of one of the world’s most intensely progressive composers. There are various reasons for this, including—but not limited to—Schnittke’s varied search for style. Whether or not he ultimately adhered to his early words, “The goal of my life is to unify serious music and light music, even if I break my neck doing so,” Schnittke’s style was often evolving, depending on the circumstances of the composition at hand. In this way, he was much like his Russian predecessor Dmitri Shostakovich, who was equally adept at composing effervescent humorous film scores or symphonies that proved as violent and progressive as anything of their day.
Though born in the Volga-German Republic of Russia, Schnittke came of age musically in Vienna, where he found himself walking amidst the musical ghosts and came to feel he was a link in the chain of music’s past and future. Back in Russia, his studies continued, and he was subsequently appointed to the Moscow Conservatory’s composition faculty. Soon enough, however, Schnittke and his scores were viewed as suspect by the Soviet regime, again like Shostakovich, and by 1980 he was forbidden to travel beyond the country’s borders. He managed to leave the USSR for Hamburg in 1990, but he was doomed by ill health (though declared clinically dead on more than one occasion, he managed to recover and continue composing). He died in 1998, at 63, and was buried with state honors in Moscow, near other prominent Russian composers, including Shostakovich.
Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style was composed in 1972 for violin and piano or harpsichord and arranged in 1987 for chamber orchestra by Russian violinist Vladamir Spivakov for his Moscow Virtuosi. From the start of the Pastoral, we might as well be listening to the work of an 18th-century composer, with its lilting oboe and violin melodies, rustic color, and effortless counterpoint. It is only with the occasional wink-wink that we are treated to Schnittke-esque passages of humor, snapping us back into our century. Such moments can be heard in the subtle, catchy cross-rhythms toward the end of the charming Minuet and the ensuing Fugue and in the humorous orchestration and inconclusive concluding bars of the otherwise nostalgic Pantomime.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Concerto for Clarinet in A Major, K. 622
Instrumentation: Scored for solo clarinet, pairs of flutes, oboes, horns, and strings
Composed: 1791
Duration: 28 minutes
The final year of Mozart’s meteoric life is among the most interesting and heartbreaking periods imaginable, at least from the vantage point of a modern-day perspective. On the one hand, the thirty-five-year-old proved miraculously productive, dispatching some of his most astounding works, including two operas, The Magic Flute and La Clemenza di Tito, his final piano concerto, the E-flat string quintet, and much of the Requiem. The financial struggles that had plagued him a year or so earlier appear to have been somewhat alleviated, at least partially as a consequence of his recent operatic successes. Then, while in Prague in September of 1791, Mozart fell ill. It proved the beginning of the end.
Somehow Mozart managed to dispatch a concerto for clarinet in the little time remaining to him, though much of that musical journey remains a mystery. We know that in 1773, two brothers, Anton and Johann Stadler, clarinetists both, appeared at Vienna’s Kärntnertortheater, marking their first known public performance. Thereafter, they vied for various jobs in the Austrian capital, where, like Mozart, they always hoped to serve the court. Both were finally invited to join the imperial court orchestra in 1782, and it was around this time that Mozart, who had moved to Vienna not long before, likely first encountered them.
Though Anton appears to have been a master of “a great many wind instruments,” it was his clarinet playing that drew Mozart to him. By 1784, Mozart had composed a work expressly for Stadler’s use, the Gran Partita, which featured writing for both the clarinet and the basset horn, a member of the clarinet family whose extended keys allowed for a deeper register. Mozart was equally taken by the instrument and Stadler’s mastery of it, so much so that between 1783 and 1785, he composed thirteen different works incorporating the basset horn. As fellow masons, Mozart grew quite fond of the clarinetist and his playing, despite the latter being both irresponsible and a thief; among other facts, Stadler falsely claimed credit for the invention of the basset horn. Still, Mozart managed to see past, or outright ignore, Stadler’s shortcomings, and in the end, their partnership left the world with some of its most sublime music.
Mozart’s manuscript to the Clarinet Concerto has not survived—Stadler claimed it was stolen from him, though Mozart’s widow wrote to a publisher that Stadler had pawned it. When it was finally published in 1803, it had been rescored for clarinet in A, which was the far more common instrument (indeed, the basset horn fell out of use with Stadler’s death and no instruments from the time have survived). In those cases where the basset horn’s register was too low for the clarinet, passages were transcribed up the octave. It is believed that Stadler played the work’s premiere in Vienna in October of 1791. By November, Mozart was bedridden, in pain, suffering from swelling and vomiting. Though he attempted to complete his latest undertaking, the Requiem, he died on December 5th, before the work could be finished. The Clarinet Concerto, then, Mozart’s last completed work, proved his swan song.
The Clarinet Concerto is in the standard three movements, as was typical of Mozart’s pen. While unusual is the fact that there is no cadenza in either the first or last movement, the work is imbued with Mozart’s unsurpassed late-life beauty and grace and the exquisite balance he achieved between the soloist and the orchestra has never been surpassed.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828): String Quartet No. 14 in D Minor, D. 810, “Death and the Maiden” (arr. Mahler)
Instrumentation: Scored for string orchestra
Composed: 1824, arranged in 1896
Duration: 45 minutes
Despite living but thirty-one years, Franz Schubert’s miraculous output contains over 1500 compositions, including some 40 liturgical works, 20 stage works (opera, incidental music), symphonies, overtures, and chamber music of all types, including more than 20 string quartets. Then there is his piano music and songs, which comprise the largest bulk of his musical portfolio, numbering well over 600 songs and nearly that much piano music. And what is arguably more miraculous than the sheer numbers is the quality of what he left behind. No composer ever bettered Schubert in the art of the Lied (song), while his entire oeuvre remains as vibrant and powerful as it did when the music first flowed from his pen.
While an intense lyricism permeates everything Schubert wrote, his penchant for song composition occasionally influenced larger settings. Such is the case with the beloved D minor String Quartet, wherein Schubert looked to his earlier song, “Death and the Maiden,” as the basis for a set of variations. The dark nature of German poet Matthias Claudius’ text, which tells the brief story of a young Maiden being approached by Death, was one of many macabre themes that resonated so strongly within the 19th-century European mind. Indeed, Schubert set many such poems, not the least of which includes his blockbuster, The Erlkönig. Such poetry certainly resonated particularly deeply with Schubert, who was also caught up in his own life-and-death struggle. During the period he was writing the D minor String Quartet (1824), he succumbed to syphilis and soon came to realize he was dying.
To a friend, the unhappy composer wrote:
“Think of a man whose health can never be restored, and who from sheer despair makes matters worse instead of better. Think, I say, of a man whose brightest hopes have come to nothing, to whom love and friendship are but torture, and whose enthusiasm for the beautiful is fast vanishing; and ask yourself if such a man is not truly unhappy.”
This, then, might be regarded as the overarching theme of the D minor Quartet, for although the song itself serves as the theme for Schubert’s extraordinary variations in the Andante, the emotional breadth of which far outpaces Claudius’ original poem or even Schubert’s subsequent song, the nature of death itself imbues the entire work, from the score’s violent unison opening notes to the daemonic Scherzo (which has been described as a dance of the daemon fiddler), to the tarantella—an Italian dance once believed to cure the madness brought on by the bite of a tarantula spider— found at the close.
No wonder, then, that conductor and composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) found Schubert’s quartet so compelling, for few composers have ever had a greater preoccupation with death. Indeed, Mahler feared writing a Ninth Symphony, knowing that number had signaled the end for a number of his symphonic predecessors, Schubert among them! Matters weren’t helped by the death of Mahler’s seven-year-old daughter of scarlet fever and diphtheria, in 1907, for shortly thereafter he was diagnosed with a defective heart, a malady his wife regarded as a death sentence. Indeed, Mahler would be dead less than four years later.
For Mahler, who conceived of music on a larger-than-life scale, expecting only four players to dispatch the overwhelming power inherent in Schubert’s quartet score must have seemed nigh impossible. And anyway, various composers had long been setting Schubert’s dramatic songs for orchestra, so in 1896 the composer began drafting a string orchestra version of Schubert’s quartet. For the most part, Mahler did little tinkering with Schubert’s score, and simply intended for the earlier composer’s music to be played by larger sections. The addition of double bass, however, considerably deepened the work’s lower-end, a value-added punch that contributes significantly to the overall effect. Schubert’s original needed nothing, for like all of the composer’s scores, it possesses a depth and power all its own. But Mahler’s arrangement adds incontrovertible drama to Schubert’s music, confirming the adage, more is indeed more!
© Marc Moskovitz
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