Amazing pieces of classical music - 47
Franz Schubert's String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D 810, known as "Der Tod und das Mädchen" (Death and the Maiden) in a performance by the Busch String Quartet recorded on 16th October, 1936 for EMI at their London Abbey Road Studios. Both composition and recording were truly landmarks in classical music history. The Bush Quartet was then made up by Adolph Busch (violin), Gösta Andreasson (violin), Karl Doktor (viola), and Hermann Busch (cello) and their preformance of Schubert's Death and the Maiden is still revered for its profound, intense, and historically significant interpretation. The piece itself was first played in January 1826 at the Vienna home of Karl and Franz Hacker, amateur violinists, apparently with Schubert on the viola.
It's one of the earliest recorded versions, but it still very much holds its own, particularly for the wonderfully moving way in which the players unfold the sequence of variations in the second movement, and for the sustained energy and tension of the Finale which is capped by a daring almost unhinged accelerando near the end. Later performances from the seventies and eighties by the Amadeus (DG), the Alban Berg (Warner Classics) and Quartetto Italiano (Universal) also command enormous respect for the warmth and fluidity of their performances although they don’t take as many risks as the Busch Quartet.
The piece itself has been rightly called "one of the pillars of the chamber music repertoire" and was composed in 1824, after Schubert suffered from a serious illness and realized that he was dying. Confronting the prospect that his life would be cut short, coupled with continuing anxiety as to his prospects of securing any semblance of financial stability, cast a very dark shadow over many of the works written during this period. None, however, projects such an uncompromising message of despair as the String Quartet in D minor.
In a letter to a friend at the time of composition of Death and the Maiden, Schubert wrote poignantly: "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."
The piece takes its name from the lied "Der Tod und das Mädchen", D 531, a setting of the poem of the same name by Matthias Claudius, that Schubert already wrote in 1817:
The Maiden:
Pass me by! Oh, pass me by!
Go, fierce man of bones!
I am still young! Go, dear,
And do not touch me.
And do not touch me.
Death:
Give me your hand, you beautiful and tender form!
I am a friend, and come not to punish.
Be of good cheer! I am not fierce,
Softly shall you sleep in my arms!
In their preformance of Schubert's Death and the Maiden, the Busch Quartet suggests strangeness through an allusive lyricism, internalized without a hint of sentimentality, transporting us swiftly into the unreality of these twilight atmospheres: from a disanchored Allegro molto moderato (like a constantly remodeled landscape) gradually towards the bouncy Finale whose harmonic instability appears under their bows incomparably ambivalent - leaving us in the company of a final Schubert more than ever poetic and visionary.
The very long and intense Allegro as first movement lasts well over a quarter of hour, and presents a veritable battle-ground between forceful and declamatory material that has a quasi-orchestral richness, and quieter, more lyrical episodes. Thus the music moves towards the Andante as second movement framed by the Busch Quartet as an almost absolute rejection of pathos—a willing acceptance of the nothingness promised by Death. No vision of distress or terror, but a vague unease overcome by trust, as if illustrating these words from the Lied: "Fear nothing, give me your hand, I am your friend."
For the most part, the music stays then dark and sombre, the few shifts into a supposedly brighter major key offering little relief. Perhaps the most disturbing passage comes at the end of the movement where instead of the expected emphatic final chords, the music collapses from sheer exhaustion into a ghostly echo of the opening dramatic flourish. A similarly brief oasis of tranquillity is recreated later in the work in the gentle major-key Trio that frames the driving Scherzo as third movement, some of whose thematic material is culled from a set of Ländler for piano that Schubert had composed the previous year.
A straightforward progression is then accentuated by the omission of repeats, which also explains the brevity of this recording. Stripped of emotional overload, one can admire the virginal sincerity of the phrasing. An equally unique experience in the Allegro again, and please listen carefully to the coalescent prosody that takes hold from the very first rhythmic figure, softened by an extraordinary portamento. Legato and a dynamic palette as powerful (Hermann Busch's resonant cello) as it is subtly balanced lending to this 1936 recording a singular, hymn-like intensity. Almost an antithesis to the raw, visceral energy of the historic version recorded by the Capet Quartet in 1928.
In the third movement, one might criticize a somewhat schematic approach, but it's here that a flailing energy ignites, launching itself valiantly into the Presto as fourth movement, as if the vigorous young woman, regaining her composure, had decided to flee at full speed. As ending to Schubert's Death and the Maiden it comes with this extraordinary and terrifying Presto finale, a whirlwind rollercoaster dance of death cast in the form of a tarantella. The obsessive rhythmic energy of the opening idea, which returns several times throughout the final movement, creates an almost claustrophobic atmosphere - and the only way Schubert seems able to resolve matters is by introducing an accelerando at the end which drives the music even further into the abyss
[media=https://youtu.be/AkTIZny1YBs]
It's one of the earliest recorded versions, but it still very much holds its own, particularly for the wonderfully moving way in which the players unfold the sequence of variations in the second movement, and for the sustained energy and tension of the Finale which is capped by a daring almost unhinged accelerando near the end. Later performances from the seventies and eighties by the Amadeus (DG), the Alban Berg (Warner Classics) and Quartetto Italiano (Universal) also command enormous respect for the warmth and fluidity of their performances although they don’t take as many risks as the Busch Quartet.
The piece itself has been rightly called "one of the pillars of the chamber music repertoire" and was composed in 1824, after Schubert suffered from a serious illness and realized that he was dying. Confronting the prospect that his life would be cut short, coupled with continuing anxiety as to his prospects of securing any semblance of financial stability, cast a very dark shadow over many of the works written during this period. None, however, projects such an uncompromising message of despair as the String Quartet in D minor.
In a letter to a friend at the time of composition of Death and the Maiden, Schubert wrote poignantly: "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."
The piece takes its name from the lied "Der Tod und das Mädchen", D 531, a setting of the poem of the same name by Matthias Claudius, that Schubert already wrote in 1817:
The Maiden:
Pass me by! Oh, pass me by!
Go, fierce man of bones!
I am still young! Go, dear,
And do not touch me.
And do not touch me.
Death:
Give me your hand, you beautiful and tender form!
I am a friend, and come not to punish.
Be of good cheer! I am not fierce,
Softly shall you sleep in my arms!
In their preformance of Schubert's Death and the Maiden, the Busch Quartet suggests strangeness through an allusive lyricism, internalized without a hint of sentimentality, transporting us swiftly into the unreality of these twilight atmospheres: from a disanchored Allegro molto moderato (like a constantly remodeled landscape) gradually towards the bouncy Finale whose harmonic instability appears under their bows incomparably ambivalent - leaving us in the company of a final Schubert more than ever poetic and visionary.
The very long and intense Allegro as first movement lasts well over a quarter of hour, and presents a veritable battle-ground between forceful and declamatory material that has a quasi-orchestral richness, and quieter, more lyrical episodes. Thus the music moves towards the Andante as second movement framed by the Busch Quartet as an almost absolute rejection of pathos—a willing acceptance of the nothingness promised by Death. No vision of distress or terror, but a vague unease overcome by trust, as if illustrating these words from the Lied: "Fear nothing, give me your hand, I am your friend."
For the most part, the music stays then dark and sombre, the few shifts into a supposedly brighter major key offering little relief. Perhaps the most disturbing passage comes at the end of the movement where instead of the expected emphatic final chords, the music collapses from sheer exhaustion into a ghostly echo of the opening dramatic flourish. A similarly brief oasis of tranquillity is recreated later in the work in the gentle major-key Trio that frames the driving Scherzo as third movement, some of whose thematic material is culled from a set of Ländler for piano that Schubert had composed the previous year.
A straightforward progression is then accentuated by the omission of repeats, which also explains the brevity of this recording. Stripped of emotional overload, one can admire the virginal sincerity of the phrasing. An equally unique experience in the Allegro again, and please listen carefully to the coalescent prosody that takes hold from the very first rhythmic figure, softened by an extraordinary portamento. Legato and a dynamic palette as powerful (Hermann Busch's resonant cello) as it is subtly balanced lending to this 1936 recording a singular, hymn-like intensity. Almost an antithesis to the raw, visceral energy of the historic version recorded by the Capet Quartet in 1928.
In the third movement, one might criticize a somewhat schematic approach, but it's here that a flailing energy ignites, launching itself valiantly into the Presto as fourth movement, as if the vigorous young woman, regaining her composure, had decided to flee at full speed. As ending to Schubert's Death and the Maiden it comes with this extraordinary and terrifying Presto finale, a whirlwind rollercoaster dance of death cast in the form of a tarantella. The obsessive rhythmic energy of the opening idea, which returns several times throughout the final movement, creates an almost claustrophobic atmosphere - and the only way Schubert seems able to resolve matters is by introducing an accelerando at the end which drives the music even further into the abyss
[media=https://youtu.be/AkTIZny1YBs]
