Musically Speaking

Julius Röntgen (1855-1932) is the unfamiliar name in the middle of our April program. Until a few years ago his name and music were completely unknown to me. My first encounter was while seated in the balcony at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam awaiting the start of what was to be a really splendid concert performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The Concertgebouw is not as large as Symphony Hall, but no less ideal, stately, or grand, especially with its magnificent unpainted wooden organ case and permanent choral seating towering above the stage amid flowing steps. From my seat I could take in the full volume of the hall and read the names of great composers inscribed on a frieze around the balcony. There were the usual suspects and the one name that seemed very out of place: Röntgen. When I asked my local colleagues who he was, they brightened with pride in claiming him as a Dutchman. When I heard his music, and found out more about him, it was easy to hear why.

In his Brahms Biography, Jan Swafford mentions Röntgen among those younger composers for whose work Brahms showed greatest enthusiasm. (The others were Knorr, Fuchs, Novak and Dvorak.) One of my Dutch colleagues, Francien Schatborn, principal violist of the Hilversum Radio Orchestra, made a point of telling me that she was planning to record a number of his viola works. After an exhaustive computer search of the archives in The Hague I ended up purchasing just about every piece of Röntgen chamber music that included viola. I was amazed by the amount of music he wrote for familiar combinations: three viola sonatas with piano, a trio for clarinet, viola and piano, a terzetto with flute and violin, and more than a dozen string trios. Not included in the catalog, nor in the original purchase, were the true gems that appeared a couple of years later on Francien’s inspiring premiere recording, Lyrische Gänge or Lyric Journeys (1926), five songs for the same forces as Brahms’ Op. 91, Gestillte Sehnsucht and Geistliches Wiegenlied (1884), the two songs for mezzo, viola and piano. They were re-discovered only as recently as 2004.

Set to texts by Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807-1887) which reflect upon early life and the final journey (outside and inward) toward that final rest, these songs explore the same emotional territory as Mahlers’ Das Lied von der Erde (1907) and much later by Vier letzte Lieder of Richard Strauss (1948). Their harmonic language is closer to Schumann and early Brahms, while in structure they share with the Mahler–a concluding song in which the material is extended to the point of seeming endless.

The first two songs, entitled Der Schlaf, (Sleep), and Stille (Silence) bring easily to mind the quiet-producing sleep of Brahms’ chosen texts, and of Strauss’ Beim Schlafengehen.

Clip: Der Schlaf

Clip: Stille

Mozart (1756-1791) and Mendelssohn (1809-1847) had more in common than personal encounters early in life with Goethe (1749-1832). Mendelssohn followed Mozart’s invention of the viola quintet (he wrote six) with two of his own. Mendelssohn’s second and last, in B-flat major, is in the same key as Mozart’s first and makes extensive use of a ‘horn-call’ motif (an ascending triad with a dotted rhythm), that Mozart uses even in his E-flat piano quartet, and in just the same way – to punctuate and thereby distinguish phrases.

Clip: Mozart Piano Quartet in E-flat, K. 493, Movement 1

Clip: Mendelssohn String Quintet in B-flat, Op. 87, Movement 1

Clip: Mendelssohn String Quintet in B-flat, Op. 87, Movement 4

Both the Mozart and the Mendelssohn end their works with movements that remind us they were significant instrumental prodigies as well as great composers.

Enjoy!