Wednesday February 10, 2010


Charley and Steve Blatt talk about the "From the Performance Studio" CD.
Felix Mendelssohn: Song without Words in G minor, Op.19 No. 6 (Venetian Gondola Song)
Simon Trpceski, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 1/17/07 MS
Wolfgang Mozart (arr. David Overton): “Rondo Alla Turca: Allegretto” (3rd movement) from Piano Sonata in A Major, K. 331
Sir James Galway, Lady Jeanne Galway, flutes; Obadiah Ariss, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 2/20/07 MS
Also, Colorado Music Festival Chamber Players (Vivienne Spy, piano; Joseph Meyer, violin; Courtney Sedgwick Filner, viola; Gregory Sauer, cello; Randall Nordstrom double bass)
Franz Schubert: Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 (Trout) 37:52 (7/31/07)
And, Frédéric Chopin: Waltz in D flat major, Op. 64 No. 1 (Minute)
Hsing-ay Hsu, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 11/6/08 MS


Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Piano Quintet in A major, D.667 (Trout)
I. Allegro vivace
II. Andante
III. Scherzo: Presto
IV. Thema: Andantino
V. Finale: Allegro giusto

During the summer of 1819 Schubert went on a walking tour of upper Austria. He stopped at the small town of Steyr and sent a note to his brother Ferdinand. ``The country round Steyr,'' he wrote, ``is unimaginably lovely.''
In Steyr he stayed at the home of Sylvester Paumgartner, the manager of a local mine. A keen amateur cellist, Paumgartner often entertained in a music room on the second floor of his house. It was he who commissioned Schubert to write the Trout Quintet, stipulating that it should have the same instrumentation as Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Quintet in E flat major, Op.87 (piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass), and that it include a variation movement on Schubert's song of two years before, Die Forelle (Trout), D.550.
Schubert began the work in Steyr that summer and completed it back in Vienna in the fall. Its fourth movement (Andantino) contained the requested variations.
After Schubert's death his brother Ferdinand sold the score to the publisher Joseph Czerny, who issued it as Opus 114. On May 21, 1829 an announcement declared, ``This Quintet, having already been performed in several circles at the publisher's instigation, and declared to be a masterpiece by the musical connoisseurs present, we deem it our duty to draw the musical public's attention to this latest work by the unforgettable composer.''
J.A. Westrup calls the Quintet ``entertainment music from first to last, and should be listened to with simple, unsophisticated enjoyment. To drink--even to talk--during a performance would not be blasphemy.''
In his book on Schubert, Alfred Einstein calls the Quintet ``a serenade for chamber ensemble,'' whose opening movement dispenses with a coda. ``The movement simply comes to an end,'' he writes, ``after a well-ordered sequence of pleasant and increasingly richly figured Schubertian ideas. One of these ideas, the last one in the `angular' rhythm, dominates the contrasting section of the following Andante, with its lyrical opening. It has a faint Magyar or Slav ring about it. And the Finale practically dispenses with fancy dress, and advertises itslef as all' ongarese [in the Hungarian style]. The first subject dominates the movement...and the melodic ideas and rhythms that compete with it are taken from the first movement (the `Trout' Quintet is a very homogeneous work). But Schubert is at his most Schubertian in the concise and stormy Scherzo and Trio, in its contrast between rhythmic emphasis and lyricism.''
The fourth movement is a set of six variations on the opening of the song Die Forelle: ``In a bright stream the capricious trout darted along like an arrow.'' The first three variations are simple melodic embellishments by first piano, then viola and cello, and finally double bass. The next two variations considerably alter the original melody and the final variation presents a grand summing up of all that has come before.