Max Reger was a prolific loner whose career seemed to vacillate
readily between having success as a professor, being misunderstood
as a member of the avant-garde, and being derided for his old-fashioned
devotion to tonality and traditional structural forms. What is
left to us is a large body of work, some of which is over-ripe
and difficult to digest. Yet for all of his excursions into then
uncharted chromatic harmonies, fiendishly difficult keyboard music
written for himself to play and structural architecture often
stretched to the breaking point, we still have a composer of often
profound depth and surprising originality.
A
virtuoso pianist with an active performing career, Reger had
a great love for chamber music, much of which was composed
for strings and piano with himself as the soloist of choice.
His two piano quartets are influenced by the work of Johannes
Brahms, a composer whom Reger played and admired. This second
quartet is full of storms, and yet its overall demeanor is
carefully shaded in melancholy so as to give it a rather sweet
and autumnal feeling. The opening allegro is full of passionate
outbursts with some very thick textures and heavy handed piano
writing. The second movement vivace is much more playful and
a welcome relief from the thunderstorm of the first movement.
There follows a graceful and tender largo and a spirited allegro
ending.
It
would be very easy to let this music derail emotionally, as
it is just close enough to the edge of excess to get syrupy
in the wrong hands. The Aperos however give us a balanced
and nuanced performance with romantic gush given just the
right amount of restraint to keep us listening. Any more passion
would be over the top, any less would result in too academic
a reading. The thick texture of the piano writing is kept
in check by Frank-Immo Zichner, and his string playing colleagues
have ample power to keep up with what is at times some overly
dense keyboard writing.
Lovely
as the quartet may be, the real gem of this disc is the elegant
String Trio in d minor, Op. 141b, which was reconstituted
from an earlier serenade for flute. From a warm and glowing
opening movement, we move to an elegant theme and variations,
quite touching in its simple beauty. The work is rounded off
by a sprightly little vivace. One really could not ask for
a finer performance. The sound is warm and balanced and themes
sing like arias in a Bellini opera.
The
stretching of tonality and the frequent chromatic shifts in
harmony might be a turn off to some listeners, but for anyone
who enjoys late romantic music, this disc is a winner. It
left me anxious to check out its companion disc (Naxos 8.570785) to see what Reger’s earlier
outings in the same two instrumental line-ups might sound
like.
Kevin
Sutton
