The Koppel series from
Dacapo has been a most heartening one,
either restoring to the catalogues works
that have been absent for some time
or giving us disc premieres. Equally
worthy of note has been the restoration
of Koppel’s own performances on Danacord.
In this respect adherents and collectors
will know, as the booklet reminds us,
that Koppel made two recordings of his
Piano Quintet, the first an LP with
his eponymous group in 1956 and again
nearly twenty five years later, this
time with the Danish Quartet.
This is the major work
here, a big twenty-eight minute and
three movement quintet set securely
in "the tradition" which in
Koppel’s case usually veers toward Bartók,
Stravinsky and Nielsen but here the
axis is definitely and surprisingly
- for me at least - Brahms and Bartók.
It’s the teaky sonority
that proclaims its Brahmsian inheritance
and the strong unison passages gather
weight and power. There’s nothing especially
backward looking about it otherwise
– it was written in 1953 – though its
flirtation with folkloric episodes gives
it a distinctively Danish cast in that
respect. Koppel manages to balance his
heftier sonority with these little escapee
moments where episodes are deftly and
lightly sprung. The slow central movement
is the heart. A passacgalia tread witnesses
a curiously compelling and creative
division between the strings’s gravity
and the piano’s rather dutiful detachment.
The finale brings out the full quotient
of Koppel’s absorption of Bartókian
models but listen out for the rather
nocturnal B section, which has a rather
withdrawn intensity and is marvellously
scored.
The Piano Quartet is
a much later work. It was completed
when Koppel was nearing eighty and is
compact, lasting eleven minutes, and
cast in one movement with five clear
sections. Tonal and with elements that
strike the ear as syncopated the most
compelling stretch is the rapt slow
section. Here he thins the ensemble
to post-Nielsen essentials before launching
a stalking bass figure for the piano
to signal the abruptly satisfying end.
The most aloof and
difficult of this triptych is the Nine
Variations. Written in the turbulent
sixties – 1969 to be precise – this
is the most outspokenly modernist and
uneasy work of Koppel’s that I’ve yet
encountered. It’s written for a conventional
piano trio but the sonorities are uneasy
and the atonal elements are deliberately
uninviting. As to whether Koppel felt
impelled to write such a work, given
the prevailing orthodoxies of the day,
is a moot point – though a persuasive
one I think – but the result has a certain
chilly and academic distance.
The performance of
this and the companion works are all
one could ask for. They’re sensitive
when necessary and suitably rich toned
in the quintet. As ever the series has
been splendidly annotated and equally
well recorded. Koppel’s legacy is in
safe hands with Dacapo.
Jonathan Woolf
