This is an enterprising release containing a work each from
close German contemporaries Walter Braunfels and Richard Strauss.
The fortunes of each composer took very different paths. Up
to 1933 Braunfels’ career had progressed extremely well
especially with the success of his opera Die Vögel
(The Birds) premièred in 1920 in Munich. This
was followed by his being dismissed from his official roles
and withdrawing from public life, He was half Jewish and the
rise of the Nazi party in Germany scuppered any chances he had
of making further progress in music together with the fear of
his life being in peril. His music is all but forgotten today
whereas the music of the older Richard Strauss didn’t
really suffer under Nazi rule and has flourished internationally
ever since.
The first work Braunfels’s String Quintet, Op.
63, composed in 1944/45 in the midst of the terrible war years.
It was initially conceived as a quartet before a second cello
was added in the manner of the famous Schubert Quintet in
C major. Cast in four movements it is a substantial work
lasting almost 40 minutes. Squally music marks the lengthy opening
Allegro with a distinct undercurrent of dark agitation.
The intensity tightens and the weight increases as the music
becomes ever more melancholy. An atmosphere of cheerless desolation
suffuses the Adagio - maybe a representation of war-time
destruction and emotional pain. Rather disjointed and irregular
in rhythm the Scherzo speaks of bewilderment and anxiety.
The Finale, Rondo feels like a sardonic country
dance; unruly and often bitter.
Metamorphosen,a study for 23 solo strings with
its compositional date of 1944/45. is contemporaneous with the
BraunfelsQuintet.One of Strauss’s most deeply
felt works it could be described as a personal outpouring reflecting
the terrors of the world war. Here the arrangement for seven
strings was prepared by Rudolf Leopold. The score is fundamentally
a large-scale lament - an Adagio with a contrasting central
section marked Agitato. Bleak and despondent this wretchedly
melancholic music feels like a depiction of a world in ruins
with meagre shafts of light shining through the anguish. Gringolt
and his players bring a cool, steely and achingly intense beauty
to their interpretation.
The Zurich-based Gringolts Quartet was founded in 2008 at Schloss
Elmau following connections made at the International Musicians
Seminar in Prussia Cove, England.
These two fascinating works are well worth getting to know:
one obscure from Braunfels and the other by Strauss in an unfamiliar
guise. These are deeply felt and impeccably prepared performances
rendered in excellent sound: cool, clear and well balanced.
Michael Cookson
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Gringolts Quartet (Ilya Gringolts (violin); Anahit Kurtikyan (violin);
Silvia Simionescu (viola); Claudius Herrmann (cello)); David Geringas
(cello); Ryszard Groblewski (viola) (Metamorphosen); Dariusz
Mizera (double bass) (Metamorphosen) 