BEETHOVEN SCHUBERT. Wiener Oktett. Septet in E flat major, Op. 20 String Quintet in C major, Op. 29 Sextet in E flat major, Op.

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1 Eloq uence BEETHOVEN Septet in E flat major, Op. 20 String Quintet in C major, Op. 29 Sextet in E flat major, Op. 81b SCHUBERT Octet in F major, D.803 Wiener Oktett

2 CD LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN ( ) Septet in E flat major, Op RECORDING 1 I Adagio Allegro con brio II Adagio cantabile III Tempo di Menuetto IV Tema con variazioni (Andante) V Scherzo (Allegro molto e vivace) VI Andante con moto alla Marcia Presto 7 02 Willi Boskovsky, violin Günther Breitenbach Philipp Matheis, violas Nikolaus Hübner, cello Johann Krump, double bass Josef Veleba, Otto Nitsch, horns String Quintet in C major, Op I Allegro moderato II Adagio molto espressivo III Scherzo e trio (Allegro) IV Presto 9 17 Anton Fietz, Wilhelm Hübner, violins Günther Breitenbach Philipp Matheis, violas Ferenc Mihály, cello

3 CD FRANZ SCHUBERT ( ) Octet in F major, D RECORDING 1 I Adagio Allegro II Adagio III Allegro vivace IV Thema. Andante Variations I-VII V Menuetto VI Andante molto Allegro 8 24 Willi Boskovsky, Philipp Matheis, violins Günther Breitenbach, viola Nikolaus Hübner, cello Johann Krump, double bass Josef Veleba, horn Rudolf Hanzl, bassoon LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN ( ) Sextet in E flat major, Op. 81b 7 I Allegro con brio II Adagio III Rondo (Allegro) 5 39 Anton Fietz, Wilhelm Hübner, violins Günther Breitenbach, viola Ferenc Mihály, cello Wolfgang Tomböck, Volker Altmann, horns Wiener Oktett Total timing: The image of Beethoven that has come down to us has been greatly coloured by the stern, furrowed-browed, almost scowling portraits of the mature composer. The man who wrote the despairing Heiligenstadt Testament and produced the Third, Fifth and Seventh Symphonies and the visionary music of the late period had to be given a heroic look, as the incarnation of the Great Artist. But the portrait that Beethoven himself liked, and kept on the wall of his apartment, was the earlier of the two by Joseph Willibrord Mähler, depicting a young man of quite an equable temperament. There is some steel in the steady gaze, certainly, but one can easily imagine this Beethoven writing some genial works. As indeed he did and none more genial than the three early pieces recorded here. Of course, being Beethoven, he sometimes took a contrary attitude to his more popular productions. When he was waiting for his Septet to be printed, he told the Leipzig publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister: Do send my Septet into the world a little more quickly, because the rabble is waiting for it. But its runaway success irked him and he was extremely miffed to be told that it was his most popular work in England. When he wrote the Septet in 1799, Beethoven had a fair amount of chamber music under his belt, including the Sextet presented here. We do not know what led him to the scoring he chose: a quartet of violin, viola, cello and double bass, plus a trio of mellow wind instruments: clarinet, bassoon and horn. By opting for the title Septet and including a cello not needed in most of Mozart s divertimenti, intended for outdoor use Beethoven signalled that he was bringing the divertimento into the salon. His sole concessions to the template established by Mozart were to adopt six movements and to use a double-bass for the only time in his chamber music. A slow introduction that creates a real sense of expectancy is followed by an allegro in sonata form; an adagio; a minuet and trio; a set of variations; a scherzo and trio in place of Mozart s second minuet and trio; and a presto finale in popular style with a march-like slow introduction. The catchy minuet theme was lifted from the G major Piano Sonata, Op. 49 No. 2, which he probably did not intend to publish at that stage. The Septet was performed on 2 April 1800 in a benefit concert at the Burgtheater in Vienna; Ignaz Schuppanzigh played the violin and the First Symphony was premièred the same evening. Beethoven knew he had a winner. This Septet has been very popular, he wrote to Hoffmeister. For its more frequent use one could arrange the three wind instruments parts [...] for

4 another violin, viola and violoncello. In a later letter he suggested the work could be arranged for the pianoforte also, with a view to its wider distribution and to our greater profit. Finally published in 1802, with a dedication to Empress Maria Theresia, the Septet started a trend, spawning more arrangements than even its composer had foreseen and many imitations, although the best of these, as we shall see, was written by special request. For the roots of the entertaining Sextet in E flat for two horns and string quartet, we must go back to Beethoven s birth in Bonn, at lodgings in the Bonngasse. One of the family s near neighbours was the horn virtuoso Nikolaus Simrock, who played in the Elector s orchestra and so was a colleague as well as a friend of Beethoven s father. As a child Beethoven learnt the horn with Simrock and clearly was an attentive pupil, as the horn writing in the Sextet probably composed in 1795 is superbly tailored to the natural instruments of the day (in 1800 Beethoven turned out an equally assured Sonata for horn and piano). Was Simrock the intended first horn? When the Sextet was eventually issued to the public in 1811, alongside the Lebewohl (or Les Adieux ) Piano Sonata and with the improbably high opus number 81b, Simrock was the publisher. It is logical that he hung on to his copy of the work all those years, waiting for the chance to make use of it, as there is no evidence that Beethoven approved the publication. Rather than try to merge his very different types of instrument, Beethoven sets them off against each other all the way through. The jolly theme heard at the start has things all to itself for some time, before the first horn introduces the second subject. Considerable virtuosity is demanded from the horns, especially the first player. The Adagio is very beautiful but quite brief; and in the cheerful finale the horns (the second playing before the first) present the main material. Towards the end the second horn has to play very low, supported by the cello. Another genial creation by Beethoven is his only original full-length String Quintet, Op. 29 (there are also some arrangements, as well as the late Fugue, Op. 137). Like Mozart, Beethoven adds a viola to the basic string quartet, although he does not make such good use of the threeagainst-two, two-against-three potential of this scoring. Dating from 1801 and commissioned by Count Fries, the C major Quintet is a rather lonely staging post between the Op. 18 and Op. 59 Quartets and is unfairly neglected by comparison. The warmth of viola tone is evident in the flowing first theme, which starts in the The original Wiener Oktett PHOTO: TULLY POTTER COLLECTION

5 home key but modulates almost at once before returning, and the second subject is in A major and minor, which would have startled performers at the time; only towards the end does this movement become at all forceful. The Adagio, which Beethoven wants played with great expression, also begins with a sunny theme but wanders through all sorts of interesting motifs before a very brief, choppier central section gives way to a varied repetition of the opening. The lilting Scherzo with its skittish Trio is an absolute delight. Then comes one of Beethoven s most surprising finales, opening in dramatic fashion with tremolos for most of the instruments and scale passages for the first violin. Although the marking is Presto, the effect is to impede forward motion and heighten tension. After quite a lot of these mock-heroics, spiced with modulations and cross-rhythms, suddenly Beethoven introduces a slow minuet-style passage in A major, harking back to the key contrasts in the first movement. The heroic posturings return, then there is another minuet interlude, and finally the heroic motifs win out. This movement led to the Quintet being known as The Storm. It took a quarter of a century for Beethoven s Septet to find its ideal twin. Early in 1824 Count Ferdinand Troyer, chief steward to Beethoven s former pupil Archduke Rudolf and himself a clarinettist and composer, asked Franz Schubert for a piece exactly the same as Beethoven s Septet. Schubert obliged, although he added a second violin to the scoring to create a richer sound and made his Octet longer if all repeats are played, it lasts more than an hour. The charming work received its first performance at Troyer s home in the spring of 1824 and on Easter Monday 1827 it was played in public, at Schuppanzigh s last Viennese subscription concert of the season. To cap the coincidence of its being performed by the distinguished musician who had christened its model, it shared the program with music by Beethoven (though not the Septet). Its length was too much for its first publisher in 1853 and the fourth and fifth movements were omitted, to be restored only when a complete Schubert edition was brought out at the end of that century. Since then it has often been performed in tandem with the Septet, not least by the ensemble featured in these recordings. The Wiener Oktett (Vienna Octet), based on the instrumentation of the Schubert Octet but always willing to invite guest artists, as in the Beethoven Quintet and Sextet, was founded in 1947 by the Boskovsky brothers. Willi Boskovsky ( ) was a concertmaster of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and its concert wing the Vienna Philharmonic; and in 1951 he became first concertmaster. One of the most distinctive violinists to emerge from Vienna, he was the embodiment of the Viennese style for more than three decades. Younger brother Alfred was a superb clarinettist who had studied the violin as a boy; and their colleagues in the Octet were hand-picked: Philipp Matheis (second violin), Günther Breitenbach (viola), Nikolaus Hübner (cello), Johann Krump (double-bass), Josef Veleba (horn) and Rudolf Hanzl (bassoon). All were from the Philharmonic except the violist and cellist, who were from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the city s main concert ensemble (Breitenbach joined the Philharmonic in 1952). The Vienna Octet was soon travelling abroad and in 1948 it became the first of many Viennese ensembles to record for Decca, initiating a quarter of a century of collaboration with the English company s engineering and production team. The advent of stereo saw the group re-record its core repertoire. In 1959 Willi Boskovsky, who had turned 50 and was diversifying into conducting, left the group, and for the last phase of the Octet s career it was led by Anton Fietz, like Boskovsky a legendary Viennese violinist but with his own characteristic, more clean-cut style. Born into a musical family in Vienna in 1926, as a five-year-old he received a violin for Christmas, had lessons from his father and then studied with Ernst Morawec at the State Academy of Music ( ). In 1945 he became first concertmaster of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. After taking second prize in the violin section of the 1946 international competition in Geneva, he continued to play in war-torn Vienna for a time but then made his career largely in Switzerland. By 1948 he was concertmaster of the Radio-Orchester Beromünster and in 1953 he became leader of the Zürich Tonhalle Orchestra and its Quartet, staying until 1991 and also teaching at the Zürich Conservatoire. The original members of the Vienna Octet recorded their interpretations of the Beethoven Septet and Schubert Octet three times, these versions being the final ones (there is also a live performance of the Octet from 1958). The Septet, one of the last recordings Willi Boskovsky made with the group, has always held a special place in collectors affections. By the time the other Beethoven works were taped, only three founders remained and one, Alfred Boskovsky, was not required on those occasions. The founding horn player Josef Veleba ( ) had been a pupil of the legendary Vienna

6 Philharmonic principals Karl Stiegler and Gottfried von Freiberg; and the remarkable artists who played in the Beethoven Sextet had both been trained by Freiberg. Wolfgang Tomböck, born at Mödling in 1932, came to the Philharmonic in 1962 via the Stadttheater Baden, the Vienna Volksoper and the Vienna State Opera. His son Wolfgang Jnr plays horn in the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Volker Altmann, born at Jena, Germany, in 1943, began his career in Viennese theatres in 1960, graduating to the State Opera in 1964 and the Philharmonic in The command of the tricky but uniquely exciting Viennese F-horn shown by these two men has made this recording a collector s item for horn players the world over. Tully Potter Recording producers: Erik Smith (Beethoven: Septet; Schubert: Octet); James Mallinson (Beethoven: Sextet; Quintet) Recording engineers: Gordon Parry (Beethoven: Septet); Tryggvi Tryggvason (Beethoven: Sextet, Quintet); James Brown (Schubert: Octet) Recording location: Sofiensaal, Vienna, Austria, March 1958 (Schubert: Octet), March 1959 (Beethoven: Septet), October 1969 (Beethoven: Sextet, Quintet) Eloquence series manager: Cyrus Meher-Homji Art direction: Chilu Tong Booklet editor: Bruce Raggatt BEETHOVEN: Sextet; Septet (rec.1959); Piano Quintet SCHUBERT: Octet (rec.1957) (2CD) DVOŘÁK: Sextet Op. 48 String Quintets Opp. 77 & 97 String Quartet Op. 96 American * Bagatelles Op.47 Vienna Philharmonia Quintet *Janáček Quartet (2CD) (2CD) MOZART: Clarinet Quintet (rec.1963) Clarinet Trio; Cassation; Piano Quintet BEETHOVEN: Piano Quintet MICHAEL HAYDN: Divertimento in G major wiener oktett THE DECCA LEGACY MENDELSSOHN: Octet (rec.1953); SCHUBERT: Piano Quintet Trout (rec.1950) SCHUBERT: Octet (rec.1953) SPOHR: Piano Quintet Double Quartet; Octet (rec.1959); Nonet (rec.1966) (2CD) (2CD) MOZART: Divertimenti Nos. 7, 10 (rec.1963), 15 (rec.1962), 17 (rec.1961), KV136; March in D, K (2CD) (2CD) Romantic Chamber Music MENDELSSOHN: Sextet. BERWALD: Septet KREUTZER: Grand Septet Op. 62 (rec.1968). BORODIN: Piano Quintet RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Piano Quintet Recording dates are indicated where the Wiener Oktett made multiple recordings of a given work. MOZART FROM A GOLDEN AGE Divertimenti Nos. 1 (rec.1957), 10 (rec.1952), 15 (rec.1955), 17 (rec.1950) BRAHMS: Clarinet Quintet (rec.1953) MOZART: Clarinet Quintet (rec.1954) BAERMANN: Adagio 20th-century Chamber Music BRITTEN: Sinfonietta HINDEMITH: Octet POOT: Octet. BADINGS: Octet WELLESZ: Octet (2CD) (2CD)

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