In this 1976 recording, the late Russian pianist Emil Gilels (1916-1985) is joined by members of the Amadeus Quartet (Norbert Brainin, violin; Peter Schidlof, viola; Martin Lovett, cello; and Rainer Zepperitz, double bass) in a performance of Schubert’s Trout quintet (“Forellenquintett”). This recording is from a cassette I purchased in the mid-70s, issued on the Deutsche Grammophon label, serial number 3300 646. In order to strengthen viewer confidence that the recording they are listening to is in fact the one it is claimed to be, I have created this video exclusively with images of the cassette and cassette cover and notes.
Franz Schubert (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer. He was an extremely prolific composer, so that when he died at age thirty-one he had composed over six hundred secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of chamber and piano music.
Publication of Schubert’s compositions started during his lifetime, by opus number. After the composer’s death, posthumous opus numbers continued to be assigned to new publications of his work until 1867 (Op. Post. 173).
There are two attempts to publish everything Schubert has composed in a single edition:
From 1884 to 1897 Breitkopf & Härtel published twenty-two series of Franz Schubert’s Werke: Kritisch durchgesehene Gesammtausgabe, known as the “Alte Gesamt-Ausgabe” (AGA, the former complete edition). From 1965 Dover Publications started to reprint this edition, and later it was made available at the IMSLP website.
The Neue Schubert-Ausgabe (NSA), also known as the New Schubert Edition (NSE), is published by Bärenreiter (Kassel). It proposes eighty-three volumes, in eight series. Publication of all volumes has been scheduled to conclude in 2016. Plans for this edition began as early as 1963, with the foundation of the International Schubert Society, headquartered at the University of Tübingen, Germany.
Texts of Schubert’s vocal music can be published without the music, for instance his Lieder (songs) at LiederNet
The following constitutes a complete listing of Schubert’s known works. It is ordered ascendingly according to Deutsch numbers, and attempts to reflect the most current information with regards to Schubert’s catalogue. For reasons of space, this list is divided into two articles. The first article lists Schubert’s compositions from Deutsch entries D 1 – D 500 (all are dated works). The second article lists Schubert’s compositions from Deutsch entries D 501 – D 965B (also dated works), as well as D 966 – D 998 (undated works). The second article also includes the Appendix (Anhang) to the Deutsch catalogue (works listed as “D Anh.”) and a list of works that have yet to receive a Deutsch number (listed as “D deest”). For the second article, see List of compositions by Franz Schubert (D 501–D 998). ******************************************************************************
Amadeus Quartet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Amadeus Quartet
left to right: Martin Lovett, Norbert Brainin, Siegmund Nissel, Peter Schidlof
The Amadeus Quartet was a world famous string quartet founded in 1947 and disbanded in 1987, remarkable for having retained its founding members throughout its long history.
Because of their Jewish origin, the violinists Norbert Brainin (12 March 1923 – 10 April 2005), Siegmund Nissel (3 January 1922 – 21 May 2008) and the viola player Peter Schidlof (9 July 1922 – 16 August 1987) (later violist) were driven out of Vienna after Hitler’s Anschluss of 1938. Brainin and Schidlof met in a British internment camp on the Isle of Man; many Jewish refugees had the misfortune of being confined by the British as “enemy aliens” upon seeking refuge in the UK. Brainin was released after a few months, but Schidlof remained in the camp, where he met Nissel. Finally Schidlof and Nissel were released, and the three of them were able to study with violin teacher Max Rostal, who taught them free of charge. It was through Rostal that they met cellist Martin Lovett, and in 1947 they formed the Brainin Quartet, which was renamed the Amadeus Quartet in 1948.
The group gave its first performance as the Amadeus Quartet at the Wigmore Hall in London on 10 January 1948, underwritten by British composer and conductor Imogen Holst.[1] On 25 January 1983 the Quartet gave a 35th anniversary concert in the same concert hall with a programme which included Beethoven’s String Quartet in C major, op.59 no. 3 (3rd Rasumovsky Quartet). Touring extensively, the Amadeus performed throughout Europe, Canada, the United States, Japan, and South America. Noted for its smooth, sophisticated style, its seamless ensemble playing, and its sensitive interpretation, the quartet made some 200 recordings, among them the complete quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. For concerts as well as recordings of string quintets (Mozart, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner) and string sextets (Brahms) they regularly invited Cecil Aronowitz as second viola and William Pleeth as second cello. Though they emphasized a standard Classical and Romantic repertory, they also performed works by such 20th-century composers as Béla Bartók and Benjamin Britten who wrote his third quartet expressly for them.
The Amadeus was one of the most celebrated quartets of the 20th century, and its members were awarded numerous honors, including:
The Austrian Cross of Honour for Arts and Sciences.
The quartet disbanded in 1987 upon the death of the violist Peter Schidlof, who was regarded as irreplaceable by the surviving members. Brainin died on 10 April 2005[2] and Nissel on 21 May 2008.[1] Only Lovett survived presently.
In this 1969 recording, Christoph Eschenbach and members of the Amadeus Quartet — Norbert Brainin, violin; Peter Schidlof, viola; and Martin Lovett, cello — perform the Beethoven Piano quartet in C major, WoO 36 No. 3. I recorded this video from a cassette I purchased back in the early 1970s, issued on the Deutsche Grammophon label (serial number 3335 174-10).
Allegro vivace (0:08) Adagio con espressione (6:10) Rondo: Allegro (12:57)
From David Hertzberg: “In this 1970 recording, Christoph Eschenbach and members of the Amadeus Quartet — Norbert Brainin, violin; Peter Schidlof, viola; and Martin Lovett, cello — perform the Beethoven Piano quartet in E flat major, WoO 36, No. 1. I recorded this video from a cassette I purchased back in the early 1970s, issued on the Deutsche Grammophon label (serial number 3335 174-10).
A rare form of piano quartets consist of two pianos with two players at each piano. This type of ensemble is informally referred to as “8 hand piano”, or “2 piano 8 hands”. 8 hand piano was popular in the late 19th century before the advent of recordings as it was a mechanism to reproduce and study symphonic works. Music lovers could hear the major symphonic works all in the convenience of a parlour or music hall that had two pianos and four pianists. Many of the popular works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák were transcribed for two piano eight hands. The majority of 8 hand piano music consist of transcriptions, or arrangements.
Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, Beethoven displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and Christian Gottlob Neefe. During his first 22 years in Bonn, Beethoven intended to study with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and befriended Joseph Haydn. Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792 and began studying with Haydn, quickly gaining a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. He lived in Vienna until his death. In about 1800 his hearing began to deteriorate, and by the last decade of his life he was almost totally deaf.
The three piano quartets of WoO 36, written when the composer was 15, are among the most substantial of Beethoven‘s earliest compositions. They are so early, in fact, that the autograph score calls for “clavecin” instead of piano. The same manuscript gives “basso” instead of cello, with the pieces ordered C major, E flat major, and D major. The pieces were not printed until 1828 in Vienna, in the order E flat, D, and C. Material from the C major Trio was subsequently used in the Piano Sonatas, Op. 2, Nos. 1 and 3. These are the only works Beethoven composed for this ensemble, which he abandoned for the piano trio after moving to Vienna.
When he was a boy, Beethoven was musically influenced primarily by Christian Gottlob Neefe(1748-98), a composer and one of Beethoven‘s first music teachers, Abbé Franz Sterkel(1750-1817), one of the foremost pianists in Europe, and Mozart. Of these influences, Neefe’s was the most immediate and Mozart‘s the most profound. Each of the three quartets of WoO 36 draws on a specific violin sonata by Mozart, from the set published in 1781. The first ofBeethoven‘s quartets is modeled on Mozart‘s K. 379/373a, the second on K. 380/374f, and the third on K. 296. All three quartets of WoO 36 are in three movements.
The E flat major quartet is unusual in that its slow introductory movement jumps without pause into an Allegro con spirito in E flat minor. The E flat minor movement, in sonata form, features a tiny development, but contains some adventurous passages in the recapitulation. The final movement is a set of six variations in an ornamental style on a high-Classical-era theme with two eight-measure segments. Each of the segments is repeated, the first moving to the dominant and the second returning to the tonic. Beethoven follows this pattern in all of the variations, the fifth of which is in E flat minor. After the variations have run their course, the theme returns, only slightly rearranged, followed by a coda reminiscent of the first variation. Throughout the work, the piano dominates the proceedings.
Beethoven cast the D major quartet in a more traditional format, with a central slow movement enclosed by two fast ones. The opening Allegro is in sonata form and modulates to the dominant. Boasting a much larger development section than that of the E flat quartet, the movement touches on D minor before the recapitulation. The second movement, in F sharp minor, is in two parts and marked Andante con moto. The piano opens the concluding Rondo, a movement of youthful energy dominated by the keyboard part.
The quartet in C major is also in three movements, the second of which is in a relaxed F major. After a very brief development section, Beethoven begins the recapitulation on the subdominant, a procedure Schubert would use in several of his works. The second movement features some of the most compelling melodic passages of Beethoven‘s youth, although his tendency to double most of these robs them of some of their delicacy. Nearly all of the thematic material in the closing Rondo is concentrated in the piano part.
Despite the degree to which some aspects of the Piano Quartets, WoO 36, look forward to the mature Beethoven, they have little independent life as concert pieces that command interest for more than curiosity value
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CIDSE - TOGETHER FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE (CHANGE FOR THE PLANET -CARE FOR THE PROPLE-ACCESS THIS NEW WEBSITE FROM EUZICASA)
