Ferdinand Ries Franz Limmer

Nepomuk Fe rdinand Ries Fortepiano Fr a n z Limmer OuintetW Nepomuk Fe rdinand Ries Fortepiano Fr a n z Limmer OWuintet R IKO F UKUDA · fortepiano F RANC P OLMAN · violin E LISABETH S MALT · viola JAN I NSINGER · violoncello P IETER S MITHUIJSEN · double bass Ferdinand Ries (1784 Bonn – 1838 Frankfurt) Ferdinand Ries spent his youth in his native town Bonn, where Beethoven was to make his mark and where the Rombergs were engaged in the orchestra. When the French revolutionary army marched on the town, many people fled and the orchestra was disbanded. But the Ries family had to stay by order of the Kurfürsten, which proved to be beneficial to the musical education of Ferdinand and his brother. Ferdinand received his first musical training from his father, after which he studied the cello with Bernhard Romberg. He wrote his first compositions at the age of nine. Ries went to Arnsberg to study the organ and the violin and at the age of fifteen he made piano excerpts of Haydn’s oratorios (Die Schöpfung,Die Jahreszeiten) and of Mozart’s Requiem, which were printed by Simrock in Bonn. In 1801 Ferdinand Ries went to Munich, and subsequently left for Vienna with a letter of reference from his father in order to pursue his studies under Beethoven. Beethoven took him on as a piano pupil; he had to go to Albrechtsberger to study counterpoint. Ries was greatly inspired by Beethoven and would venerate him for the rest of his life. He dedicated his Opus 1 to him: ‘si je puis justifier un jour aux yeux du public le double et glorieux titre d’élève unique et d’ami d’un si grand maître’ (‘hoping that, in the eyes of the public, one day I will be worthy of the double and glorious title of special pupil and friend of so great a master’). Later he wrote a book about the man and his work, the Biographischen Skizzen über Ludwig van Beethoven. From 1805 on, Ries stayed in Paris, Kassel, Hamburg and Copenhagen, and worked with considerable success as a composer and pianist. After several concerts in Russia (Kiev, Riga, Reval (Tallinn) and other towns), where he performed together with his former teacher Bernhard Romberg, concerts were also planned in Moscow. But due to Napoleon’s campaign and his incursion into the burning Russian capital, Ries had to change his plans and traveled to London. It was the beginning of a ten-year period in England. Ries returned to Bonn and Godesberg, where, amongst other works, he wrote his opera Die Räuberbraut. By that time, Ferdinand Ries was a well- respected and celebrated piano virtuoso and composer. In 1831 and 1832, he went on concert tours to London, Dublin, and Italy. Ignaz Franz Castelli regu- larly wrote about the concerts of the famous piano virtuoso in his Viennese review, the Allgemeine Musikalische Anzeiger. In 1834, Ries was put in charge of the Niederrhein music festival, where he also received great acclaim as a conductor and which landed him the post of director of the municipal orchestra and the singing academy in Aachen. Castelli reported on the subject: ‘... Mr. Ferdinand Ries has arrived in Aachen, where he has once more – and a more worthy person is not to be found – been entrusted with the overall direction of this year’s Whitsuntide music festival.’ In 1836, Ries returned to Frankfurt, the town which he regarded as his second home. In 1837, he was again given the directorship of the Niederrhein music festival in Aachen, for which he composed the oratorio Die Könige in Israel. The oratorio, after a libretto by Dr. Wilhelm Smets, was a great success. (Some years later, the same text was put to music by Wilhelm Franz Speer, who had succeeded Franz Limmer as chapel director at the cathedral of Timisoara.) Ries wrote his oratorio Der Sieg des Glaubens shortly thereafter. Ferdinand Ries died on 13 January 1838 in Frankfurt at the age of fifty-four. In spite of his tireless work as pianist and composer, he never achieved the same popularity as his contemporaries Spohr or Weber. Ries’s originality lies in his incorporating early romantic elements in his work and in par- tially distancing himself from classicism. He was especially accomplished in skillful piano arrangements of European folk tunes, which found wide acclaim: Air russe, Air irlandois, Thème hongrois,Air moldavien,Air autrichien, etc. In his chamber music, the piano dominates, noticeably in the Quintet, op. 74. According to his contemporaries, he invented a new musical sign: a long line within one or more bars representing a slackening of the tempo. Ries allegedly first used this sign in the score of his piano concerto Salut au Rhin. The Quintet, op. 74, for violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano was published in London in 1817. The first movement (Grave) begins with a lamento, in which the piano plays a recitative, with melodic elements that are closely related to the Hungarian folk music. During his career as a composer, Ries repeatedly turned to Hungarian melodies. In the Allegro con brio that follows, one bravura piano passage follows the other, while the strings only play a subordinate role. In this movement the piano virtuoso Ries, whose talent won him international admiration, manifests himself. The Larghetto begins with a solo for cello, accompanied only by the piano, after which the piano takes up the theme in a varied form. Several cadenza- like passages interrupt the music and lead eventually into the third movement, the Rondo. After an allegro with a brilliant piano part, there is a calm interlude that effectively evokes a medieval atmosphere. Its melody is alternately performed by the strings playing pizzicato and by the piano. The transition back to the original theme of the rondo leads through technically demanding passages that run into the thunderous finale. Franz Limmer (1808 Vienna – 1857 Timisoara/Temeswar) Already at an early stage Limmer’s musical talent was recognized. His parents enrolled him at the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied, among other sub- jects, the cello and the clarinet. Following his final exams, along with his cer- tificate, he received a silver medal with the portrait of Mozart. Subsequently, he studied harmony, composition and orchestration, his teacher being none other than the highly esteemed Viennese composer and pedagogue Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried (1776-1841). An early testimony of Limmer’s activity as a composer is to be found in a collection of 40 new waltzes for piano, edited in 1824 by the Weiglschen Verlag. Next to short compositions by Beethoven, Josef Böhm, Josef and Carl Czerny, Hellmesberger, and Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried, we also find a waltz by ‘J.F. Limmer.’The fact that Limmer’s name appeared in this collection says a lot about the talent of the then only sixteen-year-old composer. The Waltz in F major displays in its 16 bars many harmonic turns and chromaticisms, as in a bold and successful attempt to incorporate everything he had learned from Seyfried. Another early work was a Mass in D major, written when Limmer was seventeen. This was premiered in the Augustinerkirche in Vienna, and the reviews praised the composer as a ‘bright meteor in the musical sky.’ Unfortunately, the score has never been traced. However, this work may in fact have been the Missa Solemnis no. 1 in C major, which was still being performed in the cathedral of Timisoara after Limmer’s death, as we know from a newspa- per announcement from 1872. In 1830 Ignaz Franz Castelli reviewed Limmer’s String Quartet op. 10 in his Allgemeinen Musikalischen Anzeiger. He was delighted by the work. But Castelli also warned: ‘[the work] deserves to be studied and practiced first in order to be fully understood!’ Only one year later, Limmer’s Quartet for four cellos was published.This work too went down well with the critics, as did the Trio for three cellos, which appeared later that same year. The director of the German theatre in Timisoara at the time, Theodor Müller, took notice of the young composer from Vienna and offered him a position as conductor in 1834. Limmer accepted and came to Timisoara, which became his second home. At the time, this ‘small Vienna’ in southeastern Europe was flourishing economically and culturally.The most famous virtuosos performed before an enthusiastic, music- loving crowd, Franz Liszt and Johann Strauss among them. Each year, up to fifteen operas were performed in the municipal theatre, including Beethoven’s Fidelio and Verdi’s operas. Limmer composed one opera: Die Alpenhütte, after a libretto by his director Alexander Schmidt. The score has not yet been recov- ered, and only an arrangement of the overture for piano duet by Ludwig von Gyika remains. Among other works from the same period are a sonata for piano and violin in G minor, and an overture with the title Jubel-Ouvertüre. In 1835, Franz Limmer was appointed choirmaster of the cathedral of Timisoara. For this church he wrote his best-known work: the Offertorium in A (Justus ut palma florebit) op. 14, for soprano and violin solo, organ, and orchestra. The work was performed in many churches throughout the Austrian- Hungarian Empire. Limmer’s other pieces of church music, such as Veni sancte spiritus, Ecce sacerdos magnus, as well as a song to the Virgin Mary, were still being performed in the Timisoara region during the first half of the twentieth cen- tury.It was not until a few years ago that Limmer’s largest liturgical works were rediscovered: the Requiem in B flat major (1842) and the Vesper-Hymnen.

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