Reicha_SQs_V1

Anton REICHA (1770-1836) Complete String Quartets -vol.1 in C, op.48 no.1 (c.1802) [32:42] String Quartet in G, op.48 no.2 (c.1802) [31:24] Kreutzer Quartet rec. St John the Baptist, Aldbury, Hertfordshire, England, 6 and 25 February 2013. CLASSICS TOCC0022 [64:15]

Bohemian was born Antonín Rejcha, but soon moved to Germany where he adopted the German version of his name used on this CD. Later, following his naturalisation in France, he assumed the French equivalent Antoine, under which most of his music was published. Reicha was not much of a nationalist, to put it mildly - he soon forsook, even forgot, his native Czech language as he grew fluent in French and German.

In Germany Reicha became a dear friend to one of his exact contemporaries, a fellow called Beethoven, to the extent that they studied each other's work-in-progress. Such is the fickle nature of history, however, that Reicha's name today is barely recognised, despite the fact that he also taught the likes of Berlioz, Liszt, Gounod, Franck and Onslow. At the very best he may be known to some as the composer of a substantial series of comparatively conservative woodwind .

A good example of this cultural neglect can be found - or not, as it were - in the string quartets, of which, according to Toccata, only one has ever been recorded. New Grove's only mention of them is in passing, that "cadentially elided, thematically connected movements shape the String Quartet op.52". Yet given that Reicha was a composer influenced by - and exerting an influence over - Beethoven, creator of arguably the greatest string quartet cycle in history, the immense value of Toccata's project to record all of Reicha's is obvious. Co-annotator Ron Drummond explores Reicha's relationship with Beethoven in his booklet essay, 'Introducing Anton Reicha's String Quartets', which is long and fascinating, even if it does go too far in claiming Reicha's opp.48 and 49 quartets to be "a very explicit response to Beethoven's op.18". Elsewhere he has written: "I am convinced that the absence of Reicha's quartets from the repertoire seriously impoverishes our understanding of the evolution of the string quartet - that's how significant Reicha's quartets are." This time he may well be right.

Drummond claims "at least 37" quartets for Reicha, excluding fragments and pedagogy, substantially more than those listed in New Grove. He makes up the figures with tantalising mention of fourteen new works unearthed at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in 2000. In any case, Drummond helpfully lists all the known quartets, bringing the reader right up to date with scholarship.

The three quartets of op.48 - no.3 should follow on volume 2 - were Reicha's earliest published works in this genre, part of a batch appearing in in or just after 1804. Chronologically they follow Beethoven's op.18 quartet sextet, but in some respects they are more redolent of late Haydn - only with lots of 'wrong' notes and parts, as if old Haydn were still a young prankster. Reicha's highly original experimentation is certainly bold enough to have raised audience eyebrows constantly, whilst remaining 'tasteful' enough not to have sparked off any rioting.

As for the recording project, who better to entrust with this massive cycle than the Kreutzer Quartet, one of the UK's finest? In fact, despite their familiarity with the core Classical-Romantic repertoire, the Kreutzers' true expertise arguably lies in more contemporary, as often as not modernist, repertoire. There are several ensembles that might have been that little bit more persuasive - these proto-Romantic works have quite different stylistic and expressive demands to the quartets of, say, Gloria Coates (review) or Michael Finnissy (Métier MSV 92011). In the C major Quartet there are indeed one or two timing and intonation issues, but in fairness the Kreutzers settle down well for the G major.

Toccata's audio quality is good as usual, albeit rather on the bright side. In his own booklet essay, 'Reicha's Quartets From Where I Sit', Peter Sheppard Skærved is typically informative, although he can sound somewhat highbrow and, like Drummond, does get rather bogged down at times in minutiae. His likening of somewhat highbrow and, like Drummond, does get rather bogged down at times in minutiae. His likening of Reicha's quartets to different sets of Beethoven's, Mozart's and Haydn's results in a blizzard of opus numbers and key names, for example.

Overall this is a decent start - with some room for improvement - to a cycle of quartets that may well be one of the most historically important recorded for many years.

Byzantion Contact at artmusicreviews.co.uk

Comment from a reader I have enjoyed both this and the next volume, and agree with your reviewer on the whole. But I think there is room for a lot of improvement in the interpretation of these quartets as string players get the hang of what Rejcha before his professorship is about. The best Rejcha chamber performances for me on disc so far are those by the Guarneri Trio of the op 101/1-3 trios (SU4057-2). These have a wonderful energy and rhythmic vitality (somewhat like early Beethoven, e.g. the piano and string trios) yet absolutely a different, inspired and individual composer. They make you wonder how much time Rejcha and Beethoven must have spent challenging, arguing, agreeing, disagreeing and intriguing each other. They did send their music to their Leipzig publisher in the same package.

Jonathan Reeve

REICHA String Quartets: in C, op. 48/1; in G, op. 48/2 • Kreutzer Qrt • TOCCATA 0022 (64:16)

Reicha: Complete String Quartets, Vol. 1 Audio CD Toccata

Anton Reicha (1770–1836) is not a composer one normally associates with string quartets. In fact, not one of the over 50 reviews in the Fanfare Archive covering recordings of Reicha’s music headlines a string quartet, and, amazingly, neither Amazon nor ArkivMusic lists a single entry for a Reicha string quartet. Probably that’s because music for winds seems to have been the composer’s forte, and of the trios, quartets, and quintets galore that fill his catalog, most would appear to include one or more wind instruments. But appearances can be deceiving. Looking over the list of Reicha's works more closely, one actually finds quite a few entries for strings alone—i.e., withoutparts for winds; and of those opus numbers for strings only, at least 20 of them are formally and in title string quartets.

The Toccata CD at hand is labeled Volume 1, so I assume that the Kreutzer Quartet is engaged in a project to record Reicha’s complete string quartetoeuvre, and perhaps in chronological order; for the two on this disc are the first in a set of three that bear the lowest opus number (48) and date (1804) in the composer’s list of string quartets. Toccata also stakes a claim of “first recordings” for these two works, a claim that’s apparently justified, since no other recordings of any of Reicha’s string quartets, let alone these two, are to be found.

It doesn’t take much of a leap to establish a connection between Reicha’s quartets and Beethoven’s. The two men were friends, and one has only to look at the publication dates of the two ’ quartets to note how they leapfrog each other.

Group I

Beethoven, op. 18 (6); published 1801.

Reicha, op. 48 (3); op. 49 (3); published 1804 Reicha, op. 48 (3); op. 49 (3); published 1804

Group II

Reicha, op. 52 (1); op. 58 (1); published 1805

Beethoven, op. 59 (3); published 1808

Group III

Beethoven, op. 74 (1); published 1810

Beethoven, op. 95 (1); published 1816

Reicha, op. 90 (6); published 1819

Group IV

Reicha op. 94 (3); op. 95 (3); published 1824

Beethoven, op. 127 (1); published 1826

Beethoven op. 130–132; 135 (4); published 1827

This is surely not to suggest that Reicha’s efforts in the medium approach Beethoven’s in profundity of thought or significance to the history of music, but rather to note that the two composers were very much aware of each other’s contributions.

A truly absorbing Internet article—classical.net/music/comp.lst/articles/reicha/quartets— describes how, beginning in 1997, the author, Ron Drummond, began a quest to track down the parts to Reicha’s 20 published string quartets, then to trace their history and analyze them, and finally, with a group of string- playing friends, to read through them, some perhaps for the first time ever, since there’s no record of them having been performed in Reicha’s lifetime.

But what’s particularly fascinating in Drummond’s analysis is the influence Beethoven’s op. 18 quartets seem to have had on Reicha. As Drummond notes, “Five of the quartets [he’s speaking of Reicha’s earliest opp. 48 and 49 sets] share key signatures with the Beethoven. Three of those occur in the same positions in their respective sets: in both sets, No. 2 is in G, No. 4 is in C minor, and No. 6 is in B♭.”

Actually, Drummond misspeaks in his web article—only four of Reicha’s early quartets share keys with Beethoven’s op. 18 set—but he corrects the mistake and expands further on the matter in his extensive notes to this album. The keys in the published order of Beethoven’s op. 18 quartets are F, G, D, c, A, and B♭. Reicha’s keys are C, G, E♭, c, D, and B♭. Drummond maintains that Reicha devised a sequence in which his six quartets, opp. 48 and 49, would begin in a key not duplicated in any of Beethoven’s op. 18 set, and C Major certainly fits that bill. Moreover, Drummond continues, “Reicha’s fourth shared-key quartet and second unshared-key quartet are swapped vis-à-vis the corresponding Beethoven quartets.”

I’m not sure I follow this, but where the logic really starts to come unglued is when he claims that “Beethoven’s A-Major Quartet and Reicha’s E♭-Major Quartet pay explicit homage, in their respective keys and [italics are Drummond’s] positions, to the corresponding works in Mozart’s six quartets dedicated to Haydn.” Well, it’s true that the fifth numbers in both Beethoven’s published order of his op. 18 set and Mozart’s “Haydn” set are in A Major, and that the third quartet in both Reicha’s opp. 48/49 set and Mozart’s “Haydn” set are in E♭ Major, but so what?

What evidence does Drummond have that this was deliberate and not just coincidental? Does he believe that Beethoven and Reicha conspired together to come up with this correlation? Beethoven: “I’ll write my fifth quartet in A Major.” Reicha: “And I’ll write my third quartet in E♭ Major.” Beethoven: “And that way, 200 years from now, they’ll figure out that we were encoding a secret tribute to Mozart.”

Drummond’s case would never stand up in court, for not only is it based entirely on whim, fancy, and wishful Drummond’s case would never stand up in court, for not only is it based entirely on whim, fancy, and wishful thinking, it withers away in the face of actual facts. His whole idea of shared and unshared keys vis-à-vis same vs. swapped positions, not to mention the whole Mozart homage thing turns into a crock when you take into account that the written order of Beethoven’s op. 18 set was 3, 1, 2, 5, 6, and 4, not the final published order on which Drummond’s argument hinges. If nothing else, this proves that Reicha did not confer with Beethoven on this reciprocity of keys idea during the time that Beethoven was composing his op. 18 quartets; for if there had been some arrangement between the two men to execute such a plan, Reicha’s G-Major Quartet would have been No. 3, not No. 2; his C-Minor Quartet No. 6, not No. 4; and his B♭-Major Quartet No. 5, not No. 6. If Reicha did, indeed, order his opp. 48 and 49 quartets to correspond in some way to the order of Beethoven’s op. 18 quartets, he did so based on their published sequence well after the fact, and Beethoven had no part in it. Moreover, Drummond cannot possibly know that either Beethoven or Reicha was paying homage to Mozart’s “Haydn” quartets by positioning quartet numbers and keys to correspond to Mozart’s quartet numbers and keys. The joke about God telling Moses to come forth, so Moses came fifth, is applicable here, for remember that when Beethoven composed his A-Major Quartet, it came fourth and not fifth.

This isn’t the first time I’ve cautioned against coming up with such invented or imagined patterns. Musical keys and their relationships to each other are essentially mathematical and reciprocal; and given that every piece of music is derived from the same 12 notes (incredible, isn’t it?), it’s very easy to find and impose patterns which are simply the inevitable result of statistical coincidence. In fairly short order, you can find just about any pattern you like in a piece of music, and then use it to advance some theory as to how that piece of music must needs, with the full knowledge and intent of its composer, relate to some other piece of music by another composer. Such relationships may indeed exist; statistically, given only 12 notes and 24 keys, they’re unavoidable. The question is, are they intentional or the result of pure chance? Sounds like a John Cage question.

The more edifying and enlightening part of Drummond’s analysis, I think, is his narrative explaining Reicha’s musical techniques and procedures: “Reicha delighted in creating thematic puzzles. In his use of sudden, unprepared modulations into remote key areas, he expanded on the work of Emanuel Bach. His rhythmic, harmonic, melodic, and textural juxtapositions elicit insights and emotions arising not so much from the material juxtaposed as from the juxtaposition itself. By the careful orchestration of such dislocations, Reicha is able to imply musical effects not explicitly contained in the music; he evokes what is absent from the music by what is present. In the Classical Era, only Beethoven in his final string quartets, written 20 years later, would realize the full potential of such techniques, and thereby transcend them.”

I find Drummond’s last sentence of particular interest, for it reinforces an observation I’ve made in the past about Beethoven’s “music by suggestion,” a technique or process whereby the listener’s ear is led by the mere outline of a phrase or sequence of notes to fill in what’s missing and complete the thought in his mind’s own inner ear. This makes the music both ambiguous and tremendously powerful because it invites the listener to project his own feelings onto it and impart his own interpretation to its meaning. I agree totally with Drummond that Beethoven was the master of this, and that he realized its full potential in his late works, but evidence of it in incipient form already exists quite early on.

As one listens to the two Reicha quartets on this disc, the juxtapositions of which Drummond speaks are quite obvious and might be rationalized as the composer’s strong inclinations towards early Romantic period conceits. But what doesn’t sit quite right with me is the seemingly incongruous disconnect between content and style. At the heart of these quartets—you can hear it in in the melodic contours and the way in which the four voices are distributed among the players—is Haydn, not Beethoven. If not for some of the strange harmonic and rhythmic dislocations, and textural dissociations, you’d be much more likely to take these quartets for works by Haydn than for works by Beethoven. These being Reicha’s first published scores in the medium, however, it remains to be heard how his quartet writing will evolve as this cycle unfolds.

I wish I could be more sanguine about the Kreutzer Quartet’s playing. Formed in the U.K. in 1988, the group’s current members are Peter Sheppard Skærved and Mihailo Trandafilovksi, ; Morgan Goff, ; and Neil Heyde, . Judging from its discography, it appears that until now the ensemble has specialized almost exclusively in modern, 20th-century repertoire, some of it pretty obscure. Several of the Kreutzer’s releases have been reviewed in these pages. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that a group chooses to focus its attention on a particular area of the literature, but I do think that works by composers like to focus its attention on a particular area of the literature, but I do think that works by composers like Michael Tippett, David Matthews, and Gloria Coates—composers whose works the Kreutzer Quartet has recorded—require a different style of playing and interpretive approach than do works by classical and early romantic composers.

To put it simply, the collective sound the players make—the tonal picture they present, if you will—is not very pretty. It’s gritty and grainy, with little refinement and a lot of roughness. I also sense a kind of slapdash attitude, as in “No one knows this music anyway, so it doesn’t matter if we don’t play neatly and cleanly or hit all the notes in tune. Who’s going to know the difference?” Well, I do, for one, and I don’t like this kind of careless, messy playing. It might pass in some totally avant-garde piece in which it really may be hard to tell if the right notes are being played, but these quartets by Reicha require the same sort of technical discipline, accuracy, and informed style of performance one would expect to hear if the music were by Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven.

I don’t know how likely it is that another string quartet ensemble will decide to take up Reicha’s cause, so I wish I didn’t have to be so critical of the Kreutzer Quartet’s playing. Weigh the music vs. the performance of it in the balance, and decide for yourself whether to give this release the benefit of the doubt. Jerry Dubins

This article originally appeared in Issue 37:2 (Nov/Dec 2013) of Fanfare Magazine.

5.0 out of 5 starsTrue Masterpieces Revealed After More Than Two Centuries By J Scott Morrison HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on September 24, 2013 Format: Audio CD Most of us have heard various of the popular wind pieces by Anton Reicha (1770-1836), a contemporary and friend of Beethovne, but you've never heard any of his string quartets unless you've played in one yourself or have had friends who did. That's because these wonderful works have never been recorded before. This is an example of how set in stone our notion of the classical canon is. Yet, from reviewing thousands of CDs over the past fifteen years, I've learned that there are many masterpieces that simply never get heard. It is to the credit of the Kreutzer Quartet and Toccata Classics that we are beginning to hear Reicha's quartets. This disc is marked 'Volume One'. Since Reicha wrote about forty quartets, we have much to look forward to. This CD contains the first two of Reicha's eight 'Viennese quartets', written between 1802 and 1805. Although modeled to some extent on Beethoven's familiar Op. 18 quartets, they veer off into undreamed of directions, at times sounding like late Beethoven twenty years before there was any late Beethoven. One can only imagine how listeners in the first decade of the must have scratched their heads at this music. They were, however, published by the redoubtable Breitkopf und Härtel, thankfully, and have come down to us more or less unheard till now.

Reicha was a Bohemian born in Prague; the name was originally Rejcha. His father died when he was a baby and he went from relative to relative, eventually arriving at the home of his uncle , himself a composer and cellist who wound up in the in where young Anton was a schoolmate of Beethoven. He lived for a time in and then in Paris, before going to Vienna, and during those pre- Viennese years he wrote about fifteen string quartets, none of them found to have been published. From 1808 he lived in Paris again, a fixture as a composer, musicologist and teacher. During his Paris years his music became more and more conservative just as Beethoven's was got more daring. He was known primarily after his death as the author of a couple of books, Traité de mélodie and Traité de haute composition musicale.

The two quartets on this disc are astounding in their daring. Although Op. 48, No. 1 opens in a Mozartean mode, with limpid and , there follow some remarkable passages, as in the two-voice polyphony that has first and viola playing one line an octave apart while the second violin and cello play the other line an octave apart. This creates a sense of spaciousness I don't recall ever hearing before in a quartet. There is a mosaic of melodies in this movement whose relationships become more complex and absolutely delicious over the course of the movement. The second movement, Adagio, opens serenely but devolves into a storm of passion toward the end of which the calmness of the opening passage discreetly tiptoes back in. There is more tiptoeing in the skittery Minuet that leads directly into the concluding presto Finale that whirls away all care. The second quartet, Op. 48, NO. 2, in G Major is compared by the brilliant note-writer, Ron Drummond, to the G Major Quartet of Beethoven's Op. 18 only to indicate that it ranges further harmonically and has more complex thematic interconnections. Of the modern première of the quartet (in 2006 by the Coull String Quartet in Cambridge UK) Drummond wrote 'Reicha's G major quartet is elegant and witty, full of such exuberantly effortless invention that it sounds simultaneously familiar and brand new, familiar because melodically tuneful, new because frequently surprising'. Drummond says he at first found the slow movement (II, a set of variations) 'boring' when he first read through it with an informal group six years earlier, but in the Coull performance he found it stately and immensely varied in timbre, texture and accompaniment. The following Minuet is a joyful thing, full of pranks and capering bordering on the bizarre at times. Nothing Haydn or Mozart wrote comes close to the lovable weirdness of this movement. The Finale brings us back to earth with a pastoral lyricism, an almost naïve simplicity that rounds out this magnificent quartet.

The Kreutzer Quartet is made up of violinists Peter Sheppard Skaerved and Mihailo Trandafilovski, violist Morgan Goff, and cellist Neil Heyde. Skaerved, known to me previously from his marvelous recording of George Rochberg's titanic 'Caprice Variations' Caprice Variations, George Rochberg writes, in addition to Drummond's scholarly notes, a long 'The Reicha Quartets From Where We Sit' in which he speaks of the almost unheard of opportunity to work on a masterpiece more than two hundred years old that has no extant performance tradition.

These performances of these undoubted masterpieces have made my week so much richer and fuller than they otherwise might have been. Thank you Kreutzers, Drummond and most of all Anton Reicha.

Scott Morrison