Mullova Ensemble - Schubert Octet on CD

Description

The heyday of the multi-instrument serenade was unarguably the last half of the eighteenth century. Even so, demand for this most agreeable of musical entertainments, fostered in part by the rise of monied amateur performers, remained high in the first decades of the nineteenth century: a number of distinguished examples by Hummel and Spohr, and most notably, Schubert's Octet for wind and strings, ensured the survival of the genre in the romantic era. Whereas Schubert's first octet, an apprentice work for winds alone dating from 1813, represents the resurrection of the spirit of the Mozartian divertimento, this, his second, takes as its exemplar Beethoven. On learning about the success of his early Septet, op.20 (1800) in England in 1815, Beethoven was heard to state that 'he wished it [the Septet] were burned'. Despite the composer's chagrin the work was persistently one of Beethoven's best-loved works and led to many flattering imitations. In many particulars Schubert's Octet seems to pay homage to Beethoven's model: apart from the addition of a second violin, the instrumentation in both works is the same, as is the number of movements. Pursuing the detail, it is worth noting that in both the Septet and Octet there are variation movements, scherzos and minuets, and perhaps most significantly, Schubert appears to imitate the use of the slow minor-key introduction to the finale. Indeed, the aristocrat who commissioned Schubert to compose the Octet, Count Ferdinand Troyer, an administrator and keen amateur clarinettist, asked the composer to model the composition on Beethoven's Septet, a work which had long delighted him. Schubert worked on the Octet during February 1824. According to Moritz von Schwind the composer was in a frenzy of compositional activity, working mainly on string quartets and variations. Apart from the Octet, which was completed on 1 March 1824, the fruits of this intensive period of creativity were the quartets in A minor, D804, and D minor, D810 'Der Tod und das Mädchen'. The first performance of the Octet was given shortly after its completion, in the house of Count Troyer, who also took the clarinet part. Another performance took place at the house of Count Lachner in 1826, but the first public excursion for the work came on 16 April 1827. At a subscription concert arranged by the violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh the Octet was given with Beethoven's song-cycle An die ferne Geliebte and an arrangement of his Fifth Piano Concerto for two pianos and string quartet. Ten days later the Wiener Allgemeine Theaterzeitung noted that the Octet was, in keeping with the composer's well-known talent, 'luminous, agreeable and interesting'. Nevertheless, the piece had to wait thirty-four years for its next public performance, under the violinist Josef Hellmesberger in Vienna in 1861. Although Schubert's brother Ferdinand offered it, (along with a galaxy of other works) in 1829 to Diabelli for publication, the Octet was not printed until 1853, and even then the fourth and fifth movements were excluded. While the Octet shares the same period of composition as the two string quartets mentioned above, the moods evoked by this work are wholly different. Both quartets reflect the darker, more haunted side of the composer's experience: the Octet, perhaps in deference to the traditions of the serenade, is open-hearted and optimistic; only the introduction to the finale seems to approach the tone of the minor-key quartets. Review A spacious performance, enthralling and poetic: it leaves behind the world of happy Viennese music-making (best exemplified on disc, perhaps, by the famous 1957 Vienna Octet recording). Instead, we have a view of the Octet as one of Schubert s major achievments, sharing much common ground with the other great chamber works of 1824, the A minor and D minor string quartets. The Adagio is taken unusually slowly, but without any feeling of the rhythm sagging the effect is unexpectedly pr

Tracks

Schubert - Octet: Adagio - Allegro
Schubert - Octet: Adagio
Schubert - Octet: Allegro vivace
Schubert - Octet: Andante con variazioni
Schubert - Octet: Menuetto: Allegretto - Trio
Schubert - Octet: Andante molto - Allegro