Dip Your Ears, No. 194 (Spohr Nonet & Sextet)

L.Spohr, String Sextet, Nonet, camerata freden Tacet L.Spohr, String Sextet, Nonet, camerata freden Tacet DVD-Audio

SPOHR String Sextet in C, op.140. Nonet in F, op.31 ● Camerata Freden ● TACET 172 (58:22)

Louis Spohr has always had a place in “The Art of the Clarinet” type of compilations and as a pleasant chamber music filler coupled with Brahms, Beethoven, or Schubert. Marco Polo then started a terrific series dedicated to his String Quartets and Quintets that continues to this day. Orfeo and CPO discovered the appeal of Spohr soon thereafter and as of late we have the good people at Hyperion turning their attention to his symphonies.

Spohr can’t, therefore, be said to be a particularly neglected composer, but despite the increasing discography he somehow still manages to stand in the shadow of, among others, Mendelssohn. Every time I hear his music, I want to cry out—lest someone think otherwise—that the reason for that is not to be found in the quality of his work. There is nothing I’ve heard of Spohr yet that was just ‘serviceable’ or ‘competent’, to use two adjectives routinely employed to kill a composer’s output with kindness.

If there is an ionarts-reader who does not yet know Spohr from his clarinet concertos, chamber works, or perhaps his exceptional opera “Faust”, he or she might do well imagining a continuous line of musical development from Mozart via Spohr to Mendelssohn as if Mozart—Beethoven—Brahms had never happened. There is nothing of the brooding and belabored romanticism of the latter two composers in Spohr’s works which, instead, teem with joyful spirit, luminous but not fluffy; delicate but not flimsy. The skeleton is classical, the meat romantic.

Camerata Freden, the chamber ensemble of the Freden International Music Festival with roving membership, here presents the early Nonet in F (written in 1813, the first to use flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass; predating Onslow’s by over 40 years and Rheinberger’s by 70) and the String Sextet in C, written during and dedicated to the German revolution 1848.

Both works are very easy on the ears— the Sextet a double barreled string trio (like Boccherini’s Sextets) that smoothly skates its classical-romantic course; wind-heavy and bubbly the Nonet. As Colin Anderson rightly said of the Nonet in 31:3 when reviewing the Ensemble 360’s recording: “witty, elegant, and expressive: every bit as good, I suggest, as Beethoven’s Septet and Schubert’s Octet.” (Although I’d caution against too much comparison of Spohr to Beethoven which might lead to misleading expectations that could be one of the causes of the relative short shrift Spohr has been getting.)

Given how much I like Spohr’s chamber works, I have surprisingly few of the available versions for comparison. For the Nonet, Anderson places the Ensemble 360 slightly ahead of the Gaudier Ensemble on Hyperion. Having heard neither of those, I hold the Consortium Classicum on Orfeo in the highest regards, as I cherish the Villa Musica Ensemble on MDG (receiving “the strongest possible recommendation” by Robert McColley in 25:2). Together with the Camerata Freden they form a classy triptych of which this release has the most precise, transparent sound. The Villa Musica Ensemble (on a different disc, also recommended by Robert McColley, in 28:2) is the main competition in the Sextet, while the New Haydn Quartet (reissued on Naxos) can’t quite match the precision and liveliness of the Camerata Freden players.

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First published in Fanfare Magazine

Briefly Noted: Spohr String Quartets

L. Spohr, String Quartets, Vol. 17, Concertino String Quartet (released on July 8, 2014) Naxos 8.225352 | 56'25" Vol. 16 (released on May 27, 2014) Naxos 8.225983 | 57'19" C. Brown, Louis Spohr: A Critical Biography (1984/2006)

The music of many composers who achieved great fame in their lives has faded into obscurity. Louis Spohr (1784-1859) is one such example, a German composer whose music was almost completely forgotten and is still not played with any frequency. Clive Brown, a professor at the University of Leeds, wrote the definitive biography, published in the 200th anniversary year of Spohr's birth and developed from his doctoral dissertation on the composer. Spohr was a violinist by training, and among his rather prolific output is a cycle of thirty-six complete string quartets, written over the course of a long life -- not to mention four "double quartets" (a genre invented by Albrechtsberger, the string equivalent of a Venetian-style cori spezzati work, but with strings instead of singers), one traditional octet, and seven string quintets.

Naxos has finished a complete recording of the Spohr quartets, plus assorted single movements, on its Marco Polo label, a series begun by the New Budapest Quartet in the 1990s, with one volume by the Dima Quartet, and now finished by the Concertino Quartet, made up of members of the Moscow Philharmonic. (Informative booklet notes were contributed by Professor Brown, with additional essays by Keith Warsop, Chairman of the Spohr Society of Great Britain.) Volumes 16 and 17 have just been released this year, and while these recordings remain the only ones of Spohr's quartets, they are mainly of musicological interest. Most of Vol. 16 was recorded a few years ago, but the first track, the opening movement of op. 82/1, was recorded just last year for some reason and does not represent the group's best playing. The same problems are noticeable on the final track, the Variations (op. 8), although the sound of the first violin is improved on the other tracks.

The quality of playing is generally stronger on the pieces in Vol. 17, also recorded last year, with a particularly lovely slow movement in op. 30, for example. None of the quartets on these two discs grabbed me so strongly as to demand multiple listenings, especially in the two quatuors brillants, showpieces for Spohr's first violin that were something like mini-concertos, rather than equal-voiced quartets, although some movements of the other quartets also seem conceived for a primarius who is not necessarily inter pares. Perhaps these pieces would work better with a great virtuoso, someone on Spohr's level, seated first violin. Until then, the determined listener can at least learn something about a forgotten composer's music, a remarkable achievement by any standard.