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Contents:
DDD 73:49 - Potton Hall, Suffolk, England, 22-23 February 2006 T The distinguished Swiss musician Volkmar Andreae was born in Bern on July 5th 1879. His musical gifts manifested themselves at a relatively early age and he began his serious music studies at the Bern Conservatoire under Karl Munzinger. His progress was rapid, and within a few years Andreae had enrolled at the Cologne Conservatoire, a pupil of the then director of the institution, the important German musician Franz Wüllner, who had succeeded Ferdinand Hiller. It was from Wüllner that Andreae mainly studied conducting, for it was Wüllner who had conducted the first performances of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre (against Wagner’s bidding). Wüllner had earlier succeeded Hans von Bülow as conductor of the Munich Court Theatre in 1869. A champion of Wagner, despite the composer’s reservations, Wullner became a close friend of Brahms and also admired Bruckner’s works. In addition, Wüllner was highly regarded as a choral trainer and conductor, and composed a number of choral works. He died in 1902 at the age of 70. With Wüllner as his main teacher, there should be little surprise that a gifted and eager student, such as Volkmar Andreae showed himself to be in Cologne, would make great strides in his conservatoire work. Andreae excelled both as composer and conductor, and published his first mature composition, the Piano Trio in F minor Opus 1, in 1901 when he was 22. The work made a deep impression, and hearing it today, over one hundred years after it appeared, we may pause and consider why such a fine score as this should have become relatively neglected. There are many works of quality, by various composers, which are not as generally appreciated as they might be. In the case of the piano trio repertoire, it may be that the extant works by the greatest masters - Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann (perhaps including Chopin’s solitary example), Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak – constitute a superb legacy which has tended to obscure other compositions by less well-known composers. In another respect, Andreae’s twin career as a conductor – as with other composer-conductors – almost certainly would have militated against the acceptance of his own work. Perhaps now, as the aesthetic climate has changed from that which obtained during the first half of the twentieth-century, we can examine and appreciate such finely-written music as Andreae left on its own merits, and not through the necessarily disjointed spectrum of mere contemporary fashion. It has been said, not without justification, that Andreae’s music sits within the post-Romantic German tradition, but only in so far, surely, as musical syntax is concerned. In other aspects, the music certainly rests more comfortably in the late language of Brahms, whose music – although written during the Romantic period – could hardly be described as Romantic in the sense that the music of late Liszt, early Mahler or Reger, for examples, is. Whatever musical language a composer uses, and at the dawn of the twentieth-century it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the long-established major-minor convention was reaching breaking-point, it is surely the nature of a composer’s thought, the directness (and even the subtleties) of utterance, and the emotional expression he conveys, which demonstrate his quality as a creative artist. The First Piano Trio begins Allegro, at once with the first subject, heard in various combinations on all three instruments; a secondary theme, not unlike it in contour is more of a counter-subject than a second subject proper, but one is soon taken into a remarkably expressive sound-world, texturally quite unusual for its day, before the fine first theme heralds the counter-statement (a procedure perhaps deriving more from Bruckner than from Brahms). A remarkable feature of this music is the sense of onward flow, a genuine stream of expression made more compelling by the extended development section which almost transforms this movement into a symphonic utterance. The recapitulation begins more or less on traditional lines, but expands into an extended developmental coda before returning to the opening idea at the close. The Adagio is fully the equal of the first movement in terms of structural balance, but – more subtly, and bearing the imprint of Brahms’s influence in terms of thematic ingenuity – the first theme is a distant transformation of the first movement’s initial theme. This is followed by a remarkable scherzando section, very much faster, although not so much lighter in mood as in structural contrast. Now the Adagio tempo returns, but not for long, as the scherzando succeeds it once more – lighter in mood this time – and the lightening of mood is here transferred to the Adagio on its return, losing its tragic overtones. Serious it remains, as it leads to a coda that exudes a mood of greater pacification, at ease, yet thoughtful and inherently calm. The finale, Allegro ma non troppo, certainly exhibits a Brahmsian influence in its very attractive opening theme, followed by a second subject, and it becomes apparent that this is no traditional rondo but a fully-worked sonata-rondo structure. The manner by which the Trio’s initial idea is gradually threaded into the texture, and is thereby revealed as the antecedent of the finale’s first theme, is a quite masterly touch. But Andreae is not finished yet; the organic unity of the work enabling him now to draw more character and ideas from the theme, as the Trio finally acknowledges from whence it came. As we have noted, the First Piano Trio appeared in 1901, when Andreae was repetiteur at the Munich Royal Opera. The following year, he was appointed conductor of the Zurich Municipal Chorus, and in 1906 he was named conductor of the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. Andreae held this post continuously for 43 years, and from 1914 until 1941 he was also director of the Zurich Conservatoire. He served the city well during this long period, and as a conductor he promoted the music of Bruckner, Mahler, Richard Strauss and Debussy – along with many contemporary Swiss composers, and the standard orchestral repertoire as well. He made a number of recordings, although not so many as his abilities deserved, but his recordings of several symphonies of Bruckner were not only pioneering discs in their day, but remain excellent performances of those then little-known masterpieces. The Piano Trio No 2 appeared in 1914. Unlike its predecessor it is in four movements, not three. The key is E flat major, and the work begins Allegro moderato with a theme given to the piano. As violin and cello enter, the expansion of this idea has already started; the music is more individual in expression than the earlier Trio: it seems that Andreae’s language has metamorphosed into a fascinating mixture of French Impressionism and Germanic seriousness – not wholly unlike that of Alberic Magnard or the earlier chamber music of Dohnanyi – but the sweep of Andreae’s musical thought, such a feature of his Opus 1, is here if anything more striking, the instruments seemingly more interdependent than consistently compatible, yet there is nothing which is not wholly chamber-musical in the best developed Austro-Germanic sense. The recapitulation is remarkable for the lightness of texture which soon succeeds the reappearance of the opening piano idea, and the range of Andreae’s expression is stretched, being more wide-ranging in quickness of thought and of juxtaposition of musical image. In the second movement, Molto Adagio, a deep stillness settles over the music. Against this inherent slow pulse, Andreae presents a fascinating succession of variations on the themes which seem to be born from the piano’s underlying harmonic basis – colouration, meditative expression, and the occasional rise in temperature as passion wells up and subsides. Here is late-Romanticism, indeed; in the second part of the movement the music is essentially heard again, gently returning to the pacification with which it began. The third movement, Presto, is an extraordinarily original structure. It begins quietly and very fast, gossamer-like in texture, and proceeds apace before a much slower passage seems to remove all such thoughts from us. We expect a return to the Presto, but Andreae surprises us anew with an even slower section – what has happened to the Presto? But it eventually returns, now transformed – and transforming, in the thematic variations – to end this remarkable movement in state of almost balletic grace. The piano opens the finale, Allegro con brio assai vivace, with a leaping two-note figure against which the cello enunciates a ‘hunting’ theme. This is taken up by violin and piano and a wide succession of ideas pass by, ranging from what at first appears to be the start of a fugue by the piano to a rather melancholic version of the cello’s theme – again on the cello, now transformed, together with a revisiting of the material in an expanded and highly inventive movement. The music is recapitulated from the beginning, Andreae now confounding us with many subtle variations en route, before the Trio hurries to its conclusion wherein the work’s opening piano phrase is heard again – its appearance now very different from the reminiscence which ended the First Trio. It is as if an old friend has called on us once more, to wish us well. Notes by Robert Matthew-Walker
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