On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll have music by two undersold composers who seemed trapped between two worlds.
While Felix Mendelssohn and Max Reger were very much figures of their respective times, they both found abundant inspiration in music of the past, frequently the distant past. In addition, they often gave the impression of being just a little tentative when it came to exploring musical trends of the present.
Common to both was an overarching respect for the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. It was Mendelssohn, of course, who at the age of 20 would engineer the first modern performance of Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion.”
Reger composed a lot of fugues and sets of variations, fancying himself the heir of Beethoven and Brahms; but also, in his own gargantuan, overbaked way, modeling himself on the Baroque’s most outstanding genius.
Though both Mendelssohn and Reger subsumed romantic characteristics into their music, neither did so at the expense of traditional forms. There are exceptions to every rule, as they say, but generally speaking Mendelssohn’s more emotional utterances seemed to flow most convincingly in the works of his early maturity.
When he came to write his String Quartet in A minor, it was not Bach but Beethoven who was foremost in his thoughts. The composer was 18 years-old at the time of Beethoven’s death in 1827. He was clearly intoxicated by the Master’s late quartets, which had only recently been published.
Though certainly influenced by Beethoven, Mendelssohn’s own essay in the form is quite at odds with the introspection of Beethoven’s Op. 135. In contrast, he infuses his own quartet’s Classical structure with a passionate Romanticism. That the synthesis would be so successful is hardly surprising from a teenaged marvel who, within the last two years, had already written an astonishing Octet for Strings and the overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In his quartet, Mendelssohn also explores the possibilities of cyclic form more exhaustively than just about any other composer before César Franck.
We’ll hear the Quartet in A minor performed at the 1995 Marlboro Music Festival by violinists Lisa-Beth Lambert and Hiroko Yajima, violist Annemarie Moorcroft, and cellist Sophie Shao.
There are times when Reger’s music can be beyond rigorous. In fact, it might be better termed “Regerous.” Perhaps the craziest exemplar of vertiginous Teutonic counterpoint, he could write organ music of such density that the individual voices get lost in a tangle, deep inside a knot, somewhere in an impenetrable thicket.
However, on two pianos, it all seems to make sense. The program will begin with a 1977 performance of Reger’s “Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue,” Op, 96, performed by Marlboro stalwart Luis Batlle and a 19 year-old Yefim Bronfman.
Were they born too late, or merely uneasy with the more progressive impulses of their times? Quiet your head and enjoy the music. I hope you’ll join me for works by Reger and Mendelssohn on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network Network and wwfm.org.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page
