Adès: Piano Quintet; Schubert: "Trout Quintet"

Adès: Piano Quintet; Schubert: "Trout Quintet"

Adès: Piano Quintet; Schubert: "Trout Quintet"
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CD Details

Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2005-06-07
Music Label: EMI Classics
Soundtracks:
  1. Piano Quintet
  2. Piano Quintet
  3. Piano Quintet
  4. I: Allegro Vivace
  5. II: Andante
  6. III: Scherzo (Presto)
  7. Thema: (Andantino)
  8. Variation I
  9. Variation II
  10. Variation III
  11. Variation IV
  12. Variation V
  13. Allegretto
  14. V: Finale (Allegro Giusto)

Music reviews of Adès: Piano Quintet; Schubert: "Trout Quintet"

Music Review: Thomas Adès as equally brilliant composer and pianist, contributing a fine, youthful, high-strung "Trout"
Rating: 5 Stars

I find it always interesting to hear the kind of coupling which brings together an all-time classic - in the present case Schubert's "Trout" Quintet - and a contemporary piece, related to the first by theme, construction and/or instrumental combination. Other cases I can think of are the Brodsky Quartet's recording of Schubert's "Death & the Maiden" paired with George Crumb's "Black Angels" (Teldec, Franz Schubert: String Quartet In D Minor D.810 "Death and the Maiden" / George Crumb: Black Angels, for Electric String Quartet, 13 Images from the Dark Land - Brodsky Quartet), the Petersen's Quartet pairing of the same Schubert piece with Siegfried Matthus' "Maiden and Death" Quartet (Capriccio, Schubert "Death and the Maiden", Matthus "Maiden and Death" / Petersen Quartet), or Peter Serkin and Guarneri Quartet's Brahms and Henze piano quintets (Philips,incomprehensibly not listed here, you will find it on the European sister companies under ASIN B000023Y1F).

Here the instrumental combination is not exactly the same in both works, as Thomas Adès' piano quintet (here played with the Arditti Quartet) uses the traditional string quartet rather than, like Schubert, substituting the double bass to the second violin. The CD's notes by Tom Service brilliantly expound the structural relations between both works, calling the "Trout" Quintet "an essay in displacement and unpredictability that finds a contemporary resonance in the slipperiness of Adès's piece", but I am not sure this is be really perceptible to the layman. With its use of thematic blocks, its clouds of pizzicatti, its quasi-hoquetus rythms, high-register writing and recurrence of tempo accelerations, Adès's composition reminds me of Ligeti's later style, especially his horn trio.

So the real unifying factor is composer/pianist Thomas Adès, who proves himself to be not only the brilliant up-and-coming composer we know of, but an outstanding pianist as well; with members of the Belcea Quartet and bassist Corin Long, he contributes a fine, youthful, high-strung version of Schubert's masterpiece, which reminds me overall of the kind of approach George Szell and members of the Budapest Quartet applied to it in their 1946 live recording at the Library of Congress, now on Bridge records (Brahms / Schubert : Szell / Budapest Quartet).

The opening Allegro is urgent, muscular, dynamic, almost anxiously hurried, with very little of the good-natured geniality which marks interpretations such as Curzon's with the Wiener Octet (Decca, Schubert: Trout Quintet; Death and the Maiden) or Richter and the Borodin Quartet's (EMI, Schubert: "Trout" Quintet, "Wanderer" Fantasy, etc.), but not unlike Arthur Schnabel and members of the Pro Arte Quartet in their seminal pre-war recording (Schubert and Schnabel, Vol I; Piano Quintet in A, D. 667 ('Trout'); Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 959). In keeping with that approach, the Belcea strings, as picked up by the sound engineer, have a rather dry tone - not that their phrasings lack feeling, but their sound production doesn't have the kind of lyrical fullness brought by others: try the cello-violin duet at 1:55 for instance. The viola-cello triplets at 0:59 sound like a dashing train. The ensuing Andante is again lean, almost anxious in the viola-cello cantilena (1:23), with none of the ample lyricism which graces other versions (Glazer-Fine Arts on Boston Skyline Schubert: Trout Quintet/Death and the Maiden Quartet, Richter-Borodin, you name it), and the fp accents at 1:06 are explosive rather than subdued as they are at the hands of others. But there is a wonderfully hushed quality to the passage before the repeat, starting at 2:25. True to Schubert's Presto indication, the Scherzo is brisk, lively and light, well-accented, almost hard-driven - reminiscent of what Curzon and the Vienna Octet members did with it. But unlike them, Adès and the Belcea commendably apply no slow down to the central trio (Schubert prescribes none), which has a great rhythmic bounce rather than coy mawkishness. Again no mawkish dragging along in the delivery of the famous "Trout" theme, and the ensuing variations are appropriately light and dynamic, with always perfect and beautiful intonation from 1st fiddler Corina Belcea, a display of power almost verging on violence in the fourth variation and a jaunty, spirited coda. Brisk again is the Finale, with a remarkably light and transparent piano touch from Adès; and a curio: the musicians exercice an option that I have encountered only in the Claudio Arrau-Juilliard Quartet 1964 live recording at the Library of Congress reissued on Doremi (Juilliard String Quartet, Vol. 1): the repeat of the movement's first part (the second part being the repeat of the first in another tonality, you really get to hear it three times).

Not then, because of its radical interpretive choices, the version to have if you have only one, but one that is treasurable precisely for this - and for its coupling.
More Adès: Piano Quintet; Schubert: "Trout Quintet" free music reviews:
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Description of Adès: Piano Quintet; Schubert: "Trout Quintet"

Thomas Adès, one of the brightest lights of contemporary music, excels here as pianist and composer. His Quintet is a fresh reworking of classical sonata form; but instead of seeming retrograde, it shows the viability of old forms for new explorations. The work begins with a haunting violin solo that seems to recall a series of past styles, from baroque to classical to 20th-century modern, while forming the kernel of ideas developed with harmonic boldness over the Quintet's 20-minute span. Pianist Adès plays with drive and polish and his partners, the Arditti Quartet, leading interpreters of contemporary music, are as skillful, bringing an astringent touch to the forward-driving parts of the score and knowingly nuanced playing to the rest of it. The surprising disc-mate, Schubert's "Trout" Quintet, finds Adès again at the piano, joined by members of another premier string quartet, the Belcea, and bassist Colin Long. Together, they breathe new life into an old favorite, with brisk pacing that doesn't neglect the melting beauties of the work. The strings play with full, rounded, Schubertian timbres, and Adès's pianism stands alongside such other recorded exponents of the "Trout" as Serkin, Brendel, Ax, Schiff, and other full-time pianists. A fetching combination of new and old that makes both shine. --Dan Davis

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