Notes for: August 7, 2012
Bruch is known today mainly for his first violin concerto, one of the great works for solo violin and orchestra; The Scottish Fantasy, also for solo violin and orchestra, and Kol Nidre, a treatment for cello and piano of the traditional Jewish Yom Kippur prayer. During his lifetime, however, he was an internationally recognized composer whose output included three operas, three symphonies, two other violin concertos, and a series of chamber, secular and sacred choral works.
In 1910, Bruch retired from his position as professor of composition at the Berlin Academy, a position he had held for nearly 20 years, but he continued to compose in his final decade. Now, however, he returned to a genre he had largely avoided for many years, chamber music, composing two string quintets and a string octet. At his death, they were still unpublished, and when they finally appeared they were issued without opus numbers.
The string octet was his final major composition – he composed it in January-February 1920, just as he turned 82. He took as his model Mendelssohn’s youthful masterpiece, his String Octet, Op. 20, composed nearly a century earlier, but Bruch made an important change in the instrumentation. Rather than Mendelssohn‘s four violins, two violas and two cellos, Bruch substituted a double bass for the second cello. That change gave added depth and resonance to the already-full ensemble, and there are many passages in Bruch‘s octet when the music approaches orchestral sonority.
In fact, for much of the twentieth century, the only published edition of the octet was titled Concerto for String Orchestra (Octet). Bruch’s autograph score disappeared during World War II and did not resurface until 1986, when it was auctioned in New York. A philanthropic collector donated it to the Austrian National Library, and a critical edition, which we hear this evening, was published at last in 1996.
It is hard to believe that the octet could have been written in 1920. At the age of 82, Bruch seemed unaware of the new currents in music – the heightened use of dissonance, French impressionism, and Schoenberg’s atonality. Instead, Bruch still looked back to the great tradition of German romantic music – the tradition of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms – rather than music that was intentionally innovative. Further, the octet reflects Bruch’s special affinity for the singing quality of string instruments, which still appeals strongly to audiences.
The first movement, allegro moderato, in sonata form, is unrestrained German romanticism, rising again and again to climaxes. The beginning is shadowed by the husky sound of the viola leading the way, but the full-throated strings soon take over. The second theme is more animated, and the extended development blends and manipulates this material with a high level of intensity.
The second movement, adagio, in the dark key of E-flat minor, gives the first violin a prominent, even soloistic, part. There are two eloquent melodies, the first over muttering rhythmic phrases, the second raising and aspiring. The themes are separated by strong dramatic passages, and Bruch’s biographers speculate that he intended the movement as a memorial to his son Hans who died in 1913 and his wife, Clara, who died in 1919.
The third movement, allegro molto, opens with the lower strings playing tremolo, establishing the quasi-orchestral sonority and triumphant mood that pervade the music. The cellos offer a more noble second melody, but the big sound and grand manner soon return, driving the octet to a sweeping conclusion.