Notes for: July 23, 2024
In late 19th-century Russia, a country awash with Romantic composers, young Anton Arensky was one of the bright rising stars. The son of a pianist mother who was his first teacher, he had begun composing by the time he was nine. At the St. Petersburg Conservatory he studied composition with Rimsky-Korsakov and graduated with high honors in just three years. At the age of 21 he became a professor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory, where he remained for many years, teaching, among many others, Rachmaninoff and Scriabin (Rachmaninoff dedicated an early composition to “my dear professor Anton Stepanovich Arensky”). At the same time, Arensky was pursuing a career as a much-admired composer, conductor, and pianist. He composed steadily – songs, piano pieces, orchestral and chamber works, opera. For years he was one of the luminaries of Moscow’s vibrant musical life. Tchaikovsky had become a friend and a mentor, and his impact on Arensky’s style was great. But Arensky was an alcoholic and a gambler, and his addictions took their toll. Debilitated, he died of tuberculosis at the age of 45.
Arensky’s lyrical gifts and technical adroitness are abundantly apparent in the String Quartet in A Minor, a work that he wrote a few months after Tchaikovsky’s death as a memorial to his friend. The Quartet is unusually scored for two cellos, and the reason for that choice is clear from the opening notes: A muted, somber theme that sounds like a Russian Orthodox psalm is given sonorous depth by the addition of the second cello. The opening mood is tempered by a lyrical second theme, and these two themes are developed throughout a dramatic movement that ranges between tenderness and passion before closing with a return to the funereal opening.
The second movement is Arensky’s direct homage to Tchaikovsky. Taking as his theme the fifth song, “Legend,” from Tchaikovsky’s “16 Songs for Children,” Arensky presents seven wonderfully varied and inventive variations that showcase his distinctive rhythmic and melodic style and his feeling for instrumental color. The variations travel from the simple canon of the first variation, through cantabile melodies, vivacious pizzicatos, tranquil andantinos, driving rhythms, sweeping arpeggios, and a final simple melody before ending with a coda that brings back the Tchaikovsky theme as well as the chant that opens the Quartet.
Like the first movement, the Finale begins with a dirgelike hymn. But this time the mood quickly turns celebratory as Arensky launches into a robust patriotic folksong. If the tune sounds familiar, that’s because Mussorgsky used the same one in Boris Godunov, and Beethoven used it in the second ”Rasumovsky” Quartet. Arensky treats it fugally and ends with an outburst of virtuosity – a satisfying ending to this very Russian, appealingly lyrical work.