November 21, 2021
“Mozart and Schumann”
Ahavath Achim Synagogue, Atlanta, GA
David Coucheron, violin; Zhenwei Shi, viola; Rainer Eudeikis, cello; Christopehr Rex, cello; Julie Coucheron, piano
MOZART: Piano Quartet No.1 in G minor, K.478
R. SCHUMANN: Piano Quartet in E♭ major, Op. 47
Mark Gresham | 23 NOV 2021
The Georgian Chamber Players have at last opened their 2021-22 season with a one-hour concert of piano quartets by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Robert Schumann, making for a good pairing of well-known mainstream repertoire. The performance took place at Ahavath Achim synagogue in northwest Atlanta this past Sunday afternoon.
The program opened with Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478. Composed in 1785 on a commission from publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister, it is likely the first major piece written for piano quartet. (Most curiously, Joseph Haydn wrote many piano trios, but never a piano quartet.)
The work goes far beyond the conventional character of the few piano quartets of Mozart’s day, which tended to treat the strings as an accompaniment to the keyboard rather than as equal partners. Even so, its dark sonorities and equality of part-writing favor the cello. The writing for piano offers skillful passages of concerto-like virtuosity with others where the instrument blends into the string texture.
Violinist David Coucheron, violist Zhenwei Shi, cellist Rainer Eudeikis, and pianist Julie Coucheron gave it an engaging reading.
Cellist Christopher Rex (courtesy of GCP)
Christopher Rex then replaced Eudeikis as cellist for the next piece, Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E-flat-major.
Schumann was possibly inspired in part Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor when he wrote a Piano Quartet in C minor in 1829, near the end of his first year of study in Leipzig. Although his most notable accomplishment to date, it was left unpublished until 1979 without opus number.
After that, Schumann would not compose any major chamber music until 1842, when he wrote a half dozen significant chamber works. One of those was his Piano Quartet in E-flat-major, Op. 47, a piece regarded today as the culmination of all previous exploration of the genre. Along with the Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44, it remains one of Schumann’s two most popular chamber works.
The sonata-form first movement opens with a reflective introduction featuring a floating four-note figure, which becomes suddenly transformed at the Allegro into a forward-moving motive that combines with a flowing melody in the piano, which then interacts conversationally with the strings.
The second movement is a vigorous scherzo; the third, a thoughtful three-part song form. A lively rondo serves as the Finale (Vivace) in which the principal theme is treated contrapuntally, with three overlapping thematic ideas coming together toward the work’s end.
It proved a well-played, exuberant conclusion to the concert.
Georgian Chamber Players will present their next concert on January 23, 2022 at First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta. ■
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Mark Gresham is publisher and principal writer of EarRelevant. he began writing as a music journalist over 30 years ago, but has been a composer of music much longer than that. He was the winner of an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music journalism in 2003.
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