Quartet in E flat, Op.87, for Piano and Strings
Allegro con fuoco
Lento
Allegro moderato, grazioso
Finale: Allegro ma non troppo
As with so much of his output, Dvorák’s chamber music as a whole has suffered through the success of a handful of works. The enormously popular "American" String Quartet, Op.96, has displaced thirteen other Dvorák string quartets from the repertoire, and this Piano Quartet in E flat, Op.87, has been thoroughly overshadowed by the Piano Quintet in A major, Op.81, which predates it by two years. Needless to say, its relative neglect is thoroughly unfair - even before a note is heard, the circumstances of its composition alone suggest that it should be vintage Dvorák. It was his second essay in the form (he’d written a D major Piano Quartet, Op.23, on Mozart’s three-movement pattern, in 1875), and was first sketched in 1887, the year of the Piano Quintet and the delightful Terzetto, Op.74, in response to a request from the publisher Simrock. It shared its gestation with the 8th Symphony and was finally committed to paper during July and August 1889 at Dvorák’s summer home of Vysoká, in southern Bohemia. "As I expected" he wrote "it came easily, and the melodies just surged upon me, thank God". The peaceful and happy atmosphere at Vysoká often seemed to have this effect on him; the major works he wrote there, such as this quartet and the 8th Symphony, share a seemingly effortless flow of melody, coloured by Dvorák’s innate feeling for Czech folk-song and held in shape by his formal sense at its most developed. In this respect, the three Piano Quartets (1861-1875) of his mentor Johannes Brahms must have been a particular inspiration, but Dvorák himself was at the peak of his professional skill – a fact which had been recognised by the Austro-Hungarian government just a month earlier when it had awarded him the Order of the Iron Crown.
The Quartet is written in the standard four-movement classical layout, but its melodic content is never far removed from Dvorák’s folk-tune roots. The first movement, Allegro con fuoco, opens with a challenge from the strings and an evasive, playful response from the piano. Much of the development section and coda of this sonata-form movement is built on these ideas; they are omitted entirely from the recapitulation. A broad range of emotion is expressed in the G flat major Lento – note the ‘cello writing and the hints at the dumka form, a Slav folk-dance beloved of Dvorák, alternating melancholy and joy. The Allegro moderato, grazioso has something of the character of a ländler, or German Dance, with the typically Brahmsian feature of a more rapid central section. There is a hint of "gypsy music" at the beginning of the finale; unusually, for a major-key work, in E flat minor. The lively sonata-form movement which ensues concentrates largely on this opening theme, intensifying its brusqueness and its lyricism by turns; but Dvorák is characteristically generous with his subsidiary themes, which include a soaring B major melody for the viola in its upper register. The Quartet was premiered at a concert given by the Prague Artistic Circle on 23rd November 1890.
R.G.Bratby, 2001
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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