ANTÓN ARENSKI | Trío nº 1, en Re menor, Op.32
JOHANNES BRAHMS | Cuarteto de cuerda y piano nº 3, en Do menor, Op.60
Violin | Vladimir Dmitrienco
Viola | Jerome Ireland
Violoncello | Nonna Natsvlishvili
Piano | Tatiana Postnikova
Program notes
The work of the Russian composer Anton Arensky (1861–1906) has largely faded from public consciousness, save for the intense and mournful trio performed today. A student of Rimsky-Korsakov and close to Balakirev, Arensky’s musical temperament was more aligned with Tchaikovsky, rejecting the Russian colorism of the “Mighty Five”.
The trio we will hear today reflects this more cosmopolitan, Germanic Romantic aesthetic, following in the footsteps of Brahms. It consists of four movements: 1. Allegro moderato, 2. Scherzo. Allegro molto, 3. Elegia. Adagio, 4. Finale. Allegro non troppo. The poetic beauty of the Elegia and the work’s turbulent finale foreshadow the temperament of Arensky’s two most illustrious pupils, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff. Of this singular work, one could say what Borges wrote of a minor poet in an anthology: “To others, the gods granted endless glory, inscriptions, and monuments; of you, we know only, obscure friend, that you heard the nightingale one evening”.
Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 3 is a masterpiece. Composed over two periods—around 1856 and 1875—it is a tormented score, reflecting Brahms’s tragic and impossible love for Clara Wieck, the wife of Robert Schumann. Clara may have reciprocated his feelings but never wished to forsake Robert, either in life or in death. Brahms began composing the piece while Schumann was still confined to the mental asylum where he would eventually pass away. In the first movement, Clara’s musical motif—two repeated notes—is followed by another “Clara theme,” transformed from one that Schumann himself had included in several works dedicated to her. The subsequent four movements (1. Allegro, 2. Scherzo. Allegro, 3. Andante, 4. Finale: Allegro comodo), complex and profoundly beautiful, explore Brahms’s conflicted feelings for Clara and his loyalty to the faithful friend whose shadow always haunted him.
When discussing this composition, Brahms repeatedly suggested that one should “imagine a man about to blow his brains out as the only solution”, even hinting at the inclusion of his own image on the cover of the score. For this reason, the quartet has often been referred to as the Werther Quartet, after the literary figure to whom Brahms occasionally alluded when speaking of this turbulent music.
José María Jurado García-Posada