Hahn; Schmitt; Dubois
Ames Piano Quartet
Sono Luminus DSL-92141
This is the 14th release by the Ames Piano Quartet, the resident chamber music ensemble of Iowa State University. The quartet has been hailed for their two decades worth of well-received releases for Dorian Records, subsequently re-issued as a box set by the Virginia-based Sono Luminus label. Their latest recording features French chamber music from the first half of the twentieth century.
Best known for his vocal works, the Venezuelan-born Francophile Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) is represented here by a late Quartet in G published in 1946. Hahn, partly Jewish and once the intimate partner of Marcel Proust, kept an understandably low profile during the war years hiding away in Monte Carlo. His elegant, finely crafted quartet betrays little personal anxiety considering the circumstances; though the tender third movement suggests a certain regret, the general tone is one of restrained optimism.
Florent Schmitt (1870-1958) enjoyed tremendous success at the outset of his career but alienated the establishment through his acidic music reviews (his habit of shouting out his verdicts in the concert hall led the publisher Heugel to brand him “an irresponsible lunatic”) and perceived pro-Germanic stance owing to his Alsatian origins. Be that as it may, his truly delightful “petit concert” Hasards Op. 96 (1944) towers over his compatriots on this recording thanks to its brilliant colours, refreshing mutability and sheer rhythmic inventiveness.
Bringing up the rear is the teacher of both Hahn and Schmitt, the distinguished Théodore Dubois (1837-1924), now mostly remembered for denying Maurice Ravel the Prix de Rome. The thoroughly conventional structure and fulsome harmonies of his impeccably proper Quartet in A minor (1907) bring to mind the music of César Franck, an impression confirmed by the cyclic return of earlier themes in the finale of the work. Schmitt remains the indubitable star of the show however and reason enough to own this intriguing collection of lesser-known repertoire.
Concert Note: Reviewer Daniel Foley’s latest composition Music for the Duke of York will receive its premiere at an afternoon concert honouring the late Antonin Kubálek at Walter Hall on November 6.
