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Robert Schumann
String Quartet in F major, Op. 41 No 2
String Quartet in A major, Op. 41 No 3

1997 Simax Classics PSC 1098

"The quartet has come to an impasse. Who does not know the quartets of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and who would wish to say anything against them? In fact it is the most telling testimony to the immortal freshness of their works that still, after half a century, they gladden everyone's hearts; but it is not a good sign that the later generation, after all this time, has not been able to produce anything comparable. Onslow alone had success, and later Mendelssohn, whose aristocratic-poetic nature is particularly suited to this genre."

Robert Schumann's words, reviewing a quartet by the now forgotten Julius Schapler in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (1842), sound a note of pessimism for the future of the string quartet. One would hardly suspect they were written by a composer who was about to try his hand at the form himself - especially since at that juncture Schumann was known principally for his piano works. His First ("Spring") Symphony had been premiered the previous year, but he had as yet no reputation at all in the sphere of chamber music. Nevertheless, shortly after publishing his review - itself the by-product of intensive study of the quartet repertoire - Schumann was delivered of three String Quartets, his Op. 41, written with great fluency in the space of six weeks (2 June - 22 July 1842).

The ensuing Andante bears the unusual qualification "quasi Variaziono". It begins with a tranquil theme that has something of the spirit of a formal serenade (Brahms surely remembered this Romance-like quality in the slow movements of his Op. 51 Quartets), and the five ensuing sections have the feel of a series of variations upon it. But essen- tidy the argument unfolds continuosly, the melodic substance always developing while being viewed in the light of different textures and registers. The theme is sumptuously restated in the fifth section, but a mysterious coda follows, deriving from the central third "variation".

The scherzo, in C minor, notable for its capricious and vigorous crossrhythms, seems a direct homage to Mendelssohn, while the witty central trio, with the cello taking the lead, develops an unexpected vein of opera-buffa burlesque. The finale's principal theme, with its moto-perpetuo figuration, is highly reminiscent of the finale of the "Spring" Symphony. This bucolic and dance-like movement brings the F major Quartet to an optimistic close, but not before Schumann has made a typically cryptic reference to Beethoven's song-cycle "An die ferne Geliebte", music he associated with his beloved Clara.

The yearning figure of a failing fifth opens the short slow introduction of the Third Quartet, in A major, and immediately marks the work out as more Romantic in conception. The falling fifth proves to be an absolutely fundamental motif in the following Allegro (and indeed in the other movements). In many ways a textbook sonata-form design (though the second subject disappears in the later stages), this first movement is full of Romantic feeling, which emerges for instance in the exquisite "dying fall", at the end of the exposition (which is repeated), and the way the development begins like a third exposition, as if reluctant to quit the home key and the failing fifths.

The second movement, in the relative minor, is the most original of the four. It appears at first to he an agitated, uneasy scherzo (whose motivic focus - a rising fourth - is the inversion of the quartet's initial failing fifth). Only gradually does it reveal that-in a similar way to the second movement of the F major Quartet - it is more like a se- ries of variations. The opening sections, which include a fugato, are elaborations of the songful theme whose basic form only emerges half-way through, in the tempo of a slow Sicilienne. The concluding part of the movement, Tempo risoluto, makes no attempt to close or balance the form but instead is stern and forceful, with hints of tragedy.

The Quartet finds its centre of gravity in the fervent, hymn-like Adagio which forms the slow movement, a warmly melodic sonata design with two deeply expressive themes that are briefly developed and reprised. Clearly influenced by some of Beethoven's adagios, this movement once again evokes darker echoes which are not entirely dispelled until the Finale. Beginning with a vivacious and rhythmically assertive dotted- note idea, the finale is a highly inventive combination of sonata-rondo and scherzo, including a gavotte like episode which Schumann marks "Quasi Trio". This formally ambiguous and emotionally decisive movement displays perhaps the most adventurous use of quartet textures and tonal effects, though here - as so often in Op. 41 - the music relates closely to the parallel aspirations of Schumann the symphonist. The ex- tensive coda reinforces this impression, and if the final bars are indeed "orchestral" in effect, they bring Schumann's only quartet cycle to an ebullient and impressive end.

Calum MacDonald

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