Prokofiev, Arensky, Glazunov

Sergei Prokofiev
(April 23, 1891–March 5, 1953)
Choreographer Boris Romanov (1891–1957) left Russia in 1921 and created a new ballet company in Berlin. Romanov commissioned music for a ballet from Prokofiev, whom seemed an obvious choice, having had successfully premiered his ballet Chout (“The Buffoon”) for Diaghilev in 1921. The ballet for Romanov, Trapèze, would not be performed in its complete form (8 movements) until 1925, but some of the music had already been put into the G minor Quintet. While the quintet’s scoring allegedly reflects the available resources of the ballet company, Prokofiev envisioned the chamber work as a stand-alone piece, and did not make programmatic titles for the movements. Trapèze went on a tour that was a “financial disaster” and the score fell into oblivion, not reconstructed as a ballet until 2002. Luckily, the Quintet preserves some of the music and gives one the opportunity to hear it divorced from the story. That said, it is hard not to make programmatic associations given Prokofiev’s free approach in some of the movements.

The first movement’s theme begins unsentimentally with the oboe asserting a modally inflected melody, soon handed off to the clarinet. The viola takes over as the energy quiets. The angularity and the modality of the theme is assertive, but very much in keeping with European modernist language of the 1920s. The first variation’s falling fourth motive with a dotted quarter highlights the importance of the fourth as an interval in the movement. After a grand pause, a more grandiose evocation of the fourth motive ensues. For all the forward movement of the theme itself, this variation seems an insistent meditation on the fourth. A dramatic shift of energy marks the second variation with its folksy ardor and jaunty pizzicato, a chaotic energy reminiscent of the opening of Hindemith’s Kammermusik which premiered in 1922 in Donaueschingen. The theme returns, but not in complete recapitulation. The various distinctive lines and gestures, especially in the oboe and clarinet, head toward the final cadence.

The Andante energico’s double bass melody opens with a descending fourth, connecting it to the preceding movement, but seems to exercise more harmonic control until the entrance of the other four instruments. A contrapuntal tapestry ensues, ultimately slowing for a rather dissonant declamation of the main melody. Fluttering quintuplets ascend out of the adamant texture in the strings. The eerie con sordino violin runs quietly in the background as the viola and bass duet together until the movement culminates in an emphatic homophonic coda that ultimately ends the movement quietly in C major.

At the beginning of the Allegro sostenuto, the three string instruments are instructed to play sul tallone, that is, at the frog of the bow. This creates a firm tone underneath the staccato articulation. The clarinet and oboe have a tumbling, whimsical exchange, the main statement of which then permeates the entire texture. Here it is not hard to imagine the music paired with the ballet, as it was part of the “Dance of the Tumblers”. The Stravinskian angularity reflects Prokofiev’s engagement with Russo-European modernity, something that would be a boon in the twenties while living in Europe, but would later cause problems for Prokofiev under Stalin’s rule.

A ponderous oboe melody proceeds slowly with seriousness of step, rather than a particular direction toward a destination, soon joined by the clarinet. The circuitous opening of the Adagio pesante is unsettling, as the walk begins to feel almost trancelike, with the violin falling in step with the two wind instruments in tense harmonies. An increasing insistence in the clarinet starts to pull the movement toward a seeming denouement, but instead the energy ebbs, returning to the unsettling melancholy of the oboe.

The Allegro precipitato fits a more conventional mold for a chamber piece, with clearly expressed melodies in the winds, at least initially. The texture, as with the other movements in the quintet, is idiosyncratic, but holds together through motivic and gestural cohesion. A fortissimo chord announces eerie harmonics in the bass before a final utterance from the clarinet.

The final Andantino opens with a melodic motive in the oboe, and although the movement is in triple meter, the staccato strings imply a march. The off-kilter march is soon interrupted by a short clarinet cadenza-like passage before returning to the Stravinsky-esque, dance-like guise. Syncopated pizzicato marks a 6/8 section, featuring an extended walking bass, that leads back to the opening theme. The final measures are given over to an alarm that sounds in repeated note motives in the clarinet, violin and viola. Frenetic sixteenth notes in the low strings and clarinet invade briefly before the perfunctory end of this enigmatic work.

Anton Arensky
(July 12, 1861–February 25, 1906)
Anton Arensky’s father was a gifted amateur cellist (a doctor by profession), and his mother was a pianist who gave him his first music lessons. The family moved to St. Petersburg where he studied composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, graduating from the conservatory there in 1882 with a gold medal. He went on to employment at Moscow Conservatory as a professor of harmony and counterpoint, and would include Rachmaninov, Scriabin, and Glière in his roster of famous students. Arensky was also in contact with Tchaikovsky, and as David Brown notes, “despite being Rimsky-Korsakov’s pupil, he seems to have responded far more to the influence of Tchaikovsky.”

This first of two piano trios was composed the same year that Balakirev recommended Arensky as his successor to the directorship of the Imperial Chapel in St. Petersburg, where he returned in 1895 after resigning from his Moscow professorship. The work is dedicated to the memory of Russian cellist Karl Davydov (1838–1889), whom Tchaikovsky may have called “the czar of Russian cellists” and to whom the elder composer dedicated his Capriccio Italien of 1880.

A lyrical violin melody opens the Allegro moderato, soon joined in duet by the cello in the fashion of a Lied ohne Worte (song without words). Both in spirit and conceit, the movement recalls the third movement “Lied” of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s Trio in D minor, Op. 11. The melody’s triadic implications keep the affect light, supported by the constant harmonic movement in the piano. The reverie is interrupted by a dramatic descent in all three instruments, calling attention to the piano that then takes the theme in octaves. The secondary theme is related in pathos to the first, heard first in the cello, then the violin, but with a slightly more wistful feel. The development features a staccato utterance from the cello that opens into a reflection on the main thematic gesture as well as incorporating the sprightlier articulation. After the recapitulation, a quiet adagio coda seems to place the theme in some space of memory, with the final violin statement of only the D minor segment ending the movement with a heart-twisting sense of elegy.

The leaping descending octave gesture at the beginning of the second movement leaves little doubt as to its scherzo identity. Imbued with a certain Haydn-esque sense of whimsy, the movement sparkles with pizzicato and bouncy motives. The B-flat major trio cultivates songful romantic rhetoric in contrast. The return to the effervescent scherzo belies what is to come in the next movement.

While the end of the first movement hinted at elegy, the third movement Adagio is marked “Elegia” and offers a memorial to Davydov in G minor. With the muted cello and the quiet marcia funebre figure in the piano, the intent is clearly memorial, but the recollection of the dotted rhythm of the first theme in the first movement offers tenderness and sentiment rather than melancholy. The middle section in G major with murmuring figures in the strings seems to recall pleasant memories. The approach is consistently gentle, not overwrought. Lightly gurgling accompaniment in the piano supports tender ascending gestures in the strings. The return to G minor, with modulating cascades in the piano, leads to the final measures that finally succumb to a quiet grief.

The thematic gestures that inject a bit more Russian drama into the finale borrow the incipit of the opening theme of the piece, now recast as a fiery rondo theme. The cello opens a section of momentary respite and the entire movement revolves around the emotional contrast between the episodes and the passionate rondo theme. In an Andante, gentle triplets in the piano roll over the left hand’s recollection of the dotted funereal figure from the third movement, and this leads to the Adagio where the violin pairs the dotted motive with the first movement theme, unmuted, before the energetic coda draws to a close what has clearly been a four-movement memorial.

Alexander Glazunov
(August 10, 1865–March 21, 1936)
Like Arensky, Glazunov also studied with Rimsky-Kosakov, who marveled at Glazunov’s quick progress, and the two became lifelong friends. In the year Arensky graduated from St. Petersburg Conservatory, Glazunov completed his First Symphony, at age 16, the premiere of which was conducted by Balakirev. Glazunov was appointed to teach at St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1899 and remained connected there for three decades, but resigned temporarily during the Russian Revolution of 1905 in protest when Rimsky-Korsakov was dismissed for his sympathies with striking students. Glazunov returned when most of the demands of the striking students and professors had been met, and was quickly elected director, a post he maintained until 1930. While a teacher to both Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Glazunov was, according to author Boris Schwarz, dismissed by the younger composers as “old-fashioned” due to his “streak of academicism.” These patterns of old guard vs. new guard that repeat throughout the history of all art should be noted with a healthy skepticism, as Glazunov’s eclectic approach in the Quintet suggests.

The Allegro opens with a seemingly meandering dolce melody in the viola that soon settles into thematic significance when heard in the first violin, underscored by the other four instruments. The secondary theme is heard first in the cello, and the meter changes from 9/8 to 3/4, facilitating the cantabile fluidity of the theme. The movement offers a variety of tempo and expressive markings, but achieves a certain seamlessness by showcasing only one of the instruments at a time (usually), and features sinewy melodies that connect easily from one section to another. The texture does become more contrapuntal, with shared responsibility distributed more widely, particularly when echoing descending motions, magnifying the descent through the quintet as well: from a violin, to viola, to cello. A change of key signals a more focused energy, and the theme becomes increasingly dolcissimo in the higher tessitura of the violin. The movement ends with an extensive coda and a symphonic close in A major.

The pizzicato violins over a viola pedal that open the Scherzo eventually invite the entire ensemble to play in pizzicato, notably like the second movement of Debussy’s String Quartet composed in the same year (but premiered in 1893). The moves back to bowed playing are seamless, and Glazunov’s approach is nuanced when combining the two types of articulation. The 6/8 cantabile melody in the second violin over pizzicato in the lower strings blossoms into an imitative texture. The metric changes maintain interest and dynamism, and the thematic structure remains clear. Dancing and swaying motivic gestures seemingly build momentum for a grand finale, but the second violin intones a quiet melody, interspersed with quiet pizzicato in the first violin, as a subtle microcosm of the movement.

The Andante sostenuto offers a significant change in pathos in the entreating cello melody, but the first violin takes the same incipit and blossoms forth. The melody, similar to that of the opening movement, seems unrushed as it circles around here and there. The cello takes up the theme in its fuller form as all the instruments join in to fill out the texture, with solo moments that shine through. An Allegretto section builds toward a more agitated energy, passionately building from one motive, before settling into more melodic material. The D major sections sound almost naïve in comparison, but the contrast provides a pleasant eclecticism that avoids predictability. The harmonics in the end lend a nostalgic and reflective quality to the final moments of the movement.

The rondo finale features a typical theme, but Glazunov distributes it around the ensemble to highlight the different angles of its personality. The viola enters with a rather Russian (think Shostakovich) fugal subject answered in the first violin, followed by the second, then the cellos before the re-entry of the rondo theme. A tranquil major key episode soon morphs into a more frenzied scherzando transition back to the rondo. Motives are jettisoned through the individual instruments of the ensemble. Glazunov juxtaposes boundless energy and graceful themes, but ultimately the unbridled rondo theme has the last word in a breakneck Prestissimo.

© 2024 Rebecca G. Marchand