Music@Menlo’s twelfth season, Around Dvořák, celebrated the timeless work of the Czech Romantic master Antonín Dvořák, one of the most universally beloved musical voices of his generation. This season not only offered audiences the opportunity to absorb the vibrant musical culture of Dvořák’s homeland and its neighboring regions but also delved into the far-reaching effects of his music, whose influence was felt as far afield as America, as well as throughout subsequent generations of composers. Each disc of the 2014 edition of Music@Menlo LIVE captures the vibrant spirit of the season.

Anton Reicha, a contemporary of Beethoven’s and a Czech forebear to Dvořák, achieved considerable renown in his lifetime as a composer, theorist, and pedagogue. Reicha’s Clarinet Quintet demonstrates a winning Classical sensibility and a keen melodic imagination worthy of his most prominent contemporaries. The curiously appealing Concertino, by Dvořák’s compatriot and contemporary Leoš Janáček, is followed by Dohnányi’s Piano Quintet, a celebration of the Romantic legacy of Brahms and Schumann and a descendant of the quintets of Schumann, Brahms, and Dvořák.

Anton Reicha (1770–1836)
Quintet in B-flat Major for Clarinet and String Quartet, op. 89 (ca. 1809–1820)
Czech composer Anton Reicha established himself in musical circles at a very young age. He moved to Bonn with his uncle’s family in 1785, taking a post as Second Flutist in the Court of the Elector of Cologne Orchestra. There, Anton befriended Ludwig van Beethoven, who sat in the back of the viola section, and developed an interest in composition, no doubt due in part to this new friendship. Reicha is most renowned as a prolific composer of wind music. His impressive catalog of twenty-four wind quintets was composed between 1809 and 1820. By 1815, Reicha’s subscription series had become so popular that it warranted the establishment of an independent wind ensemble simply to debut these quintets. The Quintet in B-flat for Clarinet and String Quartet, op. 89, was intended for Jacques-Jules Bouffil, a professor of clarinet at the Conservatoire and a member of the wind ensemble. Though the exact dates of composition are unclear, the work was likely composed over eleven years, completed and published circa 1820. The opening Allegro begins with a jovial statement by the strings, followed by a graceful subject presented by the clarinet. The subject shifts to the violin, and the clarinet and lower strings provide a sonorously complex arpeggiated accompaniment. A light, long-breathed development brings a return to the airy opening theme, much fuller and more energetic than before. Immediately noticeable is the equal importance Reicha gives to both the strings and the clarinet, which is delicately exploited further in the second movement Andante. The boisterous minuet employs the full dynamic range of the ensemble: while the clarinet plays gaudy, glissando-like passages, the cello wails in its deep register at the close of each phrase. The lighthearted Allegretto finale, with its fugal passages, carries the work to a flourishing close. —Andrew Goldstein

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)
Concertino (1925)
Leoš Janáček composed his Concertino for Piano and Ensemble in 1925 for the pianist Jan Herman; the work was written a year after the wind sextet Mládi, Janáček’s nostalgic reminiscence of his youth. The Concertino shares something of Mládi’s sprightly energy and, like many of Janáček’s mature works, had a programmatic genesis; in this case, in keeping with the childish joy of Mládi, the composer imagined his young self in nature scenes amidst talking animals. The Concertino is scored for piano with two violins, viola, clarinet, bassoon, and horn, but Janáček uses the ensemble sparingly. The first movement is scored for just piano and horn. The composer’s programmatic image here was of a hedgehog trying to return to its lair—but the boy Janáček and his pals have blocked the entrance. The spiky ascending theme, rounded off with a downward turn, represents the hedgehog’s frustration. The up-tempo second movement is scored for piano and clarinet. The quick chords and abrupt silences that start things off represent a squirrel dashing from branch to branch. The clarinet follows with a rascally melody above a light, staccato piano accompaniment. The young Janáček captures the squirrel in a cage; its futile attempts to escape are illustrated by long trills above static harmonies. The full ensemble finally appears in the second movement’s final measures, and the music segues into the third movement, marked Con moto and portraying a mass of squawking birds. The music proceeds without pause to the Allegro finale. The piano presents a puckish tune, and that music escalates into a boisterous racket by the full ensemble. Near the end of the finale, the piano calls for everyone’s attention with a frenzied cadenza, followed by a triumphant proclamation, issued to the exultant acclaim of the strings. After a brief, meditative utterance in the piano, the full ensemble joins back in, and the Concertino comes to an exhilarating close. —Patrick Castillo

Ernő Dohnányi (1877–1960)
Piano Quintet no. 1 in c minor, op. 1 (1895)
Excepting perhaps Franz Liszt, Ernő Dohnányi must be regarded as the most versatile musician to come from Hungary. He was, in addition to being a great composer, one of history’s greatest pianists. Dohnányi was moreover a supremely gifted conductor and an influential teacher and administrator, as well, playing a crucial role in building Hungary’s musical culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Dohnányi received his formal musical training at the Budapest Academy of Music, where he would later briefly serve as Director. Some years later, starting in 1915, Dohnányi took it upon himself to raise Hungary’s collective musical sophistication: he independently presented hundreds of concerts, and when guest artists were unavailable, Dohnányi himself performed some 120 concerts a year in Budapest alone. Bartók credited Dohnányi with providing his country’s entire musical life during these years. But unlike Bartók and Kodály, Dohnányi didn’t mine Hungarian folk music for his compositional vocabulary— which has likely complicated his place in history somewhat, in that he was the chief architect of Hungary’s musical landscape but has inevitably been overshadowed in this respect by those composers who more literally gave Hungary its musical voice. Dohnányi’s music instead celebrates the Romantic legacy of Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann; his Piano Quintet in c minor, op. 1, can be heard as a descendant of the quintets of Schumann, Brahms, and Dvořák, which essentially defined the genre. Dohnányi composed his Opus 1 Piano Quintet in 1895, at the age of eighteen. The work caught the attention of Brahms—at the time, Western Europe’s most distinguished musical figure—who arranged for a performance of Dohnányi’s quintet in Vienna. This performance was the first of a series of professional triumphs that would solidify Dohnányi’s reputation as the finest composer and pianist to come from Hungary since Liszt. The quintet’s Allegro first movement begins with a tempestuous first theme, driven by the piano with dense chords above turbulent triplets in the deep bass register. This is music that audibly comes from the Romantic tradition of Brahms; the moody key of c minor, famously the key of Mozart and Beethoven’s darkest and stormiest nights, is likewise well-suited to this music’s Sturm und Drang character. The steadily brewing storm quickly erupts into a fortissimo tutti statement of the theme. The cello leads the ensemble into more lyrical territory, but it is still haunted by the specter of the opening melody. While the ephemeral second movement scherzo hints at Dohnányi’s Central European heritage, this music bears little resemblance to folk music, evoking the music of Brahms with its prevailing character of full-voiced Sturm und Drang. Following the searingly beautiful third movement, the quintet’s rondo finale nods more explicitly to Dohnányi’s heritage. The movement begins with a Magyar inspired theme in 5/4 time. The rondo’s episodes are particularly imaginative, ranging from music of sweeping lyricism to a Bachian fugue, whose subject reimagines the main theme of the Allegro first movement. —Patrick Castillo

About Music@Menlo
Music@Menlo is an internationally acclaimed three-week summer festival and institute that combines world-class chamber music performances, extensive audience engagement with artists, intensive training for preprofessional musicians, and efforts to enhance and broaden the chamber music community of the San Francisco Bay Area. An immersive and engaging experience centered around a distinctive array of programming, Music@Menlo enriches its core concert programs with numerous opportunities for in-depth learning to intensify audiences’ enjoyment and understanding of the music and provide meaningful ways for aficionados and newcomers of all ages to explore classical chamber music.