Search - Thuille, Lev, Falk Quartet :: Piano Quintets

Piano Quintets from a Neglected Master

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 04/17/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Ludwig Thuille was a friend of Richard Strauss when they were both students of composition in Munich. But Thuille died relatively young and Strauss lived on to the end of WWII; Thuille was barely known except in a small circle of cognoscenti, while Strauss in his time was the most famous German composer in the world. Thuille eked out a living as a teacher in Munich (among his pupils was the Swiss-American Ernest Bloch); Strauss lived royally on the profits from his compositions. Yet they remained friends until Thuille's death in 1907 and Strauss more than once commended Thuille's work. Thuille's music was classic in the Brahmsian sense although always more chromatic than Brahms's. He had a gift for clear construction and lyrical effusion, and both those are evident in the two piano quintets on this CD. The later Op. 20 quintet in E flat is much the more impressive of the two. The G minor quintet was written when Thuille was nineteen and although neat enough, it remains a student work more or less indistinguishable from similar works by others of the time.



The E flat quintet is a lovely thing that makes purchase of this CD an easy recommendation. In the usual four movements, the music ranges from a tightly constructed opening Allegro and a hauntingly melodic Adagio with a particularly engaging pizzicato section to a vigorous and exciting finale, Allegro e risoluto. If the early three-movement G minor Quintet is less striking, it does have a lovely, lightly sentimental Larghetto and a rousing finale. Both quintets are given enthusiastic and expert performances here by pianist Tomer Lev and the members of the Falk Quartet. I gather both these works have been recorded by Oliver Triendl and the Vogler Quartet, on cpo, but I have not heard that issue.



Scott Morrison



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