Élet és Irodalom: Haydn & Mozart: Flute Quartets
Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood the commonly held view is that Mozart did not like the flute. Subscribers to this belief tend to refer to none other than Wolfgang Amadeus: the composer himself made a statement in one of the letters to his very dear father (using the address Mon très cher père! – My very dear Father! whereby he usually started his letters to Leopold) that he cannot stand that instrument, suffers when he hears it, and finds it painful to compose music for it. God save us from disputing the words of a great composer (though with some of them there would be good reason to do so) but in the light of his œuvre that aversion to the flute still seems somewhat strange.
First of all, let us just think of one of the main compositions of his œuvre, Mozart’s most elevated piece, the mystical initiation singspiel held in mankind’s treasure box next to the St Matthew Passion, and Beethoven’s 9th. How very strange to see its title include exactly the flute, moreover, referred to as no other than a magic instrument! And there are works by Mozart composed specifically for the flute. He may well have written many of these yielding to necessity, to order, very reluctantly, but still he composed more pieces for the flute than for any other instrument: neither the clarinet nor the oboe or the basson were any better off, not even the horn even if the composed as many as four concertos for it thank Joseph Leutgeb, his childhood friend on whom he played chunky pranks even in his manuscripts.
So let us see the facts regarding the flute, and Mozart: we have here the fresh and cheerful sonatas from his childhood numbered 10 to 15 in the Köchel catalogue (B major, G major, A major, F major, C major, B major – true, flute here is only a possible alternative to the violin, but the pieces still work in that form, too, they are being performed on the flute up to the present day, and sound excellent on that instrument), the graceful, and witty flute quartets (B major, G major, A major, F major, C major, B major), the flute concertos (the simpler G major, and the more complicated, and superior D major), the angelic C major Andante, and the ethereally pure Concerto for flute, harp, and orchestra (C major). If Mozart could not stand the flute, it was all the greater for an achievement that he managed to compose such versatile melodies, such dashing runs, such chirping making real birdsong pale into insignificance, such slow confession-like movements of such intimate atmosphere for an instrument he disliked; these compositions feature all of the above. Imagine what if he had liked the instrument!
Noémi Győri (flute), Katalin Kokas (violin), Péter Bársony (viola), and Dóra Kokas (cello) have recently recorded an album with Hungaroton titled Flute Quartets. The CD has four compositions, but they are not the four flute quartets by Mozart (although Mozart was practically the only one among truly notable composers who cultivated the genre of the flute quartet). We hear two flute quartets by Haydn, and two by Mozart. The key to the secret is this: the two Haydn pieces are transcriptions, two pieces from the six string quartets op. 76 (Erdődy quartets), namely no. 2 (D minor), and no. 5 (D major). The other two pieces, however, are really by Mozart: the D major (K. 285) and the C major (K. Anh. 171/285b) flute quartet (researchers today find that the C major piece is probably attributed to Mozart in error, which, however, does not reduce its value).
So, two out of the four flute quartets are transcriptions. What happens if a string quartet turns into a flute quartet by transforming the voice of the first violin? Our first – unsuspecting and unconsidered – answer may be: not a lot, only that whatever was played by the first violin will now be played by the flute. But that is not what happens. As so frequently with transcriptions the whole character of the composition changes as demonstrated also by this album. From the homogeneity of the pure sound of the strings suddenly a wind instrument will face three string instruments. That is a major difference. Mozart very consciously took that fact into account, and built upon that opposition not once in his oeuvre when he wrote his pieces based on the combination of one wind plus three or four strings: oboe quartet, clarinet quintet, horn quintet, and of course the flute quartets. In these pieces the lively, cheerful colour of the wind instrument sounding more plain, and naïve opposite the always serenely superior string adds an amusing hue to the compositions, and brings in a shift toward a sounding reminiscent of a serenade or a divertimento even if in terms of actual genre they are neither serenades or divertimentos. Even the Clarinet quintet in A major, spirited in each note has a characteristic ambivalence: while it approaches sacral purity, and elevatedness, it is, at the same time light, ethereal, and entertaining. (It is like a study written by Mozart cast in notes on the dialectics that he himself as a phenomenon was characterised by).
The music on the album is well elaborated, accurate, elegant with the musicians capable of showing their own virtuosity while at the same time politely adapting to one another. The sounding is transparent, well balanced, the emphases full of life, the melodies flexibly formed, and the segmentation telling. The music places emphasis on the multiplicity of character, and diversity that accompanies the audience through the thirteen movements as a fundamental experience. Seriousness, cheerfulness, momentum and idling, lyricism and belligerence – a delightful variety of musical behaviours enfold from the sounds of the four instruments. Noémi Győri’s flute play is pure, light, her technique agile, and communicative, and the transcriptions created from the Haydn string quartets shed a so far unknown light over the pieces flashing new colours, and new character in their movements.
Kristóf Csengery
Source: Élet és Irodalom