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The New York Piano Quartet |
Originally composed in 1930 for the famous one-armed pianist, Paul Wittgenstein, Korngold’s Suite für 2 Violinen, Violoncello, und Klavier (Linke Hand), op. 23 recently appeared again on CD. This release was recorded by the New York Piano Quartet on 8 March 2012 for the newly-established Urlicht Audio Visual label. Under the leadership of Elmira Darvarova, the New York Piano Quartet included Korngold's Suite – along with its Urlicht CD companion piece, Joseph Marx’s rarely performed Klavierquartett in Form einer Rhapsodie (1911) – as part of the New York Chamber Music Festival on 12 September 2012. The Quartet is interviewed by Troy Dixon specially for this website. Answers are provided by Elmira Darvarova, unless noted.
Q: First, I'd like to say that the Quartet's performance during the Chamber Music Festival [September 2012] was excellent. Korngold's Suite is such a wonderful work to hear in person, and the Marx Rhapsodie was amazing – I'm surprised the Marx piece isn't more well-known.
These two magnificent works have given us so much inspiration and joy!
Q: The Quartet recently received quite an outstanding review in Gramophone Magazine for the Urlicht recording of both pieces... |
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We were ecstatic when the May 2013 issue of the prestigious Gramophone Magazine praised our CD recording for the Urlicht label as “ultra-impassioned, vividly detailed performances of Korngold and Marx”, complete with a huge photo of our group on half a page. That this terrific review is by the highly-respected critic and author Donald Rosenberg, means so much to us, and to read his opinion that our New York Piano Quartet has restored life to these two works is indeed very rewarding.
Q: I understand your cellist suggested both the Korngold and Marx pieces to the Quartet – please tell us about that. |
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Our cellist, Samuel Magill, came up with the idea for both pieces, researching them extensively and falling in love with them. In 2007 Sam discovered that the manuscript for Korngold's Suite, Op. 23 was housed at the Paul Wittgenstein Collection at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts. He was instrumental in organizing a concert program to honor the 50th anniversary of Korngold's death, held on the very day of that anniversary, 29 November 2007. The concert was hosted by the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts at the Bruno Walter Auditorium, with the manuscript of Korngold's Suite on display in the lobby during the concert. This 2007 program contained not just Korngold's fantastic Suite, Op. 23, but also two other remarkable Korngold pieces, which Sam and our pianist, Linda Hall, brilliantly performed: the Concerto for Cello in C Major, Op. 37, and Pierrot's Tanzlied from Die tote Stadt, Op. 12. A very thoughtful and sophisticated review of that program by Fred Kirshnit was published in the New York Sun, hailing our “wonderful realization” and the Suite, Op. 23 as an “exceptional piece, [a] most Viennese of works, imbued with that sort of rotting flowers nostalgia that Strauss referred to as “beautiful dirt”...”. I would like to emphasize how much we appreciate Fred Kirshnit's review and his praise of our performance of this very complex work. Mr. Kirshnit noted that Linda Hall was “impressively dramatic and lyrical by turns and, unlike Wittgenstein, could turn her own pages”. (The pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in World War I, nevertheless proceeded with his performing career, commissioning a number of works from Strauss, Reger, Schmidt, Britten, Prokofiev and Ravel, as well as two pieces by Korngold – a piano concerto and the Suite, Op. 23.). We have actually performed Korngold's Suite four times since 2007.
As for the 1911 Rhapsodie by Joseph Marx – another one of Sam Magill's discoveries, and one which has become a steady part of our repertoire – we were privileged to present its American premiere in April 2010 in Washington, DC, as well as its New York premiere in September 2010 at the New York Chamber Music Festival. As with Korngold's Suite, Op. 23, the Rhapsodie by Marx is a veritable masterpiece, unjustly neglected (the great conductor Riccardo Chailly wondered “How could such a major composer fall into oblivion?”).
Q: Introduce the New York Piano Quartet for us. All four of you have associations with the Metropolitan Orchestra…
Now a solo and recording artist, in the past I was concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra – so far, the first and only female concertmaster in the entire MET Opera history. Linda Hall is a highly respected pianist and an assistant conductor at the MET, with a long history of assisting maestro James Levine also at Tanglewood during many years of collaboration. Our violist, Ronald Carbone, is one of the most sought-after viola players, not only as a long-time associate musician of the MET Orchestra, but also as a principal violist of the American Ballet Theatre, and a member of several prestigious orchestras and chamber groups. (Ron's versatility as both a violist and a violinist came very handy during our performances and our recording of Korngold's Suite, as this particular work doesn't require a violist, but is instead scored for two violins.) Last but not least, our cellist Sam Magill, former Associate Principal of the MET Orchestra, is a brilliant instrumentalist, who has made a number of critically acclaimed world-premiere CD recordings for several labels, and has performed as soloist in some of the world's greatest concert halls.
Q: What part or parts of the Suite do you enjoy most?
My personal favorite movement of Korngold's Suite is the “Lied”, which presents the charming melody “Was du mir bist” [from Korngold’s Drei Lieder, op. 22] and is one of the most beautiful movements in Korngold's entire chamber music oevre. This song-without-words, sentimental but extremely sustained in its rhetoric, is a true romantic gem. I also very much love the elegance and old-world charm of the second movement, "Waltz."
Q: A question directed to Linda Hall: is there a special challenge for a two-handed pianist to approach and perform a one-handed piece?
(LH): The Korngold Suite is a wonderful piece which I so enjoy performing. I did dread learning it, though, because my left hand is not as smart as my right. The left hand is the powerful one whereas the right has the dexterity. I knew it would take longer to get it into my fingers. As I practiced I noticed that my right hand seemed to be poised above the keys wanting to help.
I really don't know how one-armed people manage because in many instances I have to hang onto the piano with my right hand so as not to lose my balance. It is also necessary to have a piano bench so that you can slide up and down since the left hand must now travel all the way up to the highest notes.
When performing the piece at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Washington, DC, I almost fell off the bench sweeping quickly from the bass up to the treble. Luckily it made me laugh rather than cry.
Q: What’s next for The Quartet – when are you next performing Korngold’s Suite?
We are really looking forward to performing it next year at Mahler's newly-restored birth house in Bohemia, near Brno, as well as in Brno – the city where Korngold was born. As a nine-year old child Korngold had been proclaimed a “genius” by Mahler after playing his cantata Gold for him, so the connection between the two of them is not only because of the geographical proximity of their birth places. Performing works by both Mahler and Korngold in their place of origin would be a great honor and privilege for us, and I am in touch with some organizations which are presently working on bringing us there for these performances.
Originally posted September 2013