ヨセフ・スク・ピアノカルテット

グスタフ・マーラー（1860－1911）：ピアノカルテット　イ短調

アルフレート・シュニトケ（1854－1928）：ピアノカルテット

レオシュ・ヤナーチェク（1854－1928）：ピアノトリオ、JW X/22（ミロシュ・シュテェドロニュによる復元）

ヨセフ・スク（1874－1935）：カルテット イ短調 作品1、ピアノ、バイオリン、ヴィオラ、チェロのための作品

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911): Piano Quartet in A minor

Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998): Piano Quartet

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928): Piano Trio, JW X/22, reconstruction by Miloš Štědroň

Josef Suk (1874–1935): Quartet in A minor, Op. 1 for Piano, Violin, Viola and Cello

The concert will present chamber works by leading musical figures of the turn of the 20^th century, and will also acquaint us with issues concerned with the reconstruction of pieces which have not been preserved until today, but have been written by other artists.

The Piano Quartet in A minor by Gustav Mahler is the only preserved chamber work from this great author of symphonic music. It is a composition he produced during his studies at the Vienna Conservatory, probably in 1876. The work has been preserved as a fragment, and it is not completely clear if the work, which only had three performances in the year of its creation, ever existed in another, more elaborate version. The first movement of the quartet wasn’t discovered until the 1960s by Mahler´s wife, Alma, and the composition had its modern premiere in 1964. In addition to the first complete movement of the Piano Quartet, several bars from the Scherzo were also preserved.

This fragment was later completed by Alfred Schnittke, one of the second half of the 20^th century’s most remarkable authors of music, after the piece caught his attention in 1988. Based on the preserved 24 bars, he created a very distinctive piece which is by no means a mere attempt to reconstruct the original but more of a “memory of what was not fulfilled.” In the end, we can understand this work as a unique palimpsest where the original Mahler layer slowly dissolves and is overlaid by a new layer which, however, comments on the original message and regains life within it again.

Janáček´s Piano Trio, composed in 1908, has not been preserved to this day. It had its premiere at Brno’s Club of Friends of Art in 1909, and its tale ends with a production in 1922. However, it is almost certain that the composition was destroyed by Janáček himself, who later transformed the material from the Trio into the form of a string quartet. The mystery of the missing piece, and some curiosity as to how it would sound with the chosen instruments, has led many authors inspired by L. N. Tolstoy’s “Kreutzer Sonata” to reconstruct the piece on the basis of a reverse transformation from the Quartet. Each adaptation brings a different vision, a different perspective. At the concert we will hear a modification created by Miloš Štědroň.

The three-movement Piano Quartet by Josef Suk from 1891 is the composer´s first composition with an opus number. The fact that Suk had already composed many previous compositions is clear from the maturity of the work. The composer produced the piece during his studies at the Prague Conservatory in Antonín Dvořák´s class. He valued the quartet very much, as Dvořák had commented on the second movement: “What a great chap you are!” No wonder the young Josef Suk dedicated the composition to his beloved teacher.

Author: Jiří Zahrádka