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Private letters in an intimate setting Venezia
Teatro La Fenice (Sale Apollinee)
09/10/2024 - & September 11, 2024
Felix Mendelssohn: 4 Pieces for String Quartet, opus 81: 3. Capriccio in E minor
Leos Janácek: Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters”, JW VII/13
Franz Schubert: Quartet No. 13 “Rosamunde”, opus 29, D. 804
Armida Quartet: Martin Funda, Johanna Staemmler (violin), Teresa Schwamm-Biskamp (viola), Peter-Philipp Staemmler (cello)
Armida Quartet (© Vitale Fano)
It’s said that Venice was the first city to invent tourism. Whereas adventurers and curious spirits have always been attracted to explore the unknown, it’s believed that centuries ago, the mercantile La Serenissima was the first city to intentionally create hype and infrastructure to profit from tourism.
Alas, Venice was too successful for its own good, for today it’s one of most visited cities on earth. So in demand is real estate to host and entertain visitors that many inhabitants have now migrated to terra ferma outside the city. Once a major Italian city, Venice now has less than 50,000 inhabitants, down from 175,000 in the 1950s.
I’m a frequent visitor to La Fenice, the city’s revered opera house, considered by many to be the world’s most beautiful, and I’ve enjoyed countless memorable opera performances there. Given the city’s dwindling population and the huge influx of tourists, a large proportion of those in attendance are étrangers.
This time, I was surprised and frankly delighted to discover Venice had a successful chamber music series organized by Musikŕmera, who present over twenty concerts per season. The audience is overwhelmingly Venetian. A small contingent of tourists distinguished themselves with applause between the movements. Most chamber music concerts are held in the beautiful and intimate Sale Apollinee, with a capacity of 120. More popular events are held in Teatro Malibran, with still bigger events at La Fenice’s main hall. It’s admirable that such an institution is able to thrive in this sparsely-populated city. The present concert was given under their auspices.
Winners of the 2012 ARD International Competition in Munich, Germany’s Armida Quartet has risen to become one of Europe’s leading quartets. Its name is derived from Haydn’s opera Armida (1784), in honour of the iconic composer and father of the string quartet.
Mendelssohn’s “Capriccio” was composed in 1843. It was later assembled by the publisher with three other short pieces for string quartet into a single hybrid work. The short piece is in the form of a prelude and fugue. The Andante con moto prelude evoked melancholy, while the Allegro fugato, assai vivace was in an appropriately speedy tempo. This was a fine appetizer for the two major works in the programme.
The 1904 premiere of Jenůfa in Brno took place when Janácek (b. 1854) was already middle‑aged. He’d made his living as a provincial music teacher and organist in Brno, but after Jenůfa’s debut in Prague and its ensuing international success, he embarked on a remarkable second period of productivity, during which he wrote what are now considered to be major works: Kátia Kabanová (1921); The Cunning Little Vixen (1924); The Makropulos Case (1926); From the House of the Dead (1928); Taras Bulba (1921); Sinfonietta (1926); the Glagolitic Mass (1927); String Quartet No. 1 “Kreutzer Sonata” (1924); and String Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters” (1928). It is believed that the fecund last years of his life were due to his passion for Kamila Stösslova, a young married woman 38 years his junior. This unfulfilled passion was channeled into abundant creativity.
The String Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters” was written the very year of Janácek’s death. It’s likely he was reflecting on both his passion for Stösslova as well as his impending death. A condensation of over seven hundred letters sent to his muse, the quartet expresses the emotions inspired by this unconsummated love. The viola part, which represents Stösslova, was originally intended for viola d’amore, but that instrument did not suit the work’s texture. According to Milan Skampa (1928‑2018), violist of the legendary Smetana Quartet, the melancholy third movement is a lullaby to the child Janácek and Stösslova never had.
The Armida Quartet ably presented these cascades of emotion, from the sadness and despair of the Adagio to the voluptuous lyricism and joy of the folk‑dance inspired Finale, without ever indulging in sentimentality. Restrained frenzy is how one could qualify their measured yet stylish approach.
The Quartet No. 13 is called “Rosamunde” after the incidental music (D. 797) that Schubert wrote a year earlier for the eponymous play by Helmina von Chézy (1783‑1856) about a Cypriot princess, now mercifully forgotten. Both “Rosamunde” and the Quartet No. 14 “Death and the Maiden” were composed the same year (1824), and share an intensity not found in Schubert’s previous chamber works. Perhaps it was the composer’s knowledge that his brief life would soon come to an end. The Quartet “Rosamunde” opens less ominously with two melancholy first movements. Beneath its calm surface is anguish, brought deftly to the surface by the Armida Quartet en demi‑teinte. They ably conveyed tenderness in the lyrical Andante and the plaintively melancholy Menuetto. This work would be quite bleak had it not been for its elegant Hungarian-folksy Finale which was almost joyful. Armida were adept at conveying a uniquely Schubertian melancholic joy.
Although the two major works presented were intensely serious, the Janácek for its unfulfilled passion, the Schubert for its anguish-tinged melancholy, the Armida Quartet brought its attentively appreciative audience pure elegance imbued with grace and joy.
Ossama el Naggar
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