Piano Quartet in G minor, Op.25

When Schoenberg orchestrated the Brahms Piano Quartet in G minor and called it “Brahms’s Fifth” he had a point, misguided project though it was. The structure of the first movement of the Quartet, including a second-subject group with no fewer than three different themes, is on a positively symphonic scale. A false recapitulation after an apparently short development includes a whole new examination of the first subject before picking up again where it left off. The Intermezzo is no mere intermezzo, still less a scherzo, but a consistently tense inspiration with outer sections driven by a nagging ostinato on cello or viola. It’s not difficult to work out what attracted Schoenberg to the broadly expressive Andante con moto. The introduction of the opening theme in E flat major, though sonorous enough, seems to be a massed-strings concept and the brilliant entry of the central march theme in C major cries out for orchestral brass, and so does it dramatic re-entry in C minor. As for the closing Rondo alla zingarese, while it is extravagant in comparison with Haydn’s witty use of gypsy material nearly seventy years earlier, it is not so far over the top as to deserve Schoenberg’s treatment of it with his absurd xylophone and glockenspiel.

When Schoenberg orchestrated the Brahms Piano Quartet in G minor and proudly described it as “Brahms’s Fifth” he had a point, misguided project though the arrangement surely was. It is indeed a work of symphonic proportions – shorter than its companion in A major Op.26, it is true, but half as long again as the precedent Brahms would have known best, Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E flat Op.7.

The thematically abundant first movement of Op.25 is based for the most part on the melody suggested by the piano in the opening bars and taken up in its definitive form, on a decisive chord of G minor, by the strings in octaves. There are also three second-subject themes – one introduced in D minor by cello, an expressive variant in D major on violin and viola in unsion, and a jubilant song in D major for the whole ensemble. Even so, only the inexhaustible and ever flexible first subject is featured in the development and only two of the second-subject themes (one of them much varied) find their way into the recapitulation.

The C minor Intermezzo is no mere intermezzo, still less a scherzo. Except for the interventions of a delightful dancng melody in D flat major, it is a consistently tense inspiration with outer sections driven by a nagging ostinato on cello or viola. The A flat major animato middle section, which at one point makes a Schoenbergian retrograde allusion to the main theme of the first movement, is briefly recalled to end the movement in C major.

Strangely enough, in this generous structural context, the Andante con moto is not a true slow movement. The piano quavers under the E flat major main theme keep it moving, expansively scored for strings though it is. There is no hint, however, not even in the agitated dotted rhythms that form the transition to the middle section, of the animato triple-time march that is to make a magically hushed entry in C major and assert itself in fortissimo C minor and triumphant C major before making way for a much altered reprise of the opening section.

As for the closing Rondo alla zingarese, while it is certainly extravagant in comparison with Haydn’s witty use of Hungarian gypsy material in his piano trios and string quartets, it is not so far over the top as to deserve Schoenberg’s neither historically nor ethnically correct xylophone, glockenspiel and glissando trombone. He would have been better off with a cimbalom to match Brahms’s idiomatic simulation of that instrument in his piano cadenza.

transcribed for orchestra by Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

Allegro

Intermezzo: allegro ma no troppo

Andante con moto

Rondo alla zingarese: presto

Schoenberg did several unlikely things during his last years in Los Angeles. Apart from playing tennis with George Gershwin, whom he admired as a composer, he wrote a Suite in G major for high-school string orchestra, a Theme and Variations in G minor for amateur wind band and his first ever organ work, Variations on a Recitative, which was another tonal composition among the twelve-note masterpieces he was writing at much the same time. The strangest enterprise of all was his orchestral arrangement of Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G minor, which was first performed under the direction of Otto Klemperer in Los Angeles in May 1938.

Schoenberg himself described the new score as “Brahms’s Fifth.” What inspired him to undertake it, however, is not completely clear. His own declared reasons are: “I like the piece… It is seldom played… It is always very badly played, because the better the pianist the louder he plays and you hear nothing from the strings. I wanted to hear everything, and this I achieved.” But there must be more to it than that - surely, his reverence for Brahms, who was one of his great models as a composer, and perhaps also an exiled Austrian composer’s nostalgia for his Viennese past. Another reason could well be that Schoenberg felt that the Brahms Piano Quartet G minor - a comparatively early piece written in 1861 - would have made a better Symphony in G minor in the first place.

Thematic material as abundant and as expansive as that of the first movement does seem to demand a proportionately large-scale instrumental setting and a wider variety of colour than piano and string trio can provide. The first subject, introduced in the opening bars on woodwind (according to Schoenberg), is simple in outline but at the same time sturdy enough to be capable of carrying considerable dynamic weight. The second subject, on the other hand, consists of no fewer than three themes - a gift of a melody for orchestral cellos in D minor, a variant of it in D major effectively heightened with woodwind colours, and a swingingly energetic theme in the same key for lower strings. Most encouragingly of all for Schoenberg and his “Brahms’s Fifth” approach, the construction is on a positively symphonic scale: a false recapitulation after an apparently short development includes a whole new examination of the first subject before picking up again where it left off.

Schoenberg’s arrangement of the first movement is perhaps the most convincing of the four. There are occasional mildly alien (Brucknerian or even Elgarian) intrusions but for the most part it sounds like orchestral music by Brahms. As for the other movements, while the same principles are applied - “to remain strictly in the style of Brahms and not to go further than he himself would have gone if he had been alive today” - they are rather less responsive, presumably because their material is better adapted to the piano-quartet medium.

Even so, Schoenberg’s orchestration of the two middle movements is engagingly sensitive in some places and highly imaginative in others. The way in which the horns take over the persistent triplet figure from the strings in the outer sections of the C minor Intermezzo is just one of many subtly felicitous touches of colour. The warm embrace by horns and cellos of the graceful second theme is worthy of the old master himself. As Schoenberg was the first to admit, however, Brahms’s characteristic broken-chord piano figurations gave him trouble: the animato middle section of the Intermezzo is an example of that, ingeniously rendered though it is. There are sensational ideas too, as in the martial middle section of the E flat major Andante con moto, and moving ones, as when the oboe introduces its expressive C major version of the main theme of the movement at the end of that section. Schoenberg’s use of horn and oboe is nearly always convincingly Brahmsian, his shrill treatment of the trumpets less so, his liking for percussion colours hardly ever.

Just how seriously Schoenberg intended his version of the last movement, it is difficult to judge. He was not normally given to levity in his music-making but the occasionally over-the-top treatment of some passages in this already ebullient gypsy rondo - not least from the clarinet (originally piano) cadenza onwards - is irresistibly comic to some ears. The reversion to Brahms’s string-trio scoring at one point is particularly witty, the use of xylophone and glockenspiel particularly extravagant.

Gerald Larner©2002