Piano Quartet in A minor (1876)

Nicht zu schnell

Accordng to Mahler himself, the best of his student pieces was a Piano Quartet he wrote towards the end of his time at the Vienna Conservatoire, which would be round about 1878. It was so well received that he sent the score to Russia for a competition. Sadly, he never saw it again. We do, however, have the first movement and a fragmentary scherzo of a Piano Quartet in A minor which he wrote in his first or second year at the Conservatoire and which, since its publication in 1964, has acquired a minor cult status – thanks not least to Alfred Schnittke’s fascination with the fragmentary scherzo. At the same time, the string-orchestra arrangement by Alexander Asteriades, of a work that makes such a heroic feature of the piano part, has not helped the cause very much.

Highly accomplished though the Nicht zu schnell (Not too quick) first movement is for a composer of 15 or 16, it is obviously indebted to Brahms and clearly has its structural faults. The faults are not necessarily unwelcome, however. Mahler’s emotional investment in the brooding opening theme, introduced by the left hand of the piano under throbbing chords in the right, is such that he has little interest in the Bach-like second subject interpolated by violin and piano a few bars later. But the important point is that the emotion is a reality rather than a posture and so intense that, after the exposition repeat, it inspires a passionate development with a massively sonorous climax in the piano part at one point. The intensity is retained convincingly enough through the recapitulation, and if the violin cadenza seems excessive the quietly modest ending compensates for it.

Nicht zu schnell

Accordng to Mahler himself, the best of his student pieces was a Piano Quartet he wrote towards the end of his time at the Vienna Conservatoire, which would be round about 1878. It was so well received that he sent the score to Russia for a competition. Sadly, he never saw it again. We do, however, have the first movement and a fragmentary scherzo of a Piano Quartet in A minor which he wrote in his first or second year at the Conservatoire and which, since its publication in 1964, has acquired a minor cult status – thanks not least to Alfred Schnittke’s fascination with the fragmentary scherzo, which he not only quoted in his Concerto Grosso No.4/Symphony No.5 but also developed into his own Piano Quartet.

Highly accomplished though the Nicht zu schnell (Not too quick) first movement is for a composer of 15 or 16, it is obviously indebted to Brahms and clearly has its structural faults. The faults are not necessarily unwelcome, however. Mahler’s emotional investment in the brooding opening theme, introduced by the left hand of the piano under throbbing chords in the right, is such that he has correspondingly little interest in the brisk, Bach-like second subject interpolated by violin and piano in the same key a few bars later. The invitation to a chromatic fugue suggested at this point is stylishly acknowledged but not accepted, attention being diverted to a comparatively plain theme heard earlier on violin. But the important point is that the emotion is a reality rather than a posture and so intense that, after the exposition repeat, it inspires a passionately eventful development with a massively sonorous piano climax based on the main theme. The intensity is retained convincingly enough through the recapitulation and if the violin cadenza seems excessively dramatic the quietly modest ending compensates for it.

arranged for string orchestra by Alexander Asteriades (b 1941)

There is something peculiarly fascinating about Mahler’s Piano Quartet in A minor. It’s just a student work - Mahler was no more than sixteen when he wrote it - and it is far from complete but, perhaps because it is the one surviving chamber piece by a composer who from the age of twenty was to devote himself to nothing but orchestral and vocal music, it has acquired an iconic status in recent years. In 1988, for example, the fragmentary second movement, a Scherzo in G minor, found its way into Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No.4/Symphony No.5: amid the dying reverberations of a tam-tam stroke at the end of a massive orchestral climax, it makes a ghostly entry in its original scoring for piano, violin, viola and cello.

Having got no further than its first thirty bars or so before Mahler abandoned it, that Scherzo is unperformable except in a surreal context like that of the Schnittke work. The first movement, on the other hand, he did finish and, technically clumsy though it might be, it offers moving evidence of emergent genius. The opening bars, where the piano introduces a melody subtly foreboding in character and intriguingly flexible in rhythm, signal the arrival of a composer who is more than a teenage imitator of Schumann and Brahms. So it is not surprising that this A minor first movement has attracted the interest not only of enterprising chamber ensembles but also of a musician like Alexander Asteriades, who has brought it to a wider audience by arranging it for string orchestra.

When Asteriades, a violin teacher at the University of Bayreuth, was working on the arrangement (which was published by Universal Edition last year) he inevitably met a few problems - not the least of which was the repeated piano chords which are first heard in the opening bars of the orginal version and which recur at frequent intervals as a characteristic feature of the texture. His answer, in the absence of a piano, was to pass them on to divided second violins who, occasionally helped out by violas, sustain the background impulse of triplet rhythms through much of the piece. Another difficulty must have been the virtuoso cascade of piano octaves in the development section, which he simply transcribes for four-part strings.

This literal approach to the problem of compensating for the piano part did not prevent Asteriades from correcting a few inconsistencies and harmonic anomalies in Mahler’s original score and altering his “too hectic” figuration at one point. In the recapitulation he goes so far as to cut a short episode which he considers harmful to the symmetry of the piece but which, since it recalls the third of the three main themes before the second, could also be considered an original structural strategy on the composer’s part. The inspiration of this movement in A minor, however, is the quality of its opening theme and the adventures it experiences - most dramatically in a frenzied crescendo based on obsessive repetitions of its first three notes at the climax of the development section, most passionately in an eloquent violin cadenza shortly before the end - all of which is faithfully and effectively represented in the Asteriades arrangement.

Gerald Larner©