Reznicek String Quartets

[Alan Howe]

...five String Quartets, forthcoming from cpo:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/emil-nikolaus-von-reznicek-streichquartette-vol-1/hnum/8455674

[FBerwald]

Oh yes! I like this composer a lot!

[Alan Howe]

These (somewhat confusing) details are taken from the Wikipedia entry on the composer:

String Quartet No.1 in C minor (1882) [Altmann No.1]

String Quartet No.2 in C sharp minor (1906)

String Quartet Fragment in C sharp minor (ca.1920; only mvts. 1-3)

String Quartet No.3 in C sharp minor (1921) [Altmann No.2]

String Quartet No.4 in D minor (1922) [mvts.1 & 2 arranged from String Quartet in C sharp minor 1907; mvts.3 & 4 new][Altmann No.3]

Allegro alla polacca for String Quartet (1922; originally new 4th mvt. for Quartet in D minor)

String Quartet No.5 in E minor (1925/30)

String Quartet No.6 in B flat major (1932) [mvts.2 & 3 taken from Quartet No.5 in E minor] [Altmann No.4]

[eschiss1]

Most of these can be found in published or (computer-)typeset form at IMSLP.

[Alan Howe]

The CDs evidently feature the quartets in C minor, C sharp minor, D minor, E minor and B flat. Problem is, there are two in C sharp minor, not to mention movements used in both the E minor and B flat works! I suppose we won't know what's been recorded until we see further details. I trust that cpo will be accurate here...

This is the listing at IMSLP:

String Quartet in C minor
String Quartet No.2 in C-sharp minor
String Quartet in C-sharp minor
String Quartet in D minor
String Quartet in E minor
String Quartet in B-flat major

i.e. six quartets, not 5!! Hmmmmm.....

[Santo Neuenwelt]

Matestic made recordings of the 1883 c minor and the d minor. The Franz Josef String Quartet recorded the c sharp minor.

[Alan Howe]

Ah, but which C sharp minor? There are evidently two.

[eschiss1]

Easily solved.

"No.2 in C-sharp minor" (1906, published 2012) has 5 movements:
Mässig, aber mit schwung (begins C# G# ABB#C# G# C#)
Sehr gehalten, etwas gepresst, phantasierend
Scherzo. Sehr schnell und leicht
Nicht sehr schnell, gewichtig
Mässig bewegt

See IMSLP.

The C-sharp minor tout court (not sure of composition date, me, but published 1921) - has 4 movements:
1. Allegro (begins C# G# A#B# C#)
2. Andante mosso
3. Allegretto
4. Pesante

Listening to the opening of the Franz Schubert Quartet recording on Nimbus via NML/IMSLP, it's clearly the "C-sharp minor" (published 1921) (not "quartet no.2").
EDIT:
Oh wait, you said the Franz Josef String Quartet. Who they?

[eschiss1]

Also, Alan, I think one of those 6 quartets is sketchy, literally. Hrm. Ah, no, that's not the reason. The 2nd and 5th quartets (as now numbered) were unpublished and only one of them was acknowledged, I'm guessing. (They're typeset-published, but still published/available, on IMSLP with permission from the copyright-holders as I am given to understand.
Let's see. 5th quartet is at IMSLP, in again maybe its first publication, composed 1930, 4 movements, "Reznicek completed his 5th string quartet in E minor in 1930. In 1931 he reused the 2nd and 3rd movement in his 6th string quartet in B♭ major."

6th quartet of 1931 ("sometimes called String Quartet No.4") : published by Birnbach in 1932 - 4 movements, two of them from the E minor of the year before...
3rd (4th) (D minor) quartet. 1922; published 1923  (since the C-sharp minor of 1921 seems not to have been given a number !?! ) - "Latterly numbered No.4 since the recent publication of two quartets (nos. 2 in C-sharp and 5 in E minor) previously in manuscript."

[eschiss1]

I'm almost certain that cpo is recording the C-sharp minor listed as "Altmann No.2", not the recently published 1906 work, though it's interesting that they -are- recording the E minor work.
(The Minguet Quartett is a good choice for music of this period; they did -very- well by Robert Fuchs' "complete" (actually, just his 4 published out of 7 composed, most if not all 7 available still at ÖNB) string quartets.)

[eschiss1]

They might also release the 1906 quartet on another disc, of course. Reviewers will assume that these are all his quartets (just as with the Litolff piano trios disc on Hyperion recently, where all the reviews I read assumed that this was all he wrote, folks, and to be fair Hyperion's notes were ambiguous on the point, but to be more fair (to Litolff), they could have, I dunno, looked it up in 5 seconds? 5 whole seconds ? (this)) ...

[Santo Neuenwelt]

Yeah, Franz Schubert, the composer, not Franz Josef the Kaiser....but they were both Franz

[BerlinExpat]

Leopold Nowak contributed an account of E N von Reznicek's compositions in Felicitas von Reznicek's biography of her father's music (Gegen den Strom) . Under "Chamber Music" the following entry suggests there are only five complete string quartets:

1880-82   String Quartet in C minor (FR)
1906   String Quartet in C sharp minor (1st version)
1921   String Quartet in C sharp minor (2nd version) (SI)
1921-22   String Quartet in D minor (BI)
1925-30   String Quartet in E minor (only fragments survive)
1926       Kol nidrey (Prelude to Holofernes) for violin or violoncello and piano (UE)
1932   String Quartet in B flat minor (BI)

In the text it states that the reworking of the 1906 C sharp minor quartet involved replacing the 4th movement (Mässig bewegt) with a "Präludium and Fuge". Nevertheless the rest of the first version was recomposed for the 1921 version allowing the 1st version to be incorporated the D minor (1921) quartet. For this quartet the first three movements of the first C sharp minor quartet were used with key changes but the fourth movement replaced with a "Tempo di Polacca". In the second version of the D minor quartet the third and fourth movements were replaced with new compositions. Nowak notes that these four quartets are all interrelated.

Of the E minor quartet (1925) only the first and fourth movements survive in manuscript. Reznicek replaced the fourth movement in 1930.

Details taken from pages 315-317 of Gegen den Strom by Felicitas Reznicek.

[Alan Howe]

Thanks for this. At last an explanation that makes sense!