Draeseke String Quartet No.3 etc.

[Alan Howe]

...forthcoming from cpo:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/felix-draeseke-streichquartett-nr-3/hnum/9735536

Coupling: Szene Op.69 for violin & piano; Suite Op.86 for 2 violins.

[eschiss1]

Looking forward to. Don't know the suite, but I like the other two works very much.

[semloh]

Ah, excellent! Thanks, Alan. I was wondering if/when this would be available, having got the 1st and 2nd SQs. Don't know any of the works, so also looking forward to hearing them.

[Alan Howe]

SQ3 is a 'difficult' piece requiring a considerable amount of effort on the part of the listener. Something to get your teeth into...

[eschiss1]

I've only heard the 3rd quartet because (1) midis (2) Matesic's recording. I think there is a recording on YouTube too but I haven't listened to it yet...

This is, it seems, the 2nd recording of the Szene on cpo and, to my knowledge, its third commercial recording.
(The promotionals say that this is the only work by Draeseke in work-sized sonata form to have 5 movements, which is true if one doesn't count divertimenti like Draeseke's serenade; they then go on to count Haydn's divertimenti. Not sure that makes sense. (They call those early works Haydn's divertimento-like quartets, but I'm not positive Haydn himself called them quartets any more than he called his earlier "piano trios" trios (he called them sonatas). Names attached by editors a century-plus later really shouldn't count...))

[Alan Howe]

The performance of SQ3 is very fine. Dating from 1895, it's a typically tough work, very chromatic and stylistically about as far from the mainstream of chamber music writing of that period as one can get owing to its employment of 'endless melody' and a highly contrapuntal approach.

I confess that Draeseke has always been for me the greatest romantic-era unsung composer (although I know that he is a really tough nut to crack), and once again I find myself simply flabbergasted at the utter originality and mastery of this quartet. There's nothing like it in the entire literature.

[Alan Howe]

The CD is reviewed somewhat uncomprehendingly (but ultimately appreciatively) in the December issue of Gramophone magazine - uncomprehendingly because the reviewer (Amy Blier-Carruthers) evidently didn't know who Draeseke was and hadn't previously heard anything quite like his music. Nevertheless, it obviously impressed her, so kudos to her for that!
https://www.ram.ac.uk/people/amy-blier-carruthers

[kolaboy]

I've never delved into FD's chamber works, so this will be a treat. CPO has become my favorite label, of late.

[Alan Howe]

Be prepared for somthing really different from the 19th century mainstream. This is not Brahms - or anything like it.

[Rainolf]

On The Art Music Lounge another review was published. The author is Lynn René Bayley:

https://artmusiclounge.wordpress.com/2021/10/09/felix-draesekes-string-music/

The conclusion: "Clearly interesting music by a composer who deserves to be much better known, and the performances are excellent."

[Alan Howe]

That's a very insightful review. To explain the difference between Draeseke and other composers of the more classical school, the writer says:

Those who have followed my blog know that one of the major complaints I have with older composers—not all of them, of course, but most of them—is that they wasted (in my view) a lot of time in their compositions creating and developing tunes that people could hum on their way out of the concert. Brahms only did this to a point, however—he was too serious and fastidious a composer to really waste a lot of time on melodies for the sake of melodies—and Draeseke did this even less, and this is probably why his music fell out of favor. What Merian so clearly and aptly described as his "somewhat standoffish" musical personality was undoubtedly based on the fact that Draeseke didn't waste time milking melodies, not even in the slow movements where they are clearly more prolonged. Moreover, these melodic lines are always, and I mean always, underpinned by that moving harmonic base, which doesn't quite leave the listener in the lurch but also doesn't coddle or pacify his or her need for something "safe" and unchanging in the lower lines.

[Double-A]

I find this passage rather shocking in its elitism--in fact snobbery.  One wonders for example who these "older" composers were who were "wasting time on melody" and "coddled" the public with "tunes they can hum on the way out".  I suspect Dvorak tops the list.

I read the whole review before posting here and there are good things in it.  But this passage is just as arrogant if read in context as it appears on its own.

[Mark Thomas]

Arrogant indeed. It reads like something any Director of  BBC Radio 3 could have said anytime between the 1980s and the 2010s.

[Alan Howe]

I think the writer could have avoided the unnecessary comparison with 'composers who wrote tunes' by simply emphasising Draeseke's preference for contrapuntal development in his compositions. In any case, it's only true to a certain degree: for example, the first movement of SQ3 has a marvellous 'tune' that has been going round in my head for days, and SQ2 has another, even more glorious opening arching melody. I'd also mention here the sublime trio in the scherzo of Draeseke's 3rd Symphony. Draeseke could certainly knock them out when he was so minded.

There's also another flaw in his argument. Raff was one of the 19th century's greatest tunesmiths, yet his music fell out of favour too. The flow of musical history just isn't that neat...

What I did find interesting, though, was this comment:

these melodic lines are always, and I mean always, underpinned by that moving harmonic base, which doesn't quite leave the listener in the lurch but also doesn't coddle or pacify his or her need for something "safe" and unchanging in the lower lines.

In other words, Draeseke's music is rarely 'safe' harmonically speaking. That's what makes him pretty well unique among the mid-to-late 19thC composers of his generation, especially of chamber music.

[Double-A]

Interestingly though the same 3rd quartet features a violation of this "principle" at the very beginning; at least to my ears the harmony there is quite "normal"; it is indeed the tuen that makes the passage memorable.

Great artists are hard to pigeonhole.

I was actually more bothered by the contempt for "less sophisticated" listeners that is woven into the passage without having any relevance to explaining this particular set of works.  If somebody gets enjoyment out of a lovely tune (I do!) who is he to look down on them?