Draeseke String Quartet No.3 etc.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Quite. If it is a waste of time "creating and developing tunes that people could hum" that's Schubert (who found it difficult NOT to write a tune) condemned and kicked ignominiously onto the rubbish heap. Really, the utter tripe some supposedly intelligent people write!

[eschiss1]

This seems like an excellent place where I'd otherwise -expect- someone to say "back to the music".

[Gareth Vaughan]

Point taken, Eric.

[Alan Howe]

It'd be interesting to hear from members who have heard the new CD...

[Alan Howe]

From Edition Silvertrust:

Felix Draeseke. "Draeseke was a musician whose works, even in his lifetime, received far fewer performances than they deserved in view of their high artistic value. His Third String Quartet dates from 1899. The first movement, Andantino elegiaco, expresses sadness which is at times interrupted by stormy episodes. The second movement, Scherzo, allegro spumante, lives up to its title, while the trio, with its easy tunefulness, provides a soothing contrast. A very expressive slow movement, Adagio non tanto, which is tinged with melancholy comes next. Before the finale, Draeseke inserts a graceful Intermezzo. The finale, Allegro risoluto, begins in a powerful, almost harsh fashion, while the second theme is a lovely cantabile melody."
—The famous chamber music critic Wilhelm Altmann writing in his Chamber Music Handbook.

Felix Draeseke (1835-1913) was born in the German city of Coburg. He began composing at an early age and subsequently entered the famous Leipzig Conservatory where he studied composition with Julius Rietz and piano with Ignaz Moscheles. However, his musical outlook was shaped and influenced by the so-called New German School of which Liszt and Wagner were the leading proponents. He held a number of teaching positions in Switzerland and Germany, eventually settling in the city of Dresden and a few years later began teaching at the Dresden Conservatory. He wrote in nearly every genre and his works were frequently performed during his lifetime. Liszt was a champion of many of Draeseke's compositions and helped them gain publication.
https://www.earsense.org/chamber-music/Felix-Draeseke-String-Quartet-No-3-in-c-sharp-minor-Op-66/?ri=0&rq=q%3DFelix%2BDraeseke%252C%2B%26lid%3D-1%26p%3D1%26rc%3D17

[semloh]

I think this exceprt from the review in December Gramophone is worth copying here.

The arresting opening of the Third String Quartet immediately alerts us that something interesting is afoot, with a beguiling, wistful, songlike little melody that fragments fairly quickly and meanders down various paths. The Constanze Quartet offer some impressive and committed playing here, with shimmering textures, singing and soaring melodic lines, poignant pulsating heartbeats in the inner parts and an expressive use of vibrato, withholding or intensifying it in response to the moment at hand.
...the performers and production team have unarguably captured an expansive, luscious and very live soundscape, one full of energy and dedication that leaves us wanting to hear more.
Amy Blier-Carruthers

[John Boyer]

It pays to give something a second chance - or a fifth one.  We used to have an active member who was bewildered when other members would say things along the lines of, "It took me a while to learn to enjoy a certain work," or "Such and such recording, which I initially dismissed, I have now returned to and enjoy far more." He said he formed all opinions of music on a single hearing and these opinions were permanent.  All this talk of changing opinions of a performance or work he found unfathomable.

I have a pretty big giveaway pile that I don't actually give away.  In it I long ago placed most of my Draeseke, with the exceptions of the piano concerto, the clarinet and cello sonatas, and the quintet for piano, horn, and strings. Something, though, made me go and pull out the string chamber music.  Today I played through the first two string quartets and the two string quintets and now, though I had listened to all four works many times and given up on them, I suddenly find that I "get" them.

 I guess sometimes you just have to try one more time after having let it sit for a while, in this case more than a year.

I never picked up the third quartet but now I definitely will.

[Alan Howe]

Draeseke is like that. His music can be a tough nut to crack, but he's my personal favourite among the unsung. Much of my appreciation for the composer I owe to the late Dr Alan Krueck who taught me the virtue of persistence when listening. The only piece I don't 'get' is Christus, but that may have something to do with the only recording ever made...

[Mark Thomas]

That's very much the case with all five hours of Christus, I think. I don't pretend to have persevered with it as maybe I should, but both Alan Krueck, undoubtedly the doyen of Draeseke enthusiasts, and another (German) luminary of the Draeseke Society (whose name now escapes me) to whom I spoke about the recording many years ago now roundly condemned Udo Follert's recording as a lamentable missed opportunity, more likely to put off the curious than to convert them. They both regarded the work as potentially Draeseke's crowning achievement.

[Alan Howe]

The 3rd String Quartet is the one I personally found hardest to like - until the cpo recording came along which, I note, jpc are now discounting:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/felix-draeseke-streichquartett-nr-3/hnum/9735536

Here's an insightful comment from musicologist Hans Merian:
<<Draeseke is, along with Brahms, one of the most important composers of chamber music. He is a thoroughly unique individual, reserved, severe, even almost somewhat standoffish on a first impression, but [with] a genuine artist's disposition that absorbs itself with its whole person in its own works and even becomes engrossed in them with a certain pensive tenacity. One has to hear him repeatedly and occupy oneself more thoroughly with him in order to appreciate him in full.>>
https://artmusiclounge.wordpress.com/2021/10/09/felix-draesekes-string-music/