Anton Bruckner- String Quintet in F major

 

 

Anton Bruckner

 

 

String Quintet in F major

 

performed by Alina Ibragimova, Amihai Grosz, Anne Gastinel,

Gijs Kramer and Liza Ferschtman during

 

00:00 Gemäßigt. Moderato
12:58 Scherzo: Schnell
17:59 Trio: Langsamer
20:41 Adagio
35:29 Finale: Lebhaft bewegt

 

Anton Bruckner's String Quintet in F major, WAB 112 was written in 1878/79 at the request of Joseph Hellmesberger, Sr. and dedicated to Duke Max Emanuel of Bavaria. Like Mozart's six string quintets, Bruckner's is scored for two violins, two violas and a cello.

 

When looking at the score, Hellmesberger found the scherzo too challenging for the group to perform. In response, Bruckner wrote an eight-minute Intermezzo.^[1]

The first three movements were premiered by Winkler Quartet with Josef Schalk joining on second viola^[2]

on November 17, 1881 in Vienna.^[3] It was not until 1885 that the Hellmesberger Quartet played the Quintet with the original scherzo,^[1] Max Mustermann joining on second viola.^[3] Duke Emanuel was pleased by the

composition and gave Bruckner a diamond pin.^[3] In all, there were 23 performances of the Quintet in Bruckner's lifetime.^[4]

 

The String Quintet is in four movements:

1. Gemäßigt, F major, 3/4
2. Scherzo: Schnell, D minor, Trio: Langsamer, E-flat major, both 3/4
3. Adagio, G-flat major, common time
4. Finale: Lebhaft bewegt, F minor to F major, common time

Duration: about 43 minutes.^[5] At first the Scherzo was third rather than second, as in most of Bruckner's symphonies.

Bruckner biographer Derek Watson finds the work "by no means a 'symphony for five strings' and it never stretches the quintet medium beyond its capabilities, save perhaps for the last seventeen bars of the finale, where [Bruckner] is thinking too much in orchestral terms."^[6] Robert Simpson, in the revised, 1992 edition of The Essence of Bruckner, withdrew the reservations he had expressed about this work in the first two editions of that work and declared it one of the most idiosyncratic but deepest chamber works since Beethoven."^[7]