Josef Labor - Piano Quintet in E minor, Op. 3

Josef Labor

(29 June 1842 – 26 April 1924)

 Austrian pianist, organist, and composer of the late Romantic era. Labor was an influential music

teacher. As a friend of some key figures in Vienna, his importance was enhanced.

 Piano Quintet in E minor, Op. 3

Quintet for Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello and Double Bass in E minor, Op. 3, written in 1880.

00:00 - I. Allegro
10:24 - II. Scherzo (Allegro vivace)
16:01 - III. Andante
27:25 - IV. Allegro ma non troppo

Czech composer Josef Labor was born in the town of Hořovice in Bohemia, at the age of three he was

left blind due to contracting smallpox[천연두]. Labor knew and was on friendly terms with virtually every musician of importance in Vienna as well as many others living elsewhere, including Brahms, Richard Strauss, Bruckner, Clara Schumann, Gustav Mahler and Bruno Walter.

This piano quintet is written for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass: the so called “Trout” instrumentation, taking its name from Schubert’s famous Trout Piano Quintet for the same combination [uploaded on this channel]. The impetus for it, no doubt, was Labor’s friendship with Frantisek {Franz} Simandl, a fellow Czech who was a virtuoso bassist whom most considered to be the equal of Dragonetti. Simandl was solo bassist with the Vienna Philharmonic for over 30 years and died in 1912 after a protracted illness. Labor dedicated the work to Simandl as a tribute and it is one of the few such works where the bass has an extremely important part with many solo passages and chances to lead the group.

- The four movement work begins with a powerful and sweeping Allegro. The parts are integrated seamlessly and the melodies are compelling.
- Next comes a playful, light-hearted Scherzo, Allegro vivace, with two highly contrasting trios. The second trio is marked “Mit humor, basso buffo” and here the bass leads the entire way.
- For vitually the first half of the third movement, Andante, the cello alone, with the support of only the piano and very occasionally the violin, sings the gorgeous and highly romantic main theme, surely one of the longest solos in the literature. In the middle section, the bass takes over with a somber and plodding, march-like melody which is then heightened with help from the viola. The movement ends with the bass taking the lead again.
- The finale, Allegro ma non troppo, after a short thrusting introduction, begins with a hard driving and exciting theme which breaks loose with great forward motion. The bass is given powerful short solos bursting with energy as the moods alternate between dramatic and gentle romanticism. The works ends with a hyper dramatic and masterful coda.

The Piano Quintet is dedicated: "Herrn Professor Franz Simandl zugeeignet".

Labor was born in the town of Hořovice in Bohemia to Josef Labor, an administrator of ironworks, and his wife Josefa Wallner, coming from a doctors-family.^[1] At the age of three, he was left blind due to contracting smallpox. He attended the Institute for the Blind in Vienna and the Konservatorium der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Conservatory of the Society of Friends of Music) where he studied composition with Bruckner’s teacher, Simon Sechter, and piano with Eduard Pickhert.

He toured Europe as a pianist and, in the process, formed a lasting friendship with King Georg V of Hanover, who was also blind. Georg named him Royal Chamber Pianist in 1865. The following year, the two men settled in Vienna, where Labor began organ lessons and became a teacher, while continuing to compose and perform.

In 1904, Labor received the title Kaiserlich und Königlich Hoforganist (Royal and Imperial Court Organist) and is today best known for his organ works. Labor took a serious interest in early music and wrote continuo elaborations for Heinrich Biber’s sonatas.

Labor taught many notable musical personalities including Alma Schindler (who married Gustav Mahler and others), Paul Wittgenstein and Arnold Schoenberg. Alma Schindler studied with Labor for 6 years, beginning when she was 14, and her diaries contain numerous references to her esteemed teacher.

Labor was exceedingly close to Paul Wittgenstein's family. He attended many musical evenings at the Wittgenstein home with such Viennese musicians of the day as Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann, Gustav Mahler, Bruno Walter, and Richard Strauss.

When Wittgenstein lost his right arm in World War I, Josef Labor was the first person he asked to write a piece for piano left hand. Wittgenstein later commissioned works for the left hand from other composers including Strauss, Maurice Ravel, Benjamin Britten, Sergei Prokofiev, and Franz Schmidt (the finale of Schmidt's A major Clarinet Quintet - the last of his Wittgenstein commissions - is a set of variations on a theme by Labor from Labor's own clarinet and piano quintet, his opus 11 published in 1901).

Paul's brother, the philosopher and writer Ludwig Wittgenstein, praised Josef Labor as one of "the six truly great composers" along with Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms.