The “Kreutzer” and Dvořák’s Romance on Second Sunday

Roger Wilkie and Robert Thies welcomed by the audience at Rolling Hills United Methodist Church.

REVIEW

Roger Wilkie and Robert Thies, Second Sundays at Two, Rolling Hills United Methodist Church

BARBARA GLAZER, Guest Reviewer

Roger Wilkie and Robert Thies.

After his performance with pianist Robert Thies of the Romance in F Minor, Op. 11, by Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904), violinist Roger Wilkie delivered some excellent comments on the program, noting that this first selection had been based on the slow movement of Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 5 in F minor (1873).

It was first performed in 1877 as a violin/orchestral piece by Prague’s Provisional Theater Orchestra in their annual concert. Dvořák’s version for piano and violin, played here, was revised from the orchestral piece and dedicated to violinist František Ondříček (1857-1922) but was never played in public during the composer's lifetime.

Dvořák in 1879.

It is infused with gorgeous melodies, yet most unusually for a Romance is written in Classical sonata form, merging with a Slavic folk style. It is in compound duple meter (two beats per measure, each beat divided into three smaller parts) which produces a sort of swaying sound, with a dreamy quality of reverie or melancholy—perhaps reflective of the deaths of three of Dvořák’s children during these years: one in infancy, another from accidental poisoning, and the third from smallpox.

I loved the Thies/Wilkie performance: the beautiful melodies played with impeccable lyrical taste and phrasing and superb technical prowess: one would never discern from Wilkie's fluid account how difficult the key of F minor is for a violinist.

George Bridgetower.

And then came the Beethoven (1770-1827) Kreutzer Sonata (Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 47, 1803). The piece was originally written for and played by his African-European violinist friend George Bridgetower (1778-1860), but after they had a falling out (over Bridgetower's remark about the morals of a woman Beethoven admired), Beethoven rededicated the work to the virtuoso violinist Rodolphe Keutzer (1766-1831), who as noted in Wilkie’s remarks never played the composition, calling it "unintelligible."

The Kreutzer presents an array of difficulties: its length (about 40 minutes), its technical demands on both instrumentalists, and its transitional style between late Classicism and Romanticism. In structure and forms it is Classical with a sonata-form first movement, a kind of rondo in the last, and the middle movement a set of five variations—a forte of Beethoven. But, adumbrating the Romantic movement, it should be played with drama, high energy, and in the designated “concertante style”—the instruments being co-equals, the piano never an accompanist, but two virtuoso instrumentalists playing as if in a mini- concerto.

Title-page of the first edition of the Kreutzer Sonata, noting that it was
written "in uno stile molto concertante come d’un concerto.”

The speed of the last movement also poses difficulties: like the later Hammerklavier piano sonata (No. 29, 1817), the speed must not obscure the music—the compositional brilliance which is often difficult to hear for the speed and technical fireworks. In many respects this performance by Thies and Wilkie, technically sound, was very “classical,” and I think it just needed to be punched up dramatically—with the earthy, raw, almost sexual romantic element that so incensed Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), and inspired him to write his novella The Kreutzer Sonata (1889).

Sonya and Leo Tolstoy.

Tolstoy must have felt a taboo breached, as audiences did much later hearing Stravinsky's savagery in The Rite of Spring (1913). Tolstoy's novella is the first-person narrative of a husband who hires a violinist to accompany his wife, a pianist and, upon hearing their impassioned performance, is aroused with suspicion regarding their relationship and inflamed with sexual jealousy. The two musicians (never really lovers, never caught en flagrante) are seated at a table talking when the enraged husband, senseless from jealousy, stabs his wife to death.

Tolstoy’s novella is an argument for sexual abstinence to avoid our “swinish,” “animalistic” proclivities which hinder the attainment of humanity and cause us such agony, and strife. His wife Sonya (Sophia) penned two rebuttal novellas (Whose Fault, 1891-94; Song Without Words, 1898, both unpublished during her lifetime), citing her husband as insensitive, unfeeling, and growing more and more ascetic and combative in a stormy marriage once marked by mutual love (and 13 children): Tolstoy did leave home in 1910, ending their marriage.

The Kreutzer Sonata by Rene Xavier Prinet.

The cultural links continue: upon reading Tolstoy's novella, Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) composed his String Quartet No. 1 (1923), a work depicting psychological drama and passion, ending in a dramatic rejection and release.

In 1901 the artist Rene Xavier Prinet (1861-1946), had painted The Kreutzer Sonata: a beautifully dressed pianist, her fingers still touching the keyboard as she stands to receive an impassioned kiss from her violinist lover—an image that in 1932 (and for years) was used in the perfume advertisement for "Tabu, the Forbidden Fragrance."

It's no wonder that impassioned music, in fact all types of music, have sometimes been censored by governments or banned outright by religious sects. Beethoven is said to have opined that "to play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable." His Kreutzer Sonata may be a transitional composition as noted, but it needs to feel less Classical and more Romantic, more earthy, more impassioned, more fiery, if we are to understand its cultural effects and as we hear in the most superb performances: Augustine Hadelich/Orion Wiess and Patricia Kopatchinskaja/Fazil Say, and close behind: Gidon Kremer/Martha Argerich.

In the Classical Crossroads recital we heard, Robert Thies on piano was outstanding, but I felt Roger Wilkie needed to punch it up—even his body stance was so collected and straight, so classical—so that overall, this good performance left me hungry for a more impassioned account. I have viewed this concert on the usual excellent Vimeo video several times, and have listened to many other performances. As a non-professional I have felt hesitant to write my impression, which also accounts for my delay in contributing this review.

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Images: The performers: Classical Crossroads, inc.; Dvořák, Bridgetower, Kreutzer title-page, the Tolstoys, The Kreutzer Sonata: Wikimedia Commons.