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Schoenberg: Sonata after the Wind Quintet Op. 26
arr. Felix Greissle
Fenwick Smith, flute and piccolo
Randall Hodgkinson, piano
Northeastern NR 210 (LP only)
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![[Picture of disc cover]](Images/schoenberg.gif)
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Dear Mr. Smith,
a very fine performance. I am delighted but sorry that I am too
sick to write more. I could cover pages and pages. Many thanks.
best, Felix Greissle
I didn't realize at the time how fortunate I was to be in touch with Felix Greissle on the subject of this piece. He was among the last surviving links to Schoenberg and the New Vienna School. In our phone conversations (I never met him in person) he spoke with the heavy accent one might expect from someone who had changed languages in midlife; he struggled also with the congestion and shortness of breath caused by advanced emphysema. Randall Hodgkinson and I sent him a tape of our first performance, along with a long laundry list of proposed changes to his transcription [see album notes below]. He replied not with the detailed suggestions we were hoping for, but with the above note, transcribed in its entirety, which in a way was even better. This was our last communication; he died shortly thereafter.
This recording was a byproduct of my lasting fascination with the music of Schoenberg and Berg. There was a time, in my impressionable youth, when I thought Schoenberg's D-minor string quartet was the greatest work of the 20th century, and listened to it every day for a month. I went on to collect scores and recordings of virtually the whole output of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, and grew up with their music in my bones. So it was inevitable that I should be drawn to Schoenberg's Sonata Op. 26--the only work that any of them wrote that is playable on the flute.
With this recording (my first, issued on LP only) I fancied that I was making a landmark contribution to the flute repertoire. What I in fact seem to have made is the world's most obscure flute record: Northeastern Records deleted it after a few years, having sold a scant 300 copies worldwide. I have never heard of a performance by anyone else. Our 1980 performance drew a capacity crowd to the Longy school in Cambridge; it was greeted by prolonged applause, and critical rapture. Surely someone, somewhere, will take it up again, sometime. . .
In the meantime, of course, I have the remaining stock of LPs--a lifetime supply, no doubt, now that the turntable has gone the way of the buggy whip. Curious? Want a copy?? E-mail me!
Album Notes
Schoenberg and his followers were imaginative and prolific in their reworking of each other's music and that of past masters. Some of these transcriptions were purely utilitarian, such as the reductions of orchestral works made to permit presentation by the limited forces of Schoenberg's Association for Private Musical Performances in Vienna. Others were made with the hope of reaching a larger audience through a more accessible medium, or with the expectation that a more conventional instrumentation might lead to more frequent performance. And, most notably, some transcriptions, such as Schoenberg's orchestration of Brahms or Webern's orchestrations of Bach, were done as tributes to the older masters.
The present transcription of Schoenberg's Wind Quintet Op.26 was made, at Schoenberg's suggestion, by Felix Greissle (1894-1982), a composer in his own right who was a student and close associate of Schoenberg, and who had married Schoenberg's daughter Gertrud in 1921. Greissle immigrated to New York City in 1938, where he became involved in the music publishing business. Randall Hodgkinson and I were in touch with him in 1980 as we prepared our first performance of the transcription. Greissle described conferring regularly with Schoenberg as his work on the transcription progressed. He was actually living in the Schoenberg household at the time; the two would meet after dinner to decide on octave transpositions, the distribution of parts, or other particulars of the work. The Sonata, as the transcription is entitled, was copyrighted by Schoenberg's publisher Universal Edition in 1926, just a year after publication of the Quintet. It is published under Schoenberg's name, with an annotation on the title page which reads " transcribed for piano and high instrument by Felix Greissle. " Performance material is provided for flute, violin, or clarinet.
The Sonata has not proved popular. Greissle is aware of its having been performed once in Tokyo some years ago, and the Schoenberg Institute was able to substantiate only one other performance, by Nicolas Slonimsky and violinist Rebecca Dulfer at the Women's Republican Club of Boston in 1936. That it has otherwise languished in total obscurity for over half a century is surely due to the often impossible awkwardness of the piano part. At the time the transcription was made, Schoenberg was so anxious that the original be accurately represented that he obliged Greissle to stuff into the keyboard part every note not accounted for in the solo line. Schoenberg was well aware of the practical difficulties this caused, and expected some material necessarily to be omitted in performance. But he was unwilling to make such compromises himself!
In later years Schoenberg relented. When Greissle undertook the piano reduction of his Violin Concerto, Schoenberg allowed him to place impractical or unplayable voices in small notes outside the staff--and he agreed that this did not unduly compromise the realization of his musical intent. Had Schoenberg reached this concession earlier, the Sonata might by now be better known in the concert hall.
With this knowledge of the circumstances attending the transcription of the Quintet, and with Greissle's blessing, Randall Hodgkinson and I have resorted to occasional octave transpositions in the flute part. In the keyboard part certain notes, and a few fragments of counterpoint have been omitted, and some spots of awkward figuration have been better adapted to the keyboard. With these changes the Sonata is no longer impossible but merely fiendishly difficult.
But what rewards the working out of those problems brings! The wealth of melodic invention, the dazzling mastery of counterpoint, and the variety of mood and character which Schoenberg summons threaten to burst the bounds of the traditional forms of the Sonata. The first movement, marked Schwungvoll (energetic, with verve) is in sonata allegro form. The long-lined principal theme, announced immediately by the flute, is by turns declamatory, yearning, exultant, and nostalgic. It presents material which is used in myriad transformations, some recognizable and some disguised, in all four movements. It also prepares the listener for the density of event and mercurial variety of mood that typify the entire piece.
The second movement, marked Anmutig und heiter (graceful and cheerful), is a witty, capricious, and occasionally bumptious Ländler, full of mischievous accents on the wrong beat, frenetic strettos, and calmer interludes where performers and audience can collect their wits.
The third movement, Etwas langsam (rather slow), opens with long, sinuous contrapuntal lines weaving about one another, gradually increasing in intensity until a climax is reached. The more congenial central section leads to a wistful recollection of the entertainments of the scherzo, a reference that occurs again shortly before the close of the movement. Both times, though, the these excursions run out of steam, winding down slower and slower until the tempo and material of the opening of the movement return.
The finale, Rondo, an energetic, busy toccata, is seldom diverted from its headlong progress. The opening four notes form a sort of motto which is developed throughout the movement in an inexhaustible variety of harmonic and melodic contexts. Towards the end of the Rondo the kinetic energy dissipates and in the stillness salient fragments from each of the preceding movements are briefly recalled. Then the motion resumes and intensifies, and the coda sweeps all before it with grandiose exuberance.
--Fenwick Smith
Copyright © Northeastern Records 1982. All rights reserved.
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