by Layne Anspach
Hello everyone!
Chamber Music Corner is a new column that will explore chamber works which include horn. This month’s highlighted piece is Louis Spohr’s Quintet in C Minor, Op. 52 for piano, flute, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. While the most famous piano-and-wind quintets exchange the flute for an oboe (i.e., Mozart, K. 452 and Beethoven, Op. 16), there is a handful of wonderful pieces using Spohr’s instrumentation to examine in the future.
Louis Spohr was a German composer, violinist, and conductor born in Brunswick in 1784. He was an extraordinary violinist who wrote chamber compositions focused mostly on string works featuring himself. From 1799 through 1821, Spohr moved from one conducting/concertmaster position to another, all while touring Europe as a soloist. After 1821, he remained in Kassel as Kapellmeister until 1857, passing away two years later after a brief illness.
In 1820, Spohr was engaged by the London Philharmonic Society for the year. While in London, the health of his first wife, Dorette Scheidler, an accomplished harpist, started to decline to the point that she was unable to perform on harp. Considering this, Spohr wrote the Quintet in C Minor, Op. 52 as a piece for which she would play the piano part. The work features the piano heavily, almost to the extent of a piano concerto with wind accompaniment.
The first movement, Allegro moderato, establishes a lively gesture between winds and piano in sonata form. The second movement starts to feature the piano as soloist; Larghetto con moto begins with a slow introduction in the winds led by the clarinet. The piano follows alone, after which the winds join in the harmony. The B section is led by a piano melody with wind accompaniment as an underlying triplet pulse. Spohr composed gorgeous melodic interjections by the winds with the piano accompanying. The movement ends with a repetition of the A section to close out the ternary form.
The Menuetto: Allegretto opens with a downward-falling horn solo which hands off the melody to the piano. The minuet is melodically shared between winds and piano, passing back and forth in turn. The trio is a fantastic feature for the piano, Spohr presumably featuring his wife’s playing. The movement repeats the minuet and trio followed by a short coda. Finale: Allegro molto is an incessant drive of sixteenth-note energy from the piano. Presented by the piano, the B theme of this movement is, in my opinion, the most beautiful theme in the entire work. A horn melody responds to the piano with the other wind parts following in response. In the development, the piano continues at a blistering pace as the winds have elongated melodies. The movement ends with a typical recap representative of sonata form. The horn leads a three-note motif with the other winds responding during the transition to the coda. The movement ends with the music building in intensity and activity until the final chords.
The recording links are from Les Vents Français’ album Romantique; Radovan Vlatković is the hornist on the album.
