Daily Blague

Rather a lot of time has elapsed since the second Guarneri Quartet concert at the Metropolitan Museum, on 19 March, and, ordinarily, I'd be inclined to let it go. As I noted somewhere in passing, it was a good concert, with unvarying true tones from first violinist Arnold Steinhardt even in the Mozart. And guest pianist Anton Kuerti was unbelievably dazzling: no spring chicken, he ought to have been heard of before by me. I'd let all this pass unrepeated, however, but for the second work on the program, Dohnányi's String Quartet No. 2, Op. 15. Thinking ahead for once, I ordered recordings of the works that I didn't have - in short, all three offerings. I never got around to listening to Dvořák's Piano Quartet, Op. 87, and I haven't heard it since the concert, so the only thing that I can say about it is that it palpably dates from before the composer's American sojourn. Mozart's Quartet in F, K. 168, struck me as rather more grown-up than expected, and I look forward to getting to know it better. My excuse for slighting these works is that I was utterly smitten by the Dohnányi.

Ernst von Dohnányi was born in Pressburg, now Bratislava, of Hungarian parents, in 1877, and between the wars, according to Bartok, he directed his new nation's musical life from Budapest. He is best known today for his glorious Variations on a Nursery Tune (eg, our "alphabet" song, which is also the theme of a magnificent set of variations by Mozart). Written for piano and orchestra, the Variations conjure up a happily grand world in which the Titanic didn't sink. I didn't know what to expect of the Quartet. I still haven't forgiving myself for missing Gidon Kremer's performance, with the Kremerata Baltica, of Georges Enescu's Octet a few years ago. That's where the Dohnányi belongs. Its opening notes seem to veer sharply from Borodin to Dvořák, but the work's presiding genius is Schubert. The finale is like the slow movement of one of Schubert's late quartets, with a craggily troubled trio; the final coda, before repeating the opening theme, brings Bruckner to mind. There is a very agreeable scherzo in between this movement and the opening Andante - Allegro. This first movement is what captured me. Its second subject - I'm not sure that that's the correct terminology - is one of the most meltingly gorgeous tunes that I've ever heard, warm and quiet and irresistible, a little homesick but not unhappy. It's the kind of beauty that made me crazy when I was a teenager; in those days, my musical passions were all concentrated upon brief, often structurally insignificant passages in works that were rarely well-known. Some friends thought that I was too clever by half, but in fact I was utterly unsophisticated, rube enough to root for music that wasn't thought to be important. Now that I'm a decaying codger, it took two or three hearings to fall in love, and I might, had I not had the recordings in advance, have missed my latest love altogether at the concert.

That's why I had to write it up. Ascoltami.