Search - Isaiah Jackson, Earl Wild, American String Orchestra :: Schumann, Dohnányi: Piano Quintets

The program notes for this record quote musicologist Alfred Neuman to the effect that the great romantic piano quintets were conceived by their composers as piano concertos with string accompaniment. This rather bold statement would be hotly debated by most string players, who regard these works as chamber music, though it is true that the piano, by its very nature, dominates the texture. No wonder Earl Wild, a brilliant virtuoso, took the next step and turned the string quartet into an orchestra. Unfortunately, this makes the sound thick and robs the musicians of the interplay that permits tonal and rhythmic flexibility; instead of ardently romantic, the music becomes stiff, overblown, and exaggerated. Wild's thundering, heavily accented approach precludes any sense of balance even with multiple players; the low instruments are especially outmatched. The loud, assertive sections are the most successful. Dohnányi wrote his quintet at 18. Well-made, effective, and very romantic, it was an immediate success, though clearly influenced by Schumann and Brahms. It is less unsuitable for orchestral treatment than the Schumann, which loses all its delicacy, tenderness, poetry, and intimacy; the second movement is without mystery or melancholy and so slow that it falls apart and becomes a funeral march. One might say this arrangement underlines the work's weaknesses and almost conceals its strengths. --Edith Eisler