Piano Quintet in A, Op. 81

The famous Piano Quintet in A Major, op. 81, that we will hear this evening was actually the second such piece in that key which Antonín Dvorák composed. The earlier work, written by Dvorák at age 30, had a few performances before it nearly disappeared altogether. Fifteen years later the composer dug up the manuscript—a friend had made a copy—and began to rework the juvenilia into something more seasoned. Yet he was never quite satisfied with the results and so, in the summer of 1887, he began anew—and what a fresh start he made! The opus 81 quintet truly deserves its position as a cornerstone in the chamber music repertory. It is equal to, if not at times superior to, the charm and sophistication found in related works by Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms.
The work opens with one of the most serene and lyrical themes in all chamber music: a lilting barcarolle piano accompaniment against the deep-voiced song in the cello. This is no mere idyll, however, and the quick intrusion of chromatic harmony and the minor mode show Dvorák’s matchless sense of expressive contrast at its best. In the blink of eye, the serene has become the haunted. Indeed, the home key (A major) is constantly clouded by its parallel minor throughout the first theme group, and the darker mood carries over into the animated second theme in C-sharp minor. These oscillations between mood and mode spill over into the development section, which swells outward with a return to the pastoral first theme in D major. Sequences lead us through the flat keys, culminating in a dramatic juxtaposition of material from the first and second themes. Dvorak marks the return to A major at the peak of a long crescendo and a sweeping statement of the main theme (played by piano over 6/4 harmony) prepares the full recapitulation. Rather than reprise the second theme in tonic (which would be expected given sonata-form conventions), Dvorák places it in F-sharp minor—the key of the following movement. A major returns to the scene at the start of the furious coda which brings the ambitious movement to a close.
The slow movement, a highly sectional and symmetrical ABACABA form, lasts as long as the opening movement, and it picks up the important F-sharp-minor tonality heard in the preceding movement. This Dumka melody (section A) shows the Bohemian side of Dvorák’s compositional voice; the Dumka derives from a Ukranian folk ballad usually conveying feelings of melancholy. Some in our audience will hear echoes of the 1940s pop hit, “Nature Boy” (whose composer, Eden Ahbez, was unsuccessfully sued for copyright infringement). The first episode in D major (section B) sounds, to me at least, as if we have been dropped down momentarily into the middle of a Beethoven string quartet, though even here Dvorák’s penchant for major-minor shifts can barely be restrained. The Vivace (section C) recalls elements of the main theme from the first movement (specifically, its agitated tail end), and here the entire section is brought to an abrupt close with a quasi recitative before the repeat of ABA.
The third movement is a Scherzo with tinges of the Furiant, a popular and rapid folk dance based around shifts between two- and three-beat patterns. (Dvorák’s Slavonic Dance op. 46 no. 8 is a more faithful instance.) The dance designation was probably an afterthought, for the movement as we have it lacks the Furiant’s distinctive accents and metric shifts. Still it is boisterous and infectious, and these qualities outshine the few formal subtleties that only a scholar might find intriguing. A strong and effective contrast is projected y the central tranquillo episode, which sets the head of the main theme against pastoral pedal tones. The striking contrast foreshadows a similar effect yet to come in the finale.
The finale, a sonata-rondo with stylistic elements of a polka, begins with a few measures of introduction rounded off with a Beethovenian degree of firm punctuation. Images of the eastern European village band spring easily to mind during the first theme, with its perpetual motion melody against syncopated piano accompaniment. As in the opening movement, fluctuations between major and minor modes occur frequently, especially during the second theme group in E major/minor. The traditional development section arrives at a very distant tonal center (C minor!), and the dramatic return of A major takes place over 6/4 harmony—another detail echoing the first movement. But Dvorák has reserved his best gambit for the end when, only measures before the final rush to cadence, he withdraws inward to a hymn-like stillness. Upon that calm breaks a tranquillo version of the movement’s main theme: what was restless and danceable earlier now becomes heartfelt and tender. It is a gesture prescient of the finale to the Cello Concerto, where a last-minute song quotation functions as touching memorial to Dvorak’s sister-in-law. In the Quintet, such subtlety helps secure the composition’s status as first-rate from start to finish.

(c) Jason Stell