This programme note was written for the brilliant Lewes Chamber Music Festival.
Every festival worth its salt requires the inclusion of a forgotten masterpiece and they don’t come more forgotten (or strangely masterful) than Catoire’s String Quintet op.16 (1901). Born in Moscow in 1861, Georgy Catoire studied mathematics and after graduating with top honours from Moscow University as per his family’s wishes, he decided to devote himself to music, this time rather against his family’s wishes. Tchaikovsky was impressed with his talent and encouraged him to persevere and improve his compositional technique. He went on to study in Berlin, which perhaps explains certain “un-Russian” aspects of his style, but German music is only one ingredient of a rich brew. The influence of French music is keenly felt – the opacity and lushness of Franck, and maybe more importantly, the suppleness, fluidity and grace of Fauré too – an attraction with its roots in Catoire’s Gallic heritage perhaps. The peculiar sense of Russian melancholy, and certain textural fingerprints, link him clearly to his teachers Tanayev (to whom the piece is dedicated) and Arensky, as well as the more restrained aspects of Rachmaninov. But enough of the comparison game. His neglect has been explained as a result of his commitment to Wagner at a time in Russia when Teutonism was not at all in line with the prevailing desire to forge a national identity for Russian music. But surely also the idiom is a problem – familiar in sound, but utterly strange in expression, seductive yet austere, complex, restless, veiled. The extraordinary contrapuntal density of the music is what gives it its unique aura – five separate string voices intertwining in a sinuous, undisentanglable nexus of melody, in which a single tune on one instrument is impossible to discern for more than a few moments before another will surge over it, through it, alongside it. The effect is unique in music, a minor innovation maximally capitalised on by the composer in this quintet. The third movement is the most unusual and so perhaps bears special mention. In its pellucid, diaphanous radiance this music represents an exquisite refinement of the knotty beauty of the other movements, each voice floating in its own space, velocity and time zone, though eventually focusing and coalescing to reach a climax of Janáčekian ecstasy. How lucky we are to hear the work of this minor master alongside the canonical works of the established greats, and how much richer we are for knowing both!
Copyright 2015 Guido Martin-Brandis. To ask for permission to use this or other notes for your concert, please get in touch on the contact page.