Album insights
In today's music scene, where concerts take place in auditoriums before large audiences, it's easy to overlook the fact that various forms of chamber music originated from private house concerts. These intimate gatherings saw both amateurs and professional musicians coming together purely for the pleasure of making music. Noteworthy artists like the composer quartet consisting of Mozart, Haydn, Vanhal, and Dittersdorf enjoyed these gatherings, where social connections mattered more than the musicians' skill level. For instance, the quartet would meet weekly at Mozart's house in the 1780s to play their own string quartets. Imagine being able to listen to these intimate "concerts" today!
Johann Michael Vogl, a close friend of Schubert, who inspired many of his 600+ songs, hailed from Steyr, a town south of Linz in the Austrian Alps. The music scene in Steyr was curated by Sylvester Paumgartner, a wealthy mine owner and amateur cellist, whose home became the city’s musical hub. When Schubert spent three months in Steyr during the summer of 1819, Paumgartner commissioned him to compose a quintet featuring an unusual blend of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. This unique project likely reflected the musical talents of Paumgartner's friends and his desire for Schubert to model Hummel's quintet with the same instrumentation.
Paumgartner suggested to Schubert to compose a variation movement based on a specific song—"Die Forelle" (D550). Schubert had written this song, a setting of a poem by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, two years prior in 1817. During his time in Steyr, Schubert also penned "Death and the Maiden," a piece that later inspired another famous variation movement in his String Quartet in D minor, D810 (1824).
Enthralled by Steyr's landscape and society, Schubert eagerly began work on what may be his most sociable chamber music piece. Completed in Vienna in the fall of 1819, the "Trout Quintet" premiered in Steyr before year-end, with Paumgartner himself reportedly taking on a distinguished role in the cello part.
Schubert, a native Viennese, stood out among the composers of late 18th and early 19th-century Vienna. Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a leading composer of that period, transitioned the classical style of Mozart and Haydn towards the early Romantic style, paving the way for Webster, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Schubert. As a virtuoso pianist, Hummel primarily composed for his own instrument, creating several solo concertos and numerous piano works. His chamber music, including the piano quintet composed in Vienna in October 1802, mirrored the conviviality found in Schubert's earlier works. Although published in 1822 under Op. 87, Hummel's quintet was available in manuscript form in 1819 when Paumgartner recommended it to Schubert.
Hummel's quintet, a truly Schubertesque composition, anticipated the melodious style of the younger composer by almost a decade, while revealing marked contrasts with Beethoven's more intense and thematic works of the same period. Despite its brevity and the predominant key of E minor, distinct from Schubert's, Hummel's quintet stands out for its virtuosic piano passages and exuberant character, making it a compelling piece in the chamber music genre.