Was just listening to a broadcast from British Broadcasting - yay, BBC3!! *g* - a week ago, of a quintet written when my grandfather was a teenager, at the end of that so very Great War *pfft*, year 1918... should have put up a message explaining that as I've been learning to do on Y!M and etc. ) for anyone trying to contact me- anyway.
I have a recording of the piece, but I'm glad I decided to listen to this. The BBC started webcasting a half-decade or so back, and before then, I would read their listings with envy piled on envy; Radio 3 is one of the best stations a classical music-obsessed listener could want to hear, and now I can hear it. The BBC only keeps most things (more and more, in the years since they started webcasting; at first they only archived a few programs) on their servers for a week after broadcast, and this was an all around better and easier-to-hear performance *g*. One case in point: it's a work in three movements. Count them: three. But every time I listened, I would hear two. That's because the first two movements are in a similar slow, quiet tempo. What separates them, though, is-- more than I thought! Thematic material; a substantial pause; character; a real cadence - the first movement ends with quiet, gentle C major chords (the only real peace in the work, I'd say)...
The finale does open with a quote of the material that haunted the first movement, but unlike the first two movements, it soon becomes energetic, its themes become well-defined of "line"- a passionate, brief and right ending to a passionate but lengthy work :).
Vierne is, like Lichtenstein's Josef Rheinberger, much better known for his music for pipe organ, and also like Rheinberger, his chamber music- sonatas for violin and for cello, piano quintet, Rheinberger's string quintet and two string quartets (, and once very popular piano quartet, many mentions of performances of which I saw in old issues of music magazines from the late 19th century...! and four trios for piano and strings...), etc. ... - is of very high quality, very rarely played. Opportunities to hear these pieces I'm very glad of, but "do not try to rationalize your obsession, sir" :^) ... eh, I enjoy them, and that is that. (Hah. One wishes that were that!...)
Eric
