Hungarian composer, conductor, and teacher Dohnanyi was also a piano virtuoso. He was involved in music in Hungary until part way into WW II, when one of his sons was involved in an aborted plot on Hitler’s life. In later years he was a teacher in Argentina and then composer-in residence at Florida State University. He lived until 1960. Dohnanyi’s best-known work is the jovial Variations on a Nursery Tune.
His chamber music is not well known, but on the strength of these three fine works it should be. All are in a late Romantic European style, with some hints of Brahms and Hungarian folk influences, but the 1935 Sextet has a more modern cast. All three are eminently listenable and fresh-sounding. The opening early Serenade – though only using a string trio – recalls the serenades and marches of Mozart and Haydn. Dohnanyi has great melodic invention and develops his harmonies in a modern fashion, even in these earlier works from around the turn of the century.
The Second String Quartet was written when the composer was teaching at the Berlin Musikhochschule at the invitation of violinist Joseph Joachim. It melds the Beethovenian model with the expressionism of Mahler and even Wagner. The Sextet is not only scored for an unusual combination of instruments but provides a glorious conclusion to the concert. The first two movements are rather serious and bleak, but the other two show Dohnanyi’s pixyish sense of humor at several points, including comic rejoinders in the strings and a section that seems to be a parody of early jazz. Both the skilled performers and Praga’s transparent surround sound score highly in this recommended release.
– John Sunier
