HANS GÁL: The Complete String Quartets = Vol. 1: Quartet No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 16; Quartet No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 99; Improvisation, Variations, and Finale on a Theme by Mozart, Op. 60b; Vol. 2: Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 35; Quartet No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 95; 5 Intermezzi, Op. 10 – Edinburgh Quartet – Meridian CDE 84557 (2 CDs), 71:39, 72:11 [Distr. by Allegro] ****:
Like Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, Austrian Jewish composer Hans Gál was forced to emigrate when it became clear the Anschluss threatened more than just his career. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, he was released from his duties as director of the Music Conservatory in Mainz. Like Zemlinsky, he fled to Vienna, teaching privately and composing until 1938, when he emigrated to England. Like Zemlinsky, Gál never regained the stature he had enjoyed before the rise of the Nazis.
Zemlinsky died in utter obscurity, in New York, during the war. Gál, who finally settled in Edinburgh, lived a long and productive life, dying in 1987, aged 97. He was important to Edinburgh’s cultural life—hence the Edinburgh Quartet rightly takes up the cudgels for him—teaching at the University and helping to found the renowned Edinburgh Festival. However, for a composer who had an exclusive contract with Simrock—the music publisher of Brahms, Bruch, and Dvorak—and whose First String Quartet was premiered by perhaps Europe’s most prestigious quartet, the Busch Quartet, the relative eclipse of Gál’s music from the 1930s on must have been a bitter pill to swallow.
The fact that his music is tonal and basically Romantic in its aesthetic certainly didn’t help him make his mark in a Europe where the avant-garde increasingly became the voice of modern music. Like Zemlinsky, Gál was early on an admirer and even follower of Brahms, and while his music increasingly incorporated other influences, including Impressionism and neoclassicism, and became increasingly chromatic, his music remained essentially lyrical. Even in his last quartet written in 1970—where the melodic line is so chromatic that Brahms would have scratched his head over it and where the bustling finale shows that Gál had finally caught up with Zemlinsky in his embrace of neoclassical elements—there are still those meltingly lovely themes that characterize his earliest quartet of 1916.
Brahms would certainly have approved of this First Quartet, with its tender strain of melancholy and thoroughly accomplished writing for the ensemble. Other critics did as well and thought of it as a model quartet. The most memorable music may come in the middle movements. The second, a restless scherzo, has every trick in the book that a composer for strings can employ: spooky tremolos, vibrant pizzicatos, a wraith-like coda with all strings sul ponticello. The slow movement seems to suspend animation and unfold in an almost static world except for a feverish, impassioned climax that comes just when the ear and mind begin to demand contrast. After this inward music, the smiling finale is relaxed, almost folkish.
The Second Quartet of 1929, in five movements, is written in the more progressive chromatic style that Gál developed following the First World War, a style that evolved very little throughout the rest of his career. He showed a predilection for polyphonic writing in his First Quartet, but here “the prevalent use of contrapuntal textures sometimes leads to astringent harmonies occasionally bordering on the atonal.” Yet Brahmsian lyrical impulses still compete for Gál’s sympathies, and here and there through the thicket of counterpoint and chromaticism will appear a tender melodic oasis, such as the sweet viola melody at the start of the slow movement or the relaxed middle section of the following Intermezzo. There’s a more modern-sounding reserve in the outer movements and in the tightly wound Toccata second movement, though each is touched with moments of tender lyricism. This, for me, is Gál’s finest work for string quartet.
Gál’s next quartet appeared forty years later. If anything, the Third is more relaxed and less spiky, more bent on charming the ear, than the Second Quartet. Its Scherzando second movement is a lilting dance, the slow movement songful, touched with a sense of longing as it progresses. To provide contrast, the bouncing finale, marked Con umore, has the urbane humor of a Hindemith or Bartók. This is Hans Gál at his most accessible.
The 5 Intermezzi of 1914 is Gál’s first work for string quartet and shows less effective ensemble writing, less independent writing especially for the lower strings—as well as Gál’s large debt to Brahms. This is pretty music but nowhere near as individual as Gál’s later work. On the other hand, the Improvisation, Variations, and Finale (1934) is a perfect example of latter-day entertainment music, with a winning sense of humor. Like the composer the theme (from Don Giovanni) is based on, Gál shows that he can turn out a sophisticated divertissement.
The Edinburgh Quartet does their adoptive countryman proud, playing with a fine sense of ensemble, purity of tone, and obvious relish and sympathy for this entire project. These are very gracious understanding performances, and I can hardly imagine better.
Meridian’s recording, which the company styles as “natural sound,” is maybe a bit more resonant than you often hear in quartet recordings these days; no venue is credited, but a church seems likely. Once I adjusted to the sound, I came to think of it as pretty much right for Gál’s special brand of Romanticism, which mostly stands at the intersection of late Brahms and early Expressionism. Both strains are given an added richness in this ample acoustic, especially since each instrument registers with fine clarity, though with just a touch of stridency to the violin tone.
It’s good to see Hans Gál getting more of the attention he deserves these days. Whether you’re an adherent or just an initiate wanting to hear more, these well-filled discs from the Edinburgh Quartet are an excellent place to turn.
— Lee Passarella
