Franck • Martin Franck: Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 14; Martin: Piano Quintet Armida Quartett; Martin Klett (piano) CAvi-music AVI 8553527 57:58 mins
Where César Franck puts the piano at the top of his list of performers, Frank Martin puts it at the end, and this sums up one aspect of their differing approaches to the piano quintet medium. Martin’s work of 1919 shows the 29-year-old composer already adept at interleaving brief ideas contrapuntally, but without building them into long melodies, as Franck does. This patterning sets a challenge for the players to make its intricacy meaningful, especially in the faster sections: which they do, largely by trusting wholeheartedly in the composer’s markings and not trying to ‘improve’ on them (with a single tiny exception, noted below).
One characteristic the two composers share is a playful way with tonality. In 1879, Franck may have raised a few eyebrows by going abruptly from D flat major to A minor and back again, and 40 years later Martin is even bolder (the note-writer is not entirely correct in stating that he ‘never joined the ranks of the avant-garde’, since from 1930 on he did experiment with 12-note serialism, while accepting that tonality must be the overall ruler).
For the performances, I have nothing but praise, especially over the range of dynamics that truly extends from ppp to fff, taking us from delicate lyricism to overwhelming majesty. The balance between the musicians is good throughout, and the virtuosity under perfect control. The exception mentioned above is an unmarked accelerando in the very last bars of the Franck, which in the circumstances we can surely allow.
Roger Nichols