EIF: Amatis Trio with Thomas Quasthoff: Humanity in War
Queen’s Hall - 14/08/23
The Amatis Trio, consisting of German violinist Lea Hausmann, British cellist Samuel Shepherd and Dutch pianist Mengjie Han, with disabled German bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff acting as reader, presented a programme of words and music as the Queen’s Hall lunchtime recital of Monday 14th August. Readings from letters written during the First World War, exemplifying humanity in the face of direst circumstances, were paired with skilfully chosen musical items. The full texts of the letters were provided in the printed programme, earning a big thumbs-up from me, I was at first slow to warm to Thomas’ reading style, as there were occasional unnatural pauses contrary to the sense and punctuation, occasional mispronunciations (such as ambulance ‘corps’ pronounced ‘corpse’) and the texts were long, so that I confess initially wishing for more music and fewer words. But then I realised how the words were causing me to hear hitherto unnoticed elements in music I previously thought familiar, resulting in an enhanced and indeed moving artistic experience. So I was won over.
After a monologue enjoining us to see past the statistics to the human beings, with experiences and relationships, the first text was from the diary of a British soldier on his way to the Western Front, confiding the shambolic nature of the preparations. This was paired with ‘March of the Watch’ (Dogberry and Verges) from Korngold’s (EIF N.B. born Brno, not Vienna as stated in the programme) music for ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ in a violin-and-piano arrangement (I know the small ensemble version of the Suite). It is parodic and grotesque and was beautifully played with comical upbeat accents. This was followed by an extract from the same diary after arrival at the front, portraying the nightmarish reality of life in the trenches. Webern’s brief atonal sketches, the second and third of the Three Little Pieces for Cello and Piano, Op. 11, hint at horrors too painful to recount. A third extract from the diary, written in a field hospital, recounts the personal experience of being wounded and gassed and seeing a friend die. Sometimes only Schubert will do: the almost convincingly stoic Andante con moto from the superb Piano Trio No.2 in E-flat major was nuanced and subtle, yet profound in the way of Schubert – as good as I have heard.
A letter from a British captain to his wife telling of the 1914 Christmas truce was answered by a piano trio arrangement of the last of Schumann’s 12 4-hand piano pieces Op.85, a serene ‘Abendlied’’. The latter half of the same letter prompted the exquisite one-movement idyllic Adagio for piano trio, published posthumously as the Notturno in, but of course, E-flat major again. Exquisite.
After the interval, some light relief in the form of a letter from a German medical officer to his parents telling of the vodka-fuelled forced conviviality and stage-managed fraternisation with Russian counterparts in January 1918, following Russia’s withdrawal from the Eastern Front after the Revolution. Drunken Russian revels with piano trio can only mean the riotous scherzo from Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No.2. What a romp! The light relief continued with a letter from an Austro-German wife to her husband’s commanding officer, pleading that he be permitted some leave to return home to satisfy her carnal desires. Schmaltzy Gemütlichkeit in the form of Kreisler’s ’Liebesleid’’ for violin and piano fitted the bill stylishly. A German officer writing to his parents as he crossed the Rhine heading back home after armistice, telling of his buoyancy of mood despite the woes of the recent past, longing for normality, was matched to brief and whimsical second movement, ‘Humoreske’, from Schumann’s Phantasiestücke Op.88 for trio.
A bittersweet letter from a dying French father to his children, asking them to respect their mother, help her to endure the loss and never cause her any pain, was echoed by the first of Two Pieces for Cello and Piano by pre-atonal Webern, in a Late Romantic style, achingly beautiful. A letter from a German balloon officer to the mother of an American pilot who had been bravely and successfully attacking the surveillance balloons before he was himself shot down by ground fire, failing to bail out in time to survive the crash. He died from his injuries and was buried by the Germans with full military honours. The poignant slow movement of Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio was movingly played, the final chord held while a letter of solidarity from the German Suffragette movement to their British counterparts was read. The music concluded with the final coda of the Clarke, an elegiac melody on violin over cello and piano harmonies. A Neville Chamberlain quotation from 1938, reminding us that in war there are no winners, only losers, concluded the moving performance.
Cover photo: Foppe Schut