Musicians of Ma’alwyck Present Ricard Strauss' Metamorphosis

Mary Darcy: The award-winning Musicians of Ma’alwyck are a favorite here in the WMHT listening area. They are the Musicians in residence at the Schuyler Mansion and Schenectady County Community College. The Musicians of Ma’alwyck specialize in music of 18th and 19th-century America, but they have a wide repertoire of chamber music.

They have a fabulous concert coming up on June 11th at Albany's Blessed Sacrament Church, featuring a very special arrangement of Rickard Strauss's Metamorphosis, as well as works
from Mozart and 20th-century Austro-Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff, with us to expand a bit on what we can expect I'm joined by the founder of the Musicians of Malwek, Anne-Marie Barker-Schwartz, and one of the guest artists for the upcoming concert, Henry Perebroun, a bassist with the Cleveland Orchestra these days, but a native of the Capital Region.
Welcome to both of you. Thank you so much for being here today.

Ann Marie Barker Schwartz: Thanks for having us.

MD: Anne-Marie, let's begin with you. Tell us more about what we have to look forward to in this concert.

AMBS: Well, I think we have a wonderful complement of music on this program with works from the mid-classical period by Anton Reicha, and of course the 20th-century work of Schulhoff, and then that glorious transcription of the metamorphosis of Ricard Strauss that was done in 1996.

I'm going to talk a little bit about the Reicha, because in a way, Reicha is a very unfamiliar composer for most people today, but his classical era was a good friend of Beethoven's, and in fact, shares his birth here.

He was active in Vienna initially, and then when fully unarrived, he ended up going to Paris, but this work dates from 1805 is last year in Vienna, and it's a set of variations and a really quite sprawling fantasia on an aria from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. And he has just a wonderful way of exploring all the sort of possibilities variation-wise that you can use with flute, violin, and cello.

It's very effective and exciting to listen to, and I'm so glad that we're opening the program with that piece.

MD: And also the metamorphosis. There's a new exciting arrangement of the metamorphosis, which is just a heartbreakingly beautiful work. It's pain and hope.

AMBS: You know, it's funny. I think this piece, the metamorphosis, is sort of on every musician's bucket list. It's so thrilling to play, and it's such a musical journey as you progress through it. I performed it in the original 23-string instrument version, but this chamber version, which is for seven instruments, is based on the idea that Strauss originally expected to write it for a septet, and then he ended up going a different direction with it. We worked so beautifully, and you don't miss the minority of the larger string group. He's the arranger. It's done a really good job of incorporating all the lines and making the dovetail in a way that gives the effect of a much larger group. And it's just glorious. I can actually hardly wait to play it, and I can hardly wait to play it with both Henry and my other longtime friend from growing up in the area, Andrea Kong.

MD: And Hery, you'll be playing back at home. What excites you about this program?

Henry Peyrebrune:It's a wonderful program. The Strauss, of course, is especially exciting, and both pieces are especially poignant. I think that Strauss, because of, it reflects his dismay at the end of centuries of glorious German culture, and it was written during the last months of World War II. The impetus apparently for him to finish up these original sketches that he had started for the smaller group was the destruction of the Vienna Opera House in March of 1945. And he finished it during what would have been the middle of the Battle of Berlin in April of 1945. And he really lamented what Germany had come to. And there's an achiness about it from that. The Schulhoff is also a touch-in piece, I mean, it's a wonderful piece of music on its own. It's similar. It reminds me of Janáček or Bartók, but he ended up, he perished in a concentration camp where he was sent for his political views.
And this is a much earlier piece, but the experience of the mid-20th century that they shared from different perspectives, I think, really makes it an interesting job to position.

MD: I think sometimes people forget that music can be political and a product of the time and the place where people are living.

HP: Yeah. Well, so I think they both had an element of politics to their lives, and maybe they should give musicians cause for humility in approaching politics because they both had horrible politics. But both wrote wonderful music in spite of that word within the context of what they're living with. The music was certainly a significant contribution on its own, but you also, and both of these composers feel the dissatisfaction with their understanding of the world, and it resolves itself in some gorgeous music.

MD: You had actually suggested that Schulhoff.

HP: Yeah, we were talking about different pieces to play, and at one point we were talking about some Dvořák, and the Strauss in, and so Schulhoff was briefly a protege of Dvořák
when he was very young. They knew each other, and then the world that Strauss acquiesced to was what led to the destruction of Schulhoffv's life. That combination with Strauss's own dismay at what had happened really is touching and should humble us.

MD: And it's an amazingly complicated world, it reminds you. This sounds like a fascinating concert. Henry, your parents were big fans of the Musicians of Ma’alwyck, yes?

HP: They were. So I played in the Albany Symphony the last three years that I was in high school before I went off to New England Conservatory. And during the second to last year I was there, a whole group of young musicians right out of college came and joined the orchestra, including Anne-Marie, and these were my friends while I was in high school. And that's how we got to know each other. So it's been a long time, I'm going to my 40th high school reunion after the week or two after this concert. But during the intro of my parents from the beginning of musicians of Malweck were regular attendees, and my mom always clipped the reviews and the articles and sent them to me. So I've kept up all along, even though we've not played together in many years.

MD: Well, looking forward to welcoming you home and hearing this fantastic concert, the Musicians of Ma’alwyck will perform Strauss' Metamorphosis and works by Mozart and 20th-century Austro-Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff. Sunday, June 11th at the Blessed Sacrament Church in Albany, 3 p.m. for tickets and information, go to MusiciansOfMaalwyck.org, Anne-Marie Barker-Schwarz, and Henry Perebroun. Thank you so much for spending some time with me this morning here at WMHT. We're looking forward to the concert.

AMBS and HP: Thank you very much, Mary.