Death and the Maiden

GIUSEPPE PENNISI listens to
Patricia Kopatchcinskaja and the
Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO), one the best known American chamber ensembles, is now in its fifty-eighth season, has its own auditorium (the Ordway Concert Hall), presents more than one-hundred-and-thirty concerts and education programs each year and has a large array of artistic partners. This Fall the SPCO is on tour in Europe. I was able to catch their only concert in Rome, on 19 November 2016 in the auditorium of the Istituzione Universitaria dei Concerti (IUC). IUC has a vast and diversified program and performs in the Aula Magna (main auditorium) of the most ancient University in Rome (Università 'La Sapienza') to a public including many students and university professors. The concert is part of IUC's 2016 Schubert series.

Patricia Kopatchcinskaja and the St Paul Chamber Orchestra in Rome. Photo © 2016 Damiano Rosa

The SPCO's European tour focuses on a special arrangement of Franz Schubert's String Quartet No 14 in D minor, Death and the Maiden, one of the pillars of the chamber music repertoire. Composed in 1824, after the composer had suffered through a serious illness and realized that he was dying, the Quartet is Schubert's testament to death. The name comes from the theme of the second movement, which Schubert took from a lied he had written in 1817, but the theme of death is palpable in all four movements of the Quartet.
In the SPCO version the ensemble is expanded to sixteen musicians and performs it with a young but already world-known soloist, the violinist Patricia Kopatchcinskaja. The arrangement is quite special. In the first part of the concert, two chamber piece for strings were presented on a theme similar to Death and the Maiden : The Partita (Trio for Violin, Viola and Cello in an arrangement for chamber orchestra by Vojtěch Saudek) by Gideon Klein, the last work of the Czech composer who was gassed at Auschwitz at the young age of twenty six, and Mendelsssohn's Concerto in B minor for violin and strings, written when the author was only thirteen). After a short intermission, Schubert's Death and the Maiden was performed, interpolated with other music on the same theme.

Before the first movement, a Byzantine Psalm in a violin arrangement by Patricia Kopatchcinskaja was played as an introduction. After the first movement (Allegro), a Kopatchcinskaja arrangement of the Lied was played. After the second movement (Andante con Moto), the string quartet by John Dowland (a British baroque composer of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) was performed. After the third movement (Scherzo — Allegro Molto), two pieces of György Kurtag followed: Ligature, composed in 1926 and a passage of the well known Kafka Fragments (Rugelos for violin). After the forth movement (Presto), Patricia Kopatchcinskaja played Crin, an overwhelming piece for violin by Jorge Sanchez-Chion, a Venezuelan composer of Chinese descent.

Patricia Kopatchcinskaja with members of the St Paul Chamber Orchestra in Rome. Photo © 2016 Damiano Rosa

The interpolation was smooth and both expanded and deepened the core theme. The SPCO and Patricia Kopatchcinskaja were superb. The auditorium audience (950) was enthustiastic.