Oliver Triendl - Thuille: Piano Quintets (2006)

Ludwig Thuille’s life was shadowed by a certain tragic element – at least with hindsight. Firstly, it was not very long: he died of a heart attack when he was just 45, although he had “always been known as the model of indestructible vitality”, as music critic and friend Rudolf Louis reported, and secondly, a very close friendship might have become a somewhat suffocating burden: his friendship with Richard Strauss, a slightly younger man. Their very revealing and largely also entertaining correspondence, for instance, shows clearly how the older talent falls behind the younger wunderkind with time, and soon realises this fact himself. During the first years of their friendship, this naturally was not yet very obvious, and the early works by both men are actually similar in some respects, as is for example said of Thuille’s first piano quintet written during his study years. Biographer Friedrich Munter described it thus: „there is a dark, sometimes painfully pathetic, sometimes defiant and bold mood running through the work, and it is significant that the composer should choose to go back to this early work in his final mature masterpiece.” The masterpiece he refers to is the late quintet op. 20: This is where the wheel comes full circle.

Tracklist:

01. Piano Quintet No. 1 in G Minor: I. Allegro maestoso
02. Piano Quintet No. 1 in G Minor: II. Larghetto
03. Piano Quintet No. 1 in G Minor: III. Finale. Presto ma non troppo
04. Piano Quintet No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 20: I. Allegro con brio
05. Piano Quintet No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 20: II. Adagio assai sostenuto
06. Piano Quintet No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 20: III. Allegro
07. Piano Quintet No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 20: IV. Finale. Allegro quasi cadenza - Maestoso - Allegro risoluto