Op-Ed: Local musicians to fillet Schubert’s immortal Trout on Sunday
April 4, 2008
by Michael Shapiro
This Sunday, April 6, at 3 p.m. in the Chappaqua Library auditorium, the quintet Paul Bonnel and Friends, lead by The Chappaqua Orchestra’s principal bassist Paul Bonnel, will perform Franz Schubert’s immortal Trout Quintet as well as Samuel Barber’s famous Adagio for strings.
I’m proud to be one of Paul’s friends. I’ll be stationed at the piano chasing thirty-second notes with other friends Miyun Chun, violin; Michael Brooks, viola; and Dae-Il Yang, cello. Paul will man the double bass, rounding out the quintet.
Schubert’s Trout is among his most beloved chamber works. But why is it named after a freshwater fish? Did Schubert ever get up to Grand Marais in Northern Minnesota and eat at the Angry Trout Restaurant where Lake Superior seafood graces the organic food menu? We do know that a German translation of James Fenimore Cooper’s “Last of the Mohicans” was found among his last effects. But that’s as close as he got to the lake region and my favorite trout dining.
More likely, the piece is so named because of its variations on a theme found in Schubert’s earlier song Die Forelle (translation: “the trout”). Saying the word “earlier” for Schubert is a bit misleading for he wrote the Trout Quintet when he was only 22.
The world would lose him just nine years later. So an early song by Schubert might as well have been composed in utero!
Nevertheless, the quintet possesses an abundance of riches – bountiful themes cast in bright keys, rich sonorities, yet graceful and touched with melancholy. The music is deceptively simple yet virtuosic. The first violin and piano parts in particular are very exposed and relentlessly difficult to play.
But it all must sound gemütlich, right out of the Austrian Alps, the snow melting into streams, flowing into rivers, then down into lakes, where trout swim innocently in cold fresh water, just waiting to be filleted.
Michael Shapiro is the music director and conductor of The Chappaqua Orchestra.
Click here for a printable view of this article.
Click here to read more Arts & Entertainment articles.Click here to read more People articles.
Click here to send a copy of this article via email.
We're interested in your opinion. Click here to submit a comment on this article, or any other.
