Stamitz: Six Trios (Linn) - MusicWeb International

Carl Phillipp Stamitz (1745-1801)
Six Trios, Op.14 (c.1780)
Trio I in G major
Trio II in C major
Trio III in F major
Trio IV in G minor
Trio V in F major
Trio VI in A major
L’Apothéose
rec. 2022, National Centre for Early Music, York, UK
Linn CKD684 [69]

While not as historically significant as his father Johann (1717-57), Carl Phillipp Stamitz was a thoroughly competent composer of refined taste, whose work was characterised by a delightful charm and an unforced lyricism. Such qualities characterise the trios recorded here.

The eldest son of Johann, Carl’s earliest musical instruction came from his father. However, his father died when Carl was only 11 and after that his teachers included several of the musicians/composers based in Mannheim, such as Christian Cannabich and Ignaz Holbauer. From 1762 until 1770 Carl Philip was a member of the court orchestra in Mannheim. In 1770 he made his way to Paris. During his time in Paris, he gave several concerts at the Concert Spirituel, some of them in collaboration with his younger brother Anton (1750-c.1789). Carl Stamitz evidently made a good impression, since several works by him were published in Paris and in 1771 he was appointed court composer to Duke Louis of Nouailles. However, in the following year he began life as a traveling virtuoso (playing viola and viola d’amore as well as violin). He visited Vienna, Frankfurt, Augsburg and Strasbourg, while still basing himself in Paris until early in 1777.

From May of 1777 until 1780 he was in London, where he gave concerts with J.C. Bach and others. The publication of this Opus 14 set of trios was announced – as follows – in the pages of the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser on April 3^rd 1777: “MR. CHARLES STAMITZ, composer of Music, having the happiness to find that his compositions have met with universal approbation, begs leave to offer to the Nobility, Gentry, Music Masters, and others, a Plan of Subscription for the following Work, viz. SIX TRIOS for two Violins, or one Violin, a Flute, and Violoncello, which he promises to deliver to subscribers on the 15^th inst. at 8s. and to non-subscribers at 10s 6d.” In 1780 he moved from London to the Hague, where he remained until the summer of 1785. Thereafter, he is documented as giving concerts in Hamburg, Magdeburg, Leipzig, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Halle and Nuremberg. In 1789 he was living in Kassel, becoming director of concerts there until April 1790. He married in 1790 and his first son was born in the same year. In 1792 he gave a concert in the court theatre of Weimar (of which Goethe was director). 1795 found Stamitz and his family settled in Jena, where he became kapellmeister and a teacher of music at the university. By now the good money which he must surely have earned during his years as a travelling soloist seems to have been spent and his positions in Jena were not well remunerated, so that in his last years he was very impoverished and was forced to sell some of his possessions.

His contemporary reputation seems not to have lasted long after his death. Modern accounts, however, have come to recognise the significance of his achievements whether in his concertos or his trios. So, for example, Egon Wellesz and Frederick Sternfeld observe that “Apart from the achievements of Mozart, the Mannheim School made the most significant contribution to the evolution of the concerto, and we owe particularly to Carl Stamitz the crystallization of a thematic language and form that solved the long conflict in the concerto between the Baroque and the Classical styles” (The Age of Enlightenment 1745-1790, ed. Egon Wellesz and Frederick Sternfeld, Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 465). In the same volume (p.524), Karl Geiringer writes “Carl Stamitz’s Six Trios, Op. 14 … clearly reveal elements of the concerto. Attractive, warmly singing solo passages are entrusted not only to the two effectively contrasting upper parts, but also to the cello, which the composer sometimes places above the violin part. Occasionally rests are prescribed for the filling-in keyboard instrument; for other passages, however, its participation is essential. Thus, Carl Stamitz moves in the direction of the string trio, without quite reaching it.”

True as these statements are, it seems unjust to discuss Stamitz almost wholly in terms of how his work anticipated that of later composers. These six trios (nos. 1 and 5 are in three movements, the remainder in two) have affinities with Haydn’s elegance and the ‘galant’ early Mozart, while lacking the emotional range and depth of those composers. There are lots of attractive melodies, though I have to admit that few of them are especially memorable. There are many interesting textures and subtle changes of instrumental colours. One significant limitation, since it removes so much in the way of possible contrasts, is that Stamitz seems, in these works, to have little interest in variations of tempo. The central movement of no. 1 is marked ‘Andante: Moderato’ and that of no. 5 ‘Andante grazioso’, but both are rather slight and undeveloped, being substantially shorter than the movements which precede and succeed them. Similarly, the presence of a Rondo or Menuet as the last movement of all six trios surely carries too far towards predictability the composer’s evident desire not to startle his audience.

Even with such limitations, all six trios make for enjoyable listening, especially when they are as well played as they are on this disc by the Spanish ensemble L’Apothéose (which takes its name from Couperin’s L’Apothéose de Corelli, one of the first works which the group worked on together).

Laura Quesada is a very impressive performer on the transverse flute – fluent, expressive without any sense of overstatement or excess, and utterly convincing in her sense of idiom and the use of ornament. Quesada was a founding member, in 2016, of L’Apothéose – who were the winners of the Friends of York Early Music Festival Prize at the 2019 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition. Quesada perhaps stands out (or perhaps I think so because I love the sound of the transverse flute!), but the other members of L’Apothéose are clearly fine musicians too. This is clear on a track such as the opening allegro of the fourth trio (in G minor), in which the interplay between Quesada’s flute, the violin of Víctor Martínez’s and the lyrical cello of Carla Sanfélix is extraordinarily beautiful and is intelligently and adroitly supported by Asís Márquez at the harpsichord. Here, as throughout the disc, the playing of the ensemble, in its finesse and its balance of subtlety and disciplined energy, is exemplary, thoroughly imbued with an absolute mutuality of sensibility and purpose.

I know of only one earlier complete recording of this set of six trios, made by the Sonatori Ensemble in 1991 and issued by the Czech company Multisonics (31 0159-2 131) in 1992. I used to have a copy of this disc which I found satisfactory rather than especially perceptive or sensitive. Certainly, this new version displays a more complete understanding of Stamitz’s idiom and aesthetic. It also benefits from superior recorded sound, beautifully balanced in a plausible and natural acoustic – the woody sound of Laura Quesada’s flute is captured to perfection and is a delight in itself.

Glyn Pursglove

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