Artur Lemba (1885-1963)
Chamber Music Volume 2
String Quartet in F sharp minor (1934)
Piano Quartet in C minor (1938)
Piano Quintet in D major (1946)
M4gnet String Quartet
Sten Lassmann (piano)
rec. 2025, International Arvo Pärt Centre, Lualasmaa, Estonia
Toccata Classics TOCC0795 [58]
My first experience of Artur Lemba’s chamber music came in the inaugural volume in this series and it left me unconvinced as to the quality of the compositions. This follow-up presents three large-scaled works, a string quartet, a piano quartet and a piano quintet written between 1934 and 1946 and it makes a stronger impression.
The composer’s reputation rests on the fact that he was the first Estonian to write an opera and a symphony so these chamber works, heard in première recordings, expand our appreciation of his musical imperatives and directions. The String Quartet (1934) is divided into two movements, the second of which is a Theme and variations, variously genial, lullaby-like, bluff, sincere, baroque-influenced, Mendelssohn Octet-lite, but the most impressive writing comes in the opening movement. Its halting, uneasy direction is contrasted with mellifluous warmth but written with real clarity – there’s no clotting or cluttered writing here nor density of sound for its own sake. It’s an attractive work, and whilst hardly distinctive, certainly among the most enjoyable examples of Lemba’s compositions I’ve heard, not least in this fine performance.
Four years later came the Piano Quartet, this time in four movements, but a work that had to wait until as late as 2021 for publication and 2025 for its premiere. This has a more august, traditional lineage, certainly Brahmsian, and a restless energy along with a pious-sounding Moderato with tolling piano figures that has to serve as the slow movement. A zesty Scherzo follows that, by way of contrast, contains much lyric richness – cellist Siluan Hirvoja plays finely here. The confident late-Romanticism of the finale once again shadows Brahms.
After the war Lemba wrote a Piano Quintet in three movements that reveals, once more, those Brahmsian antecedents. Lemba ensures the pianist, here the ever-excellent Sten Lassmann, is an active proponent in the musical argument, one whose cajoling, whether delicate or surging, incites plenty of vitality from his string colleagues in the M4gnet Quartet (what an unnecessarily modish name for a quartet, though). There’s a pastoral-seeming central movement, somewhat Spanish-sounding, before a Polka emerges. The finale is a well-structured, glittering and dramatic conclusion to a highly effective work, probably my favourite of the three pieces here.
Full marks to the quartet and Lassmann, not least for his eloquent booklet notes. The recorded sound is most sympathetic, and this release certainly makes a stronger impression than the inaugural volume.
Jonathan Woolf
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