Viola quintets: Vaughan Williams, Mozart, Mendelssohn

One of the great things about being a violist is that you can be the "special guest star" and join a string quartet to make an evening of quintets.  There are different kinds of string quintets, distinguished by which instrument is added to the standard string quartet.  So a "viola quintet" isn't, as you might think, a piece for five violas (although that would be really cool!) but one for two violins, two violas, and a cello.

So last night I was a guest star, crashing the party of a regular string quartet.  Two of the people I'd never played with before, and one I'd played with only once.  A great group of people: wonderful musicians, amazing sight readers, and just generally fun to be with!

We started out with a piece I'd never played, never heard, and never even heard of, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Phantasy Quintet, from 1912.  This was a real sight-reading challenge, particular the scherzo in 7/4 time: counting that made my brain explode.  Vaughan Williams has never been a favorite composer of mine, but I really liked this piece, and want to play it again.  And I'll add his two string quartets to my list of music I want to play.  (That's a very long list, you will not be surprised to learn. :-)

One really cool thing in the Vaughan Williams is that the slow movement, a Sarabande, has the cello tacet (silent for the entire movement).  So it devolved upon me, the second viola, to provide the bass line.  I love doing that, since I'm a wannabe cellist at heart.

Next up was perhaps the most famous viola quintet, Mozart's G minor quintet, K516.  Many people are of the opinion that Mozart's quintets are better than his quartets.  I'm not sure I agree with that, and if it's true, it's really just an accident of chronology.  Four of the six quintets are late works, written after the famous "Haydn" or "Opus Ten" quartets, and around the same time as the three "Prussian" quartets, which, while wonderful, are unusually focused on the cello since the dedicatee was a cellist.  In any case, I love the quintets, and perhaps this one most of all.  If I'm in a bad mood, I only have to listen to the last movement, and the way the sobbing slow introduction turns into the sunniest of Allegros cheers me right up.

We finished with the Mendelssohn Op. 87 quintet in B flat major.  This is a late work, one of many that were published after the composer's death at the age of 38.  A wonderful piece: in places boisterous, in places very touching, with Mendelssohn's amazing string writing throughout.  The first violinist remarked that the "passage work" (the hard parts) sounded more difficult than it was.  Mendelssohn's string music just lies under the hand better than perhaps any other composer's; one of the reasons he's such a joy to play.

I hope to get invited back to join this quartet to play more of the viola quintet literature.  That isn't as vast as the quartet literature (I blame Haydn, who never got around to writing a quintet), but there's plenty there worth playing!