During the Opening Concert of the International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht, Janine Jansen will, as is tradition, introduce the team of fellow international top musicians she has invited to the festival. Together with the brand-new winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition 2025, Nikola Meeuwsen, she will play César Franck’s beloved Violin Sonata. She will combine this with two quintets in varying formations: the relatively unknown First Piano Quintet by Ernst von Dohnányi and the famous Trout Quintet by Franz Schubert.
Wedding gift for Eugène Ysaÿe
If it had been up to César Franck’s authoritarian father, his son would have become famous as a travelling piano virtuoso. However, this Belgian-French musician hardly had a solo career; he was mainly known as an organ teacher and composer. He was a regular guest on the Paris music scene at the musical soirées of the Société nationale de musique, founded by Saint Saëns. Franck’s Sonata in A major was a wedding gift for Eugène Ysaÿe, the Belgian star violinist who also moved in these circles. Thanks in part to Ysaÿe, this lyrical piece is one of the best-known and most beloved sonatas for violin and piano. An attractive feature is that related themes recur regularly in the different movements – the “cyclical principle” developed by Franck. Thus, the cheerful final movement becomes a feast of recognition, as various passages from the preceding movements return.
Unknown masterpiece
Ernst von Dohnányi was one of the most influential Hungarian musicians before the Second World War. He wrote highly original compositions, performed worldwide as a virtuoso pianist and was a conductor and teacher at important Hungarian orchestras and institutions. He owed his international breakthrough in part to Johannes Brahms and his friend, the master violinist Joseph Joachim, who recognised his talent early on. Brahms was impressed by the First Piano Quintet in C minor from 1895 by the then 17-year-old Dohnányi, who had just graduated. 'I couldn't have done it better myself,' Brahms is said to have remarked, and he arranged the Viennese premiere. Joachim, in turn, helped Dohnányi by offering him a job as a teacher at the college in Berlin in 1905.
A cheerful Schubert
The romanticised image that “poor Schubert” was deprived of appreciation, love and success during his lifetime does not correspond with the success stories we now know. Franz Schubert had many friends, was a welcome guest in salons and his music was regularly performed and generally well received. Franz Schubert had many friends, was a welcome guest in salons, and his music was regularly performed and generally well received. That Schubert also experienced a great deal of pain, disappointment and sadness – he was unhappy in love and was often ill – is particularly evident in the deeply sad passages of his last masterpieces, such as the song cycle Winterreise. Schubert sounds very different in his cheerful Trout Quintet in A major, written in 1819 during a summer spent with friends in the mountains. He was 21 and had just decided to devote himself entirely to composing. When one of his friends commissioned him to write a quintet for the unusual combination of piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass, he set to work with enthusiasm. He added, at special request, an extra movement based on his charming song “Die Forelle”, which he had composed in 1817: the fourth movement with its beautiful variations, which constantly change colour thanks to the varying instrumentation. All five movements are equally appealing, thanks in part to the sparkling piano part and the exuberant strings.
