Volume 15 - Adriaan van Woudenberg
Logo by Martha Blanks
This issue of Horn on Record will explore an often overlooked and vitally important piece of chamber music, the Wind Quintet, Op. 26 by Arnold Schoenberg, recorded by Dutch hornist Adriaan van Woudenberg and the Danzi Quintet. Schoenberg composed his Quintet in August 1924, and it was premiered the following month. This recording of van Woudenberg was released by Philips in 1961.
Adriann van Woudenberg (b. 1925) was the solo horn of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam from 1944-1985. His studies were all with Richard Sell, then solo horn of Concertgebouw, and van Woudenberg was appointed as second horn in the orchestra before his final exams were completed at the Conservatory. Once he moved to the solo horn role after Sell, van Woudenberg played under Willem Mengelberg, Eduard van Beinum, and Bernard Haitink during their tenure as chief conductors. Across his career he taught at at the Sweelinck, Tilburg, and Maastricht Conservatories, and also the Musikhochshule in Trossigen, Germany.
Van Woudenberg was also a longtime member of the Danzi Wind Quintet, founded in 1956 by flutist Frans Vester. This quintet was formed specifically to perform the Dutch premiere of Schoenberg’s Win Quintet in 1958 at the Holland Festival – the culmination of 107 rehearsals since the quintet’s inception! Known for their expertise in contemporary music, van Woundenberg’s Danzi Quintet subsequently toured Italy, Germany, Russia, and American, and performed at the World Exhibition in Montreal, Canada, and had works written for them by Rob de Bois, Ton de Leeuw, Misha Mengelberg, Peter Schat, Josef Tal, and Jan van Viljmen.
The International Horn Society recognized Adriaan van Woudenberg’s influence at the Symposuim in London in 2014, making him and Honoray Member.
Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg was a dynamic figure in 20th century music history. He transitioned from an early compositional career saturated in a post-Romantic harmonic style with works like Verklärte Nacht (1899) and Guerrelieder (1913) to his methods aimed at the democratizing of the tonal system through atonalism. In the early 1920’s, Schoenberg introduced his “twelve-tone row” system, where a set of twelve discreet pitches of the chromatic scale serve as the ‘key’ of the work and can be written successively as a melody or motif and organized simultaneously harmonically. This tone row can be further manipulated from it’s original form by means of transposition, inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion.
After introducing this tonal landcape in his Piano Suite, Op. 25 in 1925, Schoenberg launched into the first large scale work using the dodecaphonic method with his Wind Quintet, Op. 26. This is a groundbreaking work for woodwind quintet and chamber ensemble writing, and is extremely difficult in every possible respect for all performers. Schoenberg not only uses a unique tonal language, he also compositionally structures “developing varation” throughout – these brief motivic cells transform through intermixing degees of rhythmic, melodic, or pitch contour and can do so in rapid succession and across an expanded scale. This can be challenging to listeners as there are few concrete “tunes” to latch on to on initial hearings; however, repeated study and reviewing the score are really illuminating exercises. Thankfully, the performers benefit from Schoenberg’s use of notating primary and secondary voices with indications of Hauptstimme and Nebenstimme in the score!
With the amount of rehearsal the Danzi Quintet clearly invested in their pursuit of this quintet, we are beneficiaries of a recording that not only pulls attention to the needed prevailing voices, but offers nuance of phrase, impeccable intonation, and masterful interplay of instrumental timbre. Van Woudernberg’s performance in this recording is truly inspiring – he deftly covers the entire range of the horn, dances through wicked chromatic figurations, and can bury his tone within the woodwind texture or proclaim his presence authoritatively, often in consequent musical moments.
Our listening begins with the closing moments of the 1st movement, where van Woudenberg zips through fiendish passagework, cycling through the tone row (Eb, G, A, B, C#, C, Bb, D, E, F#, Ab, F) with practiced ease and efficiency. The flute recapitulates the movement’s opening motive, and van Woudenberg’s gentle melodic tone and pin-point threading of large interval leaps brings the music to a close:
The second movement scherzando demonstrates the Danzi Quintet’s wonderful interplay of sound and texture, weaving their lines and articulations to create a dance-like feel even if the tonal language doesn’t easily coorperate. Van Woudenberg binds everything together, carrying an almost Mahlerian scherzo tune, with a few added high-octane outbursts:
The etwas fliessender section of the third movement intertwines a supple triplet figure through the winds, with the horn taking some beautiful lines. The music then rdissolves into a quirky waltz:
Our last excerpt is the ending of the fourth movement rondo – van Woudenberg unleashes his mighty orchestral sound, honed for the Concertgebouw, and the ensemble is bursting with energy to the final cadence:
If you are curious to discover this fascinating chamber work by Arnold Schoenberg, then I urge you to go to Discogs and put your own copy on the turntable! The dedication of the Danzi Quintet to bring this piece to life is remarkable, and testament to their desire to invest in the musical creativity of Schoenberg’s dodecaphony. Thank you for reading Horn on Record!