Metamorphosis - String Quintets 1 [CD]

The three works here included are arrangements of two trios by Beethoven and of his Horn Sonata. These were made by the Bohemian virtuoso oboist Carl Khym, whose name sometimes appears as Chym. He was born about 1770 and was thus a more or less exact contemporary of Beethoven and seems to have been in the service of the Emperor. Little is known of his life, but he left a number of chamber music compositions and competent and effective arrangements of works by other composers, with the string quintet version of Beethoven's Clarinet Trio, Op. 11, appearing in Vienna and Pest in 1810/1811, and of the Horn Sonata, published in Bonn by Simrock in 1817. The arrangement of the Piano Trio, Op. 1, No. 2, seems to date from 1815. Nothing is known of Khym after 1819. In 1795 Beethoven published a set of three Piano Trios, dedicated to Prince Carl Lichnowsky, in whose house they were first performed, in the presence of Haydn, who had reservations about the possible reception of the third, an implied criticism to which the composer took exception. The second of the group, the Piano Trio in G major, Op. 1, No. 2, makes a convincing string quintet. The first movement starts with a slow introduction, with the more decorative melodic elements now allotted to the violin, which opens the Allegro Vivace with a lively first subject leading to a reasonable division of labor between the other instruments of the quintet. The first violin introduces the second subject in the sonata-form movement, with it's repeated exposition, development and recapitulation. The characteristically sustained piano melody of the original work in the slow movement is aptly transferred to strings, it's opening theme repeated an octave higher, after which the first violin leads on to a secondary theme, both themes soon to return, with a brief excursion into the tonic minor key before the closing section. The Scherzo is introduced by the cello, joined at once by the other instruments, and framing a B minor Trio. The final Presto opens with the rapidly repeated notes of the violin, as in the original, with some modification of the original piano imitation of the theme, in a sonata-form movement, it's exposition again repeated, before the central development and recapitulation.