Niels Wilhelm Gade (1817-1890)
Octuor à cordes en fa majeur, op. 17
Quatuor à cordes inachevé en fa majeur
Mouvement pour quatuor à cordes en la mineur

Ensemble MidtVest

Karolina Weltrowska, violon
Matthew Jones, violon
Anna Feitosa, violon
Sanna Ripatti, alto
Janathan Slaatto, violoncelle

The Danish String Quartet

Rune Tonsgaard Sorensen, violon
Frederik Oland, violon
Asbjørn Norgaard, alto
Fredrik Schoyen Sjölin, violoncelle

Le troisième volume de cette belle intégrale de la musique de chambre de Gade vaut surtout pour le magnifique octuor à cordes de 1848 dans lequel le successeur de Mendelssohn au Gewandhaus met ses pas dans ceux de l’illustre Felix. Moins aérien peut-être que l’œuvre de Mendelssohn, cet octuor n’en est pas moins un véritable chef d’œuvre injustement méconnu de nos jours. C’est donc un vrai bonheur de le retrouver sous les archets de l’ensemble MidVest renforcé par le quatuor danois. Ce dernier seul défend en complément deux quatuors inachevés. Si l’allegro de 1836 n’est qu’une bluette, en revanche, les deux premiers mouvements de la partition de 1840 ne manquent ni de souffle ni d’ambition. La découverte est belle mais le CD s’impose surtout, on l‘aura compris, pour la réhabilitation de l’octuor à cordes. Chaque nouveau CD de Gade confirme décidément la curieuse évolution d’un musicien romantique follement doué dans sa jeunesse mais qui a évolué vers un académisme plutôt décevant avec l’âge. Raison de plus pour chérir ses premières partitions… (Richard Wander)

"We welcome the fact that cpo has now taken up Gade’s chamber music: it is wonderfully written and does not deserve to disappear into the footnotes of music history writing. The MidVest Ensemble completely dedicates itself to Gade and on this perfectly balanced recording performs the works with an open naturalness displaying his music in a highly favorable light". This is what FonoForum wrote in 2016 about Vol. 2 of our Gade recording series based on the new historical-critical complete edition of his works. The compositional history of many of these works is long and complicated because Gade often submitted his earlier works to later revisions. However, the little information we have about the composition of his Octet enables us to sketch the following picture: Gade began his work on it at the very latest in early 1848. Mendelssohn had died on 4 November 1847. In its style, overall form, and in various details Gade’s octet shares some elements with Mendelssohn’s octet. It is highly probable that Gade wanted to honor his late friend and colleague in this work, which prescribes the same instruments as the young Mendelssohn’s work from 1825. However, there is no absolute proof that Gade intended to compose a tribute to Mendelssohn. Gade’s first attempt in the genre of the string quartet is a single movement in A minor from January 1836. The movement has the character of a concert aria and attests to Gade’s fine dramatic sense when he was not yet twenty years old and to his talent for instrumentation. During 1839-40 Gade then worked on his String Quartet in F major. From the compositional journal that he kept during these years we may gather that the quartet should be regarded as a programmatic work written on Goethe’s "Willkommen und Abschied".