The Atlantis Ensemble continues its survey of the chamber repertoire of the first half of the 19th century with two great piano quintets. Robert Schumann composed his in 1842 for his pianist wife, Clara. Franz Schubert’s beloved A major piano quintet (The Trout) is presented here along with the song that inspired it. The Atlanteans, Jaap Schröder, Penelope Crawford and Enid Sutherland are joined by Etienne Abelin (violin), Peter Bucknell (viola) and Anne Trout (double bass). For Schubert’s song “Die Forelle”, Max van Egmond (baritone) is partnered by Penelope Crawford (fortepiano).
Robert Schumann: Piano Quintet in E flat major, Op. 44
1842 was a difficult year for Schumann, one in which he struggled for some sort of equilibrium in his “artist-marriage,” as he called it, to one of Germany’s finest performers (and composers---Clara Schumann’s setting of Heinrich Heine’s “Loreley” is one of the great songs of the century). In the course of a concert tour to Bremen, Oldenburg, and Hamburg, Schumann brooded about his rather passive role as his wife’s companion and little else (he called his situation “undignified) and returned alone to Leipzig on 12 March while Clara went on to Copenhagen for a month’s stay. From midyear on, he occupied himself more and more with composition, concentrating on chamber music. But the so-called “chamber music year of 1842” was not Schumann’s first venture into this arena: one of his earliest major works is the C minor Piano Quartet of 1828-1829, with its manifest and moving debts to Schubert (we are told that Schumann was heard sobbing in his lodgings the night he heard the news of Schubert’s death). Ten years later, he organized a series of “quartet mornings” in 1838, followed by compositional work in the summer of 1839 on two quartets he deemed “as good as Haydn.” Three years later, he was once again visited by “quartet-ish thoughts” and began studying Mozart’s, Haydn’s, and Beethoven’s quartets in preparation for his own renewed entry into this realm. Three string quartets of his own later, he began work on his Piano Quintet in E-flat major, op. 44, on 23 September, completing the fair copy on 12 October; such a brief span of time to create such an extraordinary work bespeaks white-hot inspiration. It was first performed in a Hausmusik setting, with Clara, five months pregnant with her second daughter and not feeling well, replaced at the piano by none other than Felix Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn criticized the second trio in the slow movement as lacking in vitality, and Schumann, responsive to his friend’s critiques, replaced the trio with another as part of a roiling series of emendations to this work en route to completion. The quintet was originally conceived in five moments, not four, and the third or middle movement was at first designed as a “Scena” in G minor. After writing twenty-plus measures of figuration and the beginnings of a melody for the cello, Schumann abandoned the notion and dispensed altogether with any such movement. But the strenuous labours paid off: this work was an instant success. When it was performed in Berlin as part of the 1846-1847 Singakademie season, it was hailed as “one of the most important works of its kind since Beethoven.” For Schumann, who wrote in his diary for November 1842, “I love Mozart dearly, but I worship Beethoven like a god who is forever apart, who will never become one of us,” this must have been the highest of high praise. What he created in the quintet, according to the great Schumann scholar John Daverio, was a nearly ideal mediation between quasi-symphonic traits---the breadth of the scoring and the spacing of the sonorities are orchestral in quality---and chamber music elements. “In this work,” Schumann seems to say, “you too can have an orchestra in your parlour.”
The big, bold primary theme of the “Allegro brillante” (definitely the right adjective), with its striding leaps upward, announces symphonic aspirations immediately and dominates much of the movement. Schumann “spins off” not only a modulatory transitional theme but the second theme in the dominant from this rich musical idea. In its original form in mm. 1-8, it is already sequential, and that sets up the entire movement to be filled with sequences, music’s travelling highway. Goethe once famously defined the string quartet as “a conversation between four equals:” while this is a quintet, not a quartet, and the piano is “more equal” here than the strings, one still hears many wonderful examples of dialogue between the instruments, as when the cello and viola split the theme in the dominant key area, the cello taking the initial rising manifestation and the viola mirroring the same figure in descending motion. The unique, wide-flung spacing of the “con fuoco” (with fury) passages that announce the impending end of both the exposition and the entire movement---like a striking of a giant gong---is a wonderful example of Schumann’s play with sonorities that burst the bounds of conventional chamber music. The second movement is marked “In the manner of a march,” Schumann’s Beethoven hero-worship evident once more---but this is a Schumannian, not a Beethovenian, funeral march. The poetically conceived march theme is the recurring element in this rondo, and it is shot through with rests/silences. The march theme itself, framed by an unharmonized broken C minor triad (a quiet announcement of portentous things to follow), has several striking characteristics: the subdominant is emphasized more than the tonic, the first phrase ends deceptively, and the consequent phrase incorporates a chord with a distinctive dissonant “bite” to it. These are bitter matters, the one spasm of dissonance tells us in restrained fashion. In the first episode following the march, Schumann shifts to parallel major mode and an exquisite cantilena in the first violin, based (subtly) on the end of the March theme. The scoring in this episode is both proto-Impressionistic, with its swaying, repetitive triplets that make the music seem as if hovering in mid-air, and Romantic in its typically Schumannian rich doublings. The funeral march returns, but this time, it ends by sinking scalewise as if in an abyss of gloom until, all of a sudden, agitation erupts. Schumann’s virtuosity with rhythmic patterns is on display here, and it all leads to a spooky, tremolo-shivery variant of the funeral march (one thinks of the eerie tremolo figures in Schubert’s great G major quartet). The lyrical episode returns in F major and, finally, the last hushed invocation of the funeral theme dying away into silence. The chord for strings alone---the piano is banished here---at the very end, high in the treble in harmonics always makes this writer think of Schubert’s song “Gruppe aus dem Tartarus,” with its procession of doomed souls into Hades and the eerie high treble chord at the end.
“How to make scales exciting” might be the motto of the Scherzo. Schumann manipulates the 6/8 compound meter such that the scales dashing up and down jostle against one another in rhythmically complex ways. Schumann always loved syncopated patterns that go on and on until finally we come bumping up against the downbeat, and he engages in that particular stylistic hallmark in this movement as well. As someone who knew his Bach inside and out, he was always interested in contrapuntal intricacies, as we can see in the first Trio—gentler than the staccato brashness of the scherzo it follows---in which the piano shadows the canon between the first violin and viola. Mendelssohn could not have criticized the new second trio of the scherzo movement as lacking in vitality, given the wild energies unleashed here in a 2/4 meter contrasting with the compound meter elsewhere. There is an almost Witches’ Sabbath dance-like ferocity to the culmination, with its dotted rhythmic bass patterns; one thinks of “Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen” from Dichterliebe. And finally, the finale demonstrates Schumann’s idiosyncratic (everything he appropriated, he made his own) approach to nineteenth-century cyclical unity in multi-movement. Like the first movement, the finale begins with a bold, proclamatory theme in similar half-note and quarter-note values in the piano, and Schumann then restates the theme at length, first a semitone higher and then a major third lower. This ongoing elaboration of the proclamatory main idea evolves into a fugato, complete with a Bach-style passage over a pedal point, and this in its turn paves the way for the “grand finale” of the finale: a double fugue combining the main theme from the first movement with the main theme of the last movement. One can even hear a doff-of-the-hat to Haydn in the fortissimo “bagpipe” open fifths pounded in the piano to announce the nearness of the end. All of Schumann’s gods of yore---Haydn, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach---are given the best homage possible here in a work where all those things they taught him are made new.
Franz Schubert: Die Forelle. From Lied to Quintet
Schubert incorporated variations on his own songs in several of his most important large-scale instrumental works, and one of the most famous examples is the fourth movement of his Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 (op. posth. 114), nicknamed “The Trout” after the song that inspired it. But unlike the vast majority of the piano or chamber music “potpourris,” variations, and fantasies on vocal works pouring off the commercial presses in the early nineteenth century, Schubert’s instrumental variations are most decidedly not definable as “Trivialmusik,” or diversionary fluff. His gigantic ambitions are evident early in this arena as in all others.
Because it all began with a song (and the song is included on the present recording), we will start there. The poet of “Die Forelle,” D. 550 (one of Schubert’s most famous songs), Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart (1739-1791), was a jailbird when this poem first appeared in 1782. A pastor’s son with a wild streak and strong political opinions, he gave all-too-free rein to his satirical talents and was imprisoned in the dungeons of Hohenasperg for ten years (1777-1787) without a trial. A courageous man who used his poetry to denounce tyranny, a gifted organist who was Master of Music at the Württemberg court, Schubart devised in “Die Forelle” what seems on the surface to be a fish tale but is actually a sexual morality-play, the moral made explicit in a fourth and final stanza that the composer omitted: “You who tarry by the golden spring / of sure youth, / think of the trout: / if you see danger, hurry by! / Most of you err only from lack / of cleverness. Girls, make sure you spot / seducers with their tackle, / or else, too late, you’ll bleed.” Allusion to a “betrayed one” (“die Betrog’ne” is feminine) deceived by a man muddying the waters with a long pole does not require much post-Freudian decoding, and Schubert---an excellent poet’s editor---saw the mini-sermon as superfluous. Schubert probably set this poem to music in late 1816/early 1817; the autograph manuscript is lost, but the earliest copies of this immediately popular song date from spring of that year. It exists in five different versions, and musicians need to be aware which versions and editions emanate from Schubert and which ones were subjected to change after Schubert’s death by the publisher Anton Diabelli; for example, one version of the song lacks a piano prelude, and others have it. The only genuinely Schubertian form of that prelude is in the Neue Schubert-Ausgabe (New Schubert Edition, from a manuscript in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.), not in the commonly-used Peters Edition. Throughout much of the song, we hear a one-measure leaping, rippling figure in the piano (often with chromatic passing tones whose effect is slyly erotic) and a sturdy vocal tune suitable for narration, a melody whose occasional sixteenth-note gruppetti mimic the piano’s figuration in varied guise. This motivic figure is one Schubert had already devised in July 1815 in the song “Erinnerung: Die Erscheinung” (Remembrance: The Apparition), D. 229, to a poem by Ludwig Kosegarten, but he would treat it far more extensively in the later song and quintet. In Schubart’s poem, the narrator who observes the scene is angered, even hurt, by the fisherman’s success with the unfortunate “little fish,” and Schubert therefore departs from his previous strict strophic design at the poet’s fifth verse. One notes the harmonic “trill”---the left hand stuck momentarily on two neighbouring chords ---when the narrating voice tells us that the wicked fisherman, tired of waiting, now muddies the waters; the staccato chords tell of the narrator’s frustration; fixed in place, he can only watch. In a complicated manoeuvre, the narrator returns to the sweet, merry music of desire for the last two lines of the poem---about blood boiling in rage! The seeming discrepancy tells us the idyllic music can now only recall a bygone fantasy. (Singers should note Schubert’s piano dynamics at the words “und ich mit regem Blute sah die Betrog’ne an” and not mimic anger by means of loudness, as so many do.) For all the charm of the music that returns, there is defeat and wistfulness in the way the piano’s signature figure sinks by stages into the bass depths throughout the instrumental conclusion of the song and in the dying-away dynamics.
Some two years later, in the summer of 1819, Schubert went to Upper Austria on holiday with his good friend, the former Vienna Court Opera singer Johann Michael Vogl and visited Vogl’s birthplace in the charming town of Steyr. “The country around Steyr is indescribably beautiful,” Schubert wrote his older brother Ferdinand, sentiments repeated in a letter to another friend, the great and gloomy poet Johann Mayrhofer, to whom he said, “In Steyr I had, and will continue to have, a marvellous time. The country is heavenly.” He would return to Steyr in 1823 and 1825; since the autograph manuscript of the quintet is lost, we cannot know for a certainty which of the three visits gave birth to this composition, but most writers opt on musical grounds for the earliest date, or 1819. Vogl and Schubert stayed at the home of a wealthy, enthusiastic amateur cellist named Sylvester Paumgartner, who promptly commissioned a quintet from his guest. For the commission, Schubert took as his model Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s (1778-1837) Quintet in E-flat, op. 87, likewise scored for the unusual ensemble of fortepiano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, and fashioned a fourth movement in the form of a theme-and-variations set based on “Die Forelle,” a song that, according to legend, Paumgartner especially liked. The resulting work in five moments has been described as the epitome of Biedermeier Hausmusik, a composition intended for domestic music-making (but the members of the household had better be accomplished performers), a piece from the sunny side of life. Certainly hearing it raises spirits right away, but whatever its genial surfaces, Schubert’s ambition is evident even before he decided in the 1820s to challenge Beethoven on his older contemporary’s turf of large-scale instrumental composition. In every movement except the third-movement Scherzo, Schubert devises sextuplet figures that do not duplicate the famous “trout” figuration from the song---until the final variation of the theme-and-variations set---but subtly link one movement to another. The first movement (Allegro vivace) is in the traditional sonata-allegro form but with the young Schubert’s hallmarks evident in every bar: the emphasis on lyrical expansiveness rather than motivic drama in the Beethovenian manner, the Mozartian swerve to parallel minor in the dominant-key section of the exposition, the wonderful pianissimo reference to C major approaching the end of the exposition, and a recapitulation which begins in the subdominant key of D major, not the tonic key (this is a characteristic of Schubert’s recapitulations from 1814 to 1819 and helps to date the Trout Quintet to 1819 rather than the 1820s). There are so often passages in Schubert’s big instrumental works where we suddenly swerve from some sort of public face---the bubbling vitality of this first movement, for example, with its trill figures and arpeggios that shoot upwards in bursts of energy---into a more private realm, wistful and haunting, if only for an instant. All was not Heurige and skittles in Schubert’s world, far from it, and the lovely manoeuvres to C major both near the end of the exposition and at the end of the entire movement are cases in point. Schubert’s delight in modulation to distant places is on display in the development section---the classic site for such demonstrations---when deft harmonic sleight-of-hand leads us immediately away from the dominant E major tonality of the exposition’s end to such remote tourist locales on the flat side of things as A-flat, B-flat, E-flat (the flatted tonic and dominant keys!) before we are returned suavely to our point of origin.
Already in mm. 14-22 of the first movement, Schubert makes reference to an F major harmony, which subsequently becomes the principal key of the Andante second movement. Here, Schubert creates a bipartite structure in which the second half is a transposed but otherwise literal restatement of the first half. Some commentators have condemned this as a mechanistic approach to musical form, but they miss the point, which is to underscore radical tonal relationships from section to section within the movement. In the first half, we hear the main tonality of F major cede to F-sharp minor [!] over a drone bass, and then to D major before culminating in G major, albeit with touches of minor mode. In the second half, we begin in A-flat major without so much as a “by your leave” or modulation to carry us from G to A-flat; the previous semitonal shift and the continuation of the chromatic climb upwards are our “preparation.” The modulation that carries us from A-flat major to the drone bass section now in A minor is sheer gold, with one chord tone altered with each bar until we arrive at a very distant key by very economical means. Finally, we return to the initial key of F major, but the harmonic audacity of what has taken place before our homecoming is breathtaking, not least in the ease with which it is accomplished. The third movement Scherzo-and-Trio in A major was composed by someone who knew his Beethoven, as evinced by the rhythmic energy and the sforzando accents clustered in places, but much else is pure Schubert, especially the structure of the Trio. In this composer’s mature works, the trio is often the chosen venue for his removals into a hushed private space, and here, we withdraw in ever-softer stages until the music is, briefly, in a trance state over a pedal point. It is a magical moment, and we are almost sorry to leave it. And the bar of utter silence as we approach the end of Trio is echt Schubert as well; he was prone to demarcating significant architectural places in his works in this manner
The fourth movement theme-and-variation set is disposed in traditional manner, with the statement of the theme followed by three increasingly frothy decorative variations, a minore episode (the varied theme in minor mode---this is a convention in variation sets), a lyrical meditation on the theme showcasing the cello, and finally, a return to the theme at the end. The relationships between Schubert’s songs and the later instrumental works spun from them are always complex; here, the theme at the beginning consists only of the harmonized vocal melody from the earlier song, stated by the strings alone, the piano conspicuously absent. In the first three variations, the piano returns and aids the strings in weaving ever-more-elaborate figuration around the theme, figuration that alludes to the prior “leaping trout/woman” theme but does not duplicate it. Not until the Allegretto concluding section, the return of the theme, does the piano (also the violin) bring back the sextuplet figures as we remember them from the song, and the effect is a rewriting of the song’s scenario: the triumph of the trout. Finally, many listeners will be familiar with the Allegro giusto finale because it was the theme music of the British television comedy “Waiting for God”---would we could all be ushered into the afterlife to such strains. This last movement is somewhat similar to the second movement in its repetition structure, this time without the multiple semitonal shifts upward.
Susan Youens
Biographies:
Penelope Crawford – fortepiano
Internationally acclaimed as one of America's master performers on historical keyboard instruments, Penelope Crawford has appeared as soloist with modern and period instrument orchestras, and as recitalist and chamber musician throughout North America. From 1975 to 1990 she was harpsichordist and fortepianist with the Ars Musica Baroque Orchestra, one of the first period instrument ensembles in North America.
Ms. Crawford teaches a doctoral seminar in piano performance practices of the 18th and 19th centuries at the University of Michigan. She also taught for twenty-five years on the artist faculty of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute. In an effort to establish stronger connections between performance and scholarship, she has served as artistic planner and performing participant in several important international festivals and scholarly conferences: Händel's Messiah: History & Performance (1980, Michigan); Michigan MozartFest, (1989, Michigan); Schubert's Piano Music, (1995, Washington D. C.); and Beyond Notation: The Performance and Pedagogy of Improvisation in Mozart’s Music, (2002, Michigan).
In addition to her work with the Atlantis Trio she has recorded for Musica Omnia Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise with Dutch baritone, Max van Egmond. Her other recordings of solo and chamber music have appeared on the Loft, Wild Boar, and Titanic labels.
Jaap Schröder – violin
Jaap Schröder, distinguished Dutch violinist and musical pedagogue, has enjoyed a multi-faceted career: quartet player, baroque violinist, soloist, conductor and teacher. He has long been engaged in research into violin literature of the 17th and 18th centuries and was one of the international pioneers in the founding of ensembles to perform in historically appropriate playing styles, notably with Quadro Amsterdam and Concerto Amsterdam.
As a soloist, Mr. Schröder has recorded repertoire ranging from works by Biber, through the J .S. Bach solo suites and sonatas, to the complete violin cycle of Beethoven for such labels as Harmonia Mundi, Virgin Classics and Smithsonian. He has directed concerts and recordings on both sides of the Atlantic of such prestigious ensembles as the Academy of Ancient Music and the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra.
As a chamber musician he has founded several ensembles including the Smithson Quartet, Quartetto Esterhazy, and the Atlantis Trio & Atlantis Ensemble. His recordings have won many awards including a Grammy nomination. Mr. Schröder has taught on the faculties of the Yale School of Music and the Luxembourg Conservatory, and is frequently invited as a visiting performer-scholar to other universities and music conservatories in America and Europe.
Etienne Abelin – violin
Swiss violinist Etienne Abelin, recipient of the 1998 Friedl-Wald Stiftung Award (Switzerland), is an internationally acclaimed soloist, chamber and orchestra musician. Pierre Boulez characterizes him as “an outstanding musician”, the San Antonio Express-News writes: “His superb sense of rhythm and his astute articulation allowed the music to breathe and its specific gestures to express themselves.” The Swiss newspaper Der Bund described him as “a breathtaking poet”. Abelin has performed chamber music with musicians like Maxim Vengorov, Hans-Heinz Schneeberger and the Swiss Charmillon Piano Quartet. From 1997–1999, Abelin held the position of the principal second violin in the European Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez and Seiji Ozawa. Abelin performs with Apollo’s Fire, the Handel & Haydn Society, the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra , the New England String Ensemble, with the Orchestre Philharmonique Suisse and as concertmaster in the Basel Sinfonietta. From 2003–2005, he will join the Lucerne Festival Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado.
Etienne Abelin performs on a 1780 V. Panormo violin and a 1740 J. Leidolff baroque violin.
Peter Bucknell – viola
Peter Bucknell recently retired from his position as the viola professor at the Crane School of music (State University of New York at Potsdam) to live in New York City.
In 1992, he won the Auckland International Viola Congress Competition and the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Award. He worked with Donald McInnes in Los Angeles, with Rainer Moog in Cologne, Germany, and with Yuri Bashmet in Siena, Italy.
Peter Bucknell has been a soloist with Apollo's Fire, the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, Les Concerts du Monde, Los Angeles Musica Viva, and Melbourne's Geminiani Chamber Orchestra (broadcasting live the Australian Premiere of Michael Colgrass' "Chaconne" for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation). He has given recitals in the United States, Sweden, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia.
As a member of the award-winning Quatour Danel, Peter Bucknell has performed at
Wigmore Hall, Grange de Meslay, Radio France and in many other European halls, specializing in the quartets of Shostakovich. He toured with the Stradivari Sextet, where he played the 'Mahler Stradivarius' Another of his Quartets won the Interpretation Prize in the Osaka Competition in 1996.
Enid Sutherland – cello
Enid Sutherland, cellist, violist da gamba, and composer, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in cello and composition at the University of Michigan. Her long career as a performer, teacher, and student of historical performances practices has taken her on a musical journey from the music of the Renaissance through that of the early Romantics.
She attracts students from all over the country to her studio in Ann Arbor. In addition to her many solo performances, she has performed with a number of ensembles, including the Ars Musica Baroque Orchestra, the New Baroque Trio, Musicke of Sundrie Kindes, the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble, the Ensemble for Early Music of New York, Apollo’s Fire of Cleveland, Tafelmusik of Toronto, the Atlantis Trio & Ensemble, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
As a composer, Enid Sutherland has written numerous works in modern idioms for small to medium mixed ensembles, solo pieces for various instruments, two song cycles, duos for violin and cello, two harpsichords, and harpsichord and piano, and one opera. She has received several commissions, and her works have been performed across the United States and in Europe. She has also been awarded grants for her work from the Ford Motor Company, the University of Michigan, and the American Music Center.
Anne Trout – double bass
Bassist Anne Trout is active as a chamber music performer and orchestral musician throughout North America, appearing with prominent ensembles sized 5 to 50. In Boston she has served as a principal player for the Handel & Haydn Society, the Boston Bach Ensemble, and Boston Baroque. Well-known as a continuo player and sympathetic collaborator, she is often engaged to accompany vocalists of international stature. She performs regularly with REBEL, the New York-based chamber ensemble, in its residency at Trinity Church in lower Manhattan and its national tours. A long-time member of the Musicians of Aston Magna, she has also performed with the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Cabrillo Festival, Colorado Music Festival, Montreal Bach Festival, Jonathan Miller's staged "St Matthew Passion" at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Philadelphia-based Tempesta di Mare, the Cambridge-based Sarasa Ensemble. Ms. Trout serves on the faculties of the Groton School, Boston College, and Longy School in Cambridge.
The Atlantis Trio and Atlantis Ensemble
The Atlantis Trio, comprising Jaap Schröder (violin), Penelope Crawford (fortepiano) and Enid Sutherland (cello), specializes in the Classical and Romantic piano trio literature on period instruments. The group has performed widely throughout North America, including concerts at the Smithsonian’s and the Westfield Center’s co-sponsored festival Schubert’s Piano Music in Washington D. C., the Haydn Festival in Amherst, Massachusetts, the Helicon series in New York City, the Schubert Club in St. Paul, Minnesota, as well as numerous live broadcasts on National Public Radio. For Musica Omnia the Atlantis Trio and the augmented Atlantis Ensemble are engaged in a major project documenting the great Romantic chamber repertoire for piano and strings, including all the major works in this genre by Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Sigismond Thalberg, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Clara Schumann & Fanny Mendelssohn. The Atlantis Trio and Atlantis Ensemble are also involved in a series of recordings of the complete chamber works for piano and strings by Felix Mendelssohn, in honour of that composer’s upcoming bicentennial in 2009.
Max van Egmond (baritone)
Born on February 1, 1936 in Semarang, Java, (Indonesia – then the Dutch East Indies),
the admired Dutch bass-baritone Max (Rudolf) van Egmond studied principally with Tine van Willingen. He completed his schooling and musical education in Holland after the war, becoming a member of the Nederlandse Bach Vereniging (Dutch Bach Society) at the age of eighteen. In 1959 (three years after his friend and compatriot, Elly Ameling) he became a prizewinner at the 's-Hertogenbosch International Vocal Competition. He was also awarded competition prizes in Brussels (1959) and Munich (1964).
These public successes marked the beginning of a distinguished career in the fields of oratorio, Lieder and baroque opera. Max van Egmond has achieved his greatest fame as an interpreter of J. S. Bach's cantatas, masses and passions and, from 1965, participated in complete recordings and performances of these masterpieces with conductors Gustav Leonhardt, Jaap Schröder, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Frans Brüggen. (Teldec, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Seon). One of Holland's most beloved artists, he has received numerous awards and honours including a special decoration from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands for his decades of service to Dutch musical life. His forty-year career has taken him throughout Europe, North and South America, the Middle and Far East, North Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
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