Intermezzo in D minor (Bruckner)
| Intermezzo in D minor | |
|---|---|
| Viola quintet by Anton Bruckner | |
The composer, c. 1860
|
|
| Catalogue | WAB 113 |
| Composed | 21 December 1879: Vienna |
| Performed | 23 January 1904: Vienna |
The Intermezzo in D minor (WAB 113) is an 1879 composition by the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner. Although it was intended to replace a movement of the String Quintet, that piece was instead performed in its original form; the Intermezzo was not publicly premiered until after the composer's death.
Bruckner completed his String Quintet in 1879 for a group headed by Joseph Hellmesberger, Sr. However, Hellmesberger found the work's "curious, elfin scherzo" to be too challenging for the group to perform. In response, Bruckner wrote an eight-minute Intermezzo, which was completed in Vienna on 21 December 1879. The Intermezzo (WAB 113) was in the same key (D minor) as the original scherzo and used the same trio section, but its tempo was slower and it was less technically challenging.
The Intermezzo was originally intended as a less difficult alternative to the scherzo of the Quintet. Nevertheless, in 1885, Hellmesberger decided to proceed with the original Quintet after it had been premiered in full by the Winkler Quartet.
The manuscript of the Intermezzo was retrieved in 1900—after Bruckner's death—from the collection of his pupil Josef Schalk. The Intermezzo, which became an independent work scored for string quintet, was premiered on 23 January 1904 in Vienna by the Fitzner Quartet during a concert of the Wiener Akademischer Wagner-Verein. There is no record of an earlier public performance.
The manuscript of the Intermezzo is stored in the archive of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. The Intermezzo was first published by Universal Edition in Vienna in 1913 (without its trio). It appeared in a complete critical edition in 1963, as appendix to the String Quintet, in Band XIII of the Gesamtausgabe edited by Leopold Nowak.
...
Wikipedia