Dohnányi und die Tradition Das Klavierquintett Nr. 2 es-Moll, op. 26 (1914)

Dohnányi's Second Piano Quintet in E-flat minor was written in 1914 and is less well-known than his first one dating from 1895. The composer has been called a traditionalist, so it is worth examining how tradition appears in this work. The outer movements of the three-movement-form are both elegiac and weighty. The beginning bears the key signature of E-flat major instead of minor, but the keys are changing rapidly as the piece progresses. This is reminiscent of Franz Schubert or of Antonín Dvořák, for instance in his Piano Quartet (op. 87) inspired by Brahms. The third movement's opening is a homage to Beethoven's late String Quartet in A Minor (op. 132). While the latter works on a sub-thematic level, Dohnányi presents an elaborated theme in fugal technique, which in 1914 was a more conservative approach than Beethoven's in 1825. For Dohnányi, the symmetric structures are not a way out of traditional tonality (unlike for Bartók, who also frequently used symmetries), but rather are a way of extending it. The formal concept is no less interesting. The recapitulation of the first movement's material within the third is evocative of the double-function form used by Franz Liszt. While Liszt conflated the traditional multi-movement form into a new one-movement form, Dohnányi – so to speak – concealed the characteristics of the new one-movement form inside a traditional three-movement form. Thus, one could ask if the accusations against Dohnányi for being a traditionalist are justified. Perhaps instead we should reconsider how traditionalism and modernity are situated in our own set of aesthetic values.