
The score to Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet (1908), inscribed by the composer to his musician colleague, Vincent d’Indy.
The catalog of music composed by Florent Schmitt contains numerous chamber works. Among them are three large-scale compositions for string ensemble: the Trio, Op. 105, the Quartet, Op. 112, and the Piano Quintet, Op. 51.
The Piano Quintet was the first of these three pieces to be created; Schmitt worked on the score for six years between 1902 and 1908, whereas the other two works would come along in the 1940s.

Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet was performed during the Mahler Festival organized in 1920 by Willem Mengelberg in Amsterdam. Schmitt himself played the piano part. The concert also included works by Chausson, Mussorgsky, Schoenberg and Stravinsky.
It is also the longest of these three chamber pieces, lasting nearly an hour’s length of time. The outer two movements last over 20 minutes each, while the slow middle movement clocks in at around 14 minutes.
Schmitt dedicated this monumental chamber work to his teacher and mentor, Gabriel Fauré. Its premiere performance was held on March 26, 1909, performed by the Fermin Touche Quartet with Maurice Dumesnil at the piano.
The long gestation period of the Piano Quintet reflected the fact that it was the work of an artist who was on the path to full maturity. Not only that, it was the first time the composer had created a piece of chamber music for forces larger than two players.

The first page of the score to Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet. Note the dedication to Gabriel Fauré, Schmitt’s teacher and mentor at the Paris Conservatoire.
Musicologist Caroline Waight has noted that Schmitt’s Piano Quintet was well-received by the critics and audiences at the time of its premiere. Indeed, along with the Psaume XLVII and La Tragédie de Salomé, the Quintet helped establish Schmitt’s name as a major composer on the international music scene.
Moreover, the Piano Quintet was awarded First Prize in the Société des compositeurs de musique’s 1909 competition — an award that was accompanied by a payment of 500 francs to the composer.
Here is how Waight characterizes Schmitt’s music in the Quintet:
“Almost orchestral in score, the work strains at the boundaries of its form, encompassing an extraordinary range of textures and emotions, and containing a wealth of melody.”
Similarly, the musicologist Michel Fleury considers the Piano Quintet to be the “absolute apex” in the progression of piano quintets written by French composers from the time of César Franck and proceeding on to Vincent d’Indy, Camille Saint-Saens, Louis Vierne. Charles Koechlin, Gabriel Pierné and others.
Fleury has written of the Piano Quintet:
“Its luxuriant harmony, its rhythmic dynamism and its melodic profusion are very representative of the composer … The Quintet goes through all the nuances of feelings, from tenderness to the most savage violence, from nostalgia to the shores of despair, from voluptuousness to the most fanciful irony. It closes with an energetic and optimistic affirmation of volition, action — and Dionysian joy.”

A 1909 advertisement by French publisher A. Z. Mathot appearing in Le Courrier musical, promoting compositions by Florent Schmitt including several scores in preparation — one being the Piano Quintet.
Writing in the January 2009 issue of The Strad magazine, music journalist, author and critic Julian Haylock wrote these words about Florent Schmitt and his Piano Quintet:
“Like his great teacher [Gabriel Fauré], Schmitt was not given to wearing his heart on his sleeve, which lends his music a noble sense of proportion during even the most heated of climaxes. At the same time, he was prone to generous washes of the kind of exotic, chromatically intensified harmonies that so appealed to the post-Wagnerian wing of French composers, as encapsulated in the chamber music of Chausson and Franck. There are supeheated, piano-saturated climaxes in Schmitt’s Quintet to make those of Brahms and Franck seem almost tame by comparison.
Temporally expansive yet strangely concise in terms of its musical patterning, the three movements of this epic chamber work weigh in at around 20, 14 and 21 minutes, respectively.”
In the process of achieving musical heights that Fleury and Haylock speak of — with alternating stormy sequences and ethereal reveries along with passionate energy throughout — the piano part in particular requires a first-rate performer who is capable of playing textures so thick that some passages in the score are spread over four staves.
One of the more significant early performances of the Piano Quintet occurred on April 11, 1919 at a Société Musicale Indépendante concert held in the Salle Gaveau. Present on the concert program — as well as in the audience — was a veritable “who’s who” of Parisian music society. In addition to Schmitt playing the piano part in his Quintet, the premiere performance of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin was played by the pianist Marguerite Long, Hélène Jourdan-Morhange performed in Roland-Manuel’s Trio, and soprano Jane Bathori presented several mélodies by Gabriel Grovlez.
The Piano Quintet was one of the first of Schmitt’s compositions to “travel extensively” to places outside of France. It was performed in the United Kingdom on numerous occasions, with the composer himself playing the challenging piano part in several of the performances into the 1930s, and the English pianist Kathleen Long doing the honors in later performances in the 1940s.
The first English performance of the Piano Quintet, which happened in 1911, did not feature the composer as pianist. Instead, it was Maurice Dumesnil playing alongside the Parisian Quartet. The following comments about it were published in the February 1, 1911 issue of The Musical Times:
The Quintet is an appealing work of great elaboration and length — and a corresponding wealth of ideas. Its harmonies are advanced without being labored or uncouth, and the workmanship is masterly.”
The first of Florent Schmitt’s own appearances in England playing the Piano Quintet happened in December 1916 in the middle of World War I. Recently mustered out of the French armed forces, the composer traveled to London for two performances, joined by an esteemed group of string players including the refugee Belgian violinist-conductor Désiré Defauw as well as violist Lionel Tertis.
The Quintet was also presented in America in its early years, including at a Society of the Friends of Music subscription concert at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York City on February 1, 1914. The performers included violinists Edouard Dethier and Doval Sanders, violist Samuel Lifschey, cellist Paul Kefer and pianist Gaston Dethier.

This advertisement promoting the Boston Quintet’s February 1920 performance of Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet appeared in the program booklets of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
In February 1920, the Boston Quartet (made up of violinists Joseph di Natale and Robert Gunderson, violist Vladimir Berlin, cellist Alma la Palme and pianist Hans Ebell) performed the Piano Quintet in that city’s Steinert Hall, while a presentation of the Quintet also happened in October 1921 at the Scottish Rite Hall in San Francisco.
And in 1932, Florent Schmitt himself played the piano part in a performance of the piece at Town Hall in New York City, part of an all-Schmitt concert organized by the League of Composers during Schmitt’s only trip to America. New York Times music critic Olin Downes was present at that performance and wrote the following words about it, as published in the Times’ November 28, 1932 edition:
“The Florent Schmitt Piano Quintet has been played from time to time in this country. It has been well-received, and then followed by other modern works scored in the same manner. Now it is 1932. The Quintet, according to the date of its publication, is virtually a quarter of a century old, but last night an audience of modernists applauded it to the echo and found it good and significant and stimulating.
This work has a fine structure and substance. Sometimes it shows a trace of Debussyan influence — or even Fauré or Chabrier — passing straws indicating the way the wind of the period of the Quintet was blowing. But this is more than music of a day — or a year, either; this was proved last night by an audience of sophisticates. With almost unanimity the work was acclaimed, and the talk in the corridors was all in its favor. So pass the years — and so endure the qualities of real music.
The work is symphonic and also romantic. It is a pianist’s quintet — the piano having a role that is brilliant and frequently orchestral. The [string] parts are, however, happily conceived — even if the quartet is employed more frequently in mass, en bloc, than polyphonically. In this respect the score passes the bounds of chamber music and has the coarser proportions of an orchestral partition.”
As in its reception in New York (and in San Francisco) in 1932, the music has made a strong impression wherever it was played. Writing about the piece in his 1932 book Around Music, the British composer Kaikhosru Sorabji was effusive in his praise:
“The Florent Schmitt Piano Quintet is … I am tempted to say, the greatest piece of chamber music ever written in France. In magnificence and splendor I do not know any chamber work to compare with it. It has much of the characteristics of Byzantine architecture, glowing with gold and polychromatic mosaics. The wide, arching curves of its fine themes and its large spaciousness of style are singularly — even uniquely — remote from the smallness, the short-windedness and lack of stamina that is so typical of most modern French music.”
In France, the Piano Quintet has been championed over the years by a number of ensembles — notably the Loewenguth Quartet, which played the work in recital well into the 1960s, including a 1952 performance at the Nuits de Sceaux Festival where, joined by Jean Hubeau at the piano, the piece shared billing with one of the Fauré quintets. The last time this ensemble presented the work was in May 1963, with Françoise Doreau as the featured pianist.

This May 9, 1936 program was one of the many times when the Loewenguth Quartet performed Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet; the composer himself was the pianist in this outing. Also on the 1936 program were the string quartets of Henri Rabaud and Maurice Ravel.
I am aware of three complete recordings that have been made of the Quintet. The first of these was recorded in 1981 and features the Berne Quartet (violinists Alexander van Wijnkoop and Christine Ragaz, violist Henrik Crafoord and cellist Walter Grimmer) with Werner Bärtschi on the piano.
Its release was a major recording event at the time, giving listeners their first chance ever to hear the full work.
More than 25 years would elapse before the other two recordings were made — both of them recorded in 2008 and released within mere months of each other.
One of these recordings, released on the Timpani label and featuring the Stanislas Quartet (violinists Laurent Causse and Bertrand Menut, violist Paul Fenton and cellist Jean de Spengler) with Christian Ivaldi on the piano, is quite similar in interpretation to the Bärtschi/Berne recording.
The third recording, broader and more expansive in style, has been released on the NAXOS label and features the Solisten-Ensemble Berlin (Matthias Wollong and Petra Schwieger on violin, violist Ulrich Knörzer and cellist Andreas Grünkorn) with pianist Birgitta Wollenweber.
My personal tastes go more to the Berne/Bärtschi and Stanislas/Ivaldi interpretations, although the NAXOS performance has also received positive reviews from music critics.
Interestingly, several recordings of the second movement of the Piano Quintet were made decades before the complete work. And indeed, some listeners consider this middle movement (marked Lent) to be the emotional high-point of the entire composition.
Schmitt’s pupil and fellow-composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud described the beginning of the second movement as reflecting “the scents of the evening and bells sounding on the horizon,” following which “a murmuring tide slowly rises and bears us towards the realms of grief” … before subsiding into a poignant sadness as the movement ends.
The first recording of this movement, waxed by Pathé-Marconi back in 1935, features Florent Schmitt on the piano, joined by the Calvet Quartet. It’s a very moving interpretation, which may explain its near-constant availability in the decades since – first on 78-rpm records, then on LP, and today on CD.
Another interesting bonus that’s part of this historical recording is a short “vocal autograph” featuring the composer himself commenting on the music. Schmitt’s remarks come at the end of the movement … and they’ve been included in all but one of the various releases of this recording over the decades.
A second recording of the slow movement dates from 1969 and features members of the Tokyo-based Mari Iwamoto String Quartet along with pianist Shozo Tsubota, distinguished professor of piano at Tokyo University of the Arts. That recording remains available today and can be purchased from several Japanese-based online music sources such as this one.

First recording: Second movement only, with the Calvet Quartet and the composer at the piano (1935).
The Piano Quintet has managed to make some headway in the recital hall in recent decades, as well. In 1980 the Quatuor Margand, joined by pianist Leslie Wright (who, interestingly enough, was also Ecuador’s longtime cultural attaché in Paris), presented the piece in a performance that was broadcast over French Radio. (The Margand players have also presented Schmitt’s challenging String Quartet in recital.)
In 1989 a performance of the piece was done by the Music Group of London and broadcast over BBC Radio 3. That performance, which featured violinists Frances Mason and Andrew Watkinson, violist Christopher Wellington, cellist Eileen Croxford and pianist David Parkhouse, has been uploaded to YouTube and can be heard here while following along with the score, thanks to George ‘Nick’ Gianopoulos’ estimable music channel.
Other performances have included the Quatuor Arcana in 1989, joined Pascal Le Corre, a pianist who has made critically acclaimed recordings of several of Schmitt’s sets of solo piano music, as well as the Quatuor Anton in 1993, joined by pianist Denis Pascal.
More recently, The Piano Quintet was featured in a French music festival in 2010 at the Palazzetto Bru Zane in Venice, Italy. Violinists Philippe Bernhard and Loic Rio, violist Laurent Marfaing, and cellist François Kieffer were joined by pianist Jean-Frédéric Neuburger in a passionate interpretation that was a major highlight of the 2010 festival.
At the time of the festival, the performers were interviewed about the music. That interview – accompanied by musical excerpts from the first and second movements of the Quintet – has been uploaded on YouTube. The 7-minute clip includes some very interesting observations from the musicians and is well-worth watching.
In August 2011, the Quintet was presented at the Hortus Festival in the Netherlands, performed by the Hortus Ensemble (violinists Eva Stegeman and Jellantsje de Vries, violist Heleen Hulst, cellist Jan Insinger and pianist Maarten van Veen). That live performance can be heard in its entirety here.
And in fall 2018, the Piano Quintet was performed by the Berne Philharmonic String Quartet and pianist Kit Armstrong at Armstrong’s music center in Hirson, France.

In September 2018, pianist Kit Armstrong and the Berne Philharmonic String Quartet joined forces at Armstrong’s music center in Hirson, France to present two piano quintets: Louis Vierne’s Op. 42 (1917) and Florent Schmitt’s Op. 51 (1908).
Not all critics have been so admiring of the Piano Quintet; one who had dismissive things to say was Anne Midgette, who wrote this in the New York Times after hearing a performance of the music by the Colorado Quartet and pianist Melvin Chen at the Bard Music Festival in August 2001:
“The last of today’s three concerts – seven hours of music – culminated in a piano quintet that lasted a full hour, which may have relieved many people in the audience of the need ever again to hear the music of Florent Schmitt.”

A vintage copy of the score to Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet, inscribed by the composer to his friend and fellow-composer Maurice Ravel. The inscription is dated February 1916, at a time when both men were serving in the French army during World War I.
But those sentiments would seem to be a distinct minority. To judge for yourself, reserve ample time for listening … give the composition a good hearing … and then post a comment here about your impressions of the music.
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Update (11/15/20): The Canada-based label St-Laurent Studio has just released a radio broadcast performance of Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet — one that features the Loewenguth Quartet along with pianist Jean Doyen. The performance dates from 1956.
The Loewenguth musicians championed this music over several decades — including taking the piece on tour to other countries — so it is only fitting that this 1956 performance be made available as part of a 2-CD set that also includes a Loewenguth radio broadcast of Schmitt’s 1948 String Quartet. The recording is available for purchase from the St-Laurent Studio website, and the label ships worldwide.
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Update (2/14/23): An upcoming performance in Japan of Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet has just been announced. It will be presented in concert at Tokyo Musicas Recital Hall in Tokyo on March 8, 2023, performed by the Eureka Quartet (made up of violinists Mika Hirose and Satoshi Morioka, violist Saki Ishida and cellist Koya Suzuki) joined by the French-trained Japanese pianist Musashi Ishikawa.
More information about the concert plus ticket information can be found on this page.
The upcoming Tokyo performance, presented under the auspices of Project Alrescha, is emblamatic of the increasing popularity of this piece in Japan — and indeed, throughout the world.
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This Quintet is one of my favorites, and audiences’ as well. I have performed the piece as a pianist over ten times — and never a dull moment!!!
I believe that people now have a different set of ears. That helps this great work to mature in history.
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Thanks for your review and background on this piece.
I listened to the Bärtschi/Berne performance twice. The outer movements are just too tumultuous for me. Middle movement is quite nice.
After hearing much of Schmitt’s late style, I am finally considering purchasing a recording of his Piano Quintet.
I have his String Quartet (Op. 112), Symphonie concertante (Op. 82), and Sonate libre (Op. 68), which I like very much. I put off buying the Quintet for a while because I felt it was too thick for my tastes (compared to his other works, at least). But I figured that it was good to have it in my collection anyway.
After reading your article about the Quintet, I have settled on the Berne/Bärtschi interpretation. It seems, however, that this recording is quite rare. I cannot find any new (unused) CDs online. Do you know where I can find one to buy?
Also, are there any recordings of the String Trio (Op. 105) that you know of?
Thank you for your note and query, Rohan. The Bern/Bartschi recording of Schmitt’s Quintet hasn’t been available as a CD reissue in some time. However, if you live outside the United States you can download the recording from Presto Classical in the UK. Here’s a link to the page where you can do so, plus an audio sample of the recording is also provided: http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/w/138665/Florent-Schmitt-Piano-Quintet-Op-51.
This particular recording is my personal favorite, although the other commercial recordings — which are easily available — certainly have their merits as well.
As for the String Trio, that piece has had just one commercial recording in the modern (post 78-rpm) era — back in 1983 by the Roussel Trio (made up of violinist Eric Alberti, violist Pierre Linares and cellist Georges Schwartz). It was released on the Cybelia label (CY 702), and to my knowledge it has never been reissued in CD form or as a digital download. Most of the Cybelia releases eventually came out on CD, but they weren’t in the catalogue for long and most have never resurfaced in other iterations later on. Unfortunately, the Schmitt Trio was one of the original Cybelia LPs that was never reissued on silver disc. Hopefully another recording will be made in due course, as it is certainly a worthy composition. In the meantime, the 78-rpm premiere recording of this piece, made by the Pasquier Trio, is available on YouTube. It is an impressive interpretation if you can get past the shellac surfaces and somewhat thin recorded sound.
Thank you for your reply. I live in the U.S., so I suppose I will have to get my hands on a used CD (which is fine by me). I have heard the other recordings on YouTube and don’t think they do full justice to Schmitt. I will just have to see for myself how I like the Bern/Bartschi.
It is sad that the Trio isn’t available commercially. I might do some searching on eBay or classical music forums.
Thanks again.
Going the used CD route was how I “upgraded” my original LP recording. There are usually one or two available via Amazon sellers or on eBay.