ETHEL: Todd Reynolds, Mary Rowell (violin), Ralph Farris (viola), Dorothy Lawson (cello) with the Newman and Oltman Guitar Duo: Michael Newman and Laura Oltman. Pierre-Petit: Toccata; Dumond: J'aime nos petits!; Françaix: Divertissement; Zarvos: Nepomuk's Dances; Reynolds: uh S it all happened so fast; Alakotila: Peliman's Revenge; Black: Laments and Dances, from the Irish. Soclair Brooks Farm, Lebanon.

 

Okay, I sure have never heard of a string quartet being named 'Ethel' before and I am still curious to know where the name came from. This was my first concert experience at the Soclair Music Festival and it promised to be interesting. A string quartet (named Ethel?) along with the Newman-Oltman guitar duo - not your run-of-the-mill programming.

This 27th season for the Soclair Music Festival featured a pre-concert talk series hosted by the gentleman who is director of the Classical New Jersey Society and editor of its Journal. in the context of a series titled 'Everything you always wanted to know about classical music but were afraid to ask.' It was therefore fitting that Michael Newman introduced the first composer (Pierre-Petit) as having been a music reviewer, musician, conductor, composer, sort of the Paul Somers of Paris.' The comment got a chuckle from concert goers.

I enjoyed the humor of J'aime nos petits written as a direct play on Eric Satire's 'Gymnopedie' (both titles phonetically similar) and found it enjoyable to listen for both the direct references and variations. Françaix's Divertissement gave both Laura Oltman and Michael Newman a chance to show off some of their virtuosity, but the main pleasure of listening to this duo is in experiencing their musicality. They have an equal and well blended sound that was especially suited to this program's selections. The lyrical as well as the harmonic thread was always present.

Ethel came to the stage with Nepomuk's Dances by a Brazilian former pop star/pianist named Marcelo Zarvos. Despite the horrid, sticky humidity (it had poured buckets only half an hour before concert time), the *syncopated rhythms and *pizzicato passages were all well executed. Todd Reynold's composition uh S it all happened so fast, was filled with repetitive rhythmic variations as well as pronounced dynamic changes - high energy 'fiddling'. But Pelimanni's Revenge included stomping at exact moments (mostly staggered off the beat), as well as playing the instruments. Cellist Mary Rowell introduced the piece by saying how difficult it had been to actually coordinate the stomping while playing. It was an interesting effect that added some real intensity to the presentation and brought another level to the day's show of 'fiddling.' Stomping is, however, best enjoyed in small doses!

The second half of the program brought the quartet and duo together for Laments and Dances, from the Irish written in 1990 by Arnold Black. The composer built the piece largely from tunes he adapted from the melodies of one of the last and best-known Irish itinerant harpers, Turlough O'Carolan. One finds in Laments and Dances the sharply contrasting moods of Irish music. The variety of instrument pairings/groupings is interesting, and there are some especially lovely melodies throughout the piece. From raucously energetic dancing to expressively grief laden laments, the strings evoked the gamut of emotions incorporated in the piece. The small duet with guitar and viola in 'The Father's Lament' was very beautiful and touchingly played.

The afternoon ended with an encore played by Laura and Michael. Cavatina is an accessible, lyrical piece by Stanley Myers and gave those concert-goers who may have felt a bit out of it with the 'newness' of this day's programming something melodic to take with them as they left the gorgeous Soclair grounds.

Does the name 'ETHEL' come from the waitress who served the group in the diner while they were discussing their direction as a newly formed quartet?

Depth of Expression
World Class Quartet in Oakland, Maryland
Thursday, August 21
By Paul M. Somers

Garrett Lakes Arts Festival. Shanghai String Quartet: Weigang Li, Yi-Wen Jiang (violins), Honggang Li (viola), Nicholas Tzavaras (cello). Haydn: Quartet, op. 76, no. 4 ('Sunrise'); Yi-Wen Jiang (arr.): China Songs; Beethoven: Quartet, op. 127. Our Town Theatre, Oakland, Md.

The world-renowned Shanghai String Quartet (the resident quartet at Montclair State University) played to a sold-out house as part of the Garrett Lakes Arts Festival on Thursday. The standing ovation they received at the conclusion was, as one listener put it, 'what I would have given them after each piece.' While someone who was not there might consider that remark a bit 'over the top', those who were in attendance would only nod their heads in agreement.

The most talked about piece on the program was the China Songs listed - in a prime example of understatement - as being 'arranged by' second violinist Yi-Wen Jiang. The three songs are actually the foundational material for post-Bartók movements of extended length which had the audience fully engaged. 'Yao Dance' teases the ear into thinking that it will be entertaining little plucked imitations of the pipa (Chinese lute) accompanying a bowed erhu (Chinese violin). But the music soon becomes far more than a simple arrangement as rhythmic and harmonic complexities develop. Even the 'Shepherd's Song', which often sounds like a sweet lullaby, has shaken off the simplicity of the folk song to become an emotional contemplation of the composer's homeland and his relationship to it.

Anyone familiar with an agrarian community can recognize that the final movement, 'Celebrate a Bumper Harvest', describes a rambunctious festival. This includes 'drums' as cellist Nicholas Tzavaras was asked to strike the top and side of his instrument and even beat the tailpiece with his bow, all for percussive effect. Cheers erupted from the audience at the work's rousing finish.

The concert's beginning and ending were neatly interlocked by presenting teacher and student - Haydn and Beethoven - in their most mature thoughts on the string quartet genre. But Haydn's Quartet also related well to the China Songs as Haydn uses folk music (especially the droning musette in the Menuetto's Trio section) which he unexpectedly twists into darker, less innocent expressions.

The composer's elevation of the half-step motive, which opens the work as part of the 'sunrise' effect, became a lucid element of the musical discourse in the hands of the Shanghais. As the motive is turned every-which-way, their attention to retaining a recognizable shape through carefully nuanced phrasing allowed the listener to enter Haydn's mind and see it working.

This same virtue was present in the first of what are considered Beethoven's 'Late Quartets.' Again the building-blocks of the music - the motives presented at the outset - were given recognizable nuanced shape, allowing the permutations and evolutions to become apparent.

Both Haydn and Beethoven wrote slow movements of great emotional depth. Haydn, in this instance, seems to have looked to his own emotional life, something which music of his period rarely does. This degree of personal intensity created a balance with Beethoven, whose evolution as a person can be traced in his ability and desire to reveal himself.

The Shanghai Quartet brought forth all the drama by unfolding the music with great care. Yes, the finale seemed to have been no-holds-barred, but it all rested on artistic control of the highest degree.

---

Return to CNJS Home Page | Return to Reviews Table of Contents

 

Nuanced playing by Deep Creek Symphony
(a.k.a Westfield Symphony Orchestra - mostly)
Stark contrasts
Friday, August 22
By Paul M. Somers

Garrett Lakes Arts Festival. Deep Creek Symphony, David Wroe (conductor), Weigang Li (violin), Honggang Li (viola). Vaughan Williams: Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante; Mendelssohn: Symphony no. 4 in A major ('Italian'). Garrett College, McHenry, Md.

One half of the Shanghai String Quartet, the brothers Weigang and Honggang Li, returned to the Garrett Lakes Arts Festival stage on Friday evening to play Mozart's incomparable Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola. The Deep Creek Symphony was at its best in partnering the pair as conductor David Wroe effectively found the proper balances between the soloists and orchestra - no mean task in this work, for the primary musical interest shifts not only between the soloists but between them and the larger ensemble. Simply stated, the orchestra is not merely an accompaniment but a full-fledged participant in the musical discourse, and Mr. Wroe made this quite evident.

Both the Li brothers found the proper Mozartean balance between restrained lyricism and emotional drama. Their technique was secure and unforced. This was made clear by contrast with one climactic spot in the finale where each did force the final note of a rising scale, and neither was able to get that final forte tone to speak cleanly because they had stepped outside the style they had so carefully cultivated throughout the rest of the music. The orchestral players were all responsive to Wroe's requests for the most detailed nuancing as every line had dynamic shape. But it was the longer passages in which the whole ensemble built gradually from very soft to full-voiced which were the most thrilling. The control exhibited as all kept the same degree of *crescendo was commented upon by several audience members during the intermission.

The concert began with one of the great works for string orchestra: Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasy on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. The understanding of this richly layered work was greatly enhanced when conductor Wroe described to the audience how to see and hear the piece, which uses three ensemble configurations. In assigning 'characters' to each - the small group of last stands as the heavenly, the large ensemble as humanity, and the solo quartet as the inner spirit - he echoed the same tri-partite construction one finds in Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question, composed in the same general early 20th century period.

As one would expect after such a spoken introduction, the performance made the three layers vivid in their distinctions. Where some performances seem to be conceived to blend the piece into a homogenous sameness, Wroe's conception depended on making the contrasts very apparent, thus marking them as important structural entities rather than mere theatrical effects. The musicians' control of the tiniest gradations of loud and soft was of the highest order, making Wroe's idea workable.

Mendelssohn's popular 'Italian' Symphony received a taut and exciting performance which unfortunately was most remarked upon because of the mishap in the first movement rather than for the excellence of the rest of the work.

Let's get the mishap out of the way first. At one point there is a sequence of woodwind entrances in which someone came in early, doubtless after having miscounted during many measures of rest, and everyone else followed because of the cues written in the parts from which they play. The post-concert debate was over who started it all, as if it really mattered. In performance it was sorted out soon enough because the strings had no chance to get out of sync and so held it all together.

But it is equally - nay, more - important to remember the many virtues of the performance. Surely the most memorable was the finale going so fast as to be on the edge while always remaining in control - simply hair-raising. Then the many solos by flutist Sato Moughalian, oboist Marcia Heller, clarinetist William Shadel, and bassoonist James Jeter were of the most Germanic sylvan sound. Moughalian in particular showed off her sterling technique.

The audience, rightly caring not a whit about the 'eternity' of a few seconds of cross-up in the first movement, cheered at the rousing conclusion. The players, however, living in a world in which their mistakes as well as their triumphs are all public, spent much time discussing what went wrong for those few moments. It must be understood as an anomaly, for I have never heard such a thing from professionals before and expect never to hear it again.

---

Return to CNJS Home Page | Return to Reviews Table of Contents

 

 

A little dynamo
A fond farewell
Saturday, August 23
By Paul M. Somers

Garrett Lakes Arts Festival. Deep Creek Symphony, David Wroe (conductor), Sandra Wolf-Meei Cameron (violin). Ravel: Mother Goose Suite; Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto; Beethoven: Symphony no. 2 in D. Garrett College, McHenry, Md.

Violinist Sandra Wolf-Meei Cameron owned the evening: the sixteen-year-old young lady from Maryland held the audience and orchestra in thrall while she played the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and was the major topic of conversation during intermission, after the concert, and at the post-concert farewell reception held for the musicians in a private Mountain Lakes Park home.

Artistically, she understood the concerto at every level, playing with a full range of expression as she gave each note a well-defined place in the large musical scheme. Her technique sparkled, her long melodic arches soared, and her control over a wide range of loud and soft was impeccable. But, both fortunately and unfortunately, the big story was her demeanor.

Here she was like a young Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg: physically involved, pacing, bobbing her head, arms sweeping into the air dramatically, and during the exciting finale's coda actually twice hopping into the air (one wag wondered if she gets frequent flyer miles). It all seemed quite genuine and was never distracting to this tolerant reviewer. The audience loved it; it made for great show-biz, and one listener commented that 'she was so intense.' That she certainly was, and the cheering audience jumping to its feet a millisecond after the last note was well-deserved.

The orchestra, quite obviously content to take a back seat to Ms. Cameron, had also played beautifully and with the same contagious level of intensity. But let me speak a 'curmudgeonly' word. Ms. Cameron's frizzy ponytail (such a small thing one might think) has to go. If it was a one-night-only aberration or (as I suspect) her usual look, its constant wild bobbing was distracting in and of itself. But worse, it helped paint a picture of a 'cute little girl prodigy' which one cannot help but see as a conscious image which has gained her the early successes she has enjoyed. It worked well in the energetic finale, but for the remainder of the work it reminded this listener too much of the exploitative (and horribly inaccurate) 'cutesy' images of Olympic gymnasts Olga Korbut and Nadia Comenici.

Cameron's diminutive stature (in person she appears to be around five feet tall) leads those in charge of her career so easily into the temptation to keep her in 'pixie' mode since they already know how to market that image. But Ms. Cameron is not twelve anymore; she's a young woman who has just learned the Sibelius Concerto, a brooding work of great emotional depth and demand. The incongruous sight of her little-girl-look, especially the bobbing frizz, will be at embarrassing odds with the high seriousness of Sibelius. But beyond the music, this mature artist at sixteen should consider St. Paul's admonitions about 'when I was a child' and understand that if her life is to be about art then she must see herself as a woman and 'put away childish things.' And corollary to that must be her understanding that her spontaneous physical intensity of performance is a mature expression - even the little jump for joy, perhaps especially that.

I loved her performance and can't wait to hear her Sibelius.

The concert began with Ravel's sweetly depictive Mother Goose Suite. Even though the music was originally composed for piano duet to be played by two young sisters, the music brings an adult sensibility to the depicted færy tale snippets. Deep Creek Symphony conductor David Wroe most affectingly read the texts which Ravel placed at the beginning of each movement. They set the mood not only for each specific story, but cast that French ethos of capturing a moment and expanding it in time.

Sato Moughalian's several flute solos were sensitively set forth, and the audience chuckled at the growling entrance of Will Scribner's contrabassoon representing the Beast talking to the Beauty. The piccolo playing of Sophia Anastasia and english horn solo by Setsuko Akizawa were exemplary. Harpist Anne Michaud, brought down from Pittsburgh for this piece alone, proved her worth with playing which kept the Impressionist magic of the music glowing. Wroe, who seemed so touched by the texts as to barely be able to read the superscription to the final 'Færie Garden' (and note that this is not at all the same as 'fairy'), brought an understanding of that movement as an apotheosis of childhood to the performance.

The concert concluded with Beethoven's too rarely played Symphony no. 2. I suppose we live in an age which wants that dramatic adrenalin rush found in the big odd-numbered symphonies of Beethoven. So the often puckish and cleverly original Second is passed over. The performance was quite convincing: all the humor was in place, and all the sudden shifts to a darker mood were properly edgy.

After the concert I ran into principal bassoonist James Jeter and remarked that I had enjoyed the 'bassoon symphony', since he had executed his unusually large number of solos so well. Others who served up eloquent solo work were clarinetist William Shadel, oboist Marcia Heller, and the horn section as a whole.

The finale was an appropriately fun-filled conclusion to the week of Garrett Lakes Arts Festival. The generosity of the families who housed the orchestra and others (including me) as guests was deeply appreciated. The presentations before the Beethoven symphony of gifts of flowers and happy spoken tributes were genuine on all sides. Farewells were delivered with no sense that they would be forever, just until next year. I learned later that unseen by the audience was a special tribute given quite purposely in private by the musicians to GLAF executive director Sarah A. Gerichten, who had done such an excellent job in her 'freshman' year. She, like Ms. Cameron, has the promise of an effective career stretching before her.

---

Return to CNJS Home Page | Return to Reviews Table of Contents