Chamber
Music in New Jersey
Hearing small ensembles of all kinds
Visiting the churches and schools around the state
By Paul M. Somers
If most outsiders (and even some New Jerseyans themselves) are
amazed at the number of professional orchestras in this state (somewhere
in the upper teens), they would be more surprised at the number
of fine chamber music series available. Even more surprising to
big-city folks is the level of attendance. I remember well the
happy shock experienced by a New Yorker who came to a chamber music
concert in a Montclair church. She commented that such a concert
in Manhattan would have maybe 50 in the audience, and that was
if the entrails of goats were propitious and the moon was in the
right phase and the planets aligned just so.
In Montclair she could barely find a seat. And she said
afterward that the music was better than such a concert would have
been in New York. Well, that may or may not be so, since there
are some very good musicians putting on concerts across the river.
But there was no denying the uplifting effect of a full and expectant
audience which buoyed the experience for her and for the musicians.
This experience is duplicated many times over around New
Jersey. Consider that just off the top of my head I can think of
the concerts at these New Jersey-based series using essentially
the same players from concert to concert: Thurnauer School at the
JCC on the Palisades, the Palisades Virtuosi, the All Seasons Chamber
Players, Chamber Music at Great Gorge, Lyrica Chamber Music, Mostly
Music, Arbor Chamber Players, Red Bank Chamber Music Society, New
Jersey Music Society, Claring Chamber Players, and Clavis. These
are groups which are New Jersey based series using essentially
the same players from concert to concert.
There are of course some groups which do not have series
of their own but which are New Jersey based: the Halcyon
Trio certainly leads the way, but one can hardly ignore the
Amabile or Madison String Quartets.
All three are comprised of fine New Jersey musicians.
Then there are the various chamber concerts put on by colleges
and universities featuring both faculty and students. Here is where
we are most likely to hear off-the-beaten-path music for unusual
combinations, often by well-known composers. This is also where
one is most likely to hear percussion ensembles, a rich part of
the collegiate musical fabric in this state. Special mention must
be made of the Partch Ensemble
at Montclair State University, which uses instruments from
the collection of Harry Partch originals.
Finally, we cannot forget the organizations which bring
in outside chamber groups: Princeton University Concerts and McCarter Theatre come to mind. The Metro-West JCC in West Orange presents
a series of mostly string quartets, and Princeton
Summer Concerts (this year in the University Chapel while Richardson
is being refurbished) expands beyond its usual trio and string
quartet fare. The concerts at the Perkins
Center for the Arts in Moorestown are surely the most intimate
and often feature ensembles of New Jersey musicians with a sprinkling
of Philadelphians added.
Several seasonal series are New Jersey classics: Soclair
Music Festival, with its wide variety of chamber concerts in
the barn, begins in June; and the Raritan
River Festival’s four May Saturdays of of chamber music concludes
this weekend. A popular part of the Cape
May Music Festival, under way as we publish, is the Tuesday
evening chamber music concerts in the Church of the Advent featuring
the New York Chamber Players. As the summer progresses the excellent Access
to Art series in various Cape May County venues will bring a variety
of chamber ensembles to the southern reaches of the shore. Also
a part of the Cape May summer scene are the Tuesday evening concerts
at the Chalfonte Hotel’s Henry Sawyer Room.
There is every likelihood that someone or some place has
been left out. But the ones mentioned above are certainly the highest
profile … and that’s a lot of high profile!
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Saturday, May 8, 2004
Most recently we heard the Proteus
Ensemble as part of the Raritan
River Music Festival. For this concert the “moveable feast”
was at the Old Greenwich Church in Warren County
just west of Bloomsbury. It is a venue which is quite audience-friendly
and a goodly crowd turned out. While some came a distance, the
rural areas of New Jersey are far from cultural wastelands and
many locals attended. As I arrived a father and daughter were playing
frisbee on the large lawn of the church, and other families arrived
as well, showing once again that rural areas still have parents
and kids going places together.
The audience responded most to the Brahms *Clarinet Trio,
op. 114. This is deep music which was played with deep feeling.
Clarinetist Gilad Harel,
cellist Alberto Parrini, and pianist James Johnston were at the highest level of virtuosity and
refined musicality. Their *dynamic range, even with a small piano,
was wide and expressively used.
Another big response was to Heitor
Villa-Lobos’ Assobio a Jàto (The Jet Whistle). It is a favorite duet on this occasion played
by flutist Jennifer Grim
and Parrini. Ms. Grim’s clean handling of the acrobatic leaps was
impressive, while Parrini’s equally athletic *double stops had
listeners smiling as they shook their heads. The final movement,
which Grim suggested could at least partly represent a train, was
certainly energetic. The arrival of the “jet whistle”, where the
flutist blows forcefully through the instrument but without using
an *embouchure to create a pitch, was properly ear-splitting and
distinctive.
Debussy’s Bilitis is an arrangement of his Six épigraphes antiques for flute and piano. These fairly short works
found Ms. Grim at her very best. Phrasing and color were perfect
for Debussy’s extreme demands. Pianist Johnson also showed himself
to own a “Debussy touch” with solidity buried within shifting timbres.
Both the opening Haydn Trio (here for flute, cello, and
piano) and the Robert Schumann Phantasiestücke (Fantasy pieces) for clarinet and piano were textbook
exemplars of their styles, classical and romantic respectively.
Most bizarre was John
Zorn’s Carny for solo piano. The title refers
to a carnival midway along which the walker encounters a variety
of entertainments. This is more or less what Zorn’s piece does.
A wildly “modernistic” promenade (nothing at all as coherent as
Mussorgsky’s in Pictures at an Exhibition) is interrupted by quotes from all manner
of earlier pieces from Bach to jazz. Rather than an *Ivesian experience
in which various musics become entangled into a philosophical whole,
Zorn’s seemed more like the Schnittke esthetic in which beauty
and harshness are pitted against one another with the latter triumphant.
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Sunday, May 16, 2004
A
cultural dissonance was thrust upon the listeners to the All Seasons Chamber Players concert in
the Oradell Reformed Church.
This was hardly intentional, accepting it as a cultural artifact
was the only philosophical refuge for the audience. A practical
refuge was impossible to come by as there was no escaping the constant
noise from Kinderkamack Road outside the windows. Buses, motorcycles,
squealing brakes, general road noise, screaming kids, and even
the church’s own bells tolling the hour created a counter-concert
which was worthy of John Cage.
Yet the power of the music remained supreme. The major work
was the Robert Schumann E-flat Piano Quartet.
Violinist Robert Lawrence, violist Joel Rudin, cellist E. Zoe Hassman, and pianist Jean Strickholm brought full romantic
expression to the work. The Scherzo’s *“A” section was light and
Mendelssohnian. The Andante’s “chorale” was the homage to late
Beethoven that it was intended to be, and Ms. Hassman shaped a
rich cello solo to open the movement. The *coda over the cello
*pedal point was ethereal in lightness. The quartet brought down
the house as it lived up to the finale’s *Vivace marking. Prolonged
applause resulted.
The biggest curiosity of the concert was the piano four-hands
Souvenirs de Bayreuth: Fantaisie en forme de quadrille sur les thèmes
favoris de l'Anneau du Nibelung de Richard Wagner (Souvenirs
of Bayreuth: Fantasy in the form of a quadrille on favorite themes
from The Ring of the Nibelungen by Richard Wagner”). This was written in
1880 by Gabriel Fauré and André Messager after an otherwise reverential
trip to the center of the Wagnerian world. It is a series of dances
in which themes from the Wagner [Ring] are the melodic material.
Pianists Steven Anderson and Strickholm played it a bit
too seriously, concentrating on the Wagner more than the quadrille.
Allowing it to be lighter and puckishly counter to lush Wagner
would have made it quite funny for those who know the [Ring.] The
only commonly known tune was the opening “Ride of the Valkyries”
which got a noise (not exactly a laugh) of recognition. But as
the piece moved into the more esoteric waters of “Siegfried’s Horn
Call,” the Alberich/Hagen scene from Götterdämmerung,
“Fire,” “Wintersturme,” “The Rhein,” “Nibelheim,” “Siegfried as
hero,” “Brünnhilde as mortal,” and the “Rhein maidens’ lament”
for most listeners the piece plodded along. Perhaps a quick play-through
of those tunes in their original would have elucidated the humor.
Ms. Hassman played three pieces by Dvorák
celebrating the centenary of the composer’s death. The highlight
was Silent Woods with its mood so carefully set and its requirement for
a nature poet’s ear so well fulfilled. Hassman’s phrasing was exquisite
no matter what the mood. It was a tad funny to hear Dvorák’s youthful
Polonaise, for it is completely derivative
and shows no sign of the composer’s mature voice. Yet it is well
made, demonstrating that craft and individuality are only tangentially
connected.
The afternoon began with the Serenade
in G for flute, violin, and viola by Max
Reger. Brenda Sakofsky
was the featured flutist in a score far from the general stereotype
of Reger. Here she effectively skittered all over the place as
the composer showed a great affinity for a French style of panache
and humor. The finale was even more skittery, yet a soft and sustained
episode in the middle and at the conclusion seemed to refer to
the central “larghetto” movement. This latter is a series of long
strands of very *chromatic writing. The trio invested it with a
richly colorful tone quality.
_____________________________________________
Thursday, May 13, 2004
A
visit to Princeton’s
Richardson Auditorium was to hear the American
String Quartet and guests. The concert was aptly entitled
“Four - Five – Six,” for it began with one of the (inexcusably)
lesser-known {Haydn} string quartets (op. 71, no. 2 in D major),
continued with Mozart’s
*Viola Quintet K. 406 with Arnold
Steinhardt as the extra violist, and concluded with Brahms’
incomparable Sextet, op. 36, with cellist Andrés
Díaz as the additional player.
The whole concert was an example of the finest in chamber
music performance. Every second of rehearsal and individual practice
paid off in playing which was both technically and musically of
the highest order. Such subtle details as first violinist Peter
Winograd playing non-vibrato in the Haydn Adagio while the
accompaniment used vibrato was counter-intuitive and yet was a
dramatically effective solution. The quartet’s final unison/octave
passage in the Haydn was played at full tilt with immaculate intonation.
The *Sturm und Drang energy of the Mozart quintet
was often driven by the two violas in the middle as Daniel Avshalomov and Steinhardt kept
the pace taut but steady. But the wild Hungarianisms of Brahms’
Scherzo Trio was another kind of driving excitement altogether.
Each player was granted at least one significant solo, most
far more often. And each shone as worth hearing for more extended
solos than this kind of ensemble playing allows.
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Sundays - February 15, March 21, and May 16, 2004
Of
course that kind of playing is the norm also at the concerts
of Mostly Music. Coming up on its 25th anniversary
season, its longevity is based on audience loyalty which is
in turn based on performing excellence. And that loyalty has
transcended a major personnel change quite a number of years
ago in which violinist Robert McDuffie, violist Toby Hoffmann and his cellist brother
Gary all felt compelled by their growing
careers to leave their roles as the core group. Such a loss
might have spelled the end, but the series has always been
about excellence above personality, so when favorite guests,
violinist Ani Kavafian and cellist Carter
Brey, agreed to take over, concerns for the future dissipated.
Audience loyalty has also transcended several venue changes.
Indeed, the audience has grown to such an extent that it expanded
from its original Westfield location to add duplicate performances
in Maplewood. The concerts now take place on Sunday afternoons
at Morrow Memorial Methodist
Church in Maplewood and in Temple
Emanu-El on Sunday evening in {Westfield}. The afternoon is
a sell-out while the evening usually has some seats available along
the far right edges or near the back. Since it is open seating,
get there really early, even if you have tickets beforehand.
It is not only the easy manner with which the host duo of
“Ani and Carter” (as they are always called by audience members)
relates to its fans, but the level of the friends they invite to
play with them which makes the series so endearing. Just in February,
March, and May the guests included such major chamber and solo
luminaries as fortepianist Kenneth
Cooper, New York Philharmonic principal violist Cynthia Phelps (practically a regular herself), violinist Ida Kavafrian (Ani’s sister), the whole
Orion String Quartet
(including violist Steven
Tenenbom, Ida’s husband), oboist Steven
Taylor (see Claring Chamber Players below), bassist John
Feeney, and hornists William
Purvis and Patrick Pridemore
(see Richardson Chamber Players below). The relaxed manner of all
participants is the hallmark of those who return often. Such mishaps
as music falling off a stand or a cold greenroom become jokes and
reasons to talk to the audience rather than embarassments.
In February Ani, Carter, and Cynthia teamed up with the
irrepressible Kenneth Cooper for an “18th Century Extravaganza”
which turned out to be Mozart to open and close, with substantial J. S. Bach in the middle. Cooper spent some time pointing out the
legitimacy of using the fortepiano for Bach. The composer not only
played the instrument late in his life, but had tried one out when
they were first invented and expressed his reservations to the
maker - sort of an 18th century beta-tester. Cooper not only made
a scholarly case but a musical one for our time: the fortepiano
proved to be the perfect foil for modern strings, keeping the antique
ethos intact without requiring the use of early instruments. Here
both Kavafian and Phelps felt no undue restraint except that of
good taste. Their respective Bach sonata performances were well
defined, lean, and spacious.
For many the highlight of the afternoon, however, was one
of two pieces in which Cooper was absent: the Suite no. 3 in C
major for unaccompanied cello, BWV 1009. This was Carter Brey with
a point of view. He made the performance all about melody and Bach’s
treatment of it. With this view he reached the listeners’ hearts.
I must confess that Bach scholar Wilfred Mellers’ book title “Bach
and the Dance of God” has always appealed to me, and it was that
dance quality which I found missing. But that’s nothing new; Casals
always seemed to me to be mostly about the long melodic line in
his Bach, so Brey is in very fine company.
The opening Mozart Allegro
for String Trio (the other Cooper absence) has a sunny *exposition
and a dark *development. Kavafian, Phelps, and Brey gave this late
Mozart work an aura of nascent romanticism in the dark passages.
The concert concluded with a “conversational” performance
of Mozart’s great E-flat *Piano Quartet. Now with three modern
strings up against a fortepiano there were moments when they overbalanced
Cooper. He made up for it by taking some solo turns at *fermatas
and other quite acceptable, though rarely taken, liberties by way
of rubato and ornamentation. The height of tempo flexibility was
in the central Larghetto, where all players pushed and pulled the
music quite effectively into a rhapsody which burst the seams of
classical proportion. But it must be remembered that E. T. A. Hoffmann
called Mozart the first musical romantic.
It was *“the other” Brahms Sextet which was the extravaganza
of the March concert. Here Ani and Carter were quite willing to
turn the bulk of the work over to the Orion String Quartet, showing
up to actually play only in that grand Brahms work. The remainder
of the program was Haydn, who is finally in vogue again. His wide
variety of humor and darkness, his technical demands on the players,
and his overarching sense of taste were superbly produced by the
Orions.
For some long-time concert goers the most gratifying moment
was at the conclusion of the most severe of all Bartók quartets,
his Fourth, when the audience erupted into cheers. The players
had given it all they had, never playing it safe. Thus such seminal
music as the “Allegretto pizzicato” was still revolutionary, clearly
paving the way for later works like Penderecki’s Threnody: for the Victims of Hiroshima with its wide variety of pizzicato
effects. The solos over the *night music tones were very free,
sounding *ametric.
Of course the Brahms B-flat Sextet brought the concert home
in its romantically leaping themes, occasional folk evocations,
and solo turns for everyone. The quirkiness of the Theme in the
variations movement was emphasized, and the ambiguity of major
and minor was handled with appropriate mystery and exoticism.
The whole resulted in a standing ovation.
The May 16th concert proved to be much more a mixed bag.
Two 1776 Divertimenti by Mozart framed the too rarely heard 1932
Sonata for two violins by Prokofiev.
This latter was not only the centerpiece of the concert
program but the artistic center as well. Ani and sister Ida went
toe-to-toe in the work which requires the players to exhibit great
sensitivity to the musical expression as well as to each other.
At times the piece seems to demand that the players face off as
if boxing, at other times it asks them to weave sinuous lines together,
and at yet others to dance lightly like two of the angels on the
head of the proverbial miraculous pin. It was a bravura performance
which concluded with fiery playing. The audience responded with
sustained applause as the sisters stood there looking as if they
needed a rest. But no breather was allowed until they had returned
to the stage for another bow.
The two Divertimenti were gracious, the second one (K. 251)
more aurally persuasive due to the biting presence of Steven Taylor’s
oboe. William Purvis and Patrick Pridemore certainly provided solid
horn playing. It proved to be all lovely *galant music which the players invested
with telling little *rubato touches. And Taylor’s episode in the
Rondo danced elegantly and lightly, the most memorable piece of
individual artistry in the whole concert.
One was glad to have heard these obscure works, but in spite
of the elegance of each movement, the whole added up to too much
thus paradoxically reducing it to too little.
How much more gratifying it would have been to add one more
oboe and do Haydn’s Symphony no 44 (“Mourning”) with one player
per part. Proportions would have been more satisfying and the music
frankly meatier.
The interconnectedness of the chamber music field (sometimes
including blood relations and married couples) can be shown well
here in New Jersey. The Mostly Music folks had the Orion Quartet
as featured guests (the two violinists are the Phillips brothers),
but the JCC on the Palisades gave them a full concert all to themselves.
_____________________________________________
Thursday, January 22, 2004
At
the JCC on the Palisades
in Tenafly the Orion
String Quartet (violinists Daniel and Todd Phillips, violist
Steven Tenenbom, and cellist Timothy Eddy) played two Beethoven
quartets, certainly (and rightly) the bulwark of the quartet
literature. In the first of the Razumovskys (op. 59, no. 1)
and the exalted op. 131 in C-sharp minor, the attention to
every kind of ensemble was exemplary: attacks, releases, nuances,
rhythmic precision, and all other details were part of a whole.
In both works accents were clear but not exaggerated.
Rather than act annoyed when the fund-raiser audience applauded
between movements of the Rasumovsky, the players smiled and acknowledged
the response. At the end they beamed even wider as if saying, “Isn’t
Beethoven something?” A well worded suggestion from the stage before
the second half brought the audience into line with the much more
serious intent of the late work, and applause disappeared until
the end. Then there was a tremendous ovation.
_____________________________________________
Sunday, February 22, 2004
The
Amabile Quartet (here
first violinist Ruotao Mao
and cellist Mikyung Lee
are married) is a home-grown ensemble. Yes, they were all born
in Asia, but formed the quartet while at New Jersey’s Mason
Gross School of the Arts. They came to South
Amboy’s Music at Saint Mary’s series where they were received
with well-deserved enthusiasm. They have the great virtue of being
transparent. One never feels them as an intermediary placing their
own idiosyncratic imprint on a composer. The four simply use their
considerable virtuosity unobtrusively. In listening I found myself
taking notes on the music not the players, for they allowed Mozart,
Shostakovich, and Mendelssohn to sound fresh.
Mozart’s D minor K. 421 was elegant and precise without
fussiness. Mozart was revealed as having left off writing from
within a category of style; this was the composer himself speaking,
not someone wearing the cloak of Sturm und Drang.
The succinct statements of Shostakovich in his 1960 Quartet
no. 7 (thank goodness not the war horse no. 8!) were powerful.
The contrast of ghostly lamentation and harsh interjections reminded
one that this esthetic is the root of Schnittke’s violent music.
Shostakovich himself could be violent as in the furious fugue,
which the Amabiles played with utter conviction and technical mastery.
The Mendelssohn D major Quartet is probably his most popular.
Its brilliant writing and graceful gestures were delivered with
exuberance and joy. This was playing rooted in emotional generosity
and technical skill. The Amabiles held nothing back while making
the concert about the music, not themselves.
_____________________________________________
Sunday, May 2, 2004
Extra-musical
relatedness lies at the heart of the Claring Chamber Players: violist Sarah Clarke and cellist Rosalyn Clarke are sisters and the concerts
are run by their violinist mother Nancy.
On this occasion Rosalyn’s husband, oboist Stephen
Taylor (see Mostly Music above) was on hand for two works.
Surely the Mozart Adagio in C major, K. 580a, was the least-known
work of the afternoon. It is for english horn and strings and was
left incomplete by the composer. The modern completion of the original
*continuity score was filled in in very Mozartean fashion. By sheer
coincidence, the opening phrase for english horn is the same as
a prominent melody from Berlioz’ Harold in Italy, yet as the piece continues it has the feel of a tenor
aria from some unwritten Mozart *Singspiel (it in the style of
The Magic Flute). Mr. Taylor certainly
provided the long line with a song-like level nuance.
He also played the famous Phantasy
for oboe and string trio by Benjamin Britten. Here, too, Taylor’s
way with a long line was on display. The piece itself, with its
use of mirror images (most noticeably the ending, which is the
reverse of the beginning) is a fine program opener.
The Mozart Divertimento for string trio, K. 563,
was given an energetic and eminently Mozartean performance. Restraint
and elegance were the key ideas, with the only hint at incipient
romanticism found in the Adagio. Not only did it supply an aria-like
lyricism, but it interrupted the *Bogenform structure, distorting
in a most romantic way the otherwise perfect symmetry.
Mendelssohn’s late E minor Quartet was filled with the full
passion one increasingly finds in his adult works. This is no longer
a child mimicking the gestures which mean passion for grownups
which we so often think of in hearing Mendelssohn. He may have
died young, but most of his music was composed as an adult with
adult sensibilities. And the Clarings played the music with that
adult frame of mind. The virtuoso requirements were well met except
for some intonation problems in the Scherzo. Here the melodic leaps
found the top note too often inaccurately placed. Nevertheless,
all was redeemed in the finale when the fingers flew along at top
speed with complete accuracy.
_____________________________________________
Sunday, May 9, 2004
One
of the great virtues of academically produced concerts is
the ability to assemble less-often heard combinations of instruments.
A recent case in point was the astonishing mix needed to play
Carlos Chávez’ Xochipili: An Imagined Aztec Music - flute, piccolo, E-flat clarinet,
trombone, and six percussionists playing a mix of traditional
and modern instruments. None of the concerts mentioned above
would have been able to put that together, but Princeton
University’s Richardson Chamber Players live for that
kind of programming.
The piece itself was only one curiosity among many in an
afternoon of chamber music from Latin America. Only the biggest
names were represented among the composers: Mexico’s Chávez and
Silvestre Revueltas,
Argentina’s Alberto Ginastera,
and Brazil’s Heitor Villa-Lobos.
But Chávez’ fascinating attempt to create Aztec music, while unlikely
as anything close to accurate - it is too *contrapuntal, quite
often sounding like the anomalous Balinese *gamelan and containing
little, if any *heterophony – was still the most memorable single
work. It is filled with rhythmic layering and *isomelos. The trombone
entrance near the end was played with a raw sound evocative of
some primitive horn. The piece was opened and closed the concert.
The solo star of the afternoon was mezzo-soprano Desirée
Halac. Her singing of four songs by Ginastera was completely
text-driven and soulful. Throughout the four songs John
Arrucci sat on a box-shaped drum with a sound hole facing the
audience. It lent the music a primitive quality while flutist Judith Pearce, harpist Barbara
Biggers, and violinist Curtis
Macomber evoked a mythic past or remote present. The final
“Algaborro algaborro” was dancingly lively, but it was “Vida, vidita,
vidala” accompanied only by the drum, which was the most haunting.
As Ms. Halac sang the Cuatros
canciones sobre melodías tradicionales indias del Ecuador by
Chávez one could only think of him as the latino Bartók. Whether
in the sometimes *pointillist setting of the often *pentatonic
“¿Que te parece pirucha?” or the lively “Quisiera ser danzsantito”,
the folk origins of the music were imaginatively retained in Halac’s
singing while maintaining a sophisticated simplicity in the accompaniments.
Revueltas’ Ocho por radio flies from one kind of latin
music to another. Though touted as being Stravinsky-like (and that
composer’s influence on Revueltas is undeniable), this was really
much more like a latino Ives walking down a street and hearing
different music emerging from each house or apartment. It calls
for clarinet ({Evan Spitzer}), bassoon ({Brian Kershner} see Red
Bank chmaber Music Society below), trumpet ({Brian McWhorter}),
violins (Macomber and {Kiri Murakami}), cello ({Sophie Shao}),
contrabass ({Maureen Llort}), and percussion (Arrucci). With such
a wide variety of instruments the sense of simultaneous happenings
is given aural definition. It was great fun.
Villa-Lobos Quinteto
em forma de choros was the most “modernist” work of the
afternoon. While its title suggests a certain relationship
to the urban street music of Rio de Janeiro, it comes across
as more of a structural similarity than melodic. The woodwind
quintet of Sato Moughalian (flute), Matthew Sullivan (oboe, see Red Bank Chamber
below), Spritzer (clarinet), Kershner (bassoon, and Patrick Pridemore (horn, see Mostly Music
above) handled the extended solo and duet passages with great
fluidity backed by long experience with the piece. The rhythmic
precision was a subtle marvel, though the final *ritardando
was kept together with dramatic body english by Moughalian,
Sullivan, and Spritzer.
_____________________________________________
Saturday, February 28, 2004
Though
there are no relationships of blood or marriage present in
the Red Bank Chamber
Music Society, there is the bond of fine music-making.
In two respects Brian Kershner was the star of the Society’s
all-woodwinds concert. Not only did he wear his bassoonist
hat with his usual style and energy, but his prowess as a
composer was featured as flutist Kevin
Willios, oboist Matt Sullivan (see above), clarinetist
Roy Gussman, hornist Douglas Lundeen, and Kershner himself
played his Suite Hommage.
Inspired by the baroque suite with its series of dance movements,
the music is often *polytonal and quite *contrapuntal. The
“Air”, where one would expect the texture to calm down, proved
to be a “chorale” over a walking bass. The busy “Badenerie”
kept the fingers flying appropriately to the early style,
but I must confess that I’m not used to a “Sarabande” being
as busy as Kershner’s. The final “Gigue” is built on a catchy
tune which is worked out *canonically with great skill and
wit.
Arthur Berger’s Quartet in C major (“To Aaron Copland”) is very tightly made yet far
from opaque. If the central Andante evokes Copland’s “western”
style with its loping rhythm and its episodes reminiscent of The Tender Land, the outer
movements are pure Berger: clever - even cute – fun requiring major
finger technique and tight ensemble.
Louis Andriessen’s Wind Trio “Arte Fiato” demanded and received great rhythmic precision.
It uses the “spikey” language of the French “Les Six” with all
its *seconds producing the sometimes sardonic wit.
The concert began one and concluded with the other of the
two wind octets by Beethoven. The first is a single movement simply
called Rondino, the second
a full four-movement work. They could be effectively combined (they
are in the same key of E-flat) by inserting the Rondino
after the Octet’s “Minuetto”. While all the players were kept busy
and given chances to make their mark, it was inevitably hornists
Lundeen and Anita Miller who captured the ears the most. The trio
for them and Kershner in the Rondino was remarkable as was the effectiveness
within a medium-sized auditorium of the illusion of distance produced
by the *stopping of the horns.
But the mere fact of the horns’ obvious virtuosity within
the context of woodwinds did not diminish the contributions of
Gary Hamme (oboe), Barbara
Santoro (clarinet), and Ivy
Haga (bassoon) who joined the already mentioned players.
This concert was an excellent excursion through the chamber
wind literature rarely supplied elsewhere. Of course the founder
and director of the Red Bank Chamber Music Society is a former
clarinetist with the Metropolitan Opera, octogenarian Leon
Knize, so an occasional bow to the winds is to be happily expected.
Mr. Knize himself will play on the June 5 concert.
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Sunday, April 18, 2004
Sometimes
there is chamber music to be heard from new sources. The latest
home-grown group is Clavis, musicians from Cape May and
Atlantic Counties who recently gave a recital in the Margate Community Church. It was in some respects like a salon in
someone’s home a century ago.
Soprano Maria Kafkalas, accompanied by Jeffrey Davidson, sang a group of popular
arias by Puccini, Franck, and Mozart. It made for an audience-friendly
opening to a concert which at its heart went into far heavier seas
than those a few hundred yards away where, on this sunny, calm
day, the Atlantic was a benevolent force.
Mezzo-soprano Koren
Cowgill took on Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (“Songs on dead children”)
with Steven Mento at
the piano. This was a performance of great intensity for both with
expressivity at its apogee. While we had heard both fine artists
before, we had never heard them together, and it was exciting to
hear them give their all to such difficult music. The audience
sat stunned at the end, recovering itself collectively for a moment
before loosing its great applause.
The two then performed Ms. Cowgill’s own setting of two
parts of T. S. Eliot’s The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock. Cowgill
awaits only the approval of her thesis piece to receive a D.M.A.
in composition from Eastman, and a year ago her Surprised by Joy was premiered by the Colonial Symphony, so knowing her track record as a composer we were
eager to hear these early songs. The musical language ranged from
the repeated pitches of a *recitativo style to a wider lyrical
scope. In the second section where she sets the vision of the mermaids
riding on the waves, Mento gave the rolling accompaniment the tension
of modern “storm and stress.” Cowgill, in singing her own songs,
not only showed a secure standard vocal technique but produced
the line, “Hear the women come and go talking of Michelangelo”
with a dark low speaking voice which conveyed annoyance. And on
the final word “drown” she went into a scary chest voice.
After two emotional experiences in a row it was a relief
to hear Duo Mento (Steven Mento with
his sister Loretta)
in the piano-four-hands classic Petite
Suite by Debussy. Coming after two pieces of such darkness
as Mahler and Cowgill, Debussy’s world of light and air as a conclusion
was a fine piece of programming. The ensemble between the two players
was clearly
genetic.
We look forward to the next recital by Clavis, with
perhaps a few new members to add to the mix. Any southern
New Jerseyans who perform at a professional level are welcome
to reach them at 609-601-9756 and become what is in essence
a performing collective.