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Claring begins its 31st season
Too rarely heard music
Sunday, October 2, 2005
By Jason C. Tramm

Claring Chamber Players: Mayuki Fukuhara (violin), Mitsuru Tsubota (violin and viola), Sarah Clarke (viola), Rosalyn Clarke (cello), Stephen Taylor (oboe) and David Jolley (horn). Mozart: Quintet in E-flat (K. 407); Mendelssohn: String Quartet in A minor (op. 13); and Mozart: Quintet in C minor (K. 406). Presented at the Unitarian Church in Montclair.

The Claring Chamber Players, now in their 31st season, are comprised of some of the finest chamber players around, and they certainly did not disappoint. What better way to spend a perfect October afternoon than to listen to world-class chamber music in a charming venue?

The highlight of the program was the Mendelssohn String Quartet in A minor, op. 13, written when the composer was 18 years old. Mendelssohn, like Mozart, was already writing mature masterworks at this young age. This quartet, written not long after the completion of the delightful and skillful overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, op. 21, displays the work of a young composer who has a firm grounding in the music of the past but is writing music that is quite relevant to its own time. While this piece displays a great deal of early Romantic pathos, there is also emphasis placed on contrapuntal techniques, which certainly point to the importance of J. S. Bach's music to the development of the mature Mendelssohn. In fact, only a few years after this piece was composed, Mendelssohn "reintroduced" the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin (1829).

Textures were brilliantly brought to life and quite vivid. The passionate playing of the opening Adagio-Allegro Vivace featured music that was "quasi-orchestral," with a sonority that seemed far more powerful than four musicians could muster and the virtuosic and effervescent style of string writing that is so clearly a part of Mendelssohn's style.

The first piece of the afternoon was Mozart's Quintet in E-flat major for strings and horn (K. 407) and featured legendary hornist David Jolley. His playing was beautifully expressive, with each phrase carefully nuanced and executed with the utmost attention to ensemble. Apart from a single descending unison scale passage in the opening Allegro, the ensemble was near perfect throughout this performance. The string tone was especially luscious in the Andante, and the players all demonstrated the sensitivity needed to make this seemingly simple movement transcendent.

The afternoon ended with another Mozart quintet, this one in C minor (K. 406), featuring oboist Stephen Taylor. Apparently this piece is an arrangement of a transcription. Mozart originally wrote it for a wind octet then arranged it for strings, and a modern composer set it for string quartet with oboe. The playing was quite sublime, but the audience reaction wasn't nearly as strong as it had been for the Mendelssohn.

My only suggestion for this concert would be to include program notes on the repertoire being performed. While cellist Rosalyn Clarke gave a few all-too-brief remarks before each piece, I would have much preferred more information. It was not mentioned, for instance, that young Mendelssohn purposely used Beethoven's late A minor quartet as his model, exploring that rarified world of composition in a way that no one else ever did.

It is also interesting to note that there wasn't a single person in this enthusiastic audience who was under the age of thirty, and most were at least double that. If this incredibly valuable art form is to be relevant to future generations, a strategy to attract the younger audiences must be developed.

During the intermission I was chatting with a warm elderly concertgoer who was amazed that this was my first time hearing the Claring Players. Her comment sums up my experience quite well: "You are no longer a virgin!" If you love fine chamber music, seek out future performances of the Claring Players.