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Prime players
Dante’s Paradiso
Sunday, October 29, 2006
By Paul M. Somers

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players: Andrew Lamy (clarinet), Mark Timmerman (bassoon), Andrea Menousek (horn), Ming Yang (violin), David Blinn (viola), Ted Ackerman (violoncello), David Rosi (contrabass). Beethoven: Duet no. 3 in B-flat major, WoO 27 (cl., bn.); Schubert: Trio in B-flat major, D. 471 (vl., va., vc.); Nielsen: Serenata-Invano (cl., bn., hn., vc., cb.); Beethoven: Septet in E-flat, op. 20 (cl., bn., hn., vl, va., vc., cb.). Dante Hall, Atlantic City.

So who says the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra doesn’t reach into southern New Jersey? Well, of course, it really doesn’t as a complete ensemble. But one must remember that it supplies an annual concert to the Cape May Music Festival, and has for years. Now they have begun a relationship with Dante Hall, a very attractive chamber venue in Atlantic City, only a block or two from the Boardwalk’s casino life. If the gaming houses are monstrous, then the 200 seat Dante Hall is intimate. If some would suggest that the short distance between the two worlds is like the spiritual distance from the eponymous poet’s Inferno to his Paradiso, certainly the NJSO’s seven musicians kept the metaphor alive.

The concert was presented so as to expand the number of players in each successive work. Whether purposely or not, the number of players increased in the order of prime numbers beginning with two, the only even prime. Surely the idea of singularity and “prime” were apt. The players, none of them first chairs, never the less showed themselves to be just as “prime” as the official firsts.

Of course the “big piece” of the concert was Beethoven’s septet. Even in the world of chamber music audiences, this is not such a familiar work because of how unusual it is to put that combination of instruments together. Yet the piece is one of the gems from Beethoven’s early pen.

All the players were in top form, producing the woody sound which is becoming the hallmark of the NJSO’s woodwind section. Intonation was impeccable, and phrasing was unified and well conceived. Brief though the finale’s solo horn lick is, afficianados of the piece smiled broadly when hornist Andrea Menousek let fly with it to such perfection.

The Serenata-Invano by Carl Nielsen is one of the Danish composer’s darker scores, featuring nothing higher than the clarinet. The score is filled with Nielsen-isms: the rest followed by five repeated notes of the same length, the rippling *thirds, and his shifts from major to minor and back. Clarinetist Andrew Lamy and bassoonist Mark Timmerman were particular stand-outs for revealing Nielsen’s special way with woodwinds.

Schubert’s string trio in one movement was the most familiar to chamber music fans. It often uses the same *neapolitan vocabulary one finds in the late *cello quintet. The players, no doubt familiar with the work for years, were excellent, violinist Ming Yang by the nature of the writing leading the way ably.

The weakest work and weakest performance was of the Beethoven duet. Lamy and Timmerman sounded a tad insecure in some spots, as if ensemble nuances had not yet been solidified. More rehearsal will no doubt have taken place by the time they do it again. It must at some level be mentally difficult to rehearse the piece, it is so inferior to most Beethoven. If he did actually compose it — and that is debatable — he certainly has left no indication in letters or notes. In this concert’s context it was perhaps intended as a place from which to build the remainder of the afternoon. The concert did, indeed, grow from the small to the crafty, to the moodily expressive, to the virtuosic.

The comfortable audience (there was room for more) applauded enthusiastically.

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