August 13 Skaneateles Festival: Anniversary celebration a tasty affair

But some wish they could have skipped the appetizer

By David Abrams
http://cnycafemomus.com

Over the course of the past 30 years the Skaneateles Festival has been serving up a tasty smorgasbord of chamber music, feeding Central New Yorkers a well-balanced diet of flavorsome works that have stood the test of time, sprinkled with a sampling of contemporary works that, occasionally, take a bit more time to digest.

In a way, Thursday evening’s anniversary season-opening concert (‘Musical Memories’) proved somewhat of a microcosm of the past three decades, with listeners smacking their lips in approval at the taste of a couple of familiar composers (Dvorak and Mozart) – but reaching for the Alka-Seltzer after trying to digest a new work co-commissioned by the festival.

Peter Child’s Pantomime: Seven Lyric Scenes for Oboe Quartet, which opened the program, is a divertimento comprising seven short contrasting character pieces that the composer, a professor of music at MIT, likens to "a wordless serio-drama." But while Child’s writing may be accessible, it is not especially engaging, and the listener and composer soon part ways.

The compositional style in Pantomime is predominantly neo-classical (a return to a style of the past), evident in the cello’s scalewise passages in the opening movement and running sixteenth-notes in the short second movement. While a tonal center does exist in this work, chords do not progress as expected (a technique called neo-tonal). Still, it’s prudent for a composer to have a sense of direction that may engage the listener’s interest. During the Chorale movement I kept wondering where, exactly, these chords were headed, until I finally realized that they were going nowhere – and rather slowly at that.

If there is a saving grace to this piece it is the Chorale Prelude movement, a clever contrapuntal setting of the drab chorale that precedes it. Here, Child draws good instrumental colors and intensity of sound from the strings in this takeoff on the Baroque model upon which it is based. The quartet, which could do little to buoy the piece, was led by long-time festival favorites Peggy Pearson (oboe) and violist Michelle LaCourse, as well as violinist Renata Knific and cellist Rosemary Elliott.

If Pantomime proved a disappointing appetizer, the Mozart Quintet for Piano and Winds (K.452) managed to satisfy the crowd’s demand for some quality fare – and this in spite of some balance problems endemic to the lively acoustical venue of First Presbyterian Church, which is not especially kind to the disparate timbres of wind instruments.

The Quintet, scored for piano (Elinor Freer), oboe (Peggy Pearson), clarinet (Deborah Chodacki), bassoon (Gregory Quick) and horn (Peter Kurau), is a charming work and a welcome break from the more usual string ensembles that dominate chamber music repertory. The quartet of winds achieved a consistent balance in dynamics with one-another (if not a notch or two louder than Mozart may have preferred), and its entrances and phrase endings were consistently in-sync with each other throughout the work. They did however overwhelm the piano on several occasions, forcing Freer to abandon some degree of grace and elegance in favor of a heavier touch that could match volume with the winds.

Balance issues notwithstanding, this was by all measures a musically satisfying performance, with tight ensemble play, careful attention to stylistic detail and judicious tempos. I enjoyed Freer’s spontaneous addition of turns, trills and playful embellishments throughout the piece, and especially the eingang (bridge) she interpolated at the end of the Largo movement before reaching the final Rondo. I also appreciated the repeat of the exposition in the Allegro moderato movement, which too often is omitted in order to shave some time off the performance.

The last course on Thursday’s plate proved to be the icing on the festival’s anniversary cake: an absolutely stunning performance of Dvorak’s Piano Quartet in D Major (Op. 23), with pianist Xak Bjerken joining festival favorites Steven Doane (cello), Mark Kaplan and LaCourse (of course).

The weight of this work lay in its lengthy first movement, and here is where the performance shined. Doane’s beautifully shaped opening cello solo – full of passion, intensity and phrase-direction – set the tone for the other players, who throughout the movement were able to feed off his passion. Like Doane, Kaplan phrases with great sensitivity and formed a perfect complement to Doane’s musical delivery. I only wish the sound on his violin, which is bright, could have better matched the more mellow tone of Doane’s instrument. Bjerken’s piano playing was especially impressive, using a touch that successfully ran the gamut from Dvorak’s whisper-soft pianissimos to the bold fortissimos of the two outer movements.

One measure of a first-rate ensemble is its ability to draw the listener into the action so that both performer and listener are swept away by the experience, and then share in the sense of exhaustion that invariably comes at the conclusion of a great performance. Such was the case Thursday evening, and a clearly appreciative crowd wasted little time in rising to its feet in gratitude.

A poster heralding the Skaneateles Festival’s 1980 season (Chamber Music at the Library) adorns my office wall. This handsome gold-colored sign shows the festival’s first music director, Lindsay Groves, standing proudly at the front entrance to the Skaneateles Library during the festival’s inaugural season, accompanied by an ensemble of colleagues. I’m not sure whether this picture is worth the proverbial 1,000 words, but I do believe that if you look deeply enough you’ll find within its borders two distinct images: the genesis of a music festival’s humble beginnings, and a prescient harbinger of the good things to come.

To be sure, lots has changed within the festival since its first (1980) season: The Chamber Music at the Library tag now reads World Class Music by the Lake; the season has expanded to four weeks; and the venue has switched from the Skaneateles Library to St. James' Episcopal Church – and ultimately to its present location at First Presbyterian Church.

Somewhere between past and present lay the memories of some astonishing performances at the summer chamber music festival that overlooks Skaneateles Lake, such as Central New York’s first look at the then 12-year old wunderkind, Hilary Hahn, whose dazzling performance of Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata had the crowd all but shower the girl with gold pieces. This was the first of many SkanFest performances featuring the venerable violinist I had reviewed for the Syracuse Post-Standard – and to this day it remains my singular most cherished memory at the festival.

Stepping back to the year 1980, I have two rather vivid recollections of that SkanFest season: One, taking my wife (at the time my fiancé) to her first performance of Schubert’s Death and The Maiden Quartet (which to this day remains her favorite chamber work); and two, standing behind a long stretch of listeners and performers at intermission waiting to use the library’s lone bathroom.

Three decades later, the Skaneateles Festival continues to inspire both kenner and liebhaber, having reached the level of artistic merit with principal chamber music festivals across the country. Oh, and yes – the restrooms are appreciably better...

 
Details box

What: Skaneateles Festival, Week 1 (Musical Memories)
Where: First Presbyterian Church, Skaneateles
When: August 13, 2009
Who: Xak Bjerken, piano; Deborah Chodacki, clarinet; Steven Doane, cello; Rosemary Elliott, cello; Elinor Freer, piano; Mark Kaplan, violin; Renata Knific, violin; W. Peter Kurau, horn; Michelle LaCourse, viola; Peggy Pearson, oboe; Gregory Quick, bassoon
Time: 1 hour and 50 minutes, including intermission
Call: (315) 685-7418
Ticket prices: $16 to $30
Website: www.skanfest.org (order tickets online or by phone)

Next: 8 P.M. Friday, Aug. 14 (Haydn, Prokofiev, Beethoven)