August 20 Skaneateles Festival: Mendelssohn’s bicentennial birthday bash a smash

Listeners get to have their cake and eat it, too, at SkanFest ‘party’

By David Abrams
http://cnycafemomus.com

You only get to celebrate a 200th birthday once, and for Felix Mendelssohn the remarkable performance held in his honor at Thursday’s Skaneateles Festival concert was enough to make all his wishes – and those of the audience – come true.

Surprisingly, when the party ended it was the youthful Parker String Quartet, and not the precocious birthday boy, who ended up taking the cake.

The opening concert of the Festival’s second week ("Happy Birthday, Felix!"), a mostly-Mendelssohn concert commemorating the composer’s considerable contributions to the chamber music and vocal repertory, will likely be remembered for the Festival debut of the Parker Quartet, a young up-and-coming chamber ensemble founded at the New England Conservatory of Music that wasted no time convincing this critic that it stands on the brink of a successful career.

From the opening exposition of the first movement of Haydn’s Quartet in G Major (Op. 76 No.1), it became clear that all the ingredients of a first-rate string quartet are in-place: a well-matched, warm and homogeneous tone, evenly balanced voicing of the four players, alert ensemble execution, clean entrances and crisp cut-offs, rhythmically tight execution, and a solid and dependable first violinist (Daniel Chong).

Nowhere was the ensemble’s blend of tone better illustrated in this work than in the sensuous Adagio movement, from the deeply resonant chordal section to the handsome dialogue between first violin and cello.  The syncopations that permeate this movement were perfectly placed throughout.

The Parker Quartet is, of course, a young ensemble – and youth comes at a price. The ensemble’s overly ambitious tempo of the third movement, which although marked presto is clearly indicated by Haydn as a minuet (and not a scherzo), sacrificed stylistic integrity for brute strength, and there was far too much muscle in the delicate Trio section that followed. Still, the quartet’s unabashed exuberance made for some stunning moments during the Finale as the four instrumentalists passed the rapid triplet figures seamlessly amongst themselves in breathtaking fashion.

Compared with the Haydn Quartet that preceded it, Mendelssohn’s String Quintet No.2 (Op. 87) demands for the most part less emotional maturity than it does sheer enthusiasm, and here’s where the Parker Quartet, with the addition of a second viola (Melissa Matson), achieved the evening’s tour-de-force.

Mendelssohn wrote some truly great works in the genre of chamber music. Unfortunately, this Quintet is not among them. It takes a superlative performance – one that can muster the proper degree of anima – to bring this piece to life, and the five instrumentalists delivered just that.

The addition to the quartet of a fifth voice provided an added dimension of warmth to the sound of this chamber ensemble, which in the lively acoustical confines of First Presbyterian Church proved especially pleasing to the ear. Ensemble interplay in the first movement was tight, with razor-sharp dotted rhythmic figures passing alertly from player-to-player.  The graceful scherzo of the second movement came off suitably gentle and playful.

The most memorable moment in the piece, however, came with the poignant Adagio (slow) movement, which carries the bulk of the weight in this lengthy work. In this tender lament the five players came together to produce an incredible vibrancy of tone, reaching deeply within the sensuous phases to produce the longing and yearning demanded by the composer. Especially lovely was the deeply expressive cello solo (Kee-Hyun Kim) towards the end of the movement.

Thursday’s program opened with an assortment of vocal works performed by tenor Robert Swensen and accompanied by pianist Adam Neiman, beginning with a da capo aria by Handel and culminating in three lieder of poems by Heinrich Heine set to music by Mendelssohn.

Swensen sings with deep feeling and great attention to dynamics, from soft whispers to full-throttle fortes. He tends to be tight in the high register, which is put to the test in the Handel aria, but he maintained a fluid legato at all times. While I wished he would have been more daring in the use of embellishments at the repeat (da capo) of the first portion of this aria, Swensen’s ornaments were smooth and tastefully executed.

In the Mendelssohn songs that followed, each of which appeared to suit Swensen better in terms of tessitura (range), the tenor impressed with his impeccable German diction and vocal delivery. As an actor, however, Swensen seems less well-suited to the realm of lieder, using minimal gesticulations and appearing uncomfortable with the use of his arms, which for the most part remained idle.

Details box

What: Skaneateles Festival, Week 2 (‘Happy Birthday, Felix!’)
Where: First Presbyterian Church, Skaneateles
When: August 20, 2009
Who: Adam Neiman, piano; Robert Swenson, tenor; Parker String Quartet; Melissa Matson, viola
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. 21 (J.S. Bach, Niels Gade, Felix Mendelssohn)