August 21 Skaneateles Festival: Pianist Adam Neiman works magic in Mendelssohn Sextet

But mediocre work by Niels Gade sullies otherwise engaging program

By David Abrams
http://cnycafemomus.com

Friday’s evening’s Skaneateles Festival concert, nicknamed "Happy Birthday, Felix," might just as well have been labeled "The Adam Neiman Show."

The brilliant young pianist, whom I first heard at last year’s SkanFest season in a remarkable performance of Anton Arensky's Piano Trio in D Minor, took on the lion’s share of the work Friday, participating in three of the four works programmed and standing squarely at the center of attention in Mendelssohn’s Sextet for Piano and Strings (Op. 110).

The program began in quiet fashion with a Busoni piano arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Chorale Prelude, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland. Originally written for organ, whose long, sustaining pedal (bass) tones are well-suited to settings of chorale melodies, this Chorale Prelude gains nothing from the switch to piano. If you’re going to program a work such as this at First Presbyterian Church, with its magnificent pipe organ, why not do it as originally intended?

Unlike the preceding arrangement, Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, commonly played on harpsichord, is well-suited to the piano.

Neiman navigated the formidable passagework in the opening Fantasia with remarkable clarity, using the sustaining pedal only sparingly and achieving an evenness of touch throughout the turbulent scalewise passages and wild arpeggiations. His shaping of the slow improvisatory (free-styled) rhapsodic section that followed, along with the judicious use of rubato, produced a meditative aura that caste a spell on the listener until s/he was brought back to the physical world with the start of the strict fugue that concluded the work.

The String Quartet in D Major by Danish composer Niels Gade (GAH-duh), which followed the two Bach keyboard works, is an obscure work by an obscure composer – a contemporary of Mendelssohn.

Prior to the performance, Parker Quartet first violinist, Daniel Chong, said a few words to the audience about this work, admitting that his ensemble initially had reservations when asked by Co-Artistic Directors David Ying and Elinor Freer to prepare it. To paraphrase Chong, "There are many great works in the string quartet repertory that have stood the test of time, and it’s impossible to get to all of them – but this quartet, around since the time of Mendelssohn, no one’s heard of…"

Midway through the first movement of the work it was apparent that Chong’s reservations were well-founded: Gade’s Quartet, while not without some degree of charm, is at best mediocre.

Thickly-textured throughout, with all four instruments playing together virtually all of the time, there’s little relief to the listener’s ear in terms of contrast of sonority. Moreover, there’s precious little thematic development or motivic play to build up convincing dramatic contrasts. As a result, the piece never gets below the surface of the pleasant themes that beg to be expanded and manipulated.

Ultimately, Gade’s Quartet sounds like a student composition, one that is unworthy of a place on Friday’s program. Even a top-notch performance by a first-rate ensemble such as the Parker Quartet couldn’t turn this pumpkin into a carriage – which raises the issue of programming. Certainly, it’s good to hear less familiar works from time-to-time, that’s why they hand out awards for "Adventurous Programming." Still, the key to successful adventurous programming is in finding new or underplayed works that nevertheless have some degree of merit. For my tastes, the String Quartet in D major is "Gade-awful."

Mendelssohn’s Sextet for Piano and Strings (Op. 110) might more accurately be titled "Concerto for Piano with String Quintet Accompaniment."

Couched as chamber music, which customarily has an equality of parts, this dazzling work places the piano at the forefront of virtually all the action, as Mendelssohn demands a virtuoso performance from the pianist while taking it rather easy on the other players.

Neiman, sporting an odd ensemble of concert attire comprising black shirt, black trousers, black boots and diamond earrings, trotted onstage looking more like he was determined to perform a magical act than a musical act. Turns out, he did both.

For a good portion of this delightful Sextet, Neiman’s fingers worked magic on his instrument, zipping up and down the keyboard in rapid sextuplet passages in one big blur, as if with sleight of hand. His brisk, relentless sixteenth-note passages in the parlor music atmosphere of the fourth movement – designed by Mendelssohn to do little more than simply show off – dazzled the crowd, many of whom could be seen shaking their heads in disbelief at the continuous fog that hovered above the piano keyboard. The coda, which kicked the action up a notch, was almost too much to bear.

Of course, it takes more than a magician to pull a rabbit out of Mendelssohn’s hat. There are lightly textured passages in the first two movements that call for a delicate, refined Mozartean touch, and here Neiman demonstrated great versatility and depth of musicianship. In spite of the pyrotechnics, I was most impressed with the pianist’s shaping of the subtle phrases in the tender and lightly scored Adagio movement, as Neiman gently balanced his lyrical passages over the muted accompaniment of the strings.

Led by violinist Karen Kim, the string players (Edward Castilano, bass; Melissa Matson and Jessica Bodner, violas and Kee-Hyun Kim, cello) produced a colorful depth of sound, suitably heavy in the middle and low registers, and provided an alert and consistent ensemble framework over which Neiman could work his magic. 

Details box

What: Skaneateles Festival, Week 2 (‘Happy Birthday, Felix!’)
Where: First Presbyterian Church, Skaneateles
When: August 21, 2009
Who: Edward Castilano, bass; Melissa Matson, viola; Adam Neiman, piano; Parker
String Quartet
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: Skaneateles High-School, 7:30 P.M. Friday, Aug. 21 (Mendelssohn, Mozart; Conrad Tao, pianist)