Boston-based chamber ensemble presents musical potpourri of several works featuring unusual instrumental combinations

By David Abrams
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Abrams.html

It’s nice to hear some off-the-beaten-path musical works spicing up the Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music’s generally mainstream programming. Then again, it is well to remember that many such works have been "beaten off the path" for good reason.

The Walden Chamber Players Saturday evening presented a four-work program of mostly good music that was mostly well-played. But the weaker elements on this program –– including a rarely-heard mixed quartet by Krzysztov Penderecki and a lackluster performance of Brahms’s mighty Clarinet Trio –– were difficult to ignore. In the end, I left the auditorium feeling that a promising musical experience had somehow eluded us.

Duke Ellington used to say that there are only two kinds of music: good and bad. For my tastes, Penderecki’s Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio falls into the latter category.

Written in 1993 and scored for the unusual combination of clarinet, violin, viola and cello, this four-movement work appears to have all the trappings of program music, with long sections of meandering, esoteric content and a suggestive title to its final movement, Abschied (farewell). Rather than reveal the program, however, Penderecki seems content to leave the listener clueless, taking him/her instead on a cryptic journey through an abstract patchwork of jagged melodic lines and incongruent musical ideas that lack sufficient cohesion to glue the disparate musical episodes together. Somewhere along this journey, the listener is left behind.

Granted, there are occasional moments of interest in Penderecki’s Quartet, with shades of Messiaen in the mournful clarinet solo that opens the first movement and a sprinkling of interesting syncopations in the unison/octave passages among the three strings during the rapid 16th-note passages of the Scherzo. Still, this work –– which Walden spokesperson/violist Christof Huebner in his pre-performance talk from the stage dubbed Penderecki’s "Post-Romantic" style –– is hardly a convincing argument for either Penderecki or Post-Romanticism. Towards the end of the final movement, the elderly gentleman in the seat directly in front of me let out a loud and lengthy yawn, thus summing up in a single gesture the composite listening experience.

The rest of the works on the program were of solid musical substance, even if not played entirely in convincing fashion. One of the ensemble’s better efforts was Schubert’s Adagio and Rondo Concertante in F Major (D. 487), a quartet written when the composer was 19. Scored for an orthodox arrangement of piano, violin, viola and cello, this work is a delightful composition that bubbles with Mozartean effervescence and joie de vivre.

The strings were well in-tune throughout the many unison and octave passages in the opening Adagio, and although first-violinist Irina Muresanu’s bright tone stood out somewhat from the others, the composite blend of tone among the four instrumentalists was generally sonorous. I was especially impressed with pianist (and founding member of the Walden Chamber Players) Jonathan Bass, who played with a suitably delicate classical touch throughout the work –– executing the many trills, turns, appoggiaturas and other musical ornaments with the unmistakable grace and élan of a seasoned performer/scholar. The quickly paced triplet figures passed among the four players during the Rondo were clean and even, yielding well-shaped phrases that blended seamlessly into one-another throughout this charming movement.

The Sextet for Horn, Clarinet, Strings and Piano, Op. 37 of Hungarian composer, Ernö Dohnányi, is one of those neglected works that deserves to be played more often. There aren’t many compositions for this arrangement of instruments, and while Dohnányi in this work appears to neglect the full timbral possibilities of such an assortment, he does craft a work with considerable harmonic interest –– such as in the curious dichotomy of major and minor modes that pervades the opening movement.

Dohnányi’s lengthy and dramatic first movement (Allegro appassionato), based on the melodic interval of a tritone, teases the listener’s sensibilities by vacillating between major and minor modes. The harmonic tension thus created keeps the listener in a constant state of speculation, yielding an enchanting but unpredictable listening experience that keeps you on the edge of your seat. The ensemble played this movement, and those that followed, in convincing fashion –– although it must be mentioned that Walden’s young horn player cracked far too many notes in this and all following movements.

The shifting between major and minor tonalities continues into the second movement Intermezzo, a rather lugubrious movement whose middle section pumps up the tension with loud and sharply defined rhythmic figures made all the more dramatic by Bass’s commanding effort at the piano. The final movement, with its sparkling folk-like tuneful writing (and which Dohnányi seems reluctant to end), tricks the listener into believing that the work ends on the flat-supertonic (D-flat Major), before the final C-Major chord that sets things straight once and for all.

What should have been the weightiest piece on the program, Brahms’s Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano, Op. 114, turned out to be a disappointment. This was sterile Brahms –– pretty, perhaps, to those hearing the work for the first time, but stylistically unconvincing to those who have heard it played well before.

Brahms came out of retirement in 1891 to write this sublime Trio (and several other works for clarinet), enchanted by the instrument’s vivid timbral colors and depth of volume and expression. The weighty masterpiece nevertheless requires a great deal of intensity and a wide array of dynamic contrasts to achieve the catharsis endemic to the composer’s mammoth chamber works.

Clarinetist Michael Wayne plays with a pleasant tone and produces a smooth legato that connects the instrument’s registers in seamless fashion. On this occasion, however, he had neither the power of projection nor the range of volume to do justice to this work.

Wayne’s amiable, chamber-like tone –– which appears better suited to Mozart than Brahms –– never rose above a mezzo-forte throughout the four movements, and as such he never was able to reach below the surface of the music to explore the depths of Brahms’s development sections in the outer two movements. Bass, at the piano, and cellist Ashima Scripp, appeared willing (and perhaps eager) to give more sound and intensity when the music called for it, but were reluctant to overshadow Wayne’s limited range of volume and energy.

Had the players been able to achieve more sound in the opening movement, the gentle pianissimo of the ethereal slow (Adagio) would have provided a welcome contrast. This poignant lyrical movement, which has the power to leave the listener breathless, lacked sufficient expression and subtlety, particularly at the recapitulation –– where the clarinet outlines the opening melody as the cello strums a gentle pizzicato accompaniment. This section rushed and left little time for the listener to savor the sensuous melodic line.

The third (Andante Grazioso) movement was inexcusably fast and stylistically inappropriate, yielding more of an allegro than an andante and steamrolling over the many subtleties of this charming minuet-like movement. I very much enjoyed Scripp’s angstful stürm und drang opening passage in the fourth movement, with its sharply dotted rhythmic propulsion. But here, too, Wayne was unable (or unwilling) to open the throttle and join the other players in creating and maintaining the level of anxiety demanded by Brahms. There were also a number of shaky moments in the development section –– leading me to wonder whether this piece was sufficiently rehearsed.

When it comes to Brahms’s chamber music, I live by one mantra: If you can’t do Brahms right, don’t do Brahms.

Details box
What: The Walden Chamber Players
Where: Lincoln Middle School, 1613 James Street, Syracuse
When: November 13, 2010, 8 p.m.
Time: 1 hour and 45 minutes
Information: call (315) 446-3424
Ticket prices: Regular $25, Senior $15, Student $10
Website: http://syracusefriendsofchambermusic.org   
Next: Aulos Ensemble, December 4, 8 p.m.