"Vienna" - Menlo Park, review by Gary R. Lemco

[Lance]

Music@Menlo

White Heat at Menlo
By Gary R. Lemco

The musical sparks flew Saturday, July 21, 2010 at the St. Mark’s Episcopal Church as talented musicians gathered for “Vienna,” the Concert Program III from Music@Menlo that concentrated musical directions both born to and propelled by the great city’s influence. Music by Haydn, Beethoven, Schoenberg, and Brahms provided the sense of musical continuity, albeit set on a course that would defy—in Schoenberg—many of the precepts of the Classical and Romantic ethos that had so long defined the Viennese sensibility.

The program opened with Haydn’s 1760 Klavier Concertino in C Major, Hob. XIV: 11, one of some fifteen Haydn created in the form. Wu Han provided the rather brilliant concertante keyboard role; Jorja Fleezanis, violin and David Finckel, cello supported the keyboard with relatively thin and intimate figures in the upper instruments. The four-bar phrase lengths in the Moderato could become formulaic, but Haydn’s deft touches of wit kept the piece moving. The ensuing Adagio and final Allegro did in fact prove “standard,” but the elastic brio of the participants convinced us of the innate charm of this relatively neglected oeuvre in Haydn’s catalogue.

Beethoven’s F Minor, Op. 95 “Serioso” Quartet (1811), however, requires no “apology.” The piece quite marks the transition for Beethoven’s last development al style, a synthesis and economy of means that compresses classical energies into extremely small spaces. The Miro Quartet members performed Op. 95—Daniel Ching, violin; Sandy Yamamoto, violin; John Largess, viola; and Joshua Gindele, cello—plied Beethoven’s terse and enigmatic motifs. After the abbreviated Allegro con brio, the so-called Allegretto (quasi Adagio) in D Major kept moving into vague harmonic realms more appropriate to the tonic minor. Largess began a plaintive fugue that seems to point to the later Op. 133. The restive quality of the music extended itself into the Allegro assai vivace ma serioso that constitutes the scherzo, an amalgam in dotted rhythm of wicked interjections and silences. Suddenly, Beethoven opens with a Larghetto to what proves an acerbic even frenzied conclusion, considering the broad, Haydnesque coda that Beethoven injects for humor, much in the manner of his F Major Symphony, Op. 93. The Miro moved through Beethoven’s mercurial but jarring world with a propulsive certainty that belied the youthfulness of the players.

The last piece of the first half was Arnold Schoenberg’s 1922 Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 (arr. Webern), an F major serenade of sorts for piano quintet, performed by Gilbert Kalish, piano; Tara Helen O’Connor, flute; Todd Palmer, clarinet; Lily Francis, violin; and Joshua Gindele, cello. In one continuous movement, the work subdivides into five sections, its style a cross between romantic interlude and expressionistic angst. Indeed, the world of Kokoschka and Schiele seems quite close, of haunted, spectral figures in relentless nervous tension. If we could not embrace tonally melodic outbursts, we could appreciate striking effects, like sudden flute riffs or wild staccati from piano and strings. The cello offered fourths in harmonics, while the upper voices trilled in some aether not quite human. That most of the materials evolved from the opening measures seemed less a spiritual consolation than a geometrical progression.

The long-delayed consummation arrived in the one work of the second half, the Brahms Sextet in G Major, Op. 36 (1865). An extended paean to the Romantic-Victorian Age that produced it, a symphonic utterance compressed into six instruments, this night realized by Erin Keefe and Jorja Fleezanis, violins; Lily Francis and John Largess, violas; and Ralph Kirschbaum and David Finckel, cellos. Brahms took a page—according to Karl Geiringer—from Schumann and ingrained as an anagram the name “Agathe” (for Agathe von Siebold) in the motif at measures 162-168. The tender colloquy of viola and first violin marked the progressive intimacy of the score, the instruments asked to play mezza voce. Country surroundings permeate the Scherzo, a Mendelssohnian affair cross fertilized by a village dance. The theme and variations Poco Adagio took us to the Friedrich painting of the Wanderer above the Sea of Mist, only in the E Minor of “frei aber einsam.” The last movement, a galloping Poco allegro, had us marveling at Brahms the musician and Brahms the academician, his simultaneous capacity for song and for the contrapuntal manipulation of lyric impulse in a leaned style. By the time the interweaving of voices culminated in a fiery coda, the audience was well ahead of the final note’s decay with a tumultuous, long-standing ovation. ♪
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Dr. Gary R. Lemco is a reviewer for
Classical Music Guide. He resides in California.