Chamber mixes it up, unites youth, experience
In chamber music, as in other things, nothing works like the combination of youth and experience. This formula has animated the Marlboro Festival for years, where students perform with mentor musicians. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center now follows this pattern as well, pairing one or more of its well-established performers with members of its B-team, also known as Chamber Music Society Two, and sending them on the road.
Pianist Wu
Han, who co-directs the society with her husband, cellist David Finckel, came to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Sunday with five superbly accomplished younger musicians for a delicious - almost too delicious - program of Mozart, Dvorak, and Schubert.
In Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat Major (K. 493), violinist Erin Keefe, cellist Julie Albers, violist Beth Guterman, and Han had the kind of rapport that comes from familiarity mixed with something that perhaps disappears on longer acquaintance, the challenging eye contact that says, “Let’s take a different turn here.” Humor and wit abounded in the first and third movements, and the languid larghetto took on a tragic depth.
Dvorak’s rarely heard Terzetto in C Major for two violins and viola followed, a change of accent and mood. Arnaud Sussmann led as spirited first violin with Keefe and Guterman. The middle scherzo movement, in the spirit of Bohemian country dances, evoked a time when “classical music” and showing off in the town square weren’t far apart.
The performance of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet, which closed the concert (with double-bass player Kurt Muroki joining the ensemble) was just about flawless. The opening arpeggio on the piano - one of the most beautiful openings of any chamber piece - was perfectly balanced and timed. A nice, slowish tempo was established as the strings explored a murky atonal depth out of which emerged, like the flash of a trout’s tail, the movement’s signature rising flourish (a variation of the figure in the piano accompaniment to the original “Trout” song). Like the Mozart piano quartet, Schubert’s quintet is a mature work, a sublime blend of joy and soulfulness. Sussmann’s light tone and careful phrasing of the “Trout” song in the opening of the theme and variations was especially nice. As in the Mozart, Han was lively and nimble. At times, she struck the notes so brightly they failed to cohere into a singing line, and chords lacked weight when the piano was in a supporting role.
A modern work would have been refreshing amid all this heavenly gemütlichkeit. Perhaps some of Bartok’s duos for two violins (also based on country themes). Or even a different instrument altogether, like the singing voice. Singers were once a regular constituent of private or chamber concerts and are now segregated in all-vocal recitals. The Gardner is an ideal place to mix it up.
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