|
CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
March 17, 2007
|
Digging Up Repertoire Gems By Heuwell Tircuit
For those of us who dote on fresh experiences, the 22-year-old Avedis ensemble represents a wealth of delights, since it programs only unknown or forgotten chamber music. That was the case Saturday afternoon in the Florence Gould Theater of the Legion of Honor, when Avedis played four pieces new to us repertory hounds. Most of the program explored the flute-cello-piano repertoire, performed by flutist Alexandra Hawley, cellist Stephen Harrison, and pianist Paul Hersh. The one exception was a set of three piano pieces by Arthur Foote, transcribed for flute, oboe (with James Matheson), and piano.
The matinee opened with Friedrich Kuhlau's Trio in G Major, Op. 119, and Lowell Liebermann's Trio No. 1, Op. 83 (2002). Rheta Smith's three transcriptions of Arthur Foote's music opened the second part, which was rounded off with Eugène Goossens' Five Impressions of a Holiday, Op. 7. In toto, score the program this way: "three fine discoveries and one failure" — not a bad average for any concert.
Kuhlau (1786-1832) is best known for his little piano sonatinas, which have been a basic teaching tool for nearly two centuries. Born near Hanover, he made a major impression when he played his Piano Concerto, Op. 7, in Copenhagen, then composed a successful comic opera (technically a singspeil). He liked the town — who doesn't? — so he stayed in Copenhagen after becoming Denmark's leading composer of the early 19th century, and died there. A devoted admirer of Beethoven, he made a trip to Vienna to meet the master and then spent much effort evangelizing for him around northern Europe.
Kuhlau was an extremely able and technically polished composer who should be programmed more often. His three-movement Trio was the jewel of the Avedis program, especially since it was played so elegantly. It's tuneful music in a somewhat Schubertian vein, except for the whizbang finale, in which traces of Carl Maria von Weber turned up unexpectedly. Considering how prolific Kuhlau was, a lot of musical pleasure is obviously sitting on shelves awaiting excavation and performance.
The other jewel of the afternoon was Goossens' five-movement holiday suite. Although best remembered as a sterling conductor, Goossens was also a fine violinist and composer. He began his career in the Queen's Hall Orchestra, which was the house band of that major concert venue in London until Nazi planes bombed it to smithereens in 1941. Goossens soon garnered attention as a conductor of such demanding scores as Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps in 1921. Two years later, he was named conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic, then of the Cincinnati Symphony, where he made several classic recordings before moving on to the Sydney Symphony. All the while, Goossens remained an active composer. He even had two operas premiered at Covent Garden, Judith and Don Juan de Mañara. His early impressionistic pieces were beautifully put together and brim with charming ideas. The individual five movements bear titles such as "In the Hills," "By the Rivers," and so on. The five sections are laid out like an 18th-century Divertimento, amounting to a prelude, a slow movement, a scherzo, another slow movement, and the inevitable jig finale. Without sounding directly like either Debussy or Scriabin, Goossens' style was bordered by both. I found this music thoroughly enjoyable. Foote (1853-1937) was once played quite regularly by American orchestras, especially in Boston where he made his career. Much of his activity was as a church organist, choirmaster, and piano teacher, the latter at the New England Conservatory from 1921 until his death. Most of his solo piano music is simple, meant for amateurs to play at home. Even so, the terse pieces that Avedis presented — Poem, Op. 41, No. 1; Oriental Dance, Op. 73, No. 5; and Flying Cloud, Op. 74, No. 4 — offered a bit of a surprise. Foote's major influence was usually Brahms, though with hints of Wagnerian chromatics. These little pieces, however, came off as strongly French in flavor. There were suggestions of lighter Bizet and the Fauré of the Dolly Suite. They're all fun, if a tad innocent-sounding. Liebermann (b. 1961) has won all kinds of professional prizes over the past 20 years. Yet, if his Op. 83 is a prime example, I can't imagine why. All four movements sounded impotent to me and ordinary in the extreme, as if the music was just running in place and getting nowhere. The style, if you could call it that, sounded somewhat like Walter Piston with a hangover — with even a few deliberate "wrong notes" thrown in, to make the music sound a bit modern. I had the impression that even the performers were bored with it. Their performance of the other works was polished, balanced, and highlighted by tasteful flights of virtuosity. But their delivery of Liebermann's Trio needed either much more rehearsal time or enough quality of invention to keep them engaged. A lack of tight ensemble playing and good balances usually indicates a let's-get-this-mess-over-with attitude, especially when Avedis demonstrated so much performance savvy during the other works. I found myself wishing I'd brought something to read.
(Heuwell Tircuit is a composer, performer, and writer who was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote previously for Chicago's American and the Asahi Evening News.)
|
