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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
July 22, 2005
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By Jonathan Russell
The finale was the high point of Friday night's Old First Church concert, a rousing, spirited rendition of Bela Bartók's Hungarian folk music-infused Contrasts. The performers — the Berkeley Chamber Group, with Tom Rose on clarinet, Karen Shinozaki on violin, and Miles Graber on piano — really sank their teeth into this one. The rest of the concert of all 20th-century music was competent and pleasant, yet unremarkable.
Contrasts was composed in 1938 for jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman and Hungarian violin virtuoso Joseph Szigeti, with Bartók himself at the piano; as such, it features highly virtuosic passages for both the clarinet and violin, including a cadenza for each. The first movement is a moderate tempo Hungarian dance called Verbunkos. The second is mysterious, nocturnal, and dramatic, and is followed by a rousing Hungarian hoe-down of a finale. All movements were colorfully and energetically performed, but the second movement was particularly well played. As a listener, I've always found this movement difficult to grasp. It often seems like a random succession of textures and colors that don't cohere. On Friday it was gripping.
The performers created textures full of color and depth. The mood was mysterious, fleeting, and utterly captivating. It was the first time I've felt as though I really “got” this movement. The vigorous third movement was played with good energy, and the b-section featured Rose on a beautifully wistful clarinet melody in the dark and wispy throat register of the clarinet. The ending seemed to run out of steam, but this may be more Bartók's fault than the performers': I have yet to hear a performance of this piece which doesn't feel like it should have already ended twice before the actual ending comes.
 The five movement trio version of Igor Stravinsky's 1919 L'Histoire du soldat (The Soldier's Tale), which opened the concert, was competent, but lacked the punch and verve of the Bartók. Rose's cadenza in the Bartók was dramatic and gutsy; in the Stravinsky, however, it seemed as if he was just trying to make sure he got all the notes. Violinist Shinozaki played with more command and pianist Graber did his best to give the performance some punch with his crisp articulation and colorful inflections, but ultimately the performance fell flat. The most successful performances I've heard of this piece have been on the fast side — very articulate, crisp, and punchy. This performance had relatively slow tempos and seemed to take a more flowing, lyrical approach, which worked nicely in a few spots – most notably in the third movement, “A Little Concert,” in which the busy, overlapping motives of the three instruments blended into a carnival-like blur of activity – but mostly left the piece soggy and flat. To be fair, the extremely wet acoustic of Old First Church was working against the performers; but on the other hand, they were clearly able to overcome this in the Bartók. Rounding out the program were Aram Khachaturian's 1932 Trio and Dimitri Shostakovich's 1966 Waltz. Khachaturian's three movement work is lush and rhapsodic with a distinctly Russian tonal and harmonic flavor. It's a piece I've heard several times and it has always struck me as having many beautiful moments that somehow fail to add up to a convincing whole. The Berkeley Chamber Group did not manage to dispel this notion; in spite of many luscious harmonies, beautifully lyrical melodies, and particularly rich and colorful piano playing by Graber, the piece meandered and my attention wandered. Rose's clarinet playing again felt flat (in terms of color and phrasing, not pitch), while Shinozaki's big, full violin sound often lacked nuance. Shostakovich's nearly-Viennese, yet still slightly ironic-Russian Waltz was played with delicacy and refinement, but without the humor that it seemed to warrant. While this piece lacked the blatant irony, caustic dissonances, and dark humor of many Shostakovich scherzos, and at times was indistinguishable from a real 19th-century Viennese waltz, the phrasing and harmonic rhythm were often just a touch uneven and off-kilter, making it all slightly twisted, out-of-whack, and either darkly ironic, or just silly, I'm not quite sure which. In either case, I wanted more cheesy violin slides, more over-the-top ritardandos leading back into the melody, more schmaltzy rubato, more playfulness. Like much of the rest of the concert (with the exception of the Bartók), it was competent and, yes, enjoyable, but lacked that extra commitment, sensitivity, and verve that would have made for a truly compelling performance.
(Jonathan Russell is a Professor of Musicianship at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and an editor with PBA Music Publishing. He is active in the bay area as a clarinetist, bass clarinetist, and composer.)
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