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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
A Pleasant Musicale For Lafayette
May 20, 2000
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By Sarah Michael
The little town of Lafayette has acquired a valuable cultural property in the Gold Coast Chamber players. On Saturday evening I had the pleasure of attending the first serious musical event I have ever attended in my home town of ten years. As far as I know, the Gold Coast Chamber Players series is the first such offering to be made in all that time.
Under the artistic direction of violist Pamela Freund-Striplen, this final concert of the series was a uniformly lightweight and sometimes delightful program of Mozart and Mendelssohn . The highlight was surely Mark Brandenburg, clarinet, and Tony Striplen, basset horn, in Mendelssohn's Concertpiece, Op. 114, a frothy composition full of arpeggiated figures, lyrical traveling in thirds and sixths, and even a hunting horn imitation. In short, it has the full set of what have become clarinet clichés.
Happily, Brandenburg and Striplen brought it off with a masterful combination of authority and humor. They were ably accompanied by pianist Roy Bogas, whose informed, expressive playing supported the entire evening, particularly in the Mendelssohn Sonata in C Minor for Viola and Piano, a rambling work whose most notable feature is several extended piano passages in the last movement. Also offered were Mozart's Duo for Violin and Viola, K.V. 424, with violinist Juliana Athayde, and Mozart's Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, K. 498. Both are pleasant, if unengaging, pieces and were well played.
As the evening progressed, I came to feel like a dinner guest who arrived hungry and found a menu consisting entirely of low-fat, low-salt desserts. Any one or two of these pieces would be delightful on a more varied program -- all together they were more than I cared to face in one sitting. In fairness, I am undoubtedly expressing a minority opinion, since the audience applauded enthusiastically after each and every movement. They certainly seemed satisfied. And there is merit in suiting the program to the audience. But give me less froth and more meat, and the quality of the programming will match the quality of the performance.
(Sarah Michael is a composer who writes about music for "20th Century
Music" and "New Music Connoisseur.")
©2000 Sarah Michael, all rights reserved
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