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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
January 5, 2003
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By Michelle Dulak
Anyone who has attended Old First Concerts' fine recital series regularly would have been surprised by the
line that formed last Sunday afternoon, clear back to the back of the church, for a chamber-music concert. I
joined the line myself at maybe a quarter to four; half an hour later, the small staff were still trying to
get people ticketed and seated, and the recital started almost twenty minutes late. Despite what seems very
little publicity to produce such a big effect, the word had gotten out: Lynn Harrell was playing.
Harrell's program bio, in a peculiar phrase, says that he is "[c]ommonly thought to be one of the two greatest
living cellists in the world." (I wonder whom the writer meant us to assume as the other one; perhaps the Ma
fans and the Rostropovich fans can duke it out?) But it seems a little strange to think of Harrell these days
in such company, not because he doesn't belong there, but because he makes so little attempt to keep his name
in. He seems to teach as much as he tours, and he records very little. He's the Anti-Diva of the cello scene.
Certainly he was no diva on Sunday. He made only two concessions to the fame that had brought in that enormous
audience. One was to wear a loud shirt. No, two loud shirts: one before intermission, the other after.
The earlier one was a sort of blue-and-pink-and-purple plaid, the later the same basic color scheme, but in a
pattern of hexagons, like chicken wire. The five women playing with him arranged to mesh, as it were, with the
color scheme, the violas in blue and purple and the violins and second cello towards red. It's as though they
were determined to make a harmony out of it somehow. As for Harrell, well, you can wear nearly anything you
want in San Francisco, but I rather think he was testing the limits.
The other was to give three short commentaries, one before each piece, each strangely sweet in its utter
inconsequence. "After Brahms wrote his Fourth Symphony, Op. 98, he wrote a cello sonata and then a violin
sonata and then a piano trio, and [. . .] and in his last chamber works he went in this particularly
experimental direction . . . Oh, heck, let's just play some music!" And so they did.
It's hard to make up a program of two string sextets and a quintet that doesn't somehow suggest three desserts in a row, and this particular one was even denser and richer and chocolatier than usual: Brahms' second String Quintet, Op. 111; the string-sextet Prelude to Richard Strauss' Capriccio, and then Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence. Sugar overload? Maybe for some; not for me. It's a treat to hear a bunch of players this good tackle music this difficult with such gusto. It was a terrific crew, actually — Helen Nightengale (an LA freelancer who is apparently partnering Harrell in the Brahms Double Concerto in the near future) as first violin, Dawn Harms as second, Anna Kruger and Elizabeth Prior-Runnicles as violas, and Thalia Moore (once a Harrell student) as second cello. Nightengale, a very strong violinist with a rich and attractive tone, was well-matched with Harms (I wish all second violinists had such guts). The violas were excellent both separately — Kruger's dense and richly-inflected sound was a special delight — and in duet. Moore, as second cellist, had fewer opportunities to stand out, but her strong and confident presence at the bottom of the texture was a major asset in the two sextets, and when she and Harrell were in unison in the Tchaikovsky's third movement the effect was awesome. And Harrell? I think he must be the most efficient cellist I've ever seen play. Not a motion wasted, no extraneous gestures or head-waving or nonsense — just a neat stroke of the bow, and out comes this glorious (and very powerful) sound. But it can be delicate too. His partnering of Nightengale in the two long violin/cello duets of the Tchaikovsky's slow movement (to take but one instance) was subtle and seductive, the subordinate line quiet, rapturous, effortless. You notice that the last is an illusion only when you remember other cellists charging laboriously through the same music.
That said, it was pretty clear that there was more enthusiasm than rehearsal time. Brahms' Op. 111 Quintet, for example, was full of beautiful things, but many places were not quite in tune or quite together, and there were moments when things threatened to fall apart completely. Nightengale ran off the rails, miscounting, twice — once just before the viola cadenza in the slow movement (doing Kruger no good), and again, more damagingly, at the very end of the finale, where there was no time to recover. Things improved with the Strauss (though putting that short bit of spun sugar after the long and dense Brahms on the first half was odd) and the Tchaikovsky — where there were some uncannily precise ensemble effects, like the pizzicato arpeggios in the third movement. There were also some frightening intonational mishaps, especially between the violins (though the duelling cello C strings were also in the running). But fun the piece is, and fun was had. I suspect that halfway through the finale there was a collective decision onstage that ran "to hell with accuracy, just go for it!" I'm glad they did.
(Michelle Dulak, editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, is a violinist and violist who has written about
music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America, and the New York Times.)
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Lynn Harrell
Helen Nightengale