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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
March 6, 2005
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By Alexander Kahn
A grand tradition in the world of classical music, one in which established musicians play concerts alongside newer talents, provides a model for emulation. Members of the Boston Symphony play alongside college students at Tanglewood; the New York Youth Symphony regular features stars like Leon Fleischer and Glenn Dicterow as soloists. Perhaps the most successful example of these collaborations is the chamber music festival held every summer at Marlboro, Vermont, where big names make chamber music with younger players. The Musicians from Marlboro concert, given Sunday in Hertz Hall, proved the tradition is alive and well.
Musicians from Marlboro is the touring extension of the summer music festival, founded in 1951. The concert featured veteran cellist Marcy Rosen, a founding member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet and currently artist-in-residence at Harvard. “Featured,” however, is probably not the mot juste, for Rosen played in only two out of the three selections on the program, and in both cases her performing role was unassuming (in the Mendelssohn Octet, for example, she played the second cello part). Rather, Rosen's spectacular performance was not so much as a cellist but as a teacher. Her eyes and ears were everywhere during the concert, encouraging her fellow players to listen to one another through gentle nods, discouraging rushing in the violins with a frown. In fact, her eyes seemed more frequently to be on her fellow players than on her sheet music — no mean task, given the difficulty of some of the music.
The power exerted by Rosen's presence was obvious in its absence during the first work on the program, Mozart's String Quintet in B-flat, K. 174. There were many wonderful moments in this reading. The lyrical second movement duet of violists Richard O'Neill and Hung-Wei Huang made me want to put all of those viola jokes to rest once and for all. Cellist Clancy Newman brought out the rustic character of the third movement's trio section with vigorous full-bow strokes. Overall, though, the playing was breathless and at times threatened to get out of control. This was especially a problem in the finale, where Mozart's “Allegro” tempo marking was liberally interpreted as a “Presto.” Though all the notes were there, they flew by at such a breakneck pace that the movement lost any grace it might have otherwise conveyed.
The Mendelssohn Octet in E-flat, op. 20, constituted the second half of the performance. The work has been in the news lately due its recent recording by the Emerson String Quartet, playing all eight parts. In the score, Mendelssohn urges the performers to play “in symphonic orchestra style,” and many of the piece's textures seem designed for a reduced string orchestra rather than for a doubled quartet. The group achieved a bold and sonorous tone, and indeed at times the sound coming from the eight musicians on stage was so rich it seemed I was listening to an orchestral performance. Like the Mozart Quintet, the Mendelssohn features delightful and unexpected combinations of instruments, such as the trio-like colloquy between the first violin, fourth violin and first viola in the development of the first movement. The balance throughout was excellent, as the eight players constantly sought to emphasize these unique voicings and to minimize the accompaniment. It was admirable of the group to program Henri Dutilleux' Ainsi la nuit of 1976, a string quartet that rounded out the first half of the program. It explores the composer's fascination with different perspectives of time through a unique system of thematic anticipations, variations, and recollections. Written for the Juilliard String Quartet, this is extremely demanding music, replete with extended passages of artificial harmonics, extended bowing techniques and extremes of register and dynamics. To see young talents engage with recent repertoire, and do so with such finesse, is encouraging.
(Alexander Kahn is a graduate student in music history and literature at UC Berkeley, where he also serves as assistant conductor of the University Symphony.)
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