San Francisco Classical Voice

The Nagano-Reiss-Hersh Trio and colleagues didn't shy away from the striking juxtapositions in their recital at Old First Church in San Francisco last Sunday. The challenge of mixing and matching music was obvious from their program of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Aram Khatchaturian, and Johannes Brahms. That's three different centuries (18th to 20th) and three different nationalities (Austrian, Armenian, and German), just for starters.

But it was the three different groupings of instruments that proved to be the most thought-provoking juxtaposition. The closing work, Johannes Brahms' Piano Quintet in F Minor, is a masterpiece of the piano-strings combination. Normally this common pairing of instruments would pass unnoticed. But set in relief against Khatchaturian's Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano and Mozart's Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, the instrumentation in the Brahms suddenly became intriguing again.

The performance of the Brahms, with the trio of Joan Nagano (piano), Craig Reiss (violin), and Julian Hersh (cello), joined by Steven Miller (violin) and Paul Ehrlich (viola), brought the issue of instrumentation in the concert to a thrilling close. Nagano melded the piano into the ensemble judiciously, providing strength in the tuttis, rhythmic edge in the rapid-fire codas, and a beautifully sculpted opening theme in the rapt Andante. But usually she provided delicate contrapuntal commentary, as if in the accompanist's role.

The integration of sounds favored the quartet of strings (in part because the spacious church tends to blur pianistic detail). As a result, the performance easily suggested the piece's origins as a strings-only quintet. Nonetheless, from this performance it was also clear that the addition of the piano was vital. In their yearning, lyrical unanimity, the quartet of string players often opened a dialog with Nagano's piano that would have been missing without the inspired complementarity of the instruments.

Due to instrumentation it was the Khachaturian, not the Mozart, that initially struck a resemblance to the Brahms. Written in 1932, Khatchaturian's Trio is a lesser cousin of Bartok's piece for the same instruments (the Contrasts written in 1939). Both pieces are inspired by folk dance rhythms and melodies. But whereas Bartok actively allied the violin with the piano in his piece, through use of pizzicato, Khachaturian more frequently pairs the violin and clarinet in prominence over the piano, just as the Brahms quintet frequently separates piano from string quartet.

Against the vigorous, lively chordal use of the piano, the clarinet and violin are partners in dance, but they are almost always a few beats out of phase with one another. Rather than stepping on each other's toes, the two create a dense tapestry of swirling motion.

Khachaturian's Trio wouldn't succeed if clarinet and violin couldn't match flexibility of tone. This is a strength of the violin but is very difficult on the clarinet -- even discouraged in some schools of wind playing. But Wagner Campos's playing had the required subtlety and flexibility to match the silvery sounds of Scott Reiss's violin.

The flexibility in Campos's playing was a key to the success of the Mozart. He sculpted his playing to match the strings, being one of them when required, then when necessary he soared above them with all the strength and beguiling purity of sound that the clarinet can offer. As with the other performances, the Mozart proved more than a mere study of mixing and matching. In addition to the sweetly flowing melodies of the Larghetto, the ensemble played the Menuet with brilliance. Campos and first violinist Miller (joined by Reiss, Hersh, and violist Paul Nahhas) created a skipping sensation that felt spontaneous and joyous, like much of the concert. It was possible to forget the difficulties of combining instruments and simply to let the music take wing.

(Jeff Rosenfeld is an oboist with the Kensington Symphony, West County Winds, and Pacific Wind Ensemble. He is a freelance science journalist and author of the recent book, Eye of the Storm: Inside the World's Deadliest Hurricanes, Tornadoes, and Blizzards.)

©2000 Jeff Rosenfeld, all rights reserved