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TRIBUTE To Nate, with Love; His Memorial June 4, 2002
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By Robert P. Commanday
A lot of Nathan Schwartz's friends and a number of his artist-colleagues filled the Crowden School Auditorium in Berkeley Sunday to express their affection for the pianist and dear man at his memorial concert. It was all about love for him and for his love of music. He died on April 6 after a battle with cancer in which, against all medical odds, he won an improbable two-year reprieve. "I can sit down and die or I can go down fighting," he had told his pupil, Yuliya Gorenman, an immigrant from Russia 12 years ago, when he began mentoring and teaching her "so much more than the music."
She recalled that to the audience Sunday before playing two beautiful, moving performances that said everything about her feelings for the man, Nate. ("Should I call you Mr. Schwartz," she had asked him, to which he responded, "Then I won't know who you're talking to. Call me Nate." And everybody did.) They were pieces by Schumann, who put more of his heart into his music than most, first, Liszt's transcription of Widmung ("Dedication"): "You, my soul, my heart . . . my world in which I live . . . my good spirit, my better self," which for Nate was music, the world he lived for, up to his final moments. Gorenman played the transcription, even its Lisztian embellishments, as an intimately eloquent song. Then the first movement of the C major Fantasy, in which the poignance of the quiet, delicate moments made telling effect against the full-fashioned romance in the piece's rich personality.
Each of the afternoon's performances reflected a comparable inner feeling, revealing the reason for its choice. After a thoughtful spoken tribute, Lois Brandwynne played Schubert's G flat Impromptu, Op.90, # 2, bringing out the lyrical song line in a texture that has the effect of orchestration. Most elegant was David Abel's and Julie Steinberg's performance of Debussy's Sonata for Violin and Piano. It was inspired. Abel was the original violinist of the Francesco Trio, joining as a founder in 1964 with Schwartz and the cellist Bonnie Hampton, whom he was to marry seven years later. Abel played exquisitely, and Steinberg's sensitivity matched his. In fact, this was as fine a performance of the Debussy as I have heard, by anyone. Particularly affecting in the context of this memorial, were the precious moments in the middle movement, Intermède: Fantasque et Léger, glimpses of sentiment that emerge in the middle of the capriciousness like memories of endearing traits and gestures flashing through the surface of generous geniality. Miwako Watanabe recalled her close association with Schwartz and Hampton as violinist with the Francesco Trio and, with Gorenman, tenderly played the Larghetto, "Indian Lament," from Dvorak's Sonatine, op. 100. The piece centers on a "characteristic" melody in the romantic manner meant to evoke music of indigenous Americans. Joan Nagano, a student of Nate's, gave a bright account of Leo Kraft's Allegro Giocoso, in his early style, a neo-classical idiom, highly syncopated. As Brahms' G minor Piano Quartet was the last work Nathan Schwartz was preparing, for a performance in Minneapolis, the Andante con moto from it was played, by Robert Mann, his longtime chamber music associate (and former leader of the Juilliard Quartet), Paul Hersh, violist and colleague on the SF Conservatory faculty, Bonnie Hampton (Mrs. Schwartz) and Gorenman. The qualities of the Andante spoke for them as the lyricism became impassioned, and then, after a dramatic break, the song returned, more eloquent than before.
For the final performance, the Adagio and Adagio-Allegro movements of Mozart's String Quintet in g minor, K. 516, Watanabe and, as the second violist, Michelle Maruyama, joined Mann, Hersh and Hampton. The muted string sonority in the slow movement, the richer for the addition of the second viola, and a private containment in the playing deepened the personal feeling. It was particularly involving when a simple four-note phrase, distributed from player to player, acted as a kind of question, its repetition seeming an affirmative response, an intimate sharing. Music related in spirit to Pamina's "Ach, ich fühl's" (The Magic Flute) gives way to an ebullient final allegro, played with the energy and the happy vitality characteristic of a great and musical friend.
(Robert P. Commanday, senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.) ©2002 Robert P. Commanday, all rights reserved |