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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
February 27, 2005
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By Michelle Dulak Thomson
Well, they've done it again. The San Francisco Symphony's chamber series is lately an opportunity for Symphony musicians to program
pieces that, in the ordinary run of things, don't get played much, because they're little-known, because their instrumentation is
unusual, or both. Sunday's concert ran true to form, beginning with two trios for two violins and viola, following with the
premiere of a wind octet, and only then reverting to a familiar and beloved piano quintet. And as often happens on this series, it
was the unfamiliar that won the day.
Sarn Oliver was quoted in the program notes as having said that he drew inspiration for his Trio One from Kodály's
Op. 12 Serenade for the same instruments, and from Purcell's viol fantasies. It's the sort of remark that could come either
from a shallow show-off or from an unusually thoughtful and eclectically-minded composer, and there's no way of knowing which until
you hear the music. Oliver is, thankfully, the latter, though the composer Trio One brings immediately to mind isn't
Kodály (certainly there's none of that whole-tone harmonic tic of the Serenade) or Purcell, but rather the Britten of
the First and Second Quartets; there's the same joyous piling-up of diatonic dissonances, the same rhythmic verve. A piece I'd like
to hear again, and soon.
The Kodály itself followed immediately on the same program, and I wondered for the umpteenth time why it it isn't played
more often. It's nearly as good a piece as the now-often-played Second Quartet — colorful, tuneful, effective, and scored so
expertly that you don't for a minute regret the absence of a cello. (Actually, the two-violin-and-viola repertoire, though tiny, is
of high quality; besides the Kodály and the Dvorák Terzetto — the only piece for the medium that
ordinarily turns up on programs — there's a fine and intricate Rhapsody by Frank Bridge.)
Here and in Sarn Oliver's own work, the trio of Oliver, Mariko Smiley, and Victor Romasevich was simply phenomenal. This was the best string chamber playing I've heard in many years of attending the Symphony's chamber concerts: brilliant, alert, perfectly together, perfectly matched in tone, always engaging and engaged. There was no whiff of dutiful professionalism anywhere, only great skill coupled happily with an eagerness for fun. Smiley has the shade brighter tone of the violins (and actually had a lot of the higher lines in the Oliver, though she was playing the second part), but her playing and Oliver's mesh very well indeed. As for Romasevich, who in the Symphony is a violinist . . . well, I didn't know before Sunday that he even played viola, let alone what a superb violist he is. His sound was sweet, deep, and mellow, with no hint of the strain you often hear in violinists who pick up the viola only occasionally. Following on the program was the premiere of Bruce Broughton's Hudson River Valley, for wind octet. Broughton's career seems to have been mostly in film and television music, which means (among other things) that the man sure can orchestrate. This was as grateful a work for its medium as you are likely to encounter, and the Symphony players obviously relished the possibilities. (I would single out Ben Freimuth's limpid, graceful clarinet, and the pungent bassoons of Steven Braunstein and Steven Dibner, but in truth all the playing was splendid.) The idiom is roughly Stravinsky-lite: Prokofiev/Irving Fine/Copland, with most of the Prokofiev in the finale ("Washington Irving"), most of the Fine in the first movement ("Route 9"), and the Copland rather blatantly occupying the outer parts of the slow movement ("Hyde Park"), in passages that could be slipped surreptitiously into Appalachian Spring with hardly anyone the wiser. No matter. This was almost-Copland that was really almost as good as Copland, which is no mean thing, and as played tenderly by the Symphony winds it was quite beautiful. (They could be fierce as well; there was one passage where the oboes and clarinets ganged up on the bassoons and horns in a grand dust-up that was perfectly choreographed.) The Brahms Piano Quintet that followed intermission was, after all that excellence, something of a letdown — not a bad performance, just a fairly ordinary one. Mariko Smiley returned, with Kelly Leon-Pearce (violin), Nancy Ellis (viola), and David Goldblatt (cello), with Lois Brandwynne at the piano. The ensemble rapport I admired in the first half wasn't so much in evidence here. The violins had repeated difficulties tuning the many passages in octaves, and the players' styles weren't at all alike (the freely demonstrative viola of Ellis next to the rather "safe" cello of Goldblatt, in particular, seemed a mismatch). Brandwynne was a fine though not altogether immaculate pianist, struggling (I thought) against a piano with the lid on the small stick not to make the dense parts sound muddy.
(Michelle Dulak Thomson 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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Sarn Oliver
Bruce Broughton