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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
June 18, 2006
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Something for Everyone By Heuwell Tircuit
Three compositions from three different periods were featured on Father's Day afternoon in Davies Hall, as part of the San Francisco Symphony's Chamber Music Series. There was a piano-string trio from 1811, a piano quintet from 1907, and a 2005 set of songs for, of all things, soprano, English horn, and harp. Oddly enough, none of the three composers was a father — not that it really mattered, since commemorations of that sort are as rare as frog hairs.
The program opened with Deborah Kavasch singing her own Songs of the Swan Maiden, supported by English hornist Julie Ann Giacobassi and harpist Douglas Rioth. This was followed by the Piano Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 67, by Amy Beach (aka Mrs. H.H.A. Beach), performed by violinists Florin Parvulescu and John Chisholm, violist Yun Jie Liu, cellist Barbara Bogatin, and pianist Dorian Ho. Following intermission, Beethoven's big Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, the "Archduke," was played by violinist Melissa Kleinbart, cellist Michael Grebanier, and pianist Stephan Prutsman.
The major event, for me at least, was hearing Beach's music again, a thing all too rarely on offer these days. Boston-based Beach (1867-1944), was the first American woman to make a splash in the international world of composition, not to mention being a virtuoso pianist who toured Europe and the U.S.
Considering her birth date, it is not at all surprising that she wrote in a plump, late-Romantic style. Although she grew in style over the years, none of her numerous scores — the opera Cabildo, a Mass, eight cantatas, a big piano concerto, a "Gaelic" Symphony, much chamber, vocal, and solo piano music — ever quite adapted to any newfangled 20th century notions. In that sense, she is quite like Richard Strauss and Sergei RachmaniNovember She had ideas and a considerable command of technical craftsmanship. The neglect of her effective solo piano works is especially puzzling to me, as they are most often big crowd pleasers.
Beach belongs to the missing link of American music — our Romantics. Her three-movement piano-dominated quintet consists of a basic introduction-sonata-allegro movement, a wispy romanza rather in a salon style, and a scherzo-like finale. What's interesting was that in place of the expected trio section of most scherzo movements, Beach wrote a free recapitulation of the opening introduction, thereby tying the whole of the quintet into a kind of circular form. Popular in her lifetime, Beach's piece leans a bit toward the flashy piano writing of Edward MacDowell, and surprisingly in her finale, Camille Saint-Saëns.
Harmonically, the biggest influences seem to be from the likes of Franck and not a little from the more advanced Liszt: Her music is the typical fare of the New England School of the period, which boasted such composers as Horatio Parker (Charles Ives' teacher), Arthur Foote, Daniel Gregory Mason, and my (semi)adored George Whitefield Chadwick. But whereas they were formally trained composers, I find Beach all the more admirable because she was largely self-taught in composition. Her music deserves to be taken seriously.
Kavasch's vocal work, on the other hand, was most distinguished by her atmospheric instrumental writing, which resembled the otherworldly late works of Benjamin Britten and his genuflection toward impressionism. It was all a rather lacy blend of tinkles and bleeps from the harpist, while the English horn sang countermelodies to the vocalist. Oddly enough, Kavasch's vocal line never took flight, leaning too heavily on the poems of Linda Bunney-Sarhad to make her point. This is what makes vocal writing the most difficult of all musical mediums to deal with. You want the words understood, but these need a bit of stretching or distortion here and there to meet melodic needs. Beginners often think that writing songs is the easiest thing to do, whereas the exact opposite is the case. Of course, the fact that Kavasch is a composer who sings, rather than a singer who composes, added another problem. She's simply not a prime-time vocalist capable of soloing in Davies. That placed a damper on the entire project. I found myself recalling a phrase about control from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, "... a sound, but not in government." Whereas all the instrumentalists played beautifully, the gold-star performance went to Beethoven's trio. This was as good as the "Archduke" gets. I especially admired the integration of the various instrumental sounds as each performer grandly adapted to the sonics of the others. That struck me as especially admirable in the dulcet timbres that Prutsman elicited from the piano. It's not uncommon for people to claim that the piano doesn't, or can't, integrate its sound with chamber strings. But that is not the case with an experienced chamber music pianist such as Prutsman. His elegant use of pedal effects was particularly adroit. Such virtues are paramount when presenting anything as well known as the "Archduke." Nothing short of outstanding will suffice, and this was just what Prutsman delivered to close the performance.
(Heuwell Tircuit is a composer, performer, and writer who was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote previously for the Chicago's American and the Asahi Evening News.)
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