Ninth California Andriasov Festival at O1C

Iosif and Arshak Andriasov (from the Old First Concerts event page for yesterday’s performance)

For as long as I have been following Victor Romasevich’s work as a violinist, I have been aware of his advocacy of the music of Iosif Andriasov and his son Arshak. Romasevich had studied both violin and viola with Iosif; and, when he took over the leadership of the Jupiter Chamber Players in 2002, he worked with his new colleagues to advance that advocacy. My primary encounters with Jupiter and the music of the two Andriasovs has been through Old First Concerts (O1C) programming. Yesterday afternoon O1C hosted the Jupiter’s latest program, named as the ninth California Andriasov Festival. Romasevich was joined by Michael Jones on second violin, Stephen Levintow on viola, and Paul Rhodes on cello. The program was live-streamed from Old First Presbyterian Church and is now available as a YouTube video.

The program provided Romasevich with the opportunity to display a new talent. He took to the piano keyboard to provide accompaniment for three of Iosif’s duo compositions. In “order of appearance,” these were for viola, violin, and cello. The first of these, the Opus 30 “Meditation,” was originally composed for a cappella choir and subsequently arranged for viola and piano. The Opus 4 “Musical Sketch” was originally composed for flute and piano, and Iosif subsequently transcribed the flute part for violin. The Opus 24 “Musical Sketch” began as concertante music for oboe and chamber orchestra; and, in this case, the version for cello and piano was arranged by Arshak. Arshak was also represented on the program by his Opus 7 piece for string quartet; and Jupiter played Iosif’s Opus 1 quartet and his Opus 32, entitled “The Spring.”

The program also featured quartet music by Alexander Glazunov composed in memory of Mitrofan Petrovich Belyayev. Belyayev was the son of a rich timber merchant and an avid amateur musician. He channeled his share of the family wealth into establishing a music publishing house in 1885, which provided a platform for 35 Russian composers, one of whom was Glazunov. After his death (in either December of 1903 or January of 1904 depending on the calendar being used), Glazunov composed his Opus 105 elegy for string quartet as a memorial gesture. He also contributed the final movement of a string quartet whose previous movements were by three other Belyayev composers: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Anatoly Lyadov, and Alexander Borodin. Each of the four movements used the “pitch spelling” B-la-F as a motif.

The program began with Dmitri Shostakovich’s earliest published work for string quartet. His Opus 36 consisted of two short arrangements of previously-composed music. The “Elegy” is taken from an aria sung by the protagonist of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The “Polka” involves one of the composer’s best-known short pieces, originally composed for the satirical ballet The Golden Age.

All of this made for an impressively diverse repertoire. All of the performances were satisfying, and Romasevich also provided some context by reading brief passages from Iosif’s diary. Remarkably, the entire program fit into the duration of about one hour. It may be worth noting that the players followed the usual conventions for quartet seating, since eye contact was a critical factor in their performance. This may have put a bit of a strain on proper social distancing, but all four of the players wore masks.

The Jupiter Chamber Players Continue to Explore Unfamiliar Russian Repertoire

Since taking over the leadership of the Jupiter Chamber Players in 2002, Victor Romasevich has led his string quartet colleagues, Michael Jones (violin), Stephen Levintow (viola), and Paul Rhodes (cello), on some fascinating journeys of repertoire discovery. A major path along that journey has involved the music of Iosif Andriasov, with whom Romasevich studied both violin and viola. Past Jupiter concerts have programmed a generous share of Andriasov’s compositions, as well as music by his son Arshak.

Yesterday afternoon Jupiter returned to the Old First Concerts series at Old First Church. The elder Andriasov was again included in the program, but this time the historical perspective addressed the opposite direction. Rather than considering the relationship between father and son, the program offered music by Evgeny Golubev, who taught the elder Andriasov between 1958 and 1963. (Alfred Schnittke studied with Golubev between 1953 and 1958.) Golubev’s music filled the second half of the program with a performance of his Opus 39 quintet for harp and string quartet in C minor. The string quartet was joined by Olga Ortenberg Rakitchenkov, harpist in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra. (Golubev’s Wikipedia page describes this piece as “one of Golubev’s few works that are still occasionally performed.”)

It is understandable that Opus 39 is only “occasionally” performed. Bringing a capable harpist together with a string quartet interested in new repertoire is not always an easy matter, particularly when than “new” repertoire is over half a century old. However, yesterday’s performance made a strong case that this is music that deserves more attention. The quintet was composed in 1953, the year in which Joseph Stalin (as well as Sergei Prokofiev) died. As is well known, composers did not fare well under Stalin’s tyrannical rule; but his death led to a period of leadership uncertainty, which did not make things much better.

It is thus surprising how freshly optimistic Opus 39 is, even with its minor key signature. From a technical point of view, the piece is particularly notable for how perceptive Golubev was in writing for the harp and in finding ways to balance it against the string quartet. The result provides an opportunity to appreciate the extensive breadth of possibilities for virtuosity coming from the harp, all of which blend in with the strings with impeccable balance. There is even a delightfully amusing exchange in which each quartet voice plucks out its own pizzicato motif, returning to bowing only after the harp makes its “Me, too!” entrance.

Andriasov himself was represented with only three short pieces for cello and piano, for which Romasevich shifted from violin to piano to accompany Rhodes. Each involved a composition from a different time in Andriasov’s life, rearranged for cello and piano. The earliest of these (1955) was written for flute and piano, and second (1970) was for oboe and chamber orchestra, and the third (1981) was for mixed a cappella choir. Each of these had its own characteristic approach to melodic line, which made the transition to cello and piano a relatively smooth one. However, compared to Andriasov’s other work, these were vignettes, perhaps out of recognition that Golubev was the focus of the afternoon.

The program began with two more familiar composers. The first of these was a serenade for two violins and viola composed by Zoltán Kodály (his Opus 12) between 1919 and 1920. This was written after Kodály’s ethnomusicological field work, much of which was conducted with Béla Bartók; and one is readily aware of the field sources, particularly in the energetic concluding Vivo movement. Romasevich, Levintow, and Rhodes then performed the third (in C minor) of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 9 string trios. This was a capable enough reading; but it tended not to dwell on many of the witty turns through which Beethoven was clearly trying to one-up his former teacher Joseph Haydn. However, even in the presence of these more familiar composers, it was the discovery of Golubev’s quintet that made yesterday afternoon’s journey so worth the while.

Adventures in New Listening

Considering the scope of my listening experience, it is very rare that I come across a program that covers a period from the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth century in which I am familiar with only one composition. Even more curious is when that one composition is one with which I have become only recently acquainted, Amy Beach's Opus 67 piano quintet in F sharp minor. However, this particular program came from last night's Graduate Viola Recital at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; and my entire knowledge of the Beach quintet comes from two performances (one professional, one student) that I previously heard at the Conservatory. Furthermore, some of the oddity of the evening was blunted by the fact that the Beach performance was actually a repeat of the student performance I heard last November. There is little I can add to my past writing about both the composition and the students who performed it, other than the obvious observation that this is a work that deserves to be performed more frequently. The only thing that may bear repeating is that, probably only by virtue of my own listening experience, performances of this quintet continue to tweak my memories of Edward Elgar's piano quintet. However, Elgar wrote his quintet in 1919, about a dozen years after Beach completed hers; and it is hard to imagine his having been influenced by it. Had he, for example, visited the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, we would have known about this from some biographical account; but there does not appear to be any evidence of his having been in North America. Indeed, Elgar's most serious connection to the United States probably came from Yehudi Menuhin, who recorded Elgar's violin concerto with Elgar conducting. However, Menuhin was born in 1916; and, for all his reputation as a child prodigy, it is hard to imagine his having influenced Elgar's composition work in 1919, even in the extremely unlikely event that he had heard Beach's music while still in utero! (For the record, while Menuhin was raised in San Francisco, he was born in New York.)

Returning from this digression, however, the most important aspect of last night's recital was the framing of the entire program. It began with two miniatures for viola and piano by a composer sitting in the audience (Sahba Aminikia) and concluded with the Opus 1 (a string quartet in D major) by a composer (Josif Andriasov) who died in 2000 but was represented by a thorough set of program notes by his musicologist widow (Marta Andriasova-Kudryashova). Both of these composers received their initial music education in Russia, Aminikia at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory and Andriasov at the Peter I. Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory. Andriasov was born in Moscow to an Armenian family, while Aminikia was born in Tehran. While the two composers were separated by half a century, they both vividly illustrated Robert Mann's precept that a composer is best understood in terms of the music to which he has been exposed; and, in this case, there could well have been a common exposure that could be traced back to origins along the banks of the Caspian Sea. Both compositions captured a certain "Armenian spirit," which is probably best associated with Aram Khachaturian but was displayed in a more "earthy" rendering than Khachaturian ever delivered. Indeed, Aminikia seemed more interested in capturing the sound qualities of these folk sources, rather than the tunes themselves, which would put him closer to Béla Bartók than to Khachaturian. Furthermore, Aminikia is currently a graduate student in composition at the Conservatory; and this was the first performance of his miniatures. So this was probably a case of one student composing for another and probably working closely together on this emphasis on the nature of the sound itself.

The "other end of the time-line," so to speak, was represented by the Opus 94 of Johann Nepomuk Hummel. What the program listed as a fantasy for viola and orchestra is probably what (according to Wikipedia) the British Library Integrated Catalogue calls his "Potpourri for Viola and Orchestra," based on "Il mio tesoro." Many of us gave our first serious listening to Hummel when Wynton Marsalis recorded his trumpet concerto, and this work made it clear that Hummel was a great admirer of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Its first movement seemed to take the first movement of the K. 385 ("Haffner") symphony and turn it on its head, while its second movement came off as a fantasy on the second movement of the K. 467 piano concerto. Thus, it was no surprise that Hummel would have also turned to Don Giovanni for inspiration; and, since the viola is the "tenor" of a string quartet, what better source than the most famous tenor aria from the opera? In many respects this work can be heard as a harbinger of the sort of salon music that would flourish throughout the nineteenth century, much of which involved such homages to the spirit of the preceding century.

Similarly, Max Bruch's Opus 85 romance for viola and orchestra may be heard as a reflection on Ludwig van Beethoven's two similarly-titled works for violin and orchestra (Opera 40 and 50); but Bruch's work is anything but a mere homage. Rather, it is likely the work of a composer who, like Johannes Brahms, had to live with the influence of Beethoven without succumbing to that influence. Bruch's result certainly exhibited a unique voice, which served the voice of the viola as well as his more popular works for violin and cello served those respective instruments.

Finally, after the Andriasov quartet the evening concluded with an encore. The string quartet returned to perform Astor Piazzolla's "Four for Tango," which he had composed for the Kronos Quartet in 1987. Piazzolla provided a sharp contrast to that "Caspian" sound that began and ended the formal program; but it also ended the evening with a playful gesture, which always makes for good programming!