Tianwa Yang Surveys a Sarasate Canon

Violinist Tianwa Yang on the cover of the box set being discussed

This is the time of year when I can catch up on past releases that I have not yet accounted for but still deserve attention. Naxos released its four-CD box set of the complete works composed by Pablo de Sarasate for violin and orchestra in November of 2015, but it was only in the last few days that I had the opportunity to survey this aspect of the composer’s catalog. The soloist for all of the recordings was Tianwa Yang, performing with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra under the baton of Ernest Martínez Izquierdo.

This makes for a generous amount of music, particularly when one realizes that the only work likely to be familiar is the very first track of the first CD! That is the composer’s Opus 20, “Zigeunerweisen” (gypsy airs), best known (at least to my generation) for its frequent appearance on no end of cartoons provided by both Warner and Disney! If all the other selections are unfamiliar, they at least provide generous insight into the composer’s command of an abundance of virtuosic tropes.

I can appreciate that many are likely to view this collection as too much of a good thing. Indeed, just listening to the entirety of a single CD may leave one more than saturated. Fortunately, in the “digital age” it is easier for listeners to sample individual selections, rather than just playing a disc from end to end. If this is the case, then such “occasional visits” are likely to be remembered as journeys of discovery.

This is particularly the case when Sarasate decides to adopt the music other composers. His most ambitious undertaking was his Opus 25, the five-movement Carmen Fantasy, which serves up perspectives on Georges Bizet’s opera that are not encountered in other arrangements of his music. There are also two fantasies on operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Opus 51 (Don Giovanni) and Opus 54 (The Magic Flute), which are just as inventive in their selection of memorable themes.

It is worth noting that Sarasate probably composed most of his works for his own performance. His career covered the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth. That landed him in the same time frame as George Bernard Shaw, who saw himself as much a music critic as an author. That combination of talents is revealed in Shaw’s assessment that Sarasate “left criticism gasping miles behind him.”

These days it seems as if the Sarasate repertoire is “miles behind.” Mind you, some readers may recall that Ray Chen played Opus 20 when he made his San Francisco Symphony debut in January of 2011. However, it appears that my last encounter with a departure from that warhorse took place in May of 2023, when violinist Patrick Galvin played Sarasate’s “Romanza andaluza,” accompanied by Connor Buckley at the piano at an Old First Concerts recital. Perhaps I shall get to know that music better when I decided to take on Yang’s other Naxos collection of the complete works for violin and piano!

David Oistrakh’s Rarities on Warner

Readers may recall that last week I began my venture into the 31 CDs classified as Premières, Rarities & Live Performances in the Warner Remastered Edition box set collection of recordings of performances by Russian violinist David Oistrakh. This began with an examination of the two CDs identified as Early Recordings. I am now in a position to discuss those albums associated with the “Rarities” category.

The most unique of these is the complete recording of a recital that Oistrakh performed in Moscow on February 16, 1960. He was accompanied by Vladimir Yampolsky; and the “heart” of the program consisted of three sonatas, each from a different century. Oistrakh began with Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1019 duo sonata in G major. He then leap-frogged into the late Romantic period with the last of Johannes Brahms’ three violin sonatas, Opus 108 in D minor. Late Brahms was followed by the Opus 1 of Karen Khachaturian (nephew of Aram), a three-movement sonata without a key specification.

Presumably, the rest of the album involved the encore selections, of which there were five, most of which were probably unfamiliar to much of the audience. Oistrakh began with the prelude-fugue coupling that constituted a solo violin partita by Alfred Mendelssohn. This was followed by the Opus 7 “Ciaccona” by Giovanni Battista Vitali, composed in 1682 for two violins and continuo violone and arranged for violin and piano by Léopold Charlier. This was followed by Oistrakh’s own arrangement of the sixth of the nine piano arrangements by Franz Liszt of “valses-caprices” by Franz Schubert. The encores were concluded with two works by twentieth-century composers: Sergei Prokofiev (his “Melody,” Opus 35b, Number 3) and Maurice Ravel (the familiar “Tzigane”).

Sergei Taneyev (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Two of the CDs are identified as “Sonata Rarities.” They live up to that title through the composers they represent (in order of appearance): Nikolai Medtner, Mieczysław Weinberg, Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov, Sergei Taneyev, Zara Levina, and Wilhelm Stenhammar. There is also a “Bravura” album, which is framed by Niccolò Paganini at the beginning (with five of his Opus 1 caprices, beginning and concluding with arrangements by Fritz Kreisler and Leopold Auer, respectively) and Pablo de Sarasate’s Opus 25 (“Carmen Concert Fantasy”) at the end.

Finally, there is an album classified as “Vignettes.” This consists of 21 tracks, all of which are shorter than ten minutes in duration. Nine of the tracks are premiere releases. They are framed by arrangements by Carl Flesch of arias by George Frideric Handel at the beginning and the “Mazurka-oberek” by Alexander Glazunov on the final track.

Personally, I can attest to the “Rarities” classification. Yes, there were many familiar encounters (which the reader will easily recognize above). However, my mind is still trying to “digest” the abundance of “first contacts” I experienced while listening to the six CDs in this category!

Galvin Recital: Two Violin Sonatas; Two Centuries

Patrick Galvin and Connor Buckley taking a bow after their performance of Prokofiev’s Opus 80 sonata (screen shot from last night’s video stream)

Last night violinist Patrick Galvin returned to Old First Presbyterian Church to follow up on his last Old First Concerts (O1C) recital given about a year ago. He organized his program around two sonatas, each from a different century. The first half of the program was dominated almost entirely by Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 80 (first) sonata in F minor. This was followed, after the intermission, by Robert Schumann’s Opus 105 (first) sonata in A minor. Galvin’s accompanist at the piano was Connor Buckley.

Neither of these sonatas receives the attention it deserves. Prokofiev spent about eight years working on Opus 80; and, by the time he had finished, he had already completed his Opus 94a (second) violin sonata in D major, which was basically a rearrangement of his Opus 94 flute sonata (also in D major), in 1943, while Opus 80 was not completed until 1946. Taken together, the two sonatas provide a study in sharp contrasts: Opus 94a was all bright sunshine, while Opus 80 presented Prokofiev at his darkest. Both Galvin and Buckley clearly appreciated that dark rhetoric, making for one of the more harrowing listening experiences to be encountered at an O1C performance.

Schumann’s sonata, like Prokofiev’s, was composed relatively late in his life. It was completed in 1851, not long before Johannes Brahms, then twenty years old, would join his household. Schumann was not particularly satisfied with Opus 105 and completed his second sonata, Opus 121 in D minor, only a few months later. Sadly, neither of these sonatas receives very much attention on the recital circuit. Nevertheless, both Galvin and Buckley gave a sufficiently engaging account of Opus 105 to suggest that Schumann’s own opinion of the music may not have been justified.

These two sonatas were interleaved with four shorter pieces, two of which were composed for solo violin. The Prokofiev sonata was preceded by Grażyna Bacewicz’ “Polish Caprice,” while the Schumann sonata was follows by the “Tangy” movement from Korine Fujiwara’s Six Tasty Caprices. As might be guessed, the “tangy” taste was presented in the form of a tango. The program then concluded with duo performances of Amy Beach’s Opus 23 “Romance” and the “Romanza andaluza” by Pablo de Sarasate, the third of eight pieces he collected under the title Spanish Dances.

Taken as a whole, this was a straightforward bread-and-butter performance. Both musicians were attentive to the many details in the selections they performed. However, they tended to moderate their overall approach to expressiveness. To be fair, however, each of the compositions performed had enough expressiveness to speak for itself!

Hilary Hahn Gives Ginastera Deserved Attention

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Universal Music Group)

One week from today Deutsche Grammophon will release violinist Hilary Hahn’s latest album, entitled Eclipse. It is a concertante album on which she performs with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the radio orchestra of Hessischer Rundfunk, which serves as the public broadcasting network of the German state of Hesse. The ensemble is led by Andrés Orozco-Estrada, who served as Principal Conductor between 2014 and 2021. As expected, Amazon.com is currently taking pre-orders for this new release.

One might describe the three selections as forming an arch with the keystone position held by Alberto Ginastera’s Opus 30 violin concerto. The advance release describe this piece as “rarely performed;” and this carries a bit of irony. The composer’s Wikipedia page asserts that he “is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century classical composers of the Americas;” but the violin concerto is far from the only work of his that is rarely encountered, whether in performance or on recording. Ironically, the Ginastera legacy seems to have enjoyed somewhat of a surge of attention during the pandemic, since, prior to lockdown, my last encounter with a performance of his music took place at a One Found Sound concert in December of 2017!

To go back to the advance publicity, that “rarely performed” citation is followed by a description of Opus 30 as “a strikingly original 20^th-century gem.” Personally, I think that hits the nail right on the head. While Ginastera follows the usual three-movement convention, the movements themselves are far from conventional. The title of the first movement is “Cadenza e Studi.” In other words the composer handles the cadenza by having it precede everything else, rather than making it a reflection on previously-played thematic material. It is followed by six études, each dwelling on a specific performance technique. The movement then concludes with a Maestoso coda.

The second movement is an Adagio, which would probably be expected. However, it is scored for 22 soloists; and, in the spirit of “enquiring minds want to know,” I was a bit miffed that Hahn was the only soloist mentioned by name! (Yes, I know nothing about the members of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, but I still believe that all soloists deserved to be acknowledged!)

The final movement consists of two sections performed without a break. The first of these is a Scherzo, which, again, can be expected as the sequel to the Adagio movement; and it is followed by a Perpetuum mobile whose Agitato tempo wraps up the concerto in less than two minutes. All this makes for a highly engaging listening experience, and I sincerely hope that Hahn’s efforts will inspire other violinists to explore the many virtues of Ginastera’s concerto.

The other stones of the arch held in place by that concerto are Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 53 violin concerto in A minor and Pablo de Sarasate’s five movement “Carmen Fantasy.” There is no shortage of fireworks in both of these selections, and Hahn’s interpretations abound with positive energy. Taken as a whole, the album serves up a rather unique overall program; but that uniqueness deserves to influence both listeners and other performers.

Barbirolli on Warner: Concerto 78s

The second category in my survey of Sir John Barbirolli: The Complete Warner Recordings will be the concerto recordings original released as 78 RPM albums. One of my first observations was that I was already familiar with about half of this content. The four concerto performances by pianist Artur Rubinstein are also included in the 94-CD Rubinstein Collection, originally produced by RCA; and there are two CDs of content that had been released, again originally by RCA, in Jascha Heifetz: The Complete Album Collection. The Heifetz recordings cover five concertos and three “encore” selections, Pablo Sarasate’s “Zigeunerweisen” (Gypsy life) and two virtuoso pieces by Camille Saint-Saëns, the Opus 28 coupling of an introduction to a rondo capriccioso and the Opus 83 “Havanaise.” Finally, there is a single concerto recording by Yehudi Menuhin, which can also be found in the Historic Recordings box of the mammoth Warner Classics collection The Menuhin Century.

Among these “reruns,” the only real disappointment is Menuhin playing Robert Schumann’s WoO 23 concerto in D minor. Menuhin never seems to get his head around what makes this concerto tick; and, to be fair, he is far from the only one to find the piece problematic. In those circumstances it is difficult to tell just how well-informed Barbirolli was. However, the recording was made with the New York Philharmonic (then known as the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York), whose relationship with Barbirolli was not the best.

On the other hand there is refreshing diversity in the recordings made by both Rubinstein and Heifetz. Rubinstein’s repertoire begins with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (K. 488 in A major), proceeds through both of Frédéric Chopin’s concertos, and concludes with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 23 (first) concerto in B-flat minor. Rubinstein’s approach to Mozart may not have been “historically informed;” but both his clarity of execution and his give-and-take with Barbirolli are likely to satisfy the attentive listener.

The Heifetz repertoire also begins with Mozart (K. 219, the last of the five concertos written in the key of A major) and also includes Tchaikovsky (Opus 35 in D major). The other concerto composers are Henri Vieuxtemps (Opus 31 in D minor), Henryk Wieniawski (Opus 22 in D minor), and Alexander Glazunov (Opus 82 in A minor). Equally satisfying is the recording of Heifetz’ frequent colleague, Gregor Piatigorsky, playing Schumann’s Opus 129 cello concerto in A minor. Suffice it to say that Piatigorsky is much more at home with Schumann than Menuhin was!

Several other historically significant pianists are included on these recordings: Wilhelm Backhaus (Edvard Grieg’s Opus 16 in A minor), Alfred Cortot (his own edition of Chopin’s Opus 21 concerto in F minor), Edwin Fischer (Mozart’s K. 482 in E-flat major), and Artur Schabel (Mozart’s K. 595 in B-flat major). One could not ask for a better survey of virtuoso piano performances during the first half of the twentieth century. Similarly, the violin soloists include Mischa Elman (Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1042 concerto in E major and Tchaikovsky’s Opus 35) and Fritz Kreisler (Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 61 in D major and Johannes Brahms Opus 77 in D major). Some may think that Kreisler was serving up the usual meat and potatoes; but his CD definitely deserves attentive listening, including the cadenzas of his own composition.

Even with the latest remastering techniques, one is aware of the vintage of all of these recordings. Nevertheless, this collection features a significant array of twentieth-century virtuosi; and, for all of our contemporary perspectives, there is much to be learned from all of them. The remastering allows one to appreciate the overall flow of each selection without having to worry about breaks involved with changing one 78 disc for another!

CMSF Opens Delightfully with James Ehnes

Yesterday afternoon in Herbst Theatre, Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF) launched its 2018 season in San Francisco with a recital by Canadian violinist (now living in Florida) James Ehnes. Pianist Orion Weiss served as his accompanist for a program of three sonatas composed by (in order of performance) Ludwig van Beethoven, Francis Poulenc, and Richard Strauss. Regular readers of this site probably know by now that, when Beethoven had his violin sonatas published, he had the title page describe them as sonatas for pianoforte and violin, a priority that probably reflected his having been the pianist when these pieces were first performed. However, it was clear from yesterday afternoon’s performances that the piano played just as significant a role in the Poulenc and Strauss selections, making the whole affair one in which Ehnes and Weiss could be described as equal partners.

Ehnes begin his program with the first of the three sonatas Beethoven had published as his Opus 12. The sonata was written in 1798 and dedicated to Antonio Salieri, whose relationship with Beethoven seems to have been warmer than that of Joseph Haydn. Nevertheless, as with other early works, there is abundant evidence of Beethoven flexing his capacity for wit, fully aware of what Haydn could do and determined to show that he could do better. This is particularly evident in the interplay of the two instruments, making it clear that the piano part was no mere accompaniment. The chemistry between Ehnes and Weiss assured the listener that they were delighted with the give-and-take opportunities afforded by the score; and, if Beethoven limited his flat-out belly laughs to only a few instances, yesterday’s reading of the score maintained a consistently engaging level of high spirits.

Poulenc was also a composer known for his high spirits, but his violin sonata marked a significant rhetorical shift. The piece was composed between 1942 and 1943, placing it after the invasion of Paris by Adolf Hitler’s German army. It was written in memory of Federico Garcia Lorca, the Spanish poet dedicated to serving the Second Spanish Republic and subsequently executed by Francisco Franco’s Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. Franco’s forces received support from both Hitler and Benito Mussolini; so Poulenc’s dedication was very much a present-day reflection on a past tragedy. He even gave the final movement the tempo marking of Presto tragico.

Taken as a whole, the sonata score presents Poulenc at his most intense. The tempo of the opening movement is Allegro con fuoco, and the fire is definitely a wild one. Since Poulenc was, like Beethoven, a pianist, it was easy to appreciate the collaborative technique through which the intense expressiveness of the music derived from both players. While sitting in Herbst, I realized that, while I knew this sonata from several different recordings, yesterday was a “first contact” experience with an actual performance. That realization quickly turned to a reflection that this piece definitely deserves more attention than it is currently getting, and both Ehnes and Weiss together could not have been better advocates for the music’s virtues.

The intermission was followed by Richard Strauss’ Opus 18 sonata in E-flat major. Ehnes observed that this was the composer’s last major effort before turning from chamber music to orchestral writing and his interest in extended tone poems. That transition may have already been on his mind, since much of the piano part involves full-handed writing suggesting that Strauss may have really wanted to write a concerto, rather than a sonata. Nevertheless, the violin is far from neglected. (Think of all the violin solo work that Strauss wrote after he shifted his attention to those tone poems.) If the rhetorical delivery came off as more than a little rumbling, particularly when compared with both Beethoven and Poulenc, Ehnes knew how to make every passage he delivered thoroughly palatable; and he and Weiss were once again able to find just the right chemistry to guide the attentive listener down Strauss’ paths, even when the gestures of ornamentation tended to go over the top.

Having turned the afternoon into a highly satisfying meal of meat and potatoes, Ehnes served up a dessert course of three encores. He seized audience attention by launching into “Flight of the Bumblebee,” which Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov originally wrote as an orchestral interlude for his opera The Tale of Tsar Sultan. Its popularly led to adaptation through more arrangements than can be enumerated, and Ehnes played the duo for violin and piano prepared by Jascha Heifetz. He then turned from the most popular of warhorses to a virtually known gem, a “Berceuse” for violin and piano by Jean Sibelius. Sibelius himself was a virtuoso violinist; but, aside from his violin concerto, most of what he wrote for violin remains unknown. Ehnes himself expressed regret that it took him so long before encountering this music, and his delivery of the score amounted to an affectionate apologia. He then turned back to the fireworks with a performance of Pablo de Sarasate’s “Zapateado” (Opus 23, Number 2), the sixth of a set of eight transcriptions of Spanish dances published two at a time in four books (Opera 21, 22, 23, and 26). This was another popular Heifetz encore; but this time he did not have to do any arranging, since Sarasate scored the music for violin and piano.

I found it interesting to observe that Ehnes came to his more familiar encore preferences through listening to a recording of Itzhak Perlman. My generation was influenced by a “battle of the record labels” with Heifetz on RCA and Isaac Stern on Columbia. However, the RCA catalog reaches further back in history; and I continue to find the CD transfers of all of that archival material to be a major asset in my collection. (It is also worth noting that Yehudi Menuhin acknowledge the influence of his own collection of Heifetz 78s.) What will be the inspiring listening matter for the next generation of violinists?

The Village Road Trio Brings Genuine Salon Nostalgia to the Hotel Rex

The Salons concerts that San Francisco Performances (SFP) brings to the Hotel Rex on a roughly monthly basis were conceived to be both casual and intimate. They allow attendees to get closer to the performers by virtue of not only a smaller space but also an informal Q&A session with the audience at the conclusion of the event, which usually lasts a bit more than one hour. Every now and then, however, programming comes up with an offering that reflects back on earlier traditions of salon life, particularly in the more decadent metropolitan cultures of Europe.

Last night SFP hosted the Village Road Trio at the Rex, and the program for the evening offered a delightful spirit of nostalgia for that sort of salon life that was in its last stages in Europe about a century ago, combined with approaches to music-making that were decidedly part of the immediate present. The trio brings together musicians of distinctly different backgrounds and talents, concert violinist and composer Alisa Rose, Rob Reich, also a composer, playing a bit of piano and a lot of accordion, and Daniel Fabricant, equally at home with both jazz and the classical repertoire, on bass. The program represented the full breadth of their eclectic interests, including three originals by Reich, two by Rose, an uncanny arrangement of Frédéric Chopin for violin and accordion, and several ventures into twentieth-century modernism.

Most importantly, however, this was music-making that was never strictly shackled by the “charts” of music notation. Even the Chopin selection, the second of the Opus 70 waltzes, which begins in F minor and migrates into A-flat major, was approached with a technique that allowed for spontaneous improvisation from both Rose and Reich. This pushed the sense of nostalgia back almost two centuries, rather than just one, suggesting the sort of immediacy that Chopin himself probably engaged when playing in the setting of a Paris salon. Both musicians had the courage to play with the music, rather than just play it; and they had the chops to bring compelling artfulness to their sense of play.

Such immediacy can also have its wild side. This was clearly evident in the violin-accordion-bass arrangements of the two selections by Béla Bartók, the set of six Romanian folk dances and the first movement of that composer’s first rhapsody, composed for accompanied violin. These interpretations reflected the uninhibited rhetorics of the source material that Bartók had collected with his colleague Zoltán Kodály. However, even wilder was the concluding account of Pablo de Sarasate’s Opus 20 “Zigeunerwiesen” (gypsy airs). Sarasate clearly wrote this for his own exhibitionistic virtuosity on the violin, but it quickly migrated to become an encore selection by almost every other violinist seeking to dazzle his/her audience. No doubt Fritz Kreisler knew how to milk every ounce of gemütlichkeit out of Sarasate’s score pages, and his spontaneity was probably enhanced by his tendency to down several beers and a bottle of wine along with a full-course dinner prior to heading off to the concert hall. The Village Road players were clearly less inebriated last night, but they were not afraid to be impetuous in the sense of play they brought to their own unique approach to Sarasate.

The original works on the program may not have been quite as wild, but they were still delightfully imaginative. Rose’s “Texas Spaghetti” (composed during a long wait at the Austin airport) was a frolicking hodgepodge of eclecticism, while her “Slidey Waltz” served up a generous portion of portamento with sly affection. Reich’s pieces were a bit more on the lyric side, but his imaginative piano work summoned up memories of a similar rhetoric of quiet lyricism that one used to find in the improvisations of Bill Evans. The innovative qualities of all of these pieces made it clear that there is still room for a salon spirit in contemporary practices.

The Spirit of the Schubertiad

I found it interesting that both Joshua Kosman (in the San Francisco Chronicle) and I (on Examiner.com) both tended to treat Julia Fischer's performance of Franz Schubert's D. 438 rondo as somewhat of an afterthought in the context of the rest of the evening. Having focused on those contributions to the program that had drawn on the final year of Schubert's life, I concluded with the following text:

Finally, Schubert was represented by more than his final year. Julia Fischer performed his 1816 rondo in A major for violin and strings (D. 438). This is more "traditional" Schubert; and grace was the key operative element in Fisher's performance. To this end she was well supported by Thomas' decision to conduct a highly-reduced string ensemble. The positive energy between Fisher and this group was particularly emphasized by her attention equally divided between Thomas on the podium and Alexander Barantschik in the concertmaster's chair. A similar spirit of intimacy emerged in the second rondo that Thomas performed with Bronfman in the pre-concert recital, D. 608 in D major from 1818.

Having posted my own account, I could then take Kosman's final paragraph strictly on its own terms:

The evening's only anomaly came at the beginning, with a clear, crisp and unmemorable account of Schubert's Rondo in A for Violin and Strings. If there is anything in this piece aside from tuneful charm - anything that would have connected it to the evening's overarching themes - Thomas and violinist Julia Fischer seemed to have mislaid it.

There was clearly a disagreement here; but it was a "surface structure" disagreement seemed based on a shared "deep structure" view of the priorities of the overall program for the evening.

I found myself thinking about this comparison this morning while reading the following text from Yehudi Menuhin's memoir, Unfinished Journey:

Perhaps what we have lost is the courage to appreciate the violin at something less than its most exalted. I don't view the eclipse of salon music with satisfaction, nor rejoice in the discrediting of the style which purveyed it. Not long ago I played at Pamplona, Sarasate's native town in northwest Spain, and seeing the honor in which he was held—squares, buildings, institutions bore his name—I concluded that here was sufficient commitment to light-heartedness to launch a Concours Sarasate, directed to presenting the violin as a salon instrument, in contrast to the general run of existing concours, which increasingly stress size, in solidity of works, big tone, huge—rather than elegant—technique.

I suspect this passage leapt out at me because, regardless of my personal feelings about salon music, Pablo de Sarasate, or Menuhin, his use of "elegant" came close to what I was trying to get at in invoking the noun "grace." From this point of view, I could then shift my attention from the salon of Sarasate's day to the spirit of the Schubertiad, which had recently been invoked so effectively in a concert that Paul Hersh had arranged at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I could then reckon that, while a string orchestra would probably not fit in any setting for a Schubertiad, there were probably several middle-class "domestic" spaces that could accommodate that "highly-reduced" ensemble that had performed at Davies. Thus, like the pre-concert offerings of four-hand piano rondos, Fischer's offering was best suited for the elegant (or graceful, if you prefer) setting of the Schubertiad.

Clearly, the physical setting of Davies Symphony Hall did little to evoke the spirit of such Schubertiads; but the same could be said of the Recital Hall at the Conservatory, in which Hersh had presented his offering. In both settings we, as audience, had to assume some level of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief." Since I was sitting just off the aisle three rows from the edge of the stage, I did not find this particularly difficult. For most of the Davies audience, however, it could easily have been more problematic!