Yesterday afternoon at Old First Presbyterian Church, Old First Concerts hosted the latest program prepared by the Ives Collective. This is basically a “pickup” chamber music group managed by cellist Stephen Harrison and Susan Freier, who plays both violin and viola. They then recruit other musicians based on the selections planned for the program.
Yesterday’s program was devoted entirely to twentieth-century music. However, the works came from different periods in the lives of their respective composers. Benjamin Britten was nineteen years old when he composed his Opus 2 “Phantasy” quartet for oboe and string trio. Rebecca Clarke’s piano trio was composed about a decade earlier, but she was in her mid-thirties at that time. Only a couple of years earlier, Edward Elgar composed his piano quintet in A minor, when he was in his early sixties.
I have to confess that the Elgar quintet had the strongest pull on my attention for personal reasons. Back when we were living in Los Angeles, my wife and I took a road-trip up the Pacific Coast to Santa Maria, which included a detour, because I wanted her to see Solvang. We had no real plan for what we would do in Santa Maria, but it turned out that the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts was hosting a chamber music performance. I cannot remember anything about the performers; but that event provided my “first contact” with the Elgar quintet. I was hooked from the darkness of the opening gesture, and my attention never waned over the course of the work’s three movements.
The fact is that, prior to that evening, I had no idea that Elgar had composed any chamber music. In fact, he is known for only three works in that genre, all of which were composed after the end of World War I. Given that Elgar had been subject to depression before that war, there is a sense that the quintet provided him with a means to work through his latest bout with this malady. The result might almost be called “a long night’s journey into day,” with the Allegro of the final movement finally allowing the composer to raise his spirits.
For yesterday afternoon’s account, Freier took the second violin part, performing with first violinist Jeremy Preston. Harrison’s cello work was paired with Melissa Matson on viola. The piano was played by Keisuke Nakagoshi. All five of the players clearly appreciated that Elgar had crafted an emotional roller coaster, but they could not have done a better job in taking command of all of the music’s rhetorical twists and turns. The program book included the following sentence by Dr. Derek Katz:
George Bernard Shaw felt the Piano Quintet was in the same vein as Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, and was the finest thing of that sort since Beethoven’s Overture.
I am no great fan of Shaw’s writings about music, but Elgar’s quintet needs all of the boosting it can get. I should not have to measure the temporal distances of my encounters with this music in decades!
This past Friday this site wrote about how Rebecca Clarke’s name was mistakenly assumed to be a pseudonym for Ernest Bloch when it was entered in a 1919 competition sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Clarke’s identity was finally established, but she still placed second behind Bloch when the awards were announced. At the next competition in 1921, Clarke’s piano trio again placed second.
In introducing this trio yesterday afternoon, Harrison suggested that one could detect passages reminiscent of Bloch’s music. I am not sure I agree. As those who read Friday’s article know, I have been more than happy to take Clarke’s music on its own terms.
Listening to the piano trio yesterday afternoon was no exception. Freier played violin for this selection, joined by Harrison and Nakagoshi. This was my “first contact” with Clarke’s trio in performance; and I definitely hope that my second opportunity comes sooner, rather than later.
Some readers may recall that the Britten centennial year (2013) was celebrated with London releasing its recordings of the composer’s complete works. Unless I am mistaken, that was my “first contact” with his Opus 2. Like Clarke’s trio, this piece was entered in a competition, this time funded by Walter Willson Cobbett.
Both Britten and his teacher, Frank Bridge, had submitted works to Cobbett’s competitions. Curiously, the program notes say nothing about whether either of them received any awards. What is cited is Britten’s skill in developing a relatively short single-movement composition that follows the usual four-movement structure. The music may lack the attention given to the more mature Britten compositions; but it was definitely given an engaging reading yesterday afternoon with Kyle Bruckmann taking the oboe part, joined by Preston on violin and Freier on viola.
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