SFS Brings Low Comedy to Chamber Music

Yesterday afternoon in Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco Symphony (SFS) presented the first Sunday afternoon program in the 2022–23 Chamber Music Series. This was a “three centuries” program with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on the eighteenth-century side and Lera Auerbach representing the current century. Claude Debussy occupied the middle of this timeline with the Opus 10 string quartet in G minor, which he completed in 1893.

The most memorable offering was the only work to be performed after the intermission. This was Mozart’s K. 522 divertimento for two horns and string quartet entitled “A Musical Joke.” Thanks to Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, we now all know that Mozart could be quite prankish, if not downright bratty. One way of describing K. 522 is as a portrait of amateur musicians whose enthusiasm vastly outweighs competence (although the current Grove suggests that Mozart had it in for incompetent composers, rather than players).

Over the course of four movements, K. 522 practically revels in creating a rogue’s gallery of ineptitudes. However, yesterday’s performers decided to dial the comedy up to eleven. Jessie Fellows led as first violin, joined by second violinist Chen Zhao, violist Katie Kadarauch, Mark Wright on bass, and horns played by Jessica Valeri and Daniel Hawkins. Collectively they decided that the humor of the performance could be enhanced with a bit of staging, beginning with all of them decked in powered wigs and eighteenth-century finery.

While, for the most part, the music itself accounts for all the jokes Mozart wished to unfold, yesterday’s performance served up a generous share of physical comedy to emphasize many of the musical blunders. Since Fellows and Kadarauch were closest to the audience, they summoned up their own lexicon of comic gestures and postures to reinforce their playing. Most of this involved aggressive execution of passages best left in the background.

Then there were the horns. As is often the case, the Adagio cantabile movement was scored only for the strings. As often seems to be  the case, there is a tendency for Adagio movements to go on forever. So Valeri and Hawkins left their seats and retired to a small table on the left side of the stage which sported a chessboard and two demitasse cups. The performance thus became a two-ring circus with the quartet slogging its way through the Adagio while Valeri and Hawkins enjoyed their coffee (followed by wine) and played with their chess pieces. (It would be unfair to the chess community to say that they were actually playing chess.)

This was far from my first encounter with K. 522. However, this was the first time I suspected that Mozart had injected some of his earlier themes into the score. More specifically, the final Presto movement seems to include a citation of the “Alleluja” theme from the K. 165 Exsultate, jubilate motet. He even makes this reference a second time for those that did not catch it on the first round.

The first half of the program was more serious but just as engaging. The Debussy quartet was performed by violinists Dan Carlson and Florin Parvulescu, violist Katarzyna Bryla-Weiss, and cellist Amos Yang. There were some intonation problems that required stopping and beginning from the start a second time. However, once that matter was settled, the account could not have been more engaging. I was particularly struck by the pizzicato work in the second movement, whose sonorities in performance were far richer than any I had encountered on a recording.

The Auerbach offering was her second piano trio, performed by violinist David Chernyavsky, cellist Sébastien Gingras, and pianist Asya Gulua. This particular trio was given a somewhat lengthy title: “Triptych—This Mirror Has Three Faces.” It is structured in five movements, which depict the panels of a triptych altarpiece and the “changes in view” as the panels are unfolded. The composition concludes with a “Folding Postlude,” whose thematic material, unless I am mistaken, reflects back on her twelfth prelude for cello and piano.

It has been far too long since I have encountered Auerbach’s music. I had to search my own archives to discover that I had previously written about a recording of her two piano trios in April of 2018! Listening to this trio again reminded me of her aggressive rhetoric with occasional twists of irony. She used to bring engaging recital content to San Francisco Performances programs; and, now that we have gotten past the worst of the pandemic, I would be only too happy to see her return to San Francisco.