SFCM: Engaging Pairing of Mozart and Beethoven

Last night the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) presented this month’s installment of Chamber Music Tuesday in the Barbro Osher Recital Hall. The program could have been entitled “The Bread and Butter of the First Viennese School,” since it presented representative accounts of that genre first by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and then by Ludwig van Beethoven. The only participating faculty member was pianist Julio Elizalde, who contributed to the Beethoven selection.

Violinist Suni Norman, cellist William Laney, and pianist Julio Elizalde (screen shot from last night’s streamed performance)

That selection was the Opus 97 “Archduke” piano trio in B-flat major. Elizalde accompanied violinist Suni Norman and cellist William Laney. Some readers may recall that Laney performed in last month’s Chamber Music Tuesday, playing performing Bedřich Smetana’s Opus 15 (first) piano trio with guest artist Wonhee Bae on violin and Helen Wu at the piano. Last night’s shift in style was a decidedly distinctive one, but it made a good case for Laney’s versatility.

Most important was that all three of the performers recognized the playfulness in Beethoven’s rhetoric which surfaces in all of the movements except for the Andante cantabile. This is performed after the Scherzo, requiring a rather abrupt shift in dispositions. The shift then swings back for the final movement, whose coda clearly demonstrates what happens when Beethoven’s playfulness turns raucous. The overall result was a thoroughly engaging journey through the trio’s three movements reminding listeners that those familiar artistic depictions of a scowling Beethoven were not giving an accurate account of the breadth of the composer’s expressiveness.

Violinist Daniel Dastoor and pianist Helen Wu (screen shot from last night’s streamed performance)

There were also many signs of playfulness in the Mozart sonata with pianist Helen Wu accompanying violinist Daniel Dastoor. (Wu was the pianist in last month’s Smetana selection.) I was reminded of how few encounters with Mozart I have experienced in the chamber music performances I have attended. I suspect that many audiences prefer their Mozart to be more dramatic, but that is unfair to the breadth of dispositions one encounters in his catalog. Personally, I have tried to seek out Mozart chamber music that goes beyond his string quartets; and I always find myself rewarded by what I have discovered.