The latest concert in the 2022–23 Chamber Music Series presented in Davies Symphony Hall by the San Francisco Symphony took place yesterday afternoon. The program consisted of a “core” of two world premiere performances framed by two more traditional string quartets, opening with the first of Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 44 quartets, composed in the key of D major, and concluding with Maurice Ravel’s only string quartet. Both premieres involved less familiar instrumentation in the chamber music repertoire.
The first of these was a quintet for a brass ensemble consisting of two trumpets (Aaron Schuman and Guy Piddington), horn (Mark Almond), trombone (Timothy Higgins), and tuba (Jeffrey Anderson). This was Higgins’ second composition for this instrumentation. It consisted of three movements: Sonata, Scherzo, and Pastorale. The music displayed an engaging command of a wide spectrum of sonorities, which should not surprise anyone familiar with the arrangements he prepared for the Gabrieli album recorded by the National Brass Ensemble. On the other hand his thematic inventiveness and thoroughly engaging rhythms are a far cry from the traditional rhetoric of Giovanni Gabrieli, and yesterday’s performance made for a delightful journey of discovery.
The second world premiere marked the latest performance by the duo of cellist Amos Yang and Charles Chandler on bass. Readers may recall that, during the pandemic, this duo contributed three video performances to the SFSymphony+ Web site. One of those videos was the performance of “Synchronicity” by Andrés Martín; and yesterday the duo played his latest work for them, entitled “Beyond Self.”
The composer described this piece as “a psychic exploration.” Over the course of a relatively brief duration, the music explored a prodigious spectrum of emotional dispositions without ever feeling as if the composer was checking off a laundry list. The intensity of the listening experience was then complemented by a more refreshing (and brief) offering, “La Feria de San Telmo,” the third of the three pieces that Martín had collected under the title Tres Tangos.
The Mendelssohn quartet brought an energetically refreshing start to the entire program. The performers were violinists Kelly Leon-Pearce and John Chisholm, violist Gina Cooper, and David Goldblatt on cello. There are any number of subtly expressive twists and turns in this music, and all four performers clearly knew how to keep the spirit consistently engaging. That included the “punch line” of the Presto con brio (fourth) movement, serving up an energetic finale even though the editors of the program book had forgotten to include it in the movement listing!
The Ravel quartet players were violinists Dan Carlson and Chen Zhao, violist Jonathan Vinocour, and Yang returning on cello. The spectrum of dispositions was both broader and subtler than the movements encountered in the Mendelssohn offering. However, what consistently draws me back to this quartet is the attentive inventiveness brought to the instrumental sonorities. Mendelssohn could engage the listener with a refreshing take on familiar architecture. Ravel, on the other, raised timbre to the same level as counterpoint and harmony; and yesterday’s players knew just how to guide the attentive listener on a journey in which the sounds themselves were just as significant and the marks on paper.
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