Four Centuries of Chamber Music at Davies

1839 portrait of Robert Schumann by Josef Kriehuber (public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

Yesterday afternoon Davies Symphony Hall hosted the first of the series of six chamber music recitals to be performed by the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony. This was a “four centuries” program, accounting for the eighteenth (the K. 452 quintet for piano and winds by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), nineteenth (Robert Schumann’s Opus 47 piano quartet in E-flat major), twentieth (Florent Schmitt’s Opus 85, entitled “Sonatine en trio”), and twenty-first (“Café Damas,” completed by Kinan Azmeh in 2018). Pianist Julio Elizalde joined the SFS musicians for the Mozart and Schumann selections, and the pianist for the Schmitt offering was Gwendolyn Mok.

The Mozart and Schumann works were the major offerings, concluding each half of the program. This made for an engaging balance of winds and strings. The Mozart performers were James Button on oboe, clarinetist Matthew Griffith, Jessica Valeri on horn, and bassoonist Justin Cummings. The blending of their sonorities was consistently engaging, making it clear that every one of them knew how to fit into the context provided by the others. As a former clarinetist, I have long had a fondness for K. 452 and could not have been more satisfied with yesterday afternoon’s account.

The string players joining Elizalde for the Schumann quartet were violinist Wyatt Underhill, Jonathan Vinocour on viola, and cellist Sébastien Gingras. Opus 47 tends to be overshadowed by the Opus 44 piano quintet (both composed in the “chamber music year” of 1842). Unless I am mistaken, any past encounters with Opus 47 were through recordings; so I was glad to listen to finally it in recital. The chemistry of the four performers could not have been better, providing a full and rich account of the breadth of Schumann’s rhetorical dispositions.

The more recent works were “first contact” experiences for me. Schmitt was the more familiar composer, but I have had few opportunities to listen to his work, even on recordings. Opus 85 was scored for flute (Blair Francis Paponiu), clarinet (Matthew Griffith), and piano, with both wind instruments evoking the god Pan. Paponiu has become a “regular” in these chamber music offerings, having performed earlier this year in January and April; and I find that I have been enjoying my encounters with that instrument in chamber music settings.

Azmeh provided his own comment in the program book to introduce his music:

This work is inspired by the idea of an imaginary traditional house band in a 1960s café in Damascus, a band that has not changed personnel nor location for decades and continues to play in spite of it all.

Having been in a similar setting in Amman, I could appreciate the composer’s intentions. The “band” in this case consisted of a violin (Jessie Fellows), a viola (Katarzyna Bryla), and bass (Orion Miller). I had no trouble getting into the spirit of the music with my own personal tinges of nostalgia; and the casual rhetoric of the score provided just the right “warm up” for the “heavier” selections that would follow.