Anthony McGill Returns for Another Quintet Gig

Clarinetist Anthony McGill (photograph by Martin Romero, courtesy of SFP)

Last night clarinetist Anthony McGill returned to Herbst Theatre for another recital presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP). He had made his SFP debut in November of 2021 with a thoroughly engaging account of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Opus 10 clarinet quintet in F-sharp minor, which he performed with the Catalyst Quartet of violinists Karla Donehew Perez and Abi Fayette, violist Paul Laraia, and cellist Karlos Rodriguez. The second half of last night’s program was another quintet performance, this time with the Pacifica Quartet of violinists Simin Ganatra and Austin Hartman, Mark Holloway on viola, and cellist Brandon Vamos. The selection was Johannes Brahms’ Opus 115 quintet in B minor, which McGill had recorded with an earlier generation of that ensemble for a 2014 release on Cedille Records.

As always, the performance experience rose above the limitations of recordings. The “back story” is a familiar one. By the age of 57 in 1890, Brahms felt it was time to “hang up his spurs.” However, he happened to listen to clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld performing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 581 clarinet quintet in A major and one of Carl Maria von Weber’s clarinet concertos. It would be fair to say that Brahms found his own ways to advance beyond Mozart. I was particularly struck by the way in which he had the strings muted for the second (Adagio) movement, providing yet another instance of Brahms’ capacity for poignancy. In a similar vein, he shifted attention to the low strings in the Presto trio section of the third movement. For the final movement, he then turned to one of his favorite genres of variations on a theme. All of these details, and many others, were easily recognized while listening to the exquisite chemistry behind McGill’s performance with Pacifica.

Prior to the intermission, they played a more recent quintet, the three-movement “High Sierra Sonata” by Ben Shirley (an alumnus of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music). Shirley was far from the first to be inspired by “natural surroundings;” and he will probably be far from the last! Whatever the impact of the setting may have been, however, the music itself reminded me of my composition teacher’s favorite derogatory assessment: “noodling.” While the composition itself was relatively short, it still came across as too long for my own tastes!

Pacifica began the program with what is probably Antonín Dvořák’s best-known string quartet, his Opus 96, given the title “American Quartet.” This was the first piece he composed after his Opus 95, the symphony in E minor, which he entitled “From the New World.” Both of these pieces reflect the composer’s joys during his visit to our country at the end of the nineteenth century. For all of the quartet’s popularity, Pacifica found its own expressive paths to bring freshness to all four of the movements. This could not have provided a better way to get the audience to sit up and take notice, and their response at the conclusion was graciously rewarding.

Sadly, we shall now have to wait until next year for SFP’s next offering!