Uneven Afternoon of Chamber Music at Davies

I tend to look forward to the Sunday afternoons of chamber music performed in Davies Symphony Hall by members of the San Francisco Symphony. (SFS) Sadly, yesterday’s offering was more than a little uneven. Nevertheless, the second half of the program made the visit more than worth the while. The was devoted entirely to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 493, his second piano quartet composed in the key of E-flat major, a somewhat upbeat complement to its predecessor, the K. 478 piano quartet in G minor. Pianist Yuhsin Galaxy Su performed with SFS musicians Jessie Fellows on violin, violist Katie Kadarauch, and Anne Richardson on cello. All four of them delivered a solid account of the many different aspects of Mozart’s rhetoric that one encounters over the course of the quartet’s three movements. (The program book listed four, none of which represented accurately the tempo of any of movements.)

The Mozart quartet was complemented in the first half of the program by an early quartet for the same instruments composed by Gustav Mahler. The composer was just beginning to exercise his talents as a composer when he wrote his single-movement piano quartet in A minor his mid-teens. (He was finishing his first year at the Vienna Conservatory at that time.) For this selection the pianist was Samantha Cho, joined by violinist Florin Parvulescu, Yun Jie Liu on viola, and cellist David Goldblatt. It was first performed in 1876 (not in the program book’s 1866, when the composer would have been about ten years old); and Mahler himself performed the piano part when the work was first performed. This music receives relatively little attention, but it unfolds a rhetoric that anticipates the composer’s more mature efforts. One could appreciate that foreshadowing in yesterday’s account of this seldom-performed score.

Mahler and Mozart were separated by a trio performance of music by Dmitri Shostakovich with Su on piano performing with flutist Yubeen Kim and Jeein Kim on violin. This was identified only as “Five Pieces,” arranged in 1970 by Levon Atovmyan, best known for his arrangements of Shostakovich’s music for film scores. Most likely, this was one of the composer’s student efforts; and the concluding Polka movement showed promising signs of his capacity for wit.

Composer Jeremiah Siochi (photograph courtesy of SFS)

The program began with the world premiere performance of “Pelagic Poem” by Jeremiah Siochi, a duo for harp and vibraphone. He composed it for his sister, SFS harpist Katherine Siochi, who performed it with percussionist Jacob Nissly. The title refers to a zone of open ocean, which apparently attracts flocks of birds. This was very much a personal undertaking, composed for a wedding; and, as a listener that was not personally involved, I fear that it overstayed its welcome. Nevertheless, there was much to enjoy in the interplay of Nissly’s vibraphone work with Siochi’s performance on harp.