BSO Photo

Hahn’s violin and Prokofiev’s concerto matched up magically. Throughout the unusual and seductive three-movement work, she somehow summoned spacious atmospheres possessed by the apposite momentum. Onstage, her enchantment with the 1916-17 oeuvre was undeniably verified. The recently-named Gramophone magazine’s Artist of the Year and two-time Grammy Award-winning soloist danced as she played, with sharp-edged, reveling choreography.

An expansive, ethereal world issued forth in the final passages of the Andantino. Here, finally, the orchestra settled in—or maybe just started catching on—as they seemed quiet and not quite there through most of this first movement. Scherzo: Vivacissimo, the short spirited second movement, whizzed and whooshed with soloist pressing orchestra on. Here, Hahn allowed a totally confident virtuosity to be superseded by a deep resonance with the Russian’s maverick score.

At one point, during an orchestral passage without her, she turned and nodded to the first violins. Later, Hahn, in a similar way, recognized other sections of the orchestra subtly but convincingly. And at one point, she even looked out into the audience, wanting to make still further contact. Such was the case, I would believe, when she bent over, and then suddenly sprang upright, signaling to the audience a single pizzicato note, drawing complete attention to her plucking one single note not with her right hand, which we would naturally follow, but rather with her left hand.

Splendacious violinism, poise and shining youth persisted all the way into the sustained trills toward the close of the Moderato—Allegro moderato the last movement from Prokofiev’s own fairly youthful concerto statement (he was born in 1891).

Hahn’s slow and contrapuntal Bach indulged in refinement. But it was her absolute attention to making the violin speak in two distinct voices that for a stretch of time achieved spellbinding dialogue.

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos led the BSO in a brilliantly colored “Scheherazade,” Symphonic Suite, opus 35 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Tremolos and pizzicatos from the strings created hyper-frenzy to hyper-delicacy. Malcolm Lowe projected his violin solos on the tight side. Cellist Martha Babcock took on arpeggios and melodic motives with grace and warmth. Improvised sounding passages from woodwinds delightfully freed the many predictable flourishes in the suite, morphing them into ear-catching motives.

Steven Ledbetter’s informative program notes were a great help in guiding us through what otherwise might have been a maze of scenarios based on the tales from the Thousand and One Nights. He helped us understand that in the end the composer would be happy if the listener enjoyed his “piece as symphonic music…an oriental narrative.” The exquisite orchestration and realization held attention. Drama it was not. Rather, a high level of orchestral display. In the final climax, brasses were allowed to overpower the strings—and others. Several obvious fluffed entries surprised.

Opening the concert with two orchestrations by the conductor and one by Enrique Fernández Arbós of piano pieces by Isaac Albéniz seemed at first to be a stroke of programming inventiveness. The music never lifted off, one reason being that all three selections were on the slow side and just did not work that well together as a group. Hearing the gorgeous harp sound so clearly in all of these pieces was one of the truly refreshing features of the concert.

The same concert will be given again Friday, March 12, 1:30 pm, Saturday, March 13, 8 pm, and Tuesday, March 16, 8pm.

David Patterson, Professor of Music and Chairman of the Department at U. Mass Boston for the past 15 years, was recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award in Teaching and the Chancellor’s Distinction in Teaching Award. Also a composer, he lives in Watertown.

Cellist Sebastian Baverstam; Japanese Counsul General, Masaru Tsujiww; and Benjamin Zander (NEC Photo)

English composer Benjamin Britten lived in New York from 1939 to 1942. He returned home as a conscientious objector, a rough row to hoe at that time. His life-long pacifism found small acceptance in the embattled wartime UK. Isolated England feared military engulfment and civil destruction. The terrible devastation of Europe’s “war to end all wars” was a mere 22 years in the past. In Brooklyn Heights, in 1940, through the mediation of his government, the 26-year-old Britten accepted a commission from Japan to write a festive work to mark the 2600^th anniversary of the Japanese Empire. Japan was itself engaged in the middle years of its extensive war in China. Britten, young and undeflectably principled, submitted a compact, emotionally charged Sinfonia da Requiem, whose three movements bore solemn titles from the Requiem Mass. On the score’s arrival in Japan, that nation’s then hyper-acute sensibilities found the overtly Christian section labels insulting. It was felt that such a work could in no way celebrate the Emperor, the incarnate symbol of national unity and the clerical head of his island empire’s Shinto religion. The foreign ministry in Tokyo fired off to the foreign office in London a stern official protest, rejecting the score. John Barbirolli and the New York Philharmonic premiered the work, Britten’s Op. 20, on 29 March 1941. Japan, England, and the US were still at peace. In 1956 the Sinfonia da Requiem was at last heard in Japan, with the composer conducting the NHK Symphony, and it has been performed there numerous times since.

On entering the hall, Benjamin Zander announced from the stage that he, the NEC Philharmonia, and the government of Japan would undertake a final healing of this seven-decade cultural and political rift between two nations that have long been firm and cordial allies. As the applause following the intensely charged performance rolled on, Mr. Zander collected a copy of the Britten score from the podium and invited Masaru Tsuji, the Japanese Consul General in Boston, to step forward. Mr. Tsuji accepted the score on behalf of his nation, then spoke briefly of the appropriateness of this musical occasion to further his people’s desire to knit strong ties among friends. (For the text of Mr. Zander’s letter of invitation to Mr. Tsuji, please see the BMInt Staff article, “Japan to Accept Britten Score, 70 Years after its Commission. “)

In modern string configuration — left-to-right: violins 1, violins 2, violas, violincellos, contrabass — the orchestra stormed into the first section, Lacrymosa (Andante ben misurato). They established a high-energy climate in which insistent, short rhythmic motifs have much of the say, handed from string groups to brass to winds, commented upon noisily by the sizable percussion battery and its allied piano part. Melodic development is not the point; the tight metrical motifs, rising and tumbling in both pitch and power, soon threw out swelling laments and the direct emotional punches of orchestrated wails. As the evocations of pain swelled, the acid brass commentary strove for attention. Brief, relenting bars ceded, attacca, to the central death’s dance, Britten’s yet more intent Dies iræ (Allegro con fuoco). Every member of the band played with utter conviction and, when urged by the conductor to deliver their all, ferocity. This was electric musicianship, a statement of such seriousness of approach and commitment that the third section, Requiem æternam (Andante molto tranquillo) retained the impetus and intensity of the preceding quarter of an hour of voltage. Even as plangent decibels gave way to an ashen, drained stasis, recurrences of the despairing howls jostled, unsettled, against a disparate new seeking after renewal and comfort. Then, listeners and players still internally thrumming with the effect of all this, it just ended.

Now and again, this publication has been a platform for somewhat divergent commentaries, as side remarks or in lengthier writings, on what is pleasurably audible in halls, what comes through clearly, and what factors may account for acoustic difficulties. The second half of this concert put Jordan Hall, as a symphonic venue, to test by permitting young conservatory musicians and the experienced audience to take in and evaluate the great changes wrought by moving the string divisions and some other instrumental groups around. A standard US orchestral layout for the Britten favored massed, fairly centered sound at almost all dynamic levels, while the late Romantic Germanic set-up adopted for the vast Bruckner Symphony No. 5 in Bb (original version, 1875-76; ed. 1939 by Robert Haas; with a later tuba part) milked the antiphonal nature of the divisi violins, contrasted violins 1 to the immediately adjacent celli and basses, and placed the violas where they spoke as much up as out, to fine effect. From their house right placement on the stage, the violins 2 section projected a veiled, dusky timbral sheen in any but ff and greater passages, delivering attention-getting power in section solo lines. Where the Britten had presented a concentrated, unified wall of sound, especially in fuller passages, the Bruckner called effectively upon the revelatory geography of its component instrumental sections to give listeners a transparent, sonically comprehensible overview of all the strands, nearly all the time. The high, hard-surfaced stage house and its hall served both of these sonic æsthetics effectively, communicating their differences while always supporting ensemble sound.

The effect of the orchestra’s exceptionally spaciously and majestically bowed Adagio opening of the first movement, Introduction (Adagio – Allegro), was curiously negated when Mr. Zander’s uneasily quick and rhythmically uncommitted Allegro toppled what had begun as an almost religious firmament of possibilities. The tempi were unrelated, a curious gesture with which to get a massive form like the Fifth underway. I should add, just to house all quibbles in one paragraph, that the bumptious, one could say raucous nature of the bold outer Scherzo wrapping insisted on frequent, brutal distensions of the sweet, Ländler-like Trio, often with such powerful distortion of forward motion and the usual relief brought by a Trio, that the movement became disjointed. The Zander approach to this was, to my ear, just that much too manic. The hyper-dramatic transitions side-swiped the ripe, difficult rhetoric of the movement. I should note, though, that I have never succeeded in coming to terms with the organization of this one movement among all the symphonies, which no doubt reveals a large gap in my understanding of what Bruckner, that marvelously odd genius, was about. Even the beautifully written characterizations of the composer’s aims by modern Brucknerians fail to convince me of this movement’s effectiveness in the hands of most conductors.

This was still an evening to remember with pleasure, and certainly with admiration for what Benjamin Zander and his brilliant, deeply committed NEC band brought off in handing listeners so eminently worthwhile an experience. Both on the part of the conductor, a Grammy nominee for his recent release of this same work, and on the part of sections and some decidedly contract-worthy wind soli, this was deeply enjoyable, moving Bruckner playing. Among the excellent winds, Pamela Daniels, first flute, and  first oboist Amanda Hardy stood out. They held aloft their extended, exposed, and pace-critical parts, especially in the second movement, Adagio (Sehr langsam). Amanda Hardy earned a warm reception for her faultless double-reed presence in and among the other complex lines of this movement and in the difficult Scherzo. It is uncommon to hear oboe tone this poised, so wonderfully fat (praise!), and sweet in North American orchestras, as we’ve almost entirely gone over to a hard, thin, edgy oboe sound that, yes, cuts, but simply cannot blend, even with the clarinets.

With the blessing (yon lovely Irish phrase), December 7 will eventually be just another twelfth-month day. Reaching out, publicly and personally, as Benjamin Zander did in extending an inviting hand to a cultured individual who happens to be his government’s voice in Boston, is one of the ways this will happen.

Editor’s note: Bill Carragan, whose comments follow, undertook what some feel is the most successful completion of the Bruckner Ninth Symphony, which has been performed and recorded a number of times. His Bruckner scholarship is thorough, constantly aware of the not always linear historical evolutions in the field, and typified by a score-based concern for the composer’s original and, inevitably, reconsidered intentions. These remarks have been added to this review at the request of the author.

“The version Ben used is that of 1878. An earlier 1876 version can only be teased out of the sources here and there, notably for the last 150 or so measures, but not for the symphony as a whole. That is because there is only one composition score, and the many over-writings in it cannot be correlated without much conjecture. Go to <www.abruckner.com> and read the essay I wrote on the Fifth to help Ben prepare for his Philharmonia recording.

The flute and oboe were lovely, and the strings, in the only legitimate seating for an orchestra, were the soul of transparency. When I was a child, all orchestras were seated with the second violins on the right. Putting the cellos on the right is cowardly, a concession to string-quartet seating, where the violins work together quite differently from what they do in the orchestra. There is no justification except fear of failure for always placing the cellos on the right. Audiophiles, especially, should resist a scheme where all the treble sound comes from the left channel and all the bass from the right.

You and I agreed on the positive aspects, not so much on the negative ones. The performance itself stemmed from a very deep understanding by Ben of the layered tempos, more complex and demanding than in any other Bruckner symphony. Nonetheless, the performance was most spontaneous and full of surprising excitement and vigor, animated perhaps by a certain sense of destiny coming from the gracious presence of the Japanese Consul General and the very heartwarming act of reconciliation by all concerned. With respect to your criticisms, the trio was actually very steady, and the violent tempo changes in the scherzo, which are present in full detail in the source, were carried out with much more integrity and success than is usually encountered. As for the beginning of the allegro, he let it grow directly from the preceding adagio, then moved it up to the regular tempo by the time of the loud statement. This was done so smoothly that I could not have any complaint.”

Veteran recording engineer Christopher Greenleaf collaborates with chamber, early, and keyboard musicians in natural acoustic venues on both sides of the Atlantic. He is active as a writer, translator, photographer, and acoustic consultant.

Benjamin Zander, guest conductor of the NEC Philharmonia, notes, “We are deeply moved by Britten’s composition and by the grace of Japan’s esteemed diplomatic representative in receiving the score 70 years after the event.”

Dear Mr Tsuji,

I received your message through your assistant, Ms Hansen and I wish to reply with great respect and affection for a new friend.

I think I have managed to unravel the story of the Britten work.

It seems clear that the British Consul in Tokyo informed Benjamin Britten that the Japanese Consulate had received the score and paid the commission, but was not willing to accept or perform the work, since it was not considered suitable for the occasion.  The committee stated ”it did not express felicitations for the 2,600th anniversary of our country.” and was “purely a religious music of a Christian nature.”

Of course, the reaction of the Japanese was perfectly understandable.  They had asked a number of prominent Western composers to submit compositions for the celebration of an important anniversary of their country.  It was  reasonable to expect that the pieces would be joyful and uplifting.  It also was tactless of Britten to use Christian titles when he was writing a piece for a country that was not Christian.

However, Britten was 26 years old, a passionate opponent  of war and a conscientious objector.  It is perhaps not surprising that he ignored the nature of the invitation and wrote a piece of music from the depths of his soul, expressing his horror of the war that had just broken out in Europe and forced his exile to America.

The unfortunate thing is that the refusal of this masterwork has put the Japanese in an unfavorable light and the issue remains something of a diplomatic embarrassment to this day, since it is invariably mentioned in books and the program notes whenever the work is written about or performed.

We could leave the matter as it is, however, I would welcome an opportunity to say something at the concert about the transformation that has taken place in the world since that time.  I believe our young people are generally ignorant about  the past and  I feel it is our role, not only to point out the relevance of the music they play to the time it was written, but also to offer our guidance in developing a healthy and open-hearted attitude to the actions of previous generations.

This is what I would propose to say at the concert, if you would grant your permission:

In 1940 Benjamin Britten was commissioned by the Japanese Government to write a piece to celebrate the 2,600th anniversary of their country.

Britten, at 26 years old and a passionate opponent of all war, perhaps not surprisingly ignored the call for a festive, celebratory work and produced instead a work that expressed his violent outrage and grief at the carnage already being perpetrated in Europe. Moreover, by giving Christian titles to each of the movements, he must have realized that the work would not find favor in a non-Christian country.

Predictably, the Japanese authorities informed Britten, through the British Consulate, that the work was unacceptable because “it did not express felicitations for the 2,600th anniversary of our country.” Also, since it used titles to each movement that were taken from the Latin Mass, it would be offensive to the Japanese people.

One year later the Japanese were at war with the Allies and the tension that this situation caused has not been resolved to this day..

We intend to resolve it tonight.

From the vantage point of our time, we can recognize that not only is the Sinfonia da Requiem a timeless masterpiece – perhaps Britten’s greatest work for orchestra – but it is also a moving plea for peace – a cause to which all Japanese people today are fervently committed.

We, in Boston, are most fortunate that our current Japanese Consul General Mr Tsuji is a man of deep sensibility and both cultural and moral awareness.  Mr Tsuji is present tonight.

At the end of the performance he will accept a copy of the score as a symbol of friendship between our nations and a recognition that, at last, wisdom and understanding prevail amongst our people.

We can feel the terrible anguish in Britten’s work – the protest and grief of the first movement; the violence and madness of the second movement and the deeply felt pleas for consolation and peace in the Finale.    The titles - Tears; Day of Judgement and Plea for Eternal Peace are no longer  seen only as Christian, but rather as universal categories of despair, pity  and hope for redemption, in which all peoples of the world can share.

We are deeply moved by Britten’s composition and by the grace of Japan’s esteemed diplomatic representative in receiving the score, seventy years after the event.

Thank you.

Warm wishes

Ben

That was stretching the point, but no matter.  Donald Crockett and Rand Steiger did cross the country from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans to hear and speak briefly about their works. Crockett is currently Chair of the Composition Department and Director of the Contemporary Music Ensemble at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, and is also active as a guest conductor of various other new music ensembles. His The Cinnamon Peeler (1993) is a powerful setting of the sensual poem by Michael Ondaatje (author of the novel, The English Patient) for mezzo-soprano, piano, viola, violoncello, flute, and clarinet. Pamela Dellal sang beautifully, standing in the same semi-circle as the instruments rather than forward of them, emphasizing the point that the voice part is on equal footing with them, but causing the text to be almost unintelligible until the last two verses, when we heard the poem, in clear, dramatic vocal articulation. I hasten to add that clear diction is one of Dellal’s usual strengths. The piece was one of changing moods, with mellow interludes between verses easing the accrued tension of the angry text.

Rand Steiger, Visiting Professor of Composition at Harvard University last fall, is Chair of the Music Department at the University of California, San Diego, and also a conductor of various new music groups; he was the founding artistic director of the California EAR Unit. We heard the world première of his Elliott’s Instruments (2010), commissioned by the Musica Viva with support from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. “Elliott” refers to Elliott Carter, whose recent 100th birthday Steiger was honoring with this work—yea, more than honoring, for Steiger offers this as a “companion piece” to Carter’s Triple Duo, and “draws on all of the solo and chamber music that Elliott wrote for these six instruments [violin, violoncello, flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, percussion, piano] since . . . 1948.” References to, and even quotations from specific works abound, “but mostly the piece consists of passages that are reminiscent of, yet not identical to, the sources.” Steiger, in his brief remarks preceding the performance, even mentioned making a chronological list of Carter’s music and working from that. “O dear,” I thought, we’re in for some pedantry.” Not so! After a “Carterish” opening of energetically rhythmic dense dissonance, the work continued, emphasizing the individuality of each instrument in turn, and in ensemble, and using hocket-like techniques to sustain long “melodic” lines. The work builds up to a fortissimo climax, and ends on a beautiful chord you wish to hear a little longer. In fact, I’d like to hear this entire piece again soon.

The concert opened with Twilight Colors (2007) by Chou Wen Chung, long of Columbia University (until 1991) and no stranger to these concerts. (But he was in California!) The four-movement work with coda was “inspired by the exceptional colors over the Hudson River Valley,” the same ones that attracted that school of American painters.  It is written for a string trio, and two wind trios (flute, oboe, clarinet), the second formed by the same players doubling on different instruments. In his prefatory remarks, Pittman noted that Chou’s recent works are based on the concepts of brush strokes in Chinese calligraphy, in which the artist controls the speed and thickness of the line, not one of which begins with the full brush. Thus the tempo is always in flux, and both the vibratos and trills begin slowly and increase in speed. And so it was, with delicate but never tentative lines, often the same ones drifting among different instruments, arriving at a huge climax at the end of the Coda.

After intermission we heard the British composer Nicholas Maw’s Ghost Dances (1988), for violin, violoncello, flute, clarinets, and piano, all doubling on folk instruments. Although Pittman spoke of his friendship with Maw (1935-2009), who tended to be “long-winded,” that did not seem to be the case with this work of many moods in nine movements plus introduction and epilog, with titles marked “frenetico” and “sinistro,” for example. Basically, said Pittman, this is a dance piece. There was indeed a beautiful “Pas de deux” (between the violoncello (Jan Müller-Szeraws) and clarinet (William Kirkley), making best use of the rich capacities of each instrument in the mid to lower range, accompanied by the piano (Geoff Burleson), a sonorous “Rückblick” (Backward glance), a very dissonant “The Frozen Moment,” and a lively “Bacchanale” full of rhythmically repeated notes.

Pittman has recently begun announcing the “Encores” in the program. This one was a humorous Old King Cole from Ma Goose (2004) by his good friend Bernard Hoffer, delightfully narrated by Pamela Dellal, over violin, violoncello, piccolo, clarinet, percussion, and piano. Somehow Nat King Cole slips in there, too.

In addition to those already named, performers included Ann Bobo, flute, Nancy Dimock, oboe, Bayla Keyes, violin, Peter Sulski, viola, and Robert Schulz, percussion. All are superb musicians and perform with élan under Pittman’s experienced conducting. Their next concert, on April 23 and 24, will present a world première of a multi-media chamber opera, Phoolan Devi: The Bandit Queen, by Shirish Korde, with preview performances April 15 and17 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester.

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

With the cello seated on a platform and the others standing, forming a semi-circle in the middle of the stage, the quartet sounded better and more balanced than other similar ensembles in this acoustic. The Artemis chose to present a nearly ideal program, quartets from the early, middle and late periods of Beethoven, to a near capacity house. Although they are German, they played in the Viennese fashion — less severe, say, than the Julliard approach.

First up was the second quartet of Op. 18 (actually the third to be composed in this set.) Never one for whom composition flowed easily, Beethoven struggled mightily on this one, occupying more than 30 sketchbook pages. In Germany it is called the Compliments-Quartette, owing to the three motives in the opening Allegro movement. (Beethoven himself applied only one descriptive name to his sixteen quartets, “Serioso” for the F-Minor quartet, which followed in the program.)

Like the first movement, the “Adagio Cantabile” features the first violin in a graceful ornamented melody. Gemuthlichkeit prevailed. This is interrupted by a change of key and tempo, the first of several quartets to do so. (Did Schubert learn from this technique?) The “Scherzo: Allegro” movement was taken like the wind, contrasting nicely with the “Trio.” The finale, “Allegro molto quasi Presto,” was characterized by Beethoven’s favorite word Aufgeknopft (unbuttoned.) It’s a rondo in which humor is predominant. At the end, the audience gave it a hearty reception.

The Quartet in F-Minor, Op. 95 offered an extreme contrast to this exuberance. By then Beethoven was experiencing deafness, financial difficulties and an unhappy love life. The program notes quoted from a letter Beethoven wrote in 1810, “Oh, life is so beautiful, but for me it is poisoned forever.” The “Allegro con brio” opens with a volley of octaves and then silence. The rest of the movement does not relent in its severity.

The “Allegretto ma non troppo” continues the despair. This is like a march to the scaffold. A diminished seventh chord leads directly to the next movement, marked “Allegro assai vivace ma serioso.” In place of a scherzo, Beethoven continues his struggles. Only the “trio” section provides relief with a steady cantus firmus. The finale begins with a moment of “Larghetto” before launching into a tormented “Allegretto agitato.” Towards the end, we are given a glimpse of hope when the instruments pause on an F-Major chord only to be plunged into an allegro once again. The audience had a well earned intermission after such an experience.

The entire second half was occupied with what an audience member told me was her favorite quartet, the A Minor, Op. 132. The is one of Beethoven’s longest quartets, with the Molto adagio movement (the “Heiliger Dankgesang”) occupying more than 16 minutes. Beethoven became seriously ill with a liver ailment while he was composing it. That’s why the slow movement was re-titled “Thanks to God from a convalescent.” Commissioned by the Russian Prince Galitzin, this is the second of a set of pieces dedicated to him.

The quartet begins simply enough, with strange chords “Assai sostenuto” leading to fugal interruptions. The first violin announces the “Allegro” section. This late music sounds very fragmented at first, but Beethoven manages to keep it organic by motivic ornamentation. The “Allegro ma non tanto” movement, for instance, has a Ländler theme which Beethoven later relates to his first motive.

The long slow movement is the emotional heart of this quartet. The score is fascinating with Beethoven’s markings, not only the Heiliger Dankgesang but also in the Lydian mode reference. This is key to the movement’s religious tone. Later, in the Andante he notes “Neue Kraft fühlend” (feeling new strength.) Then the molto adagio theme is repeated, but with a new strength.

An audience member remarked that the Celebrity Series audience regularly demands an encore. The Artemis wisely resisted. What could possibly follow this magnificent quartet?

Larry Phillips studied music at Harvard, the Montreal Conservatory, and at New England Conservatory. In 1974 he was a prizewinner at the International Harpsichord Competition in Bruges, Belgium.

The duo opened with Mozart’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in F major, K. 376. Mozart’s violin sonatas, which come out of the 18th-century tradition of “keyboard sonatas with violin accompaniment,” were conceived as small-scale works, and they may be just a bit too small for Perlman’s big style of playing. This style worked to perfection, however, with Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major, M. 8, a great romantic warhorse that closed the first half of the program. Franck had composed this work in 1886 as a wedding present for another legendary violinist, the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, who actually played it on his wedding day. (There are no reports on what Ysaÿe’s bride-to-be was doing at the time, or what she thought about this part of the marriage ceremony.) Perlman played the sonata with all the intensity of an excited groom, and a romantic-era one at that. There were some delicious 19th-century slides in the second movement, and the superb communication and ensemble between the violinist and his pianist de Silva enabled both to indulge in a rhythmic freedom and expressive playing that made this performance of the Franck as good as it gets.

The second half of the program (the printed one, that is) was devoted to Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano (1917), the third in a planned series of Six Sonates pour divers instruments. Debussy had already published the first for cello and piano, and the second (flute, viola and harp), but his fourth would have been the most exciting for this writer, since it was to be scored for oboe, horn and harpsichord! Alas, Debussy never wrote this work or any other; he died of cancer in 1918, making the violin sonata his final composition. Perlman gave a virtuoso performance of the Sonata, but like in the Mozart, he was sometimes too rough for this elegant French confection. For example, some passages in the first movement were taken at such a fast tempo that much detail got lost and the intonation suffered.

Quibbles aside, this was a masterful performance given by two masters of their instruments, both perfectly attuned to each other. It also set the stage for the “second” concert of this concert—a generous helping of seven encores that included some of the favorite bon-bons of the violin repertoire, such as Fritz Kreisler’s “Chanson Louis XIII in the Style of Couperin,” Joseph Joachim’s arrangement of Brahms’ “Hungarian Dance No. 2” and the theme from John Williams’ “Schindler’s List.” Perlman enjoyed announcing these encores from the stage and obviously enjoyed playing them as well.  His listeners certainly enjoyed hearing them, and left Symphony Hall satisfied and smiling.

Mark Kroll, a well-known Boston harpsichordist and fortepianist, tours extensively as performer, lecturer, and leader of master classes in Europe, South America, the Balkans, and the Middle East. He has an extensive discography and list of publications, and has a website here.

The Borromeo String Quartet, faculty quartet-in-residence at the New England Conservatory, shared the Jordan Hall stage Sunday evening, March 7, with three student award-winners and one guest artist. In addition to showcasing the 2010 Guest Artist Award recipients, this concert was the Borromeos’ third of an eight-part series featuring the complete string quartet cycle of local contemporary composer Gunther Schuller. A countable number of listeners were in the audience; perhaps attendance was compromised in part by the concurrent Academy Awards ceremony. I’d say the concertgoers definitely made the right choice!

Brahms Sextet in G Major with Guest Artist Award winners (photo by Mike Rocha)

Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in F Major, K. 370 (1781) got the festivities off to a light and effervescent start. The pastel tones of this sweet bon-bon, light as cotton candy and evocative of a soft Spring day, were performed in playfully elegant fashion, with graceful, dance-like phrases and gestures. Oboist Amanda Hardy spun sinuous, silky tendrils of sound, featuring clearly articulated ornamentation and smooth, ultra-expressive dynamic comings and goings. String players Kristopher Tong, violin, Mai Motobuchi, viola, and Yeesun Kim, cello played delicately and expressively, providing a perfectly balanced accompaniment. The overall effect was one of gentle precision. Refreshingly, there was nary a cough or splutter between movements; the audience was rapt (and apparently healthy).

And then … what’s this? … some sort of solar flare, or was it perhaps a volcanic eruption? Gunther Schuller’s powerful String Quartet No. 3 (1986) was a jarring and riveting musical antithesis of the Mozart, an emphatic yang to Wolfgang’s yin. Airy pastels were replaced by dense burgundies and steely grays; we had definitely entered film noir territory. Herr Schuller instructs players to perform the first movement, Maestoso, “with great intensity,” and the Borromeos certainly took him at his word! Passion and gravitas were dripping all over the stage; tensions built and erupted. This music was dark, sinister, low-pH, and high-energy, and the Borromeo members played with a simmering fury.  In contrast to the dramatic solar flare of the Maestoso, the Canzona’s auditory solar eclipse came across like the inner voice of a tormented soul. Extremely exacting playing by the quartet members; fastidious attention to detail; exquisite sensitivity and grace; serious countenances all around. The final Allegro imparted a sense of dark urgency, where the negative space between sounds carried at least as much weight as the notes themselves. Challenging for performers and audience members alike, this captivating, tightly wound, palatably harsh piece grabbed listeners by the heart, ears, and brain and never let go. Intriguingly, could have sworn I caught a whiff or two of Mozart and Beethoven in the midst of the twelve-tone structure. Perhaps it was just my imagination. Actually, it should be noted that the Borromeos are in the midst of recording all of Schuller’s string quartets — definitely something to look forward to. An added treat: the composer himself was in attendance, and made his way to the foot of the stage to share in the warm accolades.

Following the emotional intensity of the Schuller, our psyches were assuaged by the warm aural tapestry of Johannes Brahms, specifically his Sextet in G Major, Op. 36 (1865). Featuring three Borromeo members juxtaposed with their Guest Artist Award winner/special guest counterparts (Nicholas Kitchen and winner Audrey Wright, violins; Mai Motobuchi and guest Dimitri Murrath, violas; Yeesun Kim and winner Holgen Gjoni, cellos), this performance brought to mind the Marlboro Music Festival, featuring as it does a potent blend of established music professionals and talented up-and-comers. From the shimmering tones and soothing triple meter of first movement to the busy, urgent phrases of the final Poco Allegro, this expansive work was performed with ambrosial perfection. The round, full-bodied tones of guest cellist Holgen Gjoni were especially notable. Unfortunately, it seemed, to this pair of ears at least, as if the playing of violinist Audrey Wright was obscured somewhat by the indefatigable Nicholas Kitchen, and guest violist Dimitri Murrath was relegated to playing an inordinate amount of pizzicato (which he did quite admirably). No matter: the overall result was music of the highest caliber. Though each instrumentalist appeared to be intently focused on their particular part, with little discernible interaction, they sounded as if they played and breathed as one.

In the inordinately rich and vibrant musical scene of Boston, the Borromeo String Quartet is a true stand-out. Is it possible to play with more passion? Is it possible to play with a higher degree of technical prowess? With a greater sense of sharing? And all without music scores! (OK, they actually use laptops with foot controls.)  And then there’s octogenarian composer Gunther Schuller, one of the shining lights of contemporary music. And the myriad talented music students pouring into our city from around the world. An embarrassment of riches. Next time, consider forgoing the Oscars.

Michael Rocha is a self-described “long-ago” music teacher, a long-time music enthusiast and pianist, and a short-time Web designer: http://www.cobaltocumulus.com. He has an MS in Meteorology from MIT.

The afternoon’s musical entertainment began with the amusing trifle, Rossini’s Duo for Cello and Double Bass, written, it is said, for a bibulous dinner party in London, which was Rossini’s way station after quitting Italy and before his forty-plus-year residence in Paris. The three-movement work, which explores the extreme registers of both instruments, is not devoid of purely musical interest—Rossini invested this piece not only with his typical tunefulness, but with passages of lightly worn contrapuntal dexterity. The slow movement’s cello part is played so much at the high end one is tempted to think of it as the Air for the A String. Michael Reynolds, cello, and Mr. Barker—the BSO principal bass—played this for laughs, with occasional tippling gestures, but this was high-class clowning on the order of the Harlem Globetrotters: the technical challenges, notably in the outer movements, were quite real. Real enough, at any rate, to put some apparent stress on Mr. Reynolds’s articulation.

The second work up was the second “little” piece, the four Miniatures, op. 75a, of Antonin Dvorák, for two violins and viola. These were written in 1887, thus mature pieces, for amateur performance, and consist of Cavatina, Capriccio, Romanza and Elegia—moderate, fast, moderate, and slow—in which Dvorák spins lovely Czech melodies for the first violin, with purely accompanying figures for the other players. These, of course, vary depending on the section and the moment, and are lovely in themselves, but violin I gets to hog all the tunes. Charming, beautifully played by Dicterow—for 30 years and still counting the New York Philharmonic’s concertmaster—and adeptly supported by CCP members Wendy Putnam, violin and Karen Dreyfus, viola.

The first half ended with a work short on instrumental forces but quite substantial in content, the D major Duo for two violins by Ludwig, a/k/a Louis, Spohr, op. 67 no. 2. Mr. Ledbetter’s program note avers that Spohr has disappeared from notice except for W.S. Gilbert’s reference to him in The Mikado; the situation is not nearly that dire—several of his clarinet and violin concertos are occasionally broadcast, if not that frequently performed live, his Septet for mixed ensemble gets played, as do other chamber works. That said, he should be performed much more often; while not, as Gilbert would have us have it, in a league with Bach and Beethoven, he is surely the equal of such other early Romantic composers as Weber (his clarinet music is generally superior in musical depth). The Duo is a fully rounded three-movement work whose opening movement takes many fascinating harmonic detours; whose slow movement is lyrical and sentimental in a Weberish or proto-Mendelssohnian way; and whose concluding rondo provides many melodic twists. Granted, it does not plumb vast depths, but it more than justifies its place on a program. Dicterow and Putnam brought it off with style and grace.

The main event on the program was the Dvorák G major Quintet for string quartet and bass, with the misleading opus number 77 (Dvorák’s personal catalogue called it 18, but his publisher thought low opus numbers equaled low sales). It is unusual indeed to see program notes disparage a work to the degree that Mr. Ledbetter’s did this Quintet, but we are happy to take issue with him. Written in 1875, when the composer was 34, this is not juvenilia, even assuming Dvorák was something of a late bloomer (he was nowhere near as late a bloomer as Bruckner, for example). The instrumentation is a creative experiment: the bass counterbalances the treble-heavy sound of the string quartet, and as Ledbetter correctly observed, allows for use of the cello as a melody instrument, which the piece does to great effect. Throughout, the melodic content is recognizably Czech, and harmonized in Dvorák’s unique voice—several licks sounding quite premonitory of the Eighth Symphony, for instance, and utilizing colorful and characteristic progressions such as from the  tonic to the modally lowered leading tone triads. The first movement expands on a rhythmic idea clearly invoking Beethoven’s fate-knocking, from within a Bohemian melody; the scherzo is heavily accented in the outer sections and contrastingly gentle in the trio; the slow movement (a bit overlong for our taste) is beautiful and moving. The finale is musically the least successful, but it is well wrought and ties things together in proper, if perhaps too dutiful, fashion. The performance was spirited, cohesive, and persuasive, though—could this have been an acoustic artifact, since we had the same sense in the Rossini?—the cello, especially in the high range, seemed a few cents short.

Vance R. Koven studied music at Queens College and New England Conservatory, and law at Harvard. A composer and practicing attorney, he was for many years the chairman of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble.

The world premiere of Nathan Ball’s Stained glass opened the program with an amalgam of American post-minimalist and European spiritual minimalist styles, with intermittent hints of Americana. Ball exhibited a praiseworthy command of orchestration, shifting between musical textures with convincing and affective narrative. The piece was quite enjoyable, though limited by a rather strict, at times uninventive harmonic language, and developed musical ideas successfully despite being on the shorter side. Stained Glass is, however, a first movement of a larger work entitled Atone, and undoubtedly left the audience very interested in hearing this up-and-coming composer’s triptych in its entirety.

As Scott Wheeler’s Crazy Weather and Stephen Hartke’s Alvorada followed, one could not help but notice some unifying aspects between the pieces on the first half. Each of the pieces seemed to rely on traditional formal structures, some of which permeated well beyond both Wheeler’s and Hartke’s three-movement, fast-slow-fast structural mold. The most effective moments of Crazy Weather came in the more freely composed Adagio, as the music slowly and mysteriously gained a sense of motion from its suspended, frozen beginning. The third movement, Steadily Driving, built a more visceral and satisfying movement off of the materials introduced in the first, but at times seemed unconfidently delivered, and lacking in the motivation and intensity that the piece required– a very rare symptom for an ensemble with the versatility and performance standards of BMOP. Crazy Weather concluded with an extremely effective hocketing of string harmonics. Hartke’s Alvorada, Three Madrigals also seemed to press some of its most intriguing moments into the second movement, with overt melodiousness that seemed both strange and familiar. The third movement, “Bailada,” developed a wonderfully elaborate dance out of very simple materials, culminating in a surprising and pleasantly awkward coda reminiscent of Hindemith.

The performance of Milton Babbitt’s Correspondences was a validating display of BMOPs adeptness with some of the most difficult (both practically and conceptually) music written in the 20th century.  A good performance of Babbitt’s strict, pointillistic, and methodologically composed music will go beyond accuracy and draw a sense of organicism out of mixture of strings and prerecorded synthetic sounds.  No easy feat, Gil Rose and BMOP were able to breathe some sense of life into a piece that is most often only interpreted with cold precision.

Israeli composer Betty Olivero’s Neharót, Neharót was beautiful, disturbing, comforting, mystifying, and alien all at once– and without doubt the most impassioned performance of the evening.  The piece immediately drops the listener into a distinct and compelling sound world, craftily blurring the lines between consonance and dissonance while maintaining focus on an eerily shifting atmosphere. Out of the texture emerges a mesmerizing, twisting counterpoint between the accordion, section violist, and solo violist Kim Kashkashian. The solo viola continues to later interact with prerecorded samples of Middle-eastern, African, and Spanish sources– all of which become obscured in some way beneath the dense textures of the ensemble.  Kashkashian’s performance created a sense of connectivity between audience and soloist that is rarely experiences, especially in contemporary music.

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project closed the program with a fantastic performance of Bartók’s Divertimento, one of the finest works of the composer, and one of the finest compositions of the period. The performance was energetic and sensitive, and rounded off the various styles represented in the program with profundity. BMOP concludes its season with the full orchestra on May 28th with a program not to be missed, featuring the works of Steven Stucky, Leon Kirchner, Anthony De Ritis, Kati Agócs, and Martin Boykan.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

The Spectrum Singers, a remarkable ensemble of “amateur singers” founded and led by John Ehrlich, has been giving high-quality performances of a wide variety of choral music for nearly 30 years. On March 6, in the First Church Congregational, Cambridge, the ensemble continued its tradition, presenting music by three composers, each from a different country and time period.

The concert opened with four Latin motets by the 19^th-century Austrian composer Anton Bruckner: “Locus iste,” “Os justi,” “Ave Maria,” and “Virga Jesse”. They are works that reveal his depth without suffering from his often overbearing sense of timing, resulting in some of the most concise expansiveness ever created in the Western canon. Each work is a self-contained universe encompassing a huge ambitus across the choir, broad phrases, waves of sequences, and swelling dynamics. The Spectrum Singers were at their finest with these pieces, capturing all the richness of compositional craft that the music has to offer. More importantly, though, their delivery radiated the wide and seemingly contradictory emotional range contained in these works—passionate reverence, plaintive joy, aching peace—with stunning power and sensitivity. Their performance seemed to stretch space and slow time, so that at the end of every piece, though only minutes had passed, one had experienced a lifetime of expressions.

The Bruckner motets would have been worth the price of admission all by themselves. Nonetheless, the program continued with a work by the 20th-century British composer Benjamin Britten, an unsurpassed master of choral music. His Rejoice in the Lamb, a multi-sectioned work for choir, soloists, and organ, is a setting of some quirky yet deeply pious poetry by his 18th-century countryman, Christopher Smart. While Bruckner’s music wants to embody the entirety of Heaven in a bottle, Britten’s impact usually comes from choosing a single image in the text as an expressive springboard for the entire section, a habit that lent itself well to setting Smart’s wordy verse. For instance, the unexpectedly quiet, almost introverted final chorus takes its musical cue not from the first word “Hallelujah”, but from the word “sweetness” near the end of the poem. Overall, the Singers presented a solid and colorful performance of this fascinating and technically challenging work, despite the occasional stumble over mouthfuls of words in some faster phrases. The four soloists sang with grace and style, though their positioning in the chorus created a distance between them and the audience that was less than effective.

The final work on the program was a setting of the “Gloria” portion of Latin Mass for treble soloists, choir, and large ensemble (provided by the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music) by 17th-century Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi. It is one of his more popular and effective works, featuring some of his most attractive vocal writing. He took a text that is normally presented as a single entity and divided it into separate, self-contained works, the interpretive challenge of which is to fully express the character of each individual piece while still creating cohesion across the whole. The one major fault in this performance was that Ehrlich seemed reticent to indulge in the more deliberate tempi needed in some of the pieces, resulting in a slightly cut-up, hurried feel overall. This deficiency was especially felt in the “Et in terra pax,” a grippingly powerful piece of long phrases and gut-wrenching suspension chains that requires a more slowly pulsating tempo than it was given. In general, however, ensemble and soloists performed with satisfying musicianship. The joyous “Laudamus te” for two sopranos was sung with light, sprightly verve by sopranos Susan Consoli and Kathi Tighe, whose vocal character and sonorities were well-matched. Consoli’s sweet, clear voice also blended beautifully with the solo oboe in the lovely “Domine Deus.” Alto Elaine Bresnick’s steely, slightly husky voice gave the intense “Qui sedes” a strange and dramatic flair. And in all cases, the melodic lines were creatively ornamented in the best Baroque tradition, hardly surprising from an ensemble that is so clearly comfortable in any century.

Tom Schnauber is a Boston-based composer and is currently serving as chair of the Performance Arts Department at Emmanuel College. He holds a Ph.D. in composition and Theory from the University of Michigan.

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