Beginning with Bach’s Orchestral Suite Number 4 in D Major (BWV 1069), issues with clarity, as well as a subdued, occasionally lackluster approach were apparent.  This was the earliest of Bach’s four orchestral suites, and the German Baroque master took his own liberties with the form’s conventions in expressing a variety of “affects” and effects.  Conductor Ryan Turner emphasized the right beats for a suitable “Ouvertüre,” yet poor projection from the basses and splintered brass failed to make a grand impression. Emmanuel Church’s cavernous acoustic didn’t help, diffusing the sound of players seated at the rear of the orchestra and virtually obliterating the harpsichord’s harmonic and rhythmic underpinning.  Tubby bassoon runs behind the oboes undermined tight phrasing by the section and obstructed the dancing quality of the “Bourrée.”  The ensemble was more balanced and warmed slightly for the strutting “Gavotte” rhythms, and they handled the “Menuet” gracefully without turning twee. Yet the closing “Réjouissance” substituted a faster tempo for transparency.  The overall impression was of deference to, rather than engagement with, Bach’s music.

Critic Michael Steinberg described Stravinsky’s Concerto in E-flat (subtitled “Dumbarton Oaks” in honor of its commissioner’s home) as evoking Bach’s “external habits” with the “real substance” remaining uniquely Stravinskian. The first movement “Tempo Giusto” is heavily influenced by Bach’s third Brandenburg Concerto, especially the use of three dialoging sections of violins, violas and cellos, as well as the jogging chord progressions.  Stravinsky added horns, woodwinds, and basses as well as his own dissonances and rhythmic juxtapositions to the lucid lines, contrapuntal intricacy and motor rhythms associated with Bach.

Emmanuel Music was most convincing with just the 10 strings and five winds of this historical exchange.  Turner took the first movement at a modest clip that allowed Stravinsky’s arresting harmonies to peek out subtly.  He also pulled the French horns, chalumeau clarinet, and bassoon together just as they started to drag, and slyly underscored Stravinsky’s reference to the minor key turnaround in Bach’s concerto.  The second movement “Allegretto” featured sensitive choreography between the three main string sections, though a rich clarinet had to compete with a shrill flute.  The concluding “Con Moto” added swagger to cohesive syncopations over a trouncing bass line.

Unfortunately, the full orchestra scaled back Stravinsky’s energy and humor for their turn at Pulcinella following the intermission.  Stravinsky’s one-act ballet with voices involves characters from traditional Neapolitan commedia dell’arte, with Stravinsky contributing modern orchestration and “wrong notes” to music ascribed (mistakenly) to late Baroque/Galant composer Giovanni Pergolesi (1710-1736).  This tuneful, energetic and quirky work began with a polite “Ouverture” and attractive yet reserved violin and cello solos on Saturday.  The cantabile theme for oboe in the “Serenata” was played with similar nonchalance, while livelier sections sounded workmanlike.  Stravinsky’s upbeat “Tarantella” came across too smooth, never kicking or pushing forward, while the horns of the “Gavotta” huffed without momentum or coordination.  The lumbering tempo in the “Vivo” movement, with its trombone glissandi and blustering double basses, drained it of any whimsy or style.  A storming “Allegro Assai” demonstrated the orchestra combining powerfully for massed sections; yet clarity of individual parts still presented a problem, for example the awkward horn blends marring an otherwise mellifluous, lighthearted “Scherzino.”

The three vocalists took the same technically secure but emotionally cool approach.  Tenor Charles Blandy sang the first aria, “Mentre l’erbetta” (“On the grass”), a pastoral image set to the same gorgeous melody as the “Serenata,” with clear diction, firm range and relaxed, nearly aloof delivery, only coloring “sola” (“alone”) ever so slightly.  The longest aria, “Se tu m’ami” (“If you love me”) is a passionate warning from a woman to those who expect her consistently to return their affections.  Katherine Gowdon’s slender mezzo supplied the text merely as a stock character in a Neo-Classical reworking of a Baroque text, offering neither coyness nor empathy to her subject.  Postmodern detachment rather than sincerity or flow seemed to shape the vocals.  Separating Blandy and Gowdon from bass-baritone Dana Whiteside on opposite sides of the stage only detracted further from the mix or meaning of the trios “Sento dire no’nce pace” (“I hear it said there is no peace”) and “Pupillette, fiammette d’amore” (“Fair eyes, sparking with love”).  Whiteside in turn sang his solo on “Con queste paroline”(“With these words”) at the other extreme, with an over-enthusiasm bound to intimidate the object of his affection.

The evening also included Rafael Popper-Keizer performing Fancy on a Bach Air, for unaccompanied cello by John Corigliano (born 1938).  Based on the theme from Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the note of tragedy pervading this piece (its dedicatee died suddenly in the midst of its composition) was given full voice through the cellist’s arching narrative.  Beginning simply with long tones, Popper-Keizer demonstrated a consistent sense of line and attention to detail, connecting every gesture, from initial sadness, to utter hopelessness, to final, inevitable resolve.  He leaned into Corigliano’s shattering dissonances with confidence as well as a sense of their significance to the “story” and demonstrated a focused yet delicate upper register towards the end of the piece.  Performer, composer, and inspiration teamed up to communicate a variety of feelings and ideas without exaggeration or understatement.

Andrew J. Sammut is a clarinetist and also writes for Early Music America and All About Jazz.  He also blogs on a variety of music at clefpalette.wordpress.com and lives in Cambridge.

Charlote Juillard,violin; Pauline Fritsch, violin; Juliette Salmona,cello; Sarah Chena, viola; (IMG photo)

Last night, we revisited the beautiful St. John’s Church in Jamaica Plain, situated on the high ground of Roanoke Avenue and Revere Street, with a sweeping view of Boston and its beautiful surrounding homes and churches. It’s surely one of JP’s secret hidden jewels. The event was part of JP Concerts, and featured the Quatour Zaïde — visiting from Paris (France, not TX or ME). The plucky and intrepid concert series itself has a fine, informative website so nothing further need be said, except that it showcases noteworthy young artists in wonderful programs. We have previously observed that classical music lovers not venturing thither suffer their own loss thereby.

The QZ (as they refer to themselves) consists of four young French ladies. They are visiting Boston in an exchange program (established in 2003), co-sponsored on the French side by  ProQuartet-European Center for Chamber Music (ProQuartet-CEMC) and on ours by New England Conservatory (NEC).

We were tempted to steep in winter reverie, home by the fire, we must confess, but did eventually resolve to venture forth, knowing that the pianist Yannick Rafalimanana was joining the group for Cesar Franck’s Quintet in F Minor. Mr. Rafalimanana is a young Madagascar-born Frenchman currently studying at NEC, where he has generated quite a buzz among his peers as a talent to watch, to enlist, or just plain fear.

So it was really by chance that we stumbled upon the other featured artists, namely the quartet. QZ appeared first with Sérénade Italienne by Hugo Wolf and then Haydn’s Quartet Op. 50, No.1. We want to remark first of all, that QZ has an extremely personable and attractive stage presence.  Entering in coordinated but understated black pants suits and pumps, they immediately inject a note of Parisian chic. And, let’s face it, as professional managers understand only too well, stage presence and appearance do matter, even beyond the subliminal. The scuffed shoes of our own young compatriot artists, to our thinking at least, always occasion the pang of a Maalox moment.

As for the performances, these fine players performed their italiànizing German, their Esterházying Haydn and their germanizing Frenchman with utter refinement and assurance. Their playing is vigorous and robust, with tense vital rhythm and flawless intonation.

The Wolf was all light and lovely lyricism. The Haydn was given all of that understated elegance Haydn deserves. The performance of the Franck quartet, known somewhat as a dark brooder, projected its seething, troubled passion, its lyricism as well as its evident tragic intent (most prominent in the first movement).  The ensemble in the Franck was flawless. Because QZ had arrived only two days before and was consumed with activities at NEC, this formidable work was prepared in one rehearsal,  we were astonished to learn, by Yannick and his Landsmen.

The small audience, justly chagrined by its modest size, did everything possible to demonstrate its tremendous appreciation of the artistry on display.

The primary message, then, of this brief post is to urge the rest of you to hear the wonderful playing of Quatour Zaïde at Jordan Hall on January 26 at 8PM, where they perform Mozart K.590, the Italian Serenade of Hugo Wolf (again), and Beethoven Opus 131. Or, faute de mieux, catch them at the French Cultural Center 53 Marlborough Street, Boston, on January 24, at 6:30 PM, where they play the Mozart and then Debussy, Quartet Op. 10.

Tony Schemmer is a New York-born composer.  His works are performed extensively here and abroad.

The performance was impressively educational: presenting a sound that is somehow simultaneously formidable and affable, Zamir engaged a rapt audience with his understanding of the French haute-contre voice in 12 arias from 12 French operas in collaboration with Juliet Cunningham on piano. Zamir’s voice immediately gave the volume and gravitas of a rich, full contralto sound in the opening “Bois épais” from Lully’s 1684 opera Amadis — a stately aria on the edge of recit — that withstood Cunningham’s robust accompaniment. Other such arias, such as a “Je crois entendre encore” transposed from Bizet’s 1863 Les pecheurs de perles or “La fleur que tu m’avais jetee” transposed from his Carmen (1875) revelled in this rich sound.

Tuning in the later arias of the program suffered, ostensibly from exhaustion. Yet, in addition to the full qualities of Zamir’s haute-contre, it’s difficult not to be amused, even charmed,  by the lyrical qualities of his voice, a lightness that becomes a countertenor, that showed itself in the more blithe arias of the evenings. “Mes amis ecoutez l’histoire,” transposed from Adolphe Adam’s Le Postillon de Longjumeau (1836), or “Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!” transposed from Donizetti’s La fille du régiment (1840), exposed a remarkable range and flexibility in Zamir’s instrument.

Although certainly developed for Baroque and early Classical music, the combination of Zamir’s rich timbre with remarkable flexibility were somehow ideal for the late Romantic works. Wednesday evening’s successful collaboration between Zamir and Cunningham culminated in “Vainement, ma bien aimée,” transposed from Lalo’s Le Roy d’Ys (1888) and “Pourquoi me réveiller” transposed from Massenet’s Werther (1892); both were nothing short of beautiful. Zamir’s haute-contre eschewed sometimes over-blown Romantic sensibilities for a somehow fragile reading that was inherent to his higher range, an interpretation that was supported nicely with Cunningham’s sensitve accompaniment.

The evening’s performance concluded with a encore of Massenet’s Élégie–a reading that nicely summarized all that was wonderful about Zamir and Cunningham’s collaboration on Wednesday evening.

St. John’s concert series continues at the lovely church on Bowdoin Street, Beacon Hill, on January 4th, with a piano recital by Keane Southard.

Sudeep Agarwala is a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He performs with various choral groups throughout Boston and Cambridge.

Mitnick, a 20-year-old  junior, is a student in the Harvard/New England Conservatory BA/MM program. Playing with poise and aplomb, Mitnick delivered an intelligent and often spirited performance of Barber’s Violin Concert, which features a solo opening for the violin in the first movement, one of his loveliest, lushest creations. In the second movement, a lyrical theme engages both the soloist and the various instrumental sections of the orchestra. The lushness of the sizable string section occasionally pushed somewhat aggressively to the forefront, but Mitnick proved master of the piece and her instrument in the third movement, in which Barber’s main material is a running line of triplets. The movement shifts from one key to another and requires considerable virtuosity of which Mitnick showed herself quite capable. She was rewarded with a standing ovation and enthusiastic foot stamping, a hallmark of Harvard audiences. Kudos also are due to clarinetist Stefan Botarelli.

The second piece on the program, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, “Pathétique,” required all the energy of both orchestra and conductor. The performance opened with a wonderful slow, mysterious start — the result of divided basses. Cortese brought out very nimble handling of phrasing, soft and delicate leading into rounded explosions of sound, of this incredibly dramatic movement, all the way from pppppp to ffff.  The beginning of the second movement was light, dance-like. Following the end of the spirited third movement (which sounds as though it is the final movement), conductor Cortese leaned against the podium as though to gather strength for the final Adagio. (The piece is unusual in that it both begins and ends with Adagio movements.) Then the fourth movement opened with a beautiful, poignant swell from the orchestra. It is sometimes thought that the symphony is suggestive of Tchaikovsky’s death, thought by some to have been a suicide. The orchestra gave full justice to the dark drama of Tchaikovsky’s orchestration, which suggests tragedy and grief. The horns and the percussion have their exciting moments in the third movement, but it is the cellos and basses that quietly usher out the final theme. Throughout, the strings, and particularly the cellos, played with confidence and ease.

The next HRO concert will take place Saturday, March 3, 2012 and will present Acts 2 and 3 of Puccini’s Tosca.

Daphne Abeel is a committed amateur pianist and chamber musician who is currently studying at Longy.

St. Paul's Aeolian Skinner (BMInt staff photo)

Though it is the normal practice of BMInt to review and discuss only events relating to classical music, we occasionally venture afield — in this case with an appreciative account of an improvised organ accompaniment to a silent movie. On July 21 a large screen was set up in the chancel of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul (Episcopal) on Tremont St. for an audience of the participants in and friends of Pipe Organ Encounters, a gathering organized by Christian Lane including several days of workshops, concerts, and other events centered on the organ. Peter Krasinski was at the console of the 1950 Æolian-Skinner, a visually unprepossessing instrument meant to be hidden behind a façade, for Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman. This classic is one of the glories of the last flowering of silent cinema one year before the widespread adoption of sound.

To evoke memories of movie palaces Krasinki began with an overture, Bernstein’s Candide, in a bravura though not immaculate performance. Then the show began with a pitiable tintype vendor (Buster Keaton) falling in love with the unattainable beauty. Buster eventually wins her love by capturing a gang war on film, and further by having by his organ-grinder monkey crank the camera and thus document the brave Buster’s rescue of the drowning damosel.

Large screen at St. Paul's (BMInt staff photo)

It was all great fun. The audience was totally on board for this timeless comedy, and Krasinski was very effective as an accompanist. While some theater organists assign memorable themes to each character and develop and intertwine them over the course of the film, Krasinki was more of the school of highlighting action and emotion with effective though not memorable music, thereby serving more as an excellent supporting actor than as a star.

His playing had a convincing period feel with no added anachronistic elements. By using thoughtful and evocative registrations, he even got the “American Classic” Æolian Skinner to sound like a Wurlitzer theater organ. He made good use of a throbbing Vox Humana stop and contrasted reeds and flutes colorfully.  This was a great marriage of movie and music and was received with enthusiasm.

Kransinski concluded the evening with a performance of our National Anthem.  His modulation  in the last stanza was an amusing surprise.

In closing one cannot help but observe that through the performance of Peter Krasinski, the grand sounding Æolian Skinner organ met the spiritual needs of this congregation most movingly.

F.  Lee Eiseman is the publisher of The Boston Musical Intelligencer

BMInt’s extensive POE interview with Christian Lane is here.

Anna Elashvili, violin; David Alpher, piano; Julia MacLaine, cello; Margaret Dyer, viola (Michael Lutch photo)

Were we in for a treat on Thursday, June 9, opening night of the 2011 Rockport Chamber Music Festival, and its gala 30th anniversary concert to boot. We have known about the Festival’s new home, opened one season ago, through Rockport’s deftly positioned media exposure. Be advised that the reality of the building is every bit as good as the glossies. And the “media plants” about Shalin Liu only speak to the adroit and sharp professionalism that the festival administrative staff has developed.

Remember, Rockport Music started thirty years ago with the “wouldn’t it be nice” which two New Yoek innocents, soprano Lila Deis and composer David Alpher, sighed, as they viewed Rockport harbor. They found an initial supporter in Rockport local businessman Paul Sylva. At a minimum, we have here a regional jewel. Anyone in the Northeast who doesn’t make a pilgrimage to Rockport needs his head examined.

We knew that Rockport has been able to garner absolutely top-flight talent for many seasons. And this year’s roster, prospectively, is a fantastic assemblage of talent.

This concert opened with the Ikarus Chamber Players, — Anna Elashvili, violin, Margaret Dyer, viola, and Julia MacLaine, ‘cello, presenting the Beethoven String Trio in G major, Op. 9, No. 1. Not the least important for effective presentation, the young ladies looked like they were on the short list for casting the Three Graces. Colorfully and elegantly attired, coiffed and joyful in countenance as they performed, they were a visual delight. All the music’s wit, ebullience, effervescence and charm played across their faces. (It is almost heartbreaking to hear early Beethoven, setting out the young hero with bright-eyed brio, knowing the via dolorosa that awaited.)

How can we characterize the playing by Ikarus? Clean, precisely articulated ornamentation, beautiful balance of tone, humor, brio, elegant expressive phrasing, teasing rubatos, beautifully planned, breathing elasticity of tempo — in short, just a high level of musicality.

(At the reception after the performance, we complimented one of the Ikari — should that be Ikaræ? — on the Beethoven and inquired if they had performed in this fabulous Rockport space before. No, was the answer and, she added disarmingly, as this was their Rockport début and as it was the Festival’s gala opening, they had expended great care on their preparation. “As well you might,” we rejoined.)

The trio’s playing remained just as distinguished in the next selection, although here even more scope was afforded for long sustained lyricism. The piece was David Alpher’s Song Without Words, a piano quartet commissioned by Rockport Music in memory of the composer’s colleague, friend, and Rockport co-founder, the Dallas-born Deis. Alpher first took the podium to make some preliminary eulogistic remarks. With fascinating detail and moving eloquence, he sketched his association with her as they nurtured the festival into prominence.

Lest our readers assume that the observations about the Ikarus’s physical appearance were prompted by crass gender favoritism, let us report that the composer/pianist saw, if not raised, the trio’s sartorial chic. His smartly tailored white dinner jacket underscored a seigneur-ial demeanor that we found most engaging. Retro can be so cool.

Alpher’s commemorative piece in three movements followed. Elegiac, lyrical, and unapologetically tonal, the work was touching and effectively delivered by Ikarus with the composer at the keyboard. The first movement, “Loss,” is a slow, lyrical meditation. One notable effect had us jerk our head up in pleased surprise. The composer transfers an exposed solo line from the violin to viola so seamlessly that at first it appeared to be one instrument playing the entire passage. Sometimes simple tricks can be so effective.

The second movement, “Perpetual Motion,” was an up-tempo bit of boisterousness with emphatic hoedown flavor, decidedly apt to celebrate the Soprano Texan. We admired some neat and nice fughetto passages in this writing.

“Perpetual Song” (the third movement) reverted to the more introspective cantabile of movement I, again appropriate to honor the memory of a beloved singer. If we must add the smallest of respectful criticism to our account of a piece which both we and the audience found pleasing, then we would say that in this movement, we hoped for the emergence of some extended, transcendent lyrical line to round out and consummate the lyricism so nicely introduced in the first movement. Also, perhaps by design, the piano was held strictly in check, so its full resources were never recruited.

After intermission, cellist Andrés Díaz joined violinist Anne Akiko Meyers in the wonderful Mendelssohn Piano Trio in d minor, Op. 49. Artistic Director David Deveau excused himself from the performance because of tendonitis, and Wendy Chen substituted. She happened to be available because she was scheduled to perform the following evening, June 10. So first of all, as to Chen serving “above and beyond” as a ringer: wow, what playing. Much of this Mendelssohn contains the capriciousness of his Midsummer’s sprites. But, pianistically, the fairies have turned fiend. Chen’s playing was precise as taut steel springs and crystalline in its clarity. Expressive, rollicking through the full dynamic range of the instrument, yet sensitive to her colleagues, her performance was a “Wow!” Yes, “wow” bears repeating.

The team of Chen, Meyers and Díaz delivered a tense, straight-ahead, exciting reading, with the dynamism of a locomotive. Please, this does not imply without grace and taste! Indeed, we sat in admiration of both Díaz’s and Meyers’s consummate artistry.

To file under “For heaven’s sake, do not take this amiss,” we would add the following observations. We gather that Meyers and Díaz are not a permanent performing team (ensemble), as is Ikarus. On top of that, given the last-minute substitution of pianist Chen, the trio could not afford the risk of more elasticity and freedom of tempo, more rubato. By contrast, Ikarus, which is an on-going ensemble, could. So ironically the more “romantic” of the two pieces had less spontaneous freedom in its rendition, probably, as we note, of necessity. (Not that Beethoven is not a romantic himself!)

Also, the “blend” of string sound seemed to us smoother, rounder and more balanced with the trio. For some reason, especially in those passages of the Mendelssohn first movement, where the two strings play parallel at two octaves (e.g. measures 187-195 and subsequent similar iterations) the two instruments didn’t seem to blend. We thought there might be something going on acoustically, not with the two artists’ intonation, which was fine. Meyers plays the ex-Napoleon/Molitor Strad. If Díaz was playing an equally prestigious cello, maybe we have the problem of two important personalities in the same room: talking at each other rather than to each other.

And finally, constructively, I offer that the management should turn the houselights up during the setups between pieces so that the audience can consult the program notes With the lights left down, the auditorium is too dark for reading.

Other than that, the evening was sweetness and delight. We cannot wait to return for another performance.

Tony Schemmer is a New York-born American composer.  His works are performed extensively here and abroad.

The songs were ordered harmonically and thematically, each half of the concert presented as a set. By combining songs in the same or relative key, progressing by intervals with some thematic pairings tossed in, the recital brought out continuities and contrasts across time and national traditions. The opening Purcell Music for a while led to Schubert’s Im Frühling, followed by Fauré’s “L’aube blanche” from La chanson d’Eve, Schumann’s Die Lotosblume, then Dowland’s Come again, sweet love doth now invite. The opening songs stress the power of music to allay cares and assuage nostalgia, to express manifold loves in diverse musical idioms. In the first half there was a recurring theme of melancholy — yet set lovingly to music – leavened with rich and powerful moments of contentment. The first half ended with Schubert, Rastlose Liebe. Does this song of fickle love serve Upshaw as an anthem of sorts, attesting to her own love of such wide-ranging music?

The second half offered more songs on the theme of love and included some lesser-known gems which I greatly appreciated hearing: Warlock, Sleep (set to words by John Fletcher penned some three centuries earlier); Golijov, Lúa descolorida; and Bolcom, Waitin’ (a beautifully jazzy and gospel-inflected song that, as performed, inspired intense longing). There was also a very playful reading of Weill, I’m a Stranger Here Myself, including flirting with the pianist and trying to get frisky with him, all to great comic effect. (The full program can be seen here with the list and order of songs.) One way to summarize the ordering of music is to note the return to the Baroque throughout the recital, circling back throughout the program as chronologies of music history rolled backwards and forwards in waves.

Thematic pairings of note include Debussy, “La chevelure” from Chanson de Bilitis, followed by Messiaen, “Le collier” from Poème pour Mi: two love songs about a necklace, yet radically different in musical style and idiom. Similarly, Seeger, White Moon, followed by Korngold, “Mond, so gehst du wieder auf” from Lieder des Abschieds: roughly contemporaneous composers writing songs about the moon – and yet there the similarities end, with Seeger penning a more modern work, serious music to Ogden Nash’s words, and Korngold offering a more immediately accessible song, the profundity of the whole insinuating itself subtly upon the ears of the listener. These orderings made familiar songs fresh anew.

Given this variety of song written in many different styles across centuries, each song still sounded unique. Upshaw sang Purcell and Dowland with a simplicity and purity that allowed her voice to shine; for Bartók, Eddig való dolgom (a setting of a traditional text) as for the lieder, her voice seemed fuller, with more vibrato and projection, matching the demands of the music. The modern pieces demonstrated a musician magisterially singing difficult works with grace and ease. The show tunes were by turns lush and playful. From one piece to the next Upshaw seamlessly shifted vocal style and presentation. She sang beautifully with wonderful articulation – precise, carefully placed consonants, wide, open vowels – in all selections. My one issue was with her pronunciation, notably in French, perhaps also Russian (although there I am no expert): these songs, to my ears, sounded overly American, overly broad and bright. I would have appreciated a pronunciation closer to the spoken language. Prutsman proved the perfect accompanist in this recital, attuned to Upshaw and himself a master of the several styles programmed. I did find Prutsman’s flourishes and arabesques with his hands as he removed his fingers from the keys at various points to be distracting: did I hear vibrato because of his shaking fingers, pulsing notes on account of his aerial strummings above the keyboard, or just imagine them? These are, I freely admit, but cavils which hardly diminish a truly wonderful recital.

On a different note in closing, this season marks Marty Jones’s twenty-fifth and last season working with the Celebrity Series of Boston, fifteen of them as its president and executive director. She announced that this recital was in some ways her own swan song. Thanks to her efforts, we have all found pleasure and enlightenment in the copious offerings of Celebrity Series of Boston. Let us hope future seasons continue to offer us such a treasury of delights, continuing and expanding on Marty’s work and vision.

Cashman Kerr Prince is trained in Classics and Comparative Literature and is now a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Classical Studies at Wellesley College.  He is also a cellist of some accomplishment, currently playing with the Brookline Symphony Orchestra.

When, in fact, were the roof’s rafters raised? The fifth and final movement of Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 97, the “Rhenish,” danced as directed—Lebhaft, lively. Lewis himself danced on the podium. The potential of the orchestra, not to be questioned at this point as they responded in every way to their conductor, found Schumann, with his off-beat pulsing and quicksilver, always catchy, quirkiness; and they gave it everything they had.  It could be said that, albeit it shouldn’t be that way, the moment was worth the wait.

Much of the time, poetics of these various faces of Romanticism eluded the director, though not altogether; rather, just often missing that edge that raises listening to feeling, that step, sometimes ever so small, we look for in our musical experience. Not so the lighter sides of the Germans. The orchestra came fully to life in the not-so-serious sections of the one-movement Chamber Symphony of Austrian composer Franz Schreker (1878-1934). Harp and string strumming set the tone for the winds in their attractive, childlike playfulness.

Are they ready, though, for Harvard’s big space in Cambridge, or is it somewhat premature for this fledging “chamber orchestra that draws together forty of the finest performing musicians in Boston,” all of whom are bracingly quite young? Certainly the prestige and acoustics of Sanders is inviting.

It might be that word has not yet made its way around despite having received positive reviews here in the Boston Musical Intelligencer as well as elsewhere. While that remains to be seen, one still has to wonder how many performance organizations of this kind Boston is capable of sustaining. Will Discovery Ensemble be able to carve a niche for itself in the coming years that will find a larger listenership? When will we know the results of their endeavors to cultivate tomorrow’s audiences from inner-city schools? Are such efforts being tracked?

“Three Faces of Romanticism” did, to its credit, expose Schreker’s music, relatively unknown. Along with the two well-known faces, their programming follows a typical formula around these days. Another even bigger challenge (an ongoing one for years even for the Boston Symphony Orchestra), continues to be that of audience development and, more particularly, the matter of cutting across generations. As one critic put it, speaking about both A Far Cry and Discovery Ensemble, their appeal is not directed to Boston’s “sober” audiences. What on earth could he have meant? Has he forgotten the likes of, say, the New England Conservatory Philharmonia, or what the energetic and young conductor Frederico Cortese has been bringing to the Boston classical musical scene?

Discovery Ensemble is, after all, in its formative years. The forty players, who seem to be 20-something, are certainly accomplished, dedicated performers to the very last one. Seasoned enough? That is harder to determine from last night’s concert, which was the first time I had heard them. German Romanticism from talented Courtney Lewis found discipline over feeling. In Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll — his well-known dedicatory music to his wife, Cosima — Lewis over-achieved the softer dynamic markings in the score, denying richness to the strings. His whole approach, careful in considerable detail, kindled little emotion in but a few of the exuberant passages. For the young conductor, those poignant, speechless passages, the quiet long-held harmonies recurring throughout simply became resting places.

David Patterson, Professor of Music and former Chairman of the Performing Arts Department at UMass Boston, was recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award and the Chancellor’s Distinction in  Teaching Award. He studied with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen in Paris and holds a PhD from Harvard University. www.notescape.net

“An Artistic Ménagerie: Collaborations of Mind, Hand and Imagerie, Paris1900-1926″ was divided into two halves: the first was a study of opposites. Ann Allen, adjunct lecturer at the MFA and member of the Council for the Arts at MIT, was calm and composed. Those who enjoy art lectures loved her informative slide show and appreciated what they saw later in the afternoon, when most of the artwork turned up again in a richer context. Jonathan McPhee, music director of Boston Ballet, was all ebullience and charm, telling tales of Stravinsky and his ballets. At one point when he started dancing the rhythms of “The Rite of Spring,” I thought he was just about to break into a flamenco. He talked more about the composers and their music; he was full of great ballet stories, so freshly told they sounded like delicious arts gossip. He likened the amazing confluence of the arts in Paris at this time to New York City in the 1940s and 1950s.

For those who came to hear the music, little else mattered. Most of the large crowd seem delighted to see the artwork with the poems and dances to which they “belonged.” To me, the artwork, lovely though it was, was generally a giant distraction. Perhaps had the performers been less than stellar, the artwork would have been more fun, but the performances of Randall Hodgkinson, Mihae Lee, and baritone David Kravitz were completely engaging. For this listener, the music was a powerful enough experience.

The whole program was the brainchild of violist Marcus Thompson, and his superb program notes (along with those of Steven Ledbetter) were a model of thoughtfully informative writing. The first piece on the program, (1917) by Eric Satie, was based on a theme by Jean Cocteau and featured curtain, sets, and costumes by Pablo Picasso; all were shown on the screen behind the afternoon’s excellent pianists, Hodgkinson and Lee.  Parade was one of many succés de scandale that Cocteau so enjoyed creating, and that Sergei Diaghilev had in mind for a new ballet when he commanded: “Astound me!”

Maurice Ravel’s charming Histoires naturelles (1906) was sung by the wonderful baritone David Kravitz, accompanied by Lee. These five charming songs, set to poems of Jules Renard, were illustrated by Pierre Bonnard and Henri de Toulouse-Latrec. They tell the short, almost scientifically precise tales of a peacock, a cricket, a swan, a kingfisher, and a guinea fowl. The woodcuts on the screen were lovely indeed, and in this case, the collaboration of piano and voice and art and words was, to me, a charming success.

Darius Milhaud’s famous (in its orchestral version) La création du monde (1923) was given a bang-up performance by the two pianists. Two sets of collaborations —  the pianists, who played remarkably together, and the original collaboration of Milhaud writing for Blaise Cendrars’ Ballet nègre in one act, with sets and costumes by Fernand Léger — provided synergy at its best.

More animals were featured in Francis Poulenc’s 1919 Le Bèstiaire ou cortège d’Orphée (1920), with six poems of Guillaume Apollinaire and woodcuts by Raoul Dufy. Here Kravitz wittily and wistfully described a camel, Tibetan goat, grasshopper, dolphin, crawfish, and a carp, with Hodgkinson accompanying. The twenty-year-old Poulenc chose six quatrains by Apollinaire, each a tad longer than a haiku. Here, the carp:

In your fishtanks, in your ponds

how long you live, carp!

Is it that death has forgotten you,

O fish of melancholy?

Before Apollinaire’s death at age thirty-five, Poulenc set thirty-five of his poems to music. Poulenc, who went on to earn the reputation as the finest musical interpreter of French poetry, was the youngest of “Les Six,” a group of composers which included Darius Milhaud, who were named and promoted as such by Cocteau.

Finally, the two pianists gave a spectacular performance of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (“The Rite of Spring”). The sets and costumes by Nicholas Roerich were among the constantly changing art-work. Everyone at the premiere in 1913 had an opinion of this work, whether they stayed to hear it or left in disgust or alarm. Jean Cocteau spoke of its “savage sadness” and its “little melodies that arrive from the depths of the centuries.” Saint-Saens called it “an insult to habit,” and Debussy called it “an extraordinary, ferocious thing … primitive music with every modern convenience.” Debussy nevertheless sight-read “Rite” with Stravinsky in this four-hand version.  (I would have liked to have been a fly on that wall!)

Again, most people seemed to feel that the artwork enriched their “Rite” listening experience; I found it distracting. When pianists play this piece this well, I need nothing else.

Susan Miron is a book critic, essayist, and harpist. Her last two CDs featured her transcriptions of keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti.