Although concerts of French Romantic music aren’t a rarity in our musical town, concerts of harp music are noticeably rarer. But with the talent of Jessica Zhou, principal harpist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in our midst, I do hope they become more common. Mistral’s second concert this spring brought Zhou together with a string quartet, clarinet, and flute for “Reflections from the Seine,” a collection of the Impressionistic period’s most impressionistic music. Before an excited crowd gathered in Brookline’s St. Paul’s Episcopal Church this past Sunday stood the gilded figure of a harp striking a fabulous pose on a low stage drawing the audience into their seats in eager anticipation of the sounds they would soon hear. Despite the flatness of the seating area, there wasn’t a bad seat in the plastered room to enjoy the lively chamber music in the warm, reverberate space.
The entire concert seemed to prelude the grand finale of the show: Maurice Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro. The work may have begun with a slower than average opening from the accompanying chamber ensemble, but this sluggishness was shaken off by the rattling bass strings of Zhou’s harp as she entered with that juicy C-flat7 chord. Throughout the performance, I was struck by the quantity of sound Zhou was able to produce. Even in passages where the strings played vigorous four-note arpeggios across the entire range of their instrument, Zhou’s resonant chords filled the room to the point that the ensemble could only lightly tinge the impressionistic colors. Around lush harp, flakes of chalumeau, dollops of cello, whisps of violin and intense strands of flute were painted by the players in much the way Cézanne might with hues of orange or violet. The highpoint of the performance was the harp cadenza at the center of work. Zhou fearlessly grabbed our attention with dramatic pauses and toyed with us in indulgent rubato. Several in the audience lost control after the passage of (brilliantly executed) treacherous harmonics gave way to the fuller tone of the decadent G-flat major chord, The following line’s ethereal glissando that incensed the main theme brought a tear to the eye. The return of the other instruments felt like the return of the sun after a string of dreary days: as sunny remembered but warmer than ever felt.
The Harp Quinet that opened the show, Jean Cras’s of 1928, prefigured all these delights. The obscure work opened a cornucopia of textures balancing airy flute and harp against a meaty string trio. Though the harp seldom played melody, and its part seemed to be at times optional, Zhou made herself indispensable, filling it with a bubbling energy as light as carbonation. The opening’s seascape began with a confidently slow start as Julie Scolnik (flute) and Jean-Michel Fonteneau (cello) swayed back and forth under the gravitation of Zhou’s arpeggiation. The work fulfilled its title (Assez Animé) as the music swirled like musical chairs with Maureen Nelson (violin) imitating viola, Stephanie Fong (viola) imitating flute, and Fonteneau imitating violin! The second movement sounded like a kaleidoscope, not in the display of colors but in the dynamic gyre of color as it turns. Zhou’s occasional melodies sounded like the finest windchimes money could buy. The Quintet took a darker turn in the third movement, Assez Lent sans trainer. It was perhaps a retelling of the myth of the faune but more in the vein of Nijinsky than Debussy. The subtle movement erupted into a passion of strings and flute as they played a descending, planing melody pulled up by Zhou’s epic glissandi. The work ended Très Animé in a joyous cacophony of every imaginable type of pizzicato.
Compositions for strings alone filled out the rest of the program. Debussy’s String Quartet brought us back after intermission. The execution was ideal. Quite good, really. The second movement was especially colorful and the third deeply touching. It provoked several couples in the audience to embrace before the work’s Très modéré conclusion. Virgil Boutellis’s and Irène Duval’s arrangement of Camile Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre nearly brought the house down. The flashy work employed many imaginative techniques to multiply the sound of Siwoo Kim’s and Fong’s violins. Both virtuosi employed nearly continuous double or triple stopping (sometimes with left-hand pizzicati layered in) and some electric semi-bowed/col legno strokes.
Jean Françaix’s Trio for violin, viola, and cello is hardly as sublime as Debussy’s masterpiece, but it certainly contained more gunpowder. The first movement, Allegretto, vivo, launched off the starting blocks in a chatter of stimulated conversation. Above its frenetic texture, Kim volleyed swooning violin lines that Fong lightly shadowed in approval. All maintained the cheekiest con sordino sound, an effect reminiscent of the buff stop on some dry harpsichords, that pushed the timbre of the ensemble into some uncanny valley between bowed string and woody double reed. (We heard only the first and last movements.) Beforehand, Kim warned the audience of the Rondo jocular, free-for-all nature: a necessary admission. Fong-Fonteneau’s biting accompaniment formed a smart duo of resonant pizzicati and birdlike countermelodies. Kim formed a violin section by himself with lyrical double stopping and intonation that deserves an award. The conclusion brought together the best moments of the Rondo in a quodlibet of double stops, chatter runs, and pizzicati that spurred a chuckle and generous applause.