July 16, 2017
For its 21st edition, the Cactus Pear
Music Festival moved to a new
suburban venue, welcomed some new
talent along with returning veterans,
and made its most memorable marks
with music from the 20th century and
beyond.
Founded in 1997 by violinist Stephanie
Sant’Ambrogio – then the San Antonio
Symphony’s concertmaster – Cactus
Pear first planted its flag at a
downtown church, then moved a few
years later a couple of miles north to
the Monte Vista Historic District.
Another move much farther north,
well past Loop 410, followed in 2010.
This year, it hopped still farther north
to Concordia Lutheran Church, just
outside Loop 1604 at Huebner Road. On a clear day you can see Fort Worth.
A good part of the festival’s audience appears not to have followed: Attendance was conspicuously lighter than in past years. That’s a shame, because the programming and performances were top drawer, and Concordia’s acoustics, though dryish and problematic for some instruments (mainly cellos) in some seating positions, were a great improvement over the festival’s previous home, Coker United Methodist Church. Most of the instruments projected clearly and with fidelity to their timbres. Indeed, again and again it seemed I was hearing some aspects of Ms. Sant’Ambrogio’s rich, focused tone for the first time.
The festival’s apex came at the midpoint of the July 14 concert with Krzysztof Penderecki’s Clarinet Quartet (1993), for clarinet, violin, viola and cello. Ilya Shterenberg, principal clarinet for the San Antonio Symphony, was passionately committed to the work: He introduced it with cogent, detailed and eloquent remarks, illustrated with a few musical examples. Those prepared the audience for Penderecki’s modernist harmonic idiom, recalling Alban Berg in its sinuous free tonality. They could not fully prepare the audience for the work as a whole, much of it spare and haunting, a play of wisps and shadows. The opening Nocturne and closing Farewell are like meditations on a ravaged landscape, but the lines are often sensuous. The second movement is a violent, frantic, sometimes sardonic scherzo, the third a lively but ironic waltz, in a style recalling Schoenberg’s 12-tone period.
The stunning performance had the audience rapt. Mr. Shterenberg’s disciplined, agile, always-beautiful playing was abetted by Ms. Sant’Ambrogio, Bruce Williams (viola) and Holgen Gjoni (cello). Ms. Sant’Ambrogio had a gorgeous solo line in the finale. Mr. Williams, principal viola of the Austin Symphony and a standout of this year’s Victoria Bach Festival, was notable for his consistently sensitive phrasing. Mr. Gjoni, who joined the San Antonio Symphony in 2015, impressed with his bright, clear tone.
A thread of lamentation continued through several works on the festival’s closing concert, July 15. The English composer Arnold Bax composed his Quintet for oboe and string quartet in 1922, evidently with the Irish Civil War in his mind. Many of the ideas in this densely textured, harmonically slippery work of late late Romanticism are drawn from Irish folk traditions. The middle slow movement begins with a ruminative introduction for strings alone, and the oboe enters at last to deliver a highly elaborated but furrowed-brow pastoral. The finale is a jig – but it is interrupted by a second subject whose source is one of the oldest extant Irish ballads, “Lament for the Sons of Usna.” (It sounds like a direct quote from the second movement of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, but that is apparently a coincidence.)
Paul Lueders, the San Antonio Symphony’s principal oboe, was superb in the central role, especially memorable for his feathering of dynamics. His colleagues were Sandy Yamamoto (violin), Ms. Sant’Ambrogio, Mr. Williams, and Mr. Gjoni. Ms. Yamamoto, a member of the excellent Miro Quartet and a newcomer to Cactus Pear, impressed in all her appearances with the urgency and snap of her phrasing,
Those same string players were on their own in a moving account of Osvaldo Golijov’s Tenebrae, a luminously reverent piece that draws from medieval, Renaissance and Hebraic chant idioms.
Also perhaps in the line of lamentations was the work that was commissioned for the festival’s Young Artist Fellows, local high school students. As the instrumentation could not be known until the participants were chosen by audition in early April, the Venezuelan-born composer Icli Zitella had only a short time to complete the commission, but the result was splendid. Eternal Return is scored unusually for flute (Paula Wilson), clarinet (Garrett Snowden), two violins (Emily Bustos and Abigail Dixon), two violas (Maggie Alvarez and Jakob Fenton), two cellos (Andrew Arkhipov and Jackie Bustos) and piano (Mark Rogers). The music pivots between martial, dark, sometimes violent material and deep tenderness, including particularly lovely weavings of flute and clarinet or violin and cello. It makes a powerful impression despite its mere seven minutes’ duration. The performance, tautly unified without benefit of a conductor, was remarkably adept both technically and interpretively.
By tradition, the first program of each Cactus Pear season is devoted to composers whose names begin with B. Beethoven and Brahms were well represented this time around, on July 7, but more interesting was the presence of two women, Mélanie Bonis of France and Amy Beach of the United States. Bonis’s Soir, Matin (1907) for piano (Scott Cuellar), violin (Ms. Sant’Ambrogio) and cello (Beth Rapier) showed influence of Debussy and Franck in its two finely crafted movements, the first long-lined and yearning, the second bustling and prickly. Beach’s Piano Quintet in F-sharp minor is a big essay in late-Romantic drama, with confident melodic lines and clear structural arcs. Mr. Cuellar, the gold medalist in last year’s San Antonio International Piano Competition, showed a great affinity for the Romantic style, along with terrific technical chops. His partners in the Beach quintet were Dmitri Pogorelov (violin), Ms. Sant’Ambrogio, David Harding (viola) and Ms. Rapier.
A particular delight of the July 8 concert festival was the opening sequence of short cello duets played by Anthony Ross and Ms. Rapier, Cactus Pear stalwarts who are principal and assistant principal celli of the Minnesota Orchestra, and husband and wife. Ms. Rapier’s own arrangement of Egberto Gismonti’s Aqua e Vino sticks especially in memory for the swaying flexibility of the lines and the beautifully pointed Brazilian rhythms.
Czech repertoire also got its due. Bedřich Smetana’s Trio in G minor for piano, violin and cello gave vent to Ms. Sant’Ambrogio’s gutsy low register, Mr. Cuellar’s crisp rendering of the Bohemian rhythms, Mr. Ross’s gushers of melody, and exceptional teamwork all around. Antonín Dvořák’s Terzetto for two violins (Ms. Sant’Ambrogio and Ms. Yamamoto) and viola (Mr. Williams) got a creamy ensemble blend and a nice jolt of energy from Ms. Yamamoto’s rhythmic moxie.
Mark Teplitsky, the San Antonio Symphony’s principal flute, made several splendid showings, most notably in Max Reger’s lush Serenade for flute, violin (Ms. Yamamoto) and viola (Mr. Williams) and Heitor Villa-Lobos’s charming, virtuosic The Jet Whistle for flute and cello (Mr. Gjoni).
And it was nice to hear the Oboe Quartet No. 1 by Franz Krommer, a middle-weight contemporary of Mozart’s with a fine melodic gift. Mr. Lueders’s pliant tone and intelligent phrasing were beautifully supported by Ms. Sant’Ambrogio, Mr. Williams and Mr. Gjoni.
Another oboist made a non-playing appearance: Mark Ackerman, the San Antonio Symphony’s principal oboe emeritus and founder of the Olmos Ensemble, was honored with the festival’s Mary B. Eckhardt Round-‘Em Up Award for his many years of work to advance classical music and build its audience in San Antonio.
Mike Greenberg
Icli Zitella
respond
Cactus Pear Music Festival
Much delight, and a thread of lamentation
incident light
The Cactus Pear Music Festival’s new venue for 2017 was Concordia Lutheran Church.
Krzysztof Penderecki
music