Cactus Pear Music Festival
Listening to a conversation, having a 'Lark'
July 11, 2009Chamber music festivals offer pleasures that only partly overlap those to be gained from long-established troupes. The established troupe might hone and refine its interpretation of a work over the course of 20 or 30 years of playing together, living virtually (and sometimes literally) as a family and learning to speak with a single voice. In a festival, musicians assemble ad hoc from far and wide in assorted combinations for an intensive week or two of rehearsals and performances. Their individual voices have not had a chance to meld into one, and interpretations inevitably are quickly sketched rather than meticulously drafted.
But, as gifted architects know, the quick sketch often has more character, beauty and liveliness than the careful drawing. When a festival’s musicians are strong individual artists and astutely chosen, the musical results can be a living-in-the-moment presence and a sense of discovery that established troupes find difficult to match. Attending a festival concert, at the highest levels, is like eavesdropping on a freewheeling dinner-party conversation among really interesting guests.
The opening concert of the 13th annual Cactus Pear Music Festival, July 9 in Travis Park United Methodist Church, was a case in point, but there’s no surprise in that. Violinist Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio, the festival’s founder and artistic director, has consistently proven adept at assembling complementary but compatible talents.
The program held two standard works -- Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Lark” Quartet and Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in D Minor -- and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s early, little-known Quintet in C Minor for violin, viola, cello, double-bass and piano.
Haydn’s “Lark” Quartet, the fifth and finest of the masterful Op. 64 set from 1790, gets its name from the soaring melody that the first violin sets in flight against the other instruments’ chordal backdrop at the start. Violinist Nancy Dahn’s bright, spritzy tone and alert rhythms were always pleasing, and in the andante she showed how interesting a single sustained note can be even with the minimal vibrato characteristic of Haydn’s time. (Dahn returns for the second Cactus Pear program as a soloist in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5.) Her colleagues, second violinist Julie Leven, violist Dave Harding and cellist Dmitri Atapine, provided creamy support, and Atapine showed particular sensitivity to the composer’s wit in the minuet.
The Mendelssohn Trio brought together the crisp diction and high seriousness of pianist Peter Miyamoto, the intensity and warmth of Sant’Ambrogio and the generosity and limpid tone of Atapine. Alas, some strings on the piano, which had been well-behaved before intermission, went wildly out of tune.
Vaughan Williams withdrew his C Minor quintet from publication, possibly because it bears little evidence of his mature signature. Predating his interest in English folk music and his distinctive modal harmonies, the piece reflects the somewhat overstuffed late-Romantic sound world of Cesar Franck and, especially, Ernest Chausson. Though not without some innovative ideas and occasional felicities, the piece doesn’t stand well on its own and is of interest mainly as a view into a blind alley. The performance by Sant’Ambrogio, Harding, Atapine, Miyamoto and bassist Evan Premo was splendid, however. Miyamoto’s big, luxurious sound was ideally suited to the style.
Mike
Greenberg
