Cactus Pear Music Festival
Beethoven, Clarke, Elgar
July 18, 2009The Cactus Pear Music Festival continued on July 16 with two works from slightly off the beaten path (by Rebecca Clarke and Edward Elgar) and one from slightly off our planet (by Beethoven, of course).
The spirited pianist Jeffrey Sykes, a Cactus Pear mainstay since the festival’s beginning, anchored all three works, and he was joined by four top-drawer string players -- violinists Axel Strauss and Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio, violist Ara Gregorian and cellist Bion Tsang.
Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 4 dates from 1815 and could be considered the opening volley of his late period -- which is to say it is very strange and unpredictable music, indeed. Yet it is also one of Beethoven’s most organic works, the whole compact shebang growing from the fairly simple two-measure statement that begins the opening andante. In that opening andante, and again in the brief adagio, Tsang’s delicately feathered dynamics and highly specific phrasing seemed to come from the realm of art song, and there was lyricism even in the sometimes forceful, sometimes playful allegros. One might have expected as much: Tsang, who teaches at UT-Austin, has always impressed with his gorgeous tone and singing line in his too-few appearances in San Antonio.
The British-American Clarke toured widely as a violist, and she first attained wide recognition as a composer with her Sonata for viola and piano of 1916. The piece shows some influence of Debussy, and the robust lyricism and high drama of the outer movements also recall Cesar Franck, but there is a personal signature in the way Clarke extends her structures and in the impetuous wit of the middle movement. Gregorian and Sykes gave a no-holds-barred performance, and the violist’s big, lush tone was sheer pleasure.
Elgar’s Quintet in A Minor, from 1919, was given a highly sympathetic -- indeed, convinced -- account. Elgar was not a composer to shrink from excess, and the Cactus Pear aggregation invested lavishly in his aesthetic. At times, in the first and third movements, the music seemed almost to burst at the seams. The middle slow movement was suffused with warmth.
Mike Greenberg
