Camerata San Antonio:
A beguiling rediscovery -- and a great loss
September 16, 2008Two thoughts came to mind while listening to string trio movements by the Czech composer Hans Krása during Camerata San Antonio’s season opener, Sept. 14 in Travis Park United Methodist Church.
First thought: Krása’s superb craftsmanship, supple rhythmic play, and rich, shifting harmonies made him the most beguiling composer I’d never heard of.
Second thought: What wonders might he have given us had the Nazis not killed him at Auschwitz in 1944, just short of his 45th birthday?
Krása composed these pieces for string trio, a Dance and a Passacaglia and Fugue, in the year of his death while he was interned at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, along with several other Jewish composers who also would be killed at Auschwitz.
Harmonically, these pieces have roots in Janacek, a fellow Bohemian, and in Schoenberg’s chromatic romanticism. But otherwise the voice is highly individual. The Dance is notable for its use of counterpoint for propulsion and for some passages that seem to anticipate Elliott Carter’s complex approach to time. The Passacaglia’s variations, including a wistful waltz, are wonderfully subtle in their expressive shadings. The Fugue gives the most strictly ordered of musical forms a remarkable feeling of freedom and aspiration. The performances, by violinist Sayaka Okada, violist Emily Watkins Freudigman and cellist Kenneth Freudigman, were luxuriously played and cogently prepared. The lines of the Fugue passed among the players with great elegance.
Guest violist Yitzhak Schotten’s bright, lively tone and clearly etched phrasing were at the center of two evocative, atmospheric pieces by Joaquin Turina. “Crepuscule du soir” and “A la Fenetre” were scored for solo viola with a piano quintet. The music was Spanish in its melodic cut, but the influence of Debussy (and perhaps Chausson) shaped the harmonies. Violinist Karen Stiles joined the aforementioned string players. Pianist Melinda Lee Masur’s stylish playing once again gave cause to celebrate her presence in San Antonio.
Masur and Kenneth Freudigman opened the concert with Frederic Chopin’s early Introduction et Polonaise brillante. Masur’s crisply delineated Polish rhythms were a pleasure to hear, as were Freudigman’s gorgeous tone and singing line.
All the string players closed the concert with a big, warm, beautifully balanced and rhythmically astute account of Johannes Brahms’s String Quintet in G, which bursts forth like burgeoning spring.
Mike
Greenberg
