Camerata San Antonio
From Russia, with goulash
October 28, 2009A favorite pastime of musicians is to grab a pick and shovel, wander through a graveyard and dig up a forgotten or neglected composer. Sometimes the body springs back to life, fresh as a daisy; sometimes not so much.
It’s a little hard to judge the vital signs of Paul Juon, who was disinterred by Camerata San Antonio for its season opener, Oct. 25 in Travis Park United Methodist Church. Juon’s Suite in C for violin, cello and piano was the oddity in a program that also held Felix Mendelssohn’s Cello Sonata No. 2 in D and Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat.
Born in 1872 in Moscow to a Russian father and German mother, Juon lived for most of his adulthood in Germany. Soon after Hitler’s rise to power, Juon retired to Switzerland, where he died in 1940.
His Suite, a late work composed in 1932, is rather like the menu at a Continental restaurant, though one with a Russian tilt. The first of its five movements is sometimes Russian in character, with hints of Orthodox chant and a slight family resemblance to Rachmaninoff; sometimes French Romantic or Modern; sometimes Bartokian. The lively third has a lot of Russian folk character. The fourth recalls Bartok again. The fifth suggests Stravinsky. It’s all well made and holds a listener’s interest, but it’s hard to find a distinctive voice among so many stylistic strands. Pianist Vivienne Spy, violinist Matthew Zerweck and cellist Kenneth Freudigman give it a sturdy performance, though Zerweck trended slightly northward of Freudigman, pitchwise.
Both Mendelssohn and Schumann got somewhat restrained, risk-averse performances. Freudigman’s singing line was wonderful in the Mendelssohn second movement, and Spy did a fine job with the powerful wavelike piano solo that begins the third. In Schumann, they were joined by Zerweck, violinist Sayaka Okada and violist Emily Freudigman, who conspired in a fleet, seamless account of the scherzo. The other movements wanted more flexibility and gumption.
Mike
Greenberg
