Beethoven Festival: Pacifica Quartet, Olmos Ensemble
Performances rarefied and earthy
January 31, 2012The Pacifica Quartet, which impressed with its exquisitely refined playing in its local debut seven years ago, returned to the San Antonio Chamber Music Society concert series on Jan. 29, refinement pressed almost to a fault. The previous afternoon, the Olmos Ensemble offered excellent accounts of two early Beethoven chamber works for a surprisingly large crowd in the Majestic Theatre.
The major works on the Pacifica’s Temple Beth-El concert were Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 9 in E-flat and Beethoven’s String Quartet in F, Op. 59, No. 1, the first of three commissioned by Count Andrey Razumovsky of Russia. The program opened with radiant accounts of three of Antonin Dvorak’s “Cypresses,” the composer’s string-quartet arrangements of earlier songs.
The players, as in 2005, were violinists Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson, violist Masumi Per Rostad and cellist Brandon Vamos.
Composed in 1964, Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 9 is a highly dramatic and personal work that occupies an emotional middle ground between the mournful Eighth and the optimistic 10th. Of its five continuous movements, the central scherzo is a lively dance that doesn’t share the angry, sardonic wit of many of the composer’s scherzos; it contains an allusion to the most famous theme from Rossini’s “William Tell” Overture, which Shostakovich would quote more directly in the 15th Symphony of 1971. Its two adagios, flanking the scherzo, are pensive but not desolate. The final allegro, symphonic in its breadth and complexity, wraps quotations from the four previous movements in new material that is rhythmically vigorous and exhilarating.
Throughout the program, the performances were poised, tautly unified, meticulously planned, impeccable in intonation. Tempos play was minimal even in Beethoven and Dvorak, but firmly etched rhythms from Ms. Ganatra and propulsive phrasing from (the aptly surnamed) Mr. Vamos maintained a sense of direction. The restraint in these performances was a little distancing, to my ear. The Shostakovich and Beethoven quartets have been played with more spice and excitement, but never with greater beauty.
Chamber music in the Majestic? Downtown on a Saturday afternoon? Would anyone show up?
About 200 listeners did, a large minority of them (by a show of hands) attending an Olmos Ensemble concert for the first time. Many in the audience evidently were making a day of it, staying downtown for dinner and then the evening’s San Antonio Symphony concert, also in the Majestic. The theater’s acoustics for chamber music turned out to be not bad at all up to 12 rows from the stage, but muffled and dry beyond that.
Although Beethoven wasn’t generally much of a tunesmith, both the Quintet in E-flat for piano and winds and the Septet in E-flat for winds and strings contain striking extended melodies -- a rather Mozartian aria in the central andante of the former, a heartfelt song in the second movement of the latter.
The New York-based pianist Warren Jones -- named “collaborative pianist of the year” for 2010 by “Musical America” -- anchored the Quintet with crisp, stylish playing. His partners in a very zesty, polished performance were Olmos regulars Mark Ackerman (oboe), Ilya Shterenberg (clarinet), Sharon Kuster (bassoon) and Jeff Garza (horn).
The sunny Septet, modeled on the traditional serenade, assigns starring roles to both the clarinet and the violin, although only the latter gets a nice juicy solo cadenza, played with snappy confidence by Sayaka Okada. The inclusion of a double-bass frees the bassoon and cello from bass chores and allows both to sing more prominently than usual in music of the period.
The performance was pleasurable and engaging throughout, tinged with gemütlich earthiness. The string players, in addition to Ms. Okada, were Lauren Magnus (viola), Morgen Johnson (cello) and Zlatan Redzic (double-bass). The winds were Mr. Shterenberg, Ms. Kuster and Mr. Garza.
Apart from Mr. Jones, all the musicians in the Olmos concert are members of the San Antonio Symphony.
Mike Greenberg
