Pianist Aaron Diehl Photo: Maria Jarzyna

Conductor Joshua Weilerstein

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SA Symphony, J. Weilerstein, A. Diehl; Camerata SA

Doing right by Gershwin

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Matthew Zerweck (violin), Viktor Valkov (piano), and Ken Freudigman (cello).

October 5, 2019 It’s been a great week for music.  Camerata San Antonio opened its 17th  season on Sept. 29 with an all-Russian  program, and two extraordinary young   talents appeared with the San Antonio  Symphony on Oct. 4.  Jazz pianist Aaron Diehl played the  bejabbers out of George Gershwin’s  Concerto in F with the symphony in  the Tobin Center. The guest conductor  was Joshua Weilerstein, artistic  director of the Lausanne Chamber  Orchestra in France, and also a  violinist. He comes with a fine  pedigree: His older sister is the  brilliant cellist Alisa Weilerstein, who  gave memorable performances with  this orchestra in 2005 and 2009. Their  parents are the violinist Donald  Weilerstein, a founding member of the  Cleveland Quartet; and the pianist  Vivian Hornik Weilerstein.  Gershwin’s concerto has one foot in  jazz and one in classical music,  especially the late Romanticism of  Rachmaninoff. But it isn’t lightweight  "crossover” music. Gershwin seldom  gets the credit he deserves for his compositional sophistication. In this concerto the urban American boisterousness and sultriness of the jazz tradition is fully of a piece with the long-form structural complexity of the classical tradition. This was the first  performance I’ve heard that honored  both traits equally. The most obvious distinctive in Mr.  Diehl’s approach to this piece was his  strategic use of improvisation, richly  elaborating some passages without  violating the rhythmic flow. These  episodes were not imitation jazz but  the real thing, and the same can be  said of his phrasing and color sense  when he was playing the notes as  written. The bluesy piano solo that  follows the brash orchestral  introduction was suffused with wistful  languor, and the pianist brought an  apt wildness to the Charleston  rhythms later in the first movement.  He had no shortage of technique or  power. The finale exploded from the  starting gate. Mr. Diehl was almost upstaged in the  second movement by principal  trumpet John Carroll’s smoky-dive- bar-at-closing-time solos. And Mr.  Diehl almost upstaged himself with his  encore, Duke Ellington’s “Single Petal  of a Rose,” in a delicate, searching  performance that earned rapt  attention from the audience.  Sometimes, a musician doesn’t just play music – and a listener doesn’t just hear and enjoy – but both dwell deep within it. Mr. Weilerstein had an impressive evening. He brought cinematic sweep and incisive rhythms to the orchestral side of the Gershwin concerto. His balances in Felix Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony were luxurious and carefully gauged, every voice sounding clearly, and there was an uncommon cogency to his phrasing. He got a wide dynamic range from the orchestra, down to a lovely pianissimo from the strings. Only complaint: His tempo in the second movement was surely too fast to qualify as “Vivace non troppo,” and the music really wanted more relaxation.  The concert opened with the American composer Caroline Shaw’s 2011 Entr’acte for strings, a substantial and fascinating piece inspired by a passage from a Haydn string quartet. The music resides largely within classical tonal harmony and thematic unity, but extended techniques dissolve the classical into modernist wooziness or near-silent skitterings. The committed, taut performance included strong solos from principal cello Ken Freudigman and concertmaster Eric Gratz. I don’t know if Mr. Weilerstein is a candidate to succeed Sebastian Lang-Lassing as the orchestra’s music director, but if so, he certainly deserves further consideration.  The first half of Camerata’s program, in the University of the Incarnate Word concert hall, featured string quartets by two composers from off the beaten path. The first-rate musicians were violinist Matthew Zerweck and Anastasia Parker, violist Emily Freudigman, and cellist Ken Freudigman. Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Polish Jew who fled to the Soviet Union in 1939 and became a friend of Shostakovich, has been gaining notice in recent years. He is probably best known for his powerful Holocaust opera The Passenger, whose planned 1968 premiere was scuttled by Soviet authorities; performed for the first time in 2006 in a Moscow semi-staging, it has since received several important productions, including its US premiere at Houston Grand Opera. His brief Capriccio, Op. 11, for string quartet, was composed in 1943. This charming, lyrical music bears some superficial resemblance to Shostakovich, but deep down it is neoclassical, almost Haydnesque, but with modern harmonies that recall Richard Strauss.  Anton Arensky was a tragic figure, showing brilliant talent when he was young, but soon trapped by addictions to alcohol and gambling. He died in 1906 at age 45. His String Quartet No. 1 of 1888 reveals a master of harmony, a fertile musical imagination. and – like the Weinberg piece, a debt to Haydn. Of its four movements, the second, marked Andante sostenuto, is especially interesting for a sweetly lyrical but grounded sentimentality, rather like a film by Ozu. Metaphorical sparks flew from Mr. Zerweck’s violin in the fourth movement, Variations on a Russian Theme. Pianist Viktor Valkov joined Mr. Zerweck and Mr. Freudigman in the concert’s final work, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A Minor. The performance was big and fearless in every way. Individually and as an ensemble, these guys left nothing on the table.                                                                                                          Mike Greenberg    

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