In his Schubertiad
at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on March 10, Paul Hersh
spoke about the final year in the life of Franz Schubert. His point was
that Schubert was so prodigious in both the volume of work and the
daring experiments in composition that he pursued that this twelve-month
period could (and did) occupy an entire seminar at the Conservatory.
He offered this digression because he had programmed two works from this
period for his evening of four-hand piano music, the D. 940 F minor
fantasia and the D. 947 A minor allegro ("Lebensstürme").
I
offer this reflection because last night, in her San Francisco debut at
Herbst Theatre in the San Francisco Performances Annual Subscriber Gift
Concert, violinist Joan Kwuon performed another of Schubert's
outstanding achievements from this period, his D. 934 C major fantasy
for violin and piano. Like the four-hand fantasia, this work pushes the
envelope of both structural thinking and virtuosic performance. It
also served one of Schubert's favorite pursuits, which was the discovery
of new sonorities and the challenge of fitting them to his
compositional framework. The very first tremolo sounds from the piano
(excellently captured by Teddy Robie, also making his San Francisco
debut) immediately raise issues of balance against the sustained violin
lines, which could almost be those of a virtuoso soprano. This allusion
to the vocal is subsequently consummated in the third section, which is
a set of variations on Schubert's 1882 setting of Friedrich Rückert's
poem, "Sei mir gegrüsst!" These variations unfold complexities of both
structure and sonority, particularly for the violin, that anticipate the
intricate fugal writing of the four-hand fantasia. I often find it
helpful to invoke the metaphor of "journey"
in writing about listening experiences. Both Kwuon and Robie captured
the "journey" aspect of this fantasy. At the same time, since the work
was composed eleven months before Schubert's death, it also offers one
of the first steps in that more extraordinary journey through his final
year.
That skillful approach to sonority commanded by both Kwuon
and Robie also served them well in their performance of Georges Enesco's
third violin sonata (Opus 25 in A minor). Much of the character of
this sonata derives from its invocation of Romanian folk instruments,
the cimbalom (a hammered dulcimer) probably being the most familiar.
Equally important for the violin (Enesco himself being a virtuoso
violinist) are extensive passages written in harmonics, which provide an
other-worldly quality to the more reflective passages of the sonata.
Chronologically, it is possible that Enesco's experiments with writing
so heavily for harmonics may have influenced Benjamin Britten's
subsequent use of this effect; but, as was clear from last week's performance of Britten's first solo cello suite, he took the effect in entirely new directions.
These
two highly adventurous compositions were bracketed by relatively short
movements originally written for violin and orchestra by Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Haydn. The evening began with Mozart's E
major adagio (K. 261) and C major rondo (K. 373), both written for the
Italian violinist Antonio Brunetti. For her encore Kwuon selected the
adagio movement from Haydn's C major violin concerto (H. VIIa/1), These
were sober and reflective performances that framed the more tumultuous
core of the evening. Similarly, the Schubert fantasy was followed by
André Previn's Tango, Song, Dance, composed for Anne-Sophie
Mutter in 1997 and best described as virtuosity for the fun of it.
There is some sense that the soloist has been given an inordinate number
of hoops through which to leap; but Kwuon had no trouble with any of
them, maintaining a cool composure throughout the process. The
intensity of the evening was thus reserved for the middle of the
program, preceded by Mozart's calm and then relieved by the wit of both
Previn and Haydn (however odd a coupling that may have seemed).
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