April 14, 2009: A rich viola for lunch

Once again I have been granted the opportunity to luxuriate in the rich "voice of the viola," this time through the good graces of today's Noontime Concerts™ recital at Old St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco.  The soloist was Paul Ehrlich, accompanied at the piano by Roxanne Michaelian;  and the program covered, in chronological order, music from 1770 to 1919, representing the composers William Flackton, Robert Schumann, and Paul Hindemith.  Flackton was represented by the G major sonata from his Opus 2 collection of viola sonatas.  In their Grove Music Online entry for Flackton, Watkins Shaw and Robert Ford say the following about this collection:

In the preface to his op.2 sonatas (which were ‘inspected’ before publication by C.F. Abel) he stressed the claims of that neglected instrument and the need to increase its meagre repertory of solo music. Composing in a style already well outdated by the time of publication in 1770, he did so not only with ample competence but with considerable individuality and expressive power.

Ehrlich gave little thought to the "outdated" nature of the composition, performing it in a style appropriate to the period it reflected and revealing it with the care and delight reserved for a previously undiscovered gem.

Schumann was represented by his four-movement Märchenbilder, composed in 1851 about five years before his death.  Like his earlier C major fantasia for solo piano, this work may be viewed as an example of what I have called "poetry without the poet" (in the same sense as Felix Mendelssohn's "songs without words").  As often the case, such "musical poetry" is all in the rhythm;  and Ehrlich's rhythms were an excellent match to Schumann's intentions.

In 1918 and 1919 Hindemith wrote a collection of five sonatas for instruments in the string family for his Opus 11.  The fourth of these is for viola and piano.  The work is in three movements but is basically through-composed.  On first listening I am afraid I could not detect the onset of the theme which served as the basis for the variations in the second movement.  The overall effect was one of an extended fantasia, reinforced by the onset of a fugue for what I took to be the finale movement, which may well have been a reflection of Franz Schubert's four-hand piano fantasia.  If Ehrlich's performance did not leave me with a good sense of Hindemith's overall structure, it still left me curious to hear the work again.  In many ways Hindemith was a "musician's musician;"  but, since the viola was his preferred instrument, his writing for viola offers much to the "listener-in-the-street."  One only needs to give it adequate time to work up an acquaintance!