Wednesday, October 14, 2015

May 12, 2009: Two parts sublime; one part ridiculous

I have been following The Irving M. Klein International String Competition almost since my arrival in the Bay Area back in 1995.  This was due in part to the fact that every year the winner of this competition played a recital at the home of a friend (and sometime colleague) in Portola Valley.  Now that I am based in San Francisco, I am glad to see that the Noontime Concerts™ series at Old St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco now hosts a one-hour recital by the Klein winner, this year violinist Tessa Lark, accompanied for this program by Tim Bach, a frequent accompanist for recitals at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  Presumably the program was representative of what it takes to win such a competition, a combination of musicianship, breadth of repertoire, and a facile display of technical fireworks.

That last ingredient seems to require that, in the manner of Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, the soloist include the encores as part of the proper program.  However, the problem with spectacular encores is that, from a musical point of view, they tend to venture into the ridiculous;  and sometimes it is hard to tell just how seriously one of those composition should be taken.  In the absence of any better criterion, I tend to follow the judgment of Jascha Heifetz, who seemed to have gotten away with making a recording of just about anything he felt was worth recording.  If Heifetz did not record it, then he probably felt that it had ventured too far into the ridiculous for his tastes.

Having set that bar, I can now report that Lark's "encore," Henryk Wieniawski's Opus 15 variations on an original theme, was not recorded by Heifetz;  and it definitely has some of the principal hallmarks of questionable taste.  To begin at the beginning, the work commences with the sort of interminable introduction that was the opening gag of Erno Dohnányi's "Variations on a Nursery Tune," which bears the wonderful subtitle, "For the enjoyment of humorous people and for the annoyance of others."  Wieniawski's theme is not quite as trivial as Dohnányi's choice of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star;"  but it is decidedly modest in the face of the flamboyant treatment it receives, most notably when the soloist launches into a passage of extended bariolage (a term I could not resist using, since I only learned it yesterday).  The only way to listen to a composition like this is to sit back and enjoy the fun, and Lark certainly delivered all the requisite fireworks with the good humor of a tongue planted firmly in her cheek.

The more serious portion of the program was divided between the Opus 13 sonata by Gabriel Fauré and the first two movements of Johann Sebastian Bach's A minor sonata for unaccompanied violin (BWV 1003).  I have always felt that the Fauré sonata was as good a candidate as any for that Vinteuil sonata that plays such a crucial role in Charles Swann's love life in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.  Its andante movement (the one so crucial to Swann) has just the right combination of longing and wistfulness that it seemed Proust was trying to evoke;  and Lark was wonderful at capturing that spirit.  Furthermore, her sense of acoustic balance with accompanist Bach was impeccable in the Allegro vivo scherzo movement, where the relationship between violin and piano is at its most critical.  It was a near perfect performance that would have fit right in with one of Proust's refined salon settings.

Lark's approach to BWV 1003 was less secure.  Technically, she could manage the realization of the multiple voices of the Fuga movement;  but it sounded as if she did not have a sense of the overall shape of either that fugue or the Grave movement that preceded it.  There was no arguing with the refinement of her sound;  but neither movement gave the sense of a thought-out journey that conducts the ear from the opening gesture to the final coda.

Nevertheless, Lark is a confident performer.  I suspect that it is only a matter of time until her command of Bach matches that of Fauré, and her approach to encores is sure to leave her audiences delighted.  If one of the advantages of concert-going on a tight budget is the opportunity to hear emerging talents, then today's concert was a perfect example of such an opportunity.

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