October 16, 2009: Two kindred spirits and an acolyte

The first Chamber Music Masters residency took place at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music this week with cellist Kenneth Slowik filling in for originally-scheduled Paul Katz.  While much of Slowik's reputation owes as much to his viola da gamba work as to his cello performances, he has a solid command and appreciation of all centuries of the cello repertoire.  This was presented in last night's recital with both students and faculty members, in which Slowik participated in performances of Felix Mendelssohn's Opus 49 piano trio in D minor before the intermission and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's K. 593 string quintet in D major for the second half of the evening.  The Mendelssohn trio was preceded by an all-student performance of Joseph Haydn's B minor string quartet, Opus 33, Number 1.  In terms of a logic for the entire evening, Haydn and Mozart provided the framework for the occasion;  and Mendelssohn both honored that framework and departed from it.

This framework may best be appreciated as a conversation conducted between Haydn and Mozart through the medium of their respective approaches to composition.  This conversation began with the publication of Haydn's Opus 33 quartets in 1781.  As John Spitzer observed in the program notes:

Mozart, who had just moved to Vienna, studied them, played them (he was the violist), and three years later issued his own set of six string quartets, which he dedicated to Haydn, as the "Father, guide and friend" of his string quartets.

Mozart's dedication indicates that this metaphor of conversation was not only through composition but also about composition (rather in the manner the that Opus 2 piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven amount to a conversation with Haydn-as-teacher reflecting on differences between what Haydn taught and what Beethoven learned).  As Spitzer's notes observe, Haydn had much to say about composition in Opus 33:

There was much about the Opus 33 quartets that must have appealed to Mozart:  their balance of seriousness, imagination and wit;  the way all the instruments participate in the musical discourse;  the flexibility of roles, where a player can be an accompanist in one bar, a soloist in the next;  the tight construction in which every melody is broken down into its smallest parts and reassembled in a hundred different ways;  and, finally the way that the four movements fit together into a logical and satisfying whole.

Actually, the first of these quartets begins with small parts, that only gradually come together to give a sense of a coherent whole.  Indeed, the very opening fragment in the high strings barely suggests that the movement is in a minor key.  The tonal focus is only established with the second fragment, which is the first time a motif is performed (by the cello) against a harmonized background.

It is not hard to imagine the sense of adventure that a composition like this must have prompted in Mozart;  and, where performance is concerned, that sense of adventure may be even more important than an appreciation of that "logical and satisfying whole."  The student performers last night (violins Liana Bérubé and Philip Brezina, violist Jason Diggs, and cellist Michelle Kwon) have all built up experience on the professional side.  Thus, they could combine a secure sense of performing for an audience with that enthusiasm for learning that must have captivated Mozart when he was first exposed to this quartet.  (One assumes that, when opening the published Opus 33, he began with the first quartet in the set.)  No mere "opening act" before the guest of honor took the stage, this was a performance that firmly established the spirit for the rest of the evening.

On this program Mozart's "reply" to Haydn came not from one of the quartets he dedicated to Haydn but from his K. 593 string quintet, composed in December of 1790, one year before his death.  It is very much an acknowledgement that the spirit of those Opus 33 quartets was still with him and that Haydn's "flexibility of roles" could be taken to a higher level by introducing a new "role" for a second viola.  We also encounter experiments in the structural level, such as the return of the Larghetto introduction to the first movement, which probably set Beethoven to thinking about other ways in which introductory material did not have to be confined to the beginning of the movement, as in his Opus 13 C minor ("Pathétique") piano sonata.

In this performance the "second" parts were taken by students (Bérubé again on violin and Hannah Nicholas on viola), while Slowik was joined by faculty members Axel Strauss on violin and Paul Hersh on viola.  Nevertheless, there was never any doubt that this was a conversation among equals (the very essence of Mozart's chamber music), made all the more interesting by the ways in which Mozart would form different trio combinations from the full ensemble to offset the different structural elements of his movements.  As to the other conversation, between Haydn and Mozart, Haydn certainly had many ways to reply, such as in the "Salamon" quartets of 1793 (Opus 71 and Opus 74).  These were replies that Mozart would never hear but would have an impact of their own on Beethoven.

Last month I raised the problem that "Mendelssohn is one of those composers whose listening experiences can easily be influenced by the company his music keeps."  While that music is rarely short on spirit, it does not always rise to the level of logic that we find in Haydn or Mozart (or, for that matter, Franz Schubert, who provided the context in which I first started thinking about this challenge that performances of Mendelssohn face).  Last night's program took a productive approach to presenting Mendelssohn on his own terms in a favorable light in spite of the "context of monuments."  By selecting the Opus 49 trio, the performers introduced Mendelssohn as the only keyboard artist on the program;  and one could listen in terms of the challenges of the relationship between piano and strings, rather than within a string ensemble.  Because Mendelssohn has such exuberant virtuosity in his piano composition, this was a serious challenge, since it is so easy for the piano to dominate the whole affair.  This is probably why my companion for last night got a bit nervous when she saw the piano lid raised to full-stick height.

In this respect it is important to give particular attention to how pianist Jeffrey LaDeur (a master's student with considerable professional performance experience) approach this virtuoso challenge in the company of Slowik and violinist Ian Swensen.  His strategy can best be described as light and dry, resisting the temptation to overplay the damper pedal.  The result was a crisp cleanliness to all of Mendelssohn's overabundance of notes, which always found their proper place in the dynamic blend of the overall trio.  The result was one of those rare and delightful occasions when one hears the familiar in an entirely different setting and all one's expectations of the routine simply evaporate.  Perhaps if more performers approached Mendelssohn with such a keen sense of differentiation, he would be less challenged by some of the company imposed on him by program planners!