![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
concert review: Piano Quartet
May. 20th, 2007 09:48 amThat was the name of the ensemble on the program: "Piano Quartet". A term which, I find it advisable to explain, is short for "Quartet for Piano and Strings", i.e. piano (in this case Gwendolyn Mok), violin (William Barbini), viola (Elizabeth Runnicles), and cello (Thalia Moore). All local performers, all of whom I've heard before in one venue or another.
Some concert programs are as widespread as possible; others have themes (music in D Minor; music by Czech composers); sometimes the music is all by one composer, usually Mozart or Beethoven. It isn't often you get a program of music by the various members of one small musical circle, and it's especially nice when they're the members of my favorite of musical circles: the married couple Robert and Clara Schumann, and their protégé, Johannes Brahms.
Clara Schumann is not often heard; she wrote very few works and for whatever reason didn't pour into them the intense creativity that the others did. But her Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 17 (no viola in this piece), stood up for itself quite well in this company. It's a full four-movement work of solidity and grace. Robert's Piano Quartet in E-flat, Op. 47, is less often played than his Quintet. With only the three string instruments, Schumann tends to let the piano clog the ensemble, but that was adequately addressed by Mok's dark, blended playing on the crisp keyboard of an 1875 Erard piano. (He also sets a technical challenge by asking the cellist to retune in the middle of a movement. Moore dealt with this by bringing along two cellos.)
Brahms, known for heavy scoring himself, must have learned from this. His Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op. 60, wasn't completed and published until twenty years later (after two other quartets, along with many other works), but he began it when living with the Schumanns while Robert was descending into his last tragic mental illness. It's a very somber work, beginning with one stark piano chord followed by sighing motifs in the strings, and generally has more of a cold crispness than most Brahms. The quartet delved into it with the same intense vigor they gave Clara Schumann; they were somewhat calmer but just as involving with Robert.
This concert was in a tiny church in Los Gatos with wooden roof, adobe walls, and tile floor, one of the last untouched old buildings in a small-town business district that over recent decades has been remodeled, rebuilt, boutiqued, and yuppified up to its eyeteeth. (We had dinner in a Vietnamese restaurant where the servers were all Anglos. It's not as if there's a shortage of ethnic Vietnamese around here, but strangely, the food was quite good.) The acoustics are very bright: the sound bounces right off the walls, but the church isn't large enough for it to echo hollowly as it does in the San Juan Bautista Mission - and the seats are more comfortable too.
Some concert programs are as widespread as possible; others have themes (music in D Minor; music by Czech composers); sometimes the music is all by one composer, usually Mozart or Beethoven. It isn't often you get a program of music by the various members of one small musical circle, and it's especially nice when they're the members of my favorite of musical circles: the married couple Robert and Clara Schumann, and their protégé, Johannes Brahms.
Clara Schumann is not often heard; she wrote very few works and for whatever reason didn't pour into them the intense creativity that the others did. But her Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 17 (no viola in this piece), stood up for itself quite well in this company. It's a full four-movement work of solidity and grace. Robert's Piano Quartet in E-flat, Op. 47, is less often played than his Quintet. With only the three string instruments, Schumann tends to let the piano clog the ensemble, but that was adequately addressed by Mok's dark, blended playing on the crisp keyboard of an 1875 Erard piano. (He also sets a technical challenge by asking the cellist to retune in the middle of a movement. Moore dealt with this by bringing along two cellos.)
Brahms, known for heavy scoring himself, must have learned from this. His Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op. 60, wasn't completed and published until twenty years later (after two other quartets, along with many other works), but he began it when living with the Schumanns while Robert was descending into his last tragic mental illness. It's a very somber work, beginning with one stark piano chord followed by sighing motifs in the strings, and generally has more of a cold crispness than most Brahms. The quartet delved into it with the same intense vigor they gave Clara Schumann; they were somewhat calmer but just as involving with Robert.
This concert was in a tiny church in Los Gatos with wooden roof, adobe walls, and tile floor, one of the last untouched old buildings in a small-town business district that over recent decades has been remodeled, rebuilt, boutiqued, and yuppified up to its eyeteeth. (We had dinner in a Vietnamese restaurant where the servers were all Anglos. It's not as if there's a shortage of ethnic Vietnamese around here, but strangely, the food was quite good.) The acoustics are very bright: the sound bounces right off the walls, but the church isn't large enough for it to echo hollowly as it does in the San Juan Bautista Mission - and the seats are more comfortable too.
