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a day at Menlo
Jul. 24th, 2010 10:42 pmAnd a busy day this first full day of the annual Music@Menlo chamber music festival was, too. I attended one concert, one long rehearsal, and two lectures, with breaks that were long enough to sit around and get some reading done, but not really long enough to leave the Menlo campus and find meals. So music can be hungry work.
The concert was one of the "Prelude" concerts for which they start distributing free tickets an hour before performance time. And as it was held in the tiny Stent Hall, you'd better get one quickly: there were more people waiting overflow outside, hoping for non-arrivals, than there were people inside.
The Amphion String Quartet played Mendelssohn's Op. 12, a smooth and clear performance interrupted by an awkward moment when the cellist broke a string and the long pause while he went and got a new one; following which they were joined by pianist David Fung for Brahms's Piano Quintet, a strangely jumpy, even clangy rendition. Well, pump a work like that full of steroids and the audience will just love it, while I sit applauding listlessly and wondering, am I the only person here who sees through this? Energetic, yes, but imposed on the music from outside, rather than growing out of a fundamental conception.
Prof. R. Larry Todd of Duke University, though equipped with an adequate microphone, mumbled unintelligibly for an hour and a half about English music. The opening part of his talk, about how England came to be perceived as the land without music and how the rise of Sir Edward Elgar began to put a stop to that, sounded awfully familiar: not only could I have given that part of the talk myself, I actually have: I made most of the same points in my Mythcon papers on Mendelssohn and Sullivan and fairy music, and on Tolkien and music, the latter of which included extensive comparison to Elgar. Where Prof. Todd went that I couldn't was in a detailed comparison of Elgar's Piano Quintet to Brahms's, describing Elgar's as a kind of deconstruction of the earlier work. He then went on to consider relevant features in the other works on the Tuesday concert I'll be reviewing, which was really useful stuff insofar as I could make out what he was saying.
One of those other works was Walton's Piano Quartet. This was the topic of the open rehearsal session - a rare treat, as Menlo only lets audiences in to rehearsals once a year. I'd never been too fond of the Piano Quartet, but I learned new appreciation of it from this, listening to the performers work on leads, matching bowing, and the tricky and unlikely entrances Walton seems to specialize in. Cellist David Finckel gallantly declared that Walton's music was as English as Stilton cheese or jugged hare.
The best session was violinist Philip Setzer's tribute to his violin teacher, Oscar Shumsky, who died ten years ago today, as it happens. I confess I was not familiar with Shumsky, a highly respected yet never popularly acclaimed violinist who, Setzer thinks, could have had the glorious career of his near-contemporary Isaac Stern, whose playing style rather resembled his, if only he'd had Stern's greater personal charm and knack for selling himself. Setzer identified the distinctive articulation and deep consideration of Shumsky's style, showed some of what Shumsky taught him about bowing technique, and told some touching anecdotes. When Shumsky was teaching violin at Juilliard, he was also the conductor of a community orchestra out in deepest New Jersey, and often brought in Juilliard students as soloists. He asked Setzer, then his student, to be soloist in a Haydn Sinfonia Concertante for violin and cello; Setzer asked who the cellist would be, figuring on another then-student like, oh just for instance, Yo-Yo Ma. Shumsky said he was going to use a local high-school kid who had impressed him on audition, name of David Finckel, and that is how the two future stalwarts of the Emerson String Quartet first met.
The concert was one of the "Prelude" concerts for which they start distributing free tickets an hour before performance time. And as it was held in the tiny Stent Hall, you'd better get one quickly: there were more people waiting overflow outside, hoping for non-arrivals, than there were people inside.
The Amphion String Quartet played Mendelssohn's Op. 12, a smooth and clear performance interrupted by an awkward moment when the cellist broke a string and the long pause while he went and got a new one; following which they were joined by pianist David Fung for Brahms's Piano Quintet, a strangely jumpy, even clangy rendition. Well, pump a work like that full of steroids and the audience will just love it, while I sit applauding listlessly and wondering, am I the only person here who sees through this? Energetic, yes, but imposed on the music from outside, rather than growing out of a fundamental conception.
Prof. R. Larry Todd of Duke University, though equipped with an adequate microphone, mumbled unintelligibly for an hour and a half about English music. The opening part of his talk, about how England came to be perceived as the land without music and how the rise of Sir Edward Elgar began to put a stop to that, sounded awfully familiar: not only could I have given that part of the talk myself, I actually have: I made most of the same points in my Mythcon papers on Mendelssohn and Sullivan and fairy music, and on Tolkien and music, the latter of which included extensive comparison to Elgar. Where Prof. Todd went that I couldn't was in a detailed comparison of Elgar's Piano Quintet to Brahms's, describing Elgar's as a kind of deconstruction of the earlier work. He then went on to consider relevant features in the other works on the Tuesday concert I'll be reviewing, which was really useful stuff insofar as I could make out what he was saying.
One of those other works was Walton's Piano Quartet. This was the topic of the open rehearsal session - a rare treat, as Menlo only lets audiences in to rehearsals once a year. I'd never been too fond of the Piano Quartet, but I learned new appreciation of it from this, listening to the performers work on leads, matching bowing, and the tricky and unlikely entrances Walton seems to specialize in. Cellist David Finckel gallantly declared that Walton's music was as English as Stilton cheese or jugged hare.
The best session was violinist Philip Setzer's tribute to his violin teacher, Oscar Shumsky, who died ten years ago today, as it happens. I confess I was not familiar with Shumsky, a highly respected yet never popularly acclaimed violinist who, Setzer thinks, could have had the glorious career of his near-contemporary Isaac Stern, whose playing style rather resembled his, if only he'd had Stern's greater personal charm and knack for selling himself. Setzer identified the distinctive articulation and deep consideration of Shumsky's style, showed some of what Shumsky taught him about bowing technique, and told some touching anecdotes. When Shumsky was teaching violin at Juilliard, he was also the conductor of a community orchestra out in deepest New Jersey, and often brought in Juilliard students as soloists. He asked Setzer, then his student, to be soloist in a Haydn Sinfonia Concertante for violin and cello; Setzer asked who the cellist would be, figuring on another then-student like, oh just for instance, Yo-Yo Ma. Shumsky said he was going to use a local high-school kid who had impressed him on audition, name of David Finckel, and that is how the two future stalwarts of the Emerson String Quartet first met.
