Lovely, but Venue-Challenged

For years, one of the fringe benefits of regularly attending the concerts of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center was that its artistic director, clarinetist David Shifrin, often participated in the programs himself. Mr. Shifrin has moved on — though he still plays as a member of the society — and has been replaced by the husband-and-wife team of Wu Han and David Finckel. Mr. Finckel is the cellist of the Emerson String Quartet while Ms. Wu is one of the most eloquent pianists of our day, a recent Tchaikovsky Piano Trio at the Society for Ethical Culture still lovely in the memory.Tchaikovsky was extremely excited about a composition student named Sergei Rachmaninoff and as this season of chamber music winds down, the society is presenting a three-concert series of his works, one in each month of March, April, and May. The first featured a superb reading of the longer “Trio Elegiaque” and the third will offer, among a chamber potpourri, the shorter of these charming, somewhat exotic trios. On Thursday at the Rose Studio, four fine keyboardists gathered for an evening of music for two pianos.Ms. Wu and Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan began with a work that was written just after Rachmaninoff was bolstered by the encouragement of Tchaikovsky. The Suite No. 1, subtitled “Fantaisie tableaux,” is a sweetly ingenuous work, filled with Byronic fervor and the pangs of love. Of particular beauty in this current rendition was the extended solo for Ms. Wu at the commencement of the section titled “Tears.”Most listeners are familiar with the “Symphonic Dances” as a piece for orchestra — in fact, Rachmaninoff’s last piece — but it was originally conceived and written for two pianos, the composer fleshing it out only after the fact. Gilbert Kalish and Gilles Vonsattel were the duo pianists for this electric performance, the keyboard version a little more primitive than its orchestrated brother. The middle waltz was dizzying and the final Allegro vivace thrilling.But there was a problem, and a rather big one. The Rose Studio — not to be confused with the much larger Rose Theater — is a small room, perfect for most of the intimate evenings of the society. In order to physically fit the two grand Steinways, however, the entire experience had to be rotated 90 degrees, the pianos relocated to the longer side wall, leaving room for only five disproportionately wide rows of seats for the patrons, sort of like Chicago’s Orchestra Hall in miniature. The piano whose strings were in front had its cover removed, while the one in back had its completely open. It is tempting to state that the performers played much too loudly, but this is not exactly accurate. They in fact intoned at a level synchronous to the printed score, and, considering the natural excitement of their febrile performance, kept the sound appropriately boisterous. Had they been on the stage of Avery Fisher Hall, this volume would have been perfect; as it was, the sheer decibel level, with at least a hint of reverberation, made listening to this extremely vital music rather challenging.* * *When Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra presented a program at Avery Fisher Hall on Friday titled “A New Italian Renaissance,” they framed its bouquet of rarities with more familiar music that evoked the ancients. The effect was reminiscent of visiting Italy itself, a place where it is always difficult to remember what century it is.When archaeologists opened the tomb of King Tutankhamun, they found two trumpets inside. The pair was tuned to the striking first two notes of the main theme, first uttered by the solo trumpet, of the “Triumphal March” from “Aida.” This was neither a miracle nor a coincidence, but rather the residue of exhaustive research done by Verdi into the complexities of Egyptian folk music, not much altered in millennia. The ASO introduced this rousing evening with a full-bodied version of this perennial favorite, the orchestra sounding in fine voice.The tried and true, though, is not this unique group’s bread and butter. Certainly the find of the night was the Symphony No. 2 of Giuseppe Martucci. No fewer than three conductors associated with the New York Philharmonic — Mahler, Toscanini, and Muti — have championed this composer of symphonies and piano concertos, himself the conductor who first brought “Tristan und Isolde” to Italy. If he is not better-known in modern circles, it may be because he was a traditionalist in a time of modernism, a victim of what Mr. Botstein mentions in the program booklet as “the privileging of a certain kind of stylistic originality.”In any case, the performance of the Martucci was quite good, the strings especially lush and eloquent. Brahms is probably the closest famous soul mate for this piece and the Adagio ma non troppo slow movement contains some writing that could have easily come from the Hamburg master. Martucci’s contemporary Sibelius is also recalled, the first section of the piece replacing the pine for the spruce. A work of this quality belongs in the mainstream repertory. With Mr. Muti coming to town, let’s hope to hear it soon.Also of great interest was the American premiere of “Three Preludes to Sophocles’ Oedipus” by the obscure Ildebrando Pizzetti. Pizzetti was a scholar who wrote about ancient Greek music and utilized in this present score a number of modes that evoke both the place and the era. This is arresting, dramatic music, and was presented with a great deal of dignity and circumstance.The modernist trend of the World War I era was represented by a rather disconnected work titled “Pause del Silencio I” by Gian Francesco Malipiero, a composer whose influence helped establish the Second Venetian School of Bruno Maderna, Luciano Berio, and Luigi Nono. There are seven sections in this dark, surrealistic piece that seems to employ dream logic as an escape from the horrors of global conflagration. The ending is particularly strange; the music simply stops mid-phrase. After a reading of Alfredo Casella’s “Italia,” the orchestra ended with the well-known “Fountains of Rome” of Ottorino Respighi — full disclosure compels me to mention that I wrote the program notes for this piece — a celebration of the rich heritage of Rome and its ubiquitous watery architecture. Respighi is really the only one of his generation in Italy to “make the cut,” achieving worldwide fame with his extremely colorful tone poetry, even as he thought of himself much more as a man of the theater.Mr. Botstein may have missed a good bet by not presenting the more boffo ending of the companion piece “The Pines of the Appian Way,” with its relentlessly hypnotic crescendo that showcases an orchestra’s mettle. But the crowd seemed happy with the fountains in all of their glory. That surprisingly young audience applauded enthusiastically and often, even during a caesura in the finale of the Martucci. It was heartening to see so many faces under 30 at the symphony. Perhaps they represent a new American renaissance.

Lovely, but Venue-Challenged

Lovely, but Venue-Challenged

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