Hard to believe but our 2017 Palladium Chamber Series is wrapping up on May 10. It will be the fifth concert of this season – our most ambitious ever. And this concert will feature all four of our core Chamber Players ensemble – Jeffrey Multer, Danielle Farina, Edward Arron and Jeewon Park.
One new feature we’ve added this season are pre-show commentaries written by my favorite classical music writer, Kurt Loft. Kurt was the long-time music critic at the Tampa Tribune.
Kurt Loft
For tickets for the Wednesday, May 10 concert, you can call the box office at 727 822-3590 or follow this link for online tickets.
Here are Kurt’s thoughts and insights on the program you’ll hear that night:
By Kurt Loft
The evolution of Ludwig van Beethoven’s creative genius makes for one of the more intriguing biographies of any artist. Plagued by financial troubles most of his life, deafness by age 30, a variety of illnesses, and a paradoxical relationship with those around him, Beethoven could easily have tumbled into what he called his “unfavorable fate.’’ Instead, he persisted, and his stubbornness – his most resilient trait – changed 19th century musical thought.
An example of his persistence can be seen in the year 1806, when deafness forced him to compose in the “absence’’ of sound. His resolve, however, overcame his liability, evident in a remarkable outpouring of work that includes the Rasumovsky string quartets, the Appassionata piano sonata, the Fourth Symphony, the main elements of the Fourth Piano Concerto, and the formidable Violin Concerto.
With few exceptions, the Beethoven canon is significant in weight and expression; he rarely wrote light music. One that stands out is the Duo for Viola and Cello in E-Flat Major, nick-named the “Eyeglasses’’ Duo, which reveals the composer in a jovial mood. The name refers to the poor eyesight of Nikolaus Zmeskall, an amateur cellist who performed the duo alongside Beethoven on viola. The Palladium Chamber Players feature violist Danielle Farina and cellist Edward Arron on this piece.
Written in 1797, the nine-minute piece consists of a short allegro and minuetto – each marked by a teasing, playful banter between the two instruments, which take turns with the lead voice and accompaniment. The score, by the way, wasn’t published until 1916 and documented as “WoO 32,’’ or a work without an opus number.
The next duo on the program – featuring violinist Jeffrey Multer and pianist Jeewon Park – is John Corigliano’s “Lullaby for Natalie,’’ written in 2010 and dedicated to the newborn daughter of the famed violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. She frequently performs this lyrical five-minute piece in recital, and recorded it on her 2014 “American Masters’’ disc.
“In 2010 when I was pregnant with my first daughter, Natalie, my husband thought it would be a surprise to ask John to write a lullaby in her honor,” Meyers notes on her website. “And he wrote one of the most gorgeous, lush, beautiful lullabies … that Natalie now at four years old has on repeat every night. From 9 at night till 7 in the morning till she gets up, that track is just playing all throughout the night.”
Pianist Park takes the solo spotlight for another rarely performed gem, the Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brillante, Op. 22, by Frederick Chopin, who wrote the Andante Spianato as an optional introduction to the Grand Polonaise Brillante for piano and orchestra. Like the composer’s beloved Nocturnes, the Andante is flush with the composer’s trademark bel canto lyricism, delicacy, and sophisticated rhythmic nuance.
It opens with a series of rippling arpeggios in the left hand against a tear-drop melody in the right (similar to the Nocturne No. 1), followed by a serene episode in G Major that soon introduces the energetic Polonaise. This second part of the work can be played either as a piano solo or as an abbreviated concerto with orchestra. Jan Kleczynski, the 19th century Polish pianist, called it the epitome of the beauty of sound, saying “there is no composition stamped with greater elegance, freedom and freshness.’’
When Symphony Hall opened in Boston in 1900, the prominent and opinionated critic, Philip Hale, suggested signs be posted over the doorways, reading “Exit in case of Brahms.” A fire wasn’t needed to empty the auditorium, he quipped; merely a few bars of Johannes Brahms would do the trick.
A distaste for Brahms was fashionable among the lingering pro-Wagnerians of the time, who elevated themselves above what they regarded as old fashioned. Brahms, they felt, was too busy looking over his shoulder to focus on the “music of the future.” Tchaikovsky threw his own tomatoes, calling Brahms a “giftless bastard” full of “self-inflated mediocrity,” and Benjamin Britten stepped outside the composers club long enough to say “it’s not bad Brahms I mind, it’s good Brahms I can’t stand.”
Today, Brahms is as much at home at Symphony Hall as the Palladium, as the Palladium Players will soon prove with the program’s main work. His stature as a symphonist is undisputed; his two dozen chamber works are pinnacles of the literature; and his concertos, serenades, sonatas and “German Requiem” form a singular and commanding voice. A rich, earthy quality anchors much of his music, as if he planted notes as seeds, tilled the ground and harvested music in full, aromatic bloom.
This describes the youthful Piano Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 26, which shows the 28-year-old composer exploring a world nearly symphonic in itself, and his gift for romantic sentiment within the discipline of a classical form. Brahms stretches his ideas over four spacious movements that span nearly 50 minutes – making it not only his longest chamber work but eclipsing each of his four symphonies.
Brahms composed it alongside his popular Piano Quartet in G Minor, which earned him among the adoring Viennese public the reputation of “Beethoven’s heir.’’ Both quartets were written together, a synchronicity applied to the first two String Quartets, the first two Symphonies, the two Overtures, and the two Clarinet Sonatas. This multi-tasking style may have been how Brahms played ideas off one another and channeled them in the right direction.
The first movement shares a lyrical influence from Schubert, yet with a darker tinge that is pure Brahms. The main theme flows over four measures of scattered notes, followed by four measures of notes in perfect unison. Brahms called his elegiac second movement a “night piece,’’ one of the composer’s most profound adagios, which gives way to a graceful scherzo and powerful trio section. The quartet ends with a propulsive gypsy dance that hints of Hungarian folk music – lush with animated themes – and three closing chords that bring an audience to its feet.
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