By Kurt Loft, Program Notes Editor, Palladium Chamber Series
Most of us who love classical music will admit to having a favorite child. Although we cherish symphonies, concertos, operas, and choral works, nothing quite matches the intimacy of chamber music and its vast repertoire.
With just a few musicians on stage, sometimes sitting close enough to reach out and touch, we begin a conversation, the performers exposed in every note and listeners savoring each delicately rendered phrase.
But a consistent diet of high-quality chamber fare is hard to find around the Tampa Bay area, unless you’ve already discovered the annual Palladium Chamber Music Series, which begins its 12th season Wednesday, Dec. 11 at its namesake venue.
“After a rough fall in Tampa Bay, this year’s version of the series is designed to bring some joy back to our audience,’’ says Paul Wilborn, the Palladium’s executive director. “The lineup includes all our favorite players, including Ed Arron and Jeewon Park, and the Mile End Trio, plus an appearance by Amy Schwartz Moretti and the return of local favorites, the Calidore String Quartet. I’m looking forward to our best season ever. “
The best season is usually the one just finished, so if we take Paul for his word, expectations are running high for the five programs on the new lineup. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the music itself.
We begin with a solid, traditional bill, opening with a twist. On tap is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 13 in C Major, K. 415, in an arrangement for solo piano and string quartet. The composer described the concerto as “brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural without being vapid,’’ and intended it to be played by amateur musicians in the home. For this reason, he reduced its size to five instruments.
Antonín Dvořák’s seldom-heard Bagatelles, Op. 47 follow, each of its five movements beginning with a simple melody, soon to turn complex and interwoven in a thicket of tone colors, rhythms and harmonies. The night ends with a classic, Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44.
The Jan. 15 program opens with the Mile End Trio in Franz Joseph Haydn’s Piano Trio No. 25 in E minor, Op. 57, No. 2, an example of the composer’s Sturm und Drang period. A rarity is next in Leoš Janáček’s Violin Sonata in G-sharp minor, music that is emotive, tersely dramatic, jagged, eccentric and propelled by an erotic energy. Not to be missed. Then comes Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Trio élégiaque No. 2 in D minor, Op. 9, a work tinged with a lyrical fervor and stretching nearly 50 minutes.
The Feb. 12 installment includes Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 100, D. 929, famous for the cloying tune of its second movement. Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15, follows, forged with a sensuous harmonic language that is also quietly reserved.
On March 25 we get our much-needed dose of Ludwig van Beethoven with the String Quartet No. 10, Op.74, E-flat Major, the so-called Harp, performed by the Calidore String Quartet, the New York-based ensemble that appeared in an all-Beethoven program at the Palladium in 2020. The group continues with Jessie Montgomery’s Strum, which makes use of plucked or strummed rhythmic and harmonic phrases, out of which melodies weave in and out.
Calidore closes the night with more Beethoven and the monumental String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131, making this the centerpiece of the entire season. Its size alone stands apart: seven supremely integrated movements that act as a thematic arch, each section played without pause, creating a feeling of continuity, at the same time allowing performers − and listeners − to concentrate without interruption. The season’s coda includes Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonata for Violin and Keyboard in B minor, BWV 1014, the first music by the composer to be widely distributed and copied in his lifetime − and the original modern duo sonata. Then we bounced into the modern with John Corigliano’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, fueled by meters that change in almost every measure against kaleidoscopic harmonies. What to do for a finale? Let’s go for Johannes Brahms’ endearing Horn Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 40, known for one of the more impassioned slow movements in the chamber literature.
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