It’s All About Surroundings at Southwest Chamber’s Summer Festival
MUSIC REVIEW
Southwest Chamber Music’s Summer Festival at The Huntington Library, Art Galleries and Botanical Gardens in San Marino offers the area’s best site for an intimate chamber ensemble to perform, bar none. The sun is setting, a warm breeze kicks up, and the gardens are magnificent. The Loggia of the main estate is beautiful. When the location is enhanced by the expert playing of Southwest musicians, under the capable leadership of Artistic Director, Jeff von der Schmidt, the result is to experience munificence. Moreover, von der Schmidt wraps the musical evening in fullness of music selections as he did last week-end at the Huntington estate.
The occasion was the second in a series of four concerts at The Huntington, Saturday and Sunday, (I saw Sunday’s performance) that offered a varied, but surprisingly well-blended concert of the music of Giachino Rossini, Chrisoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and contemporary composer Thea Musgrave.
Because Southwest ensemble players have been together for some time, it would be easy to surmise that last minute changes in musicians would upset balances. In this case, though, violist and founding Executive Director, Jan Karlin, and L A Phil violinist Mitchell Newman, were both forced off the roster by some minor medical infractions. They were capably replaced by Julian Hallmark, violin, and Karen Elaine, viola, both of whom have performed on occasion with Southwest in the past.
The opening piece was Rossini’s String Sonata No. 3 in C major; an oddity in that Rossini composed the Sonata at age 12. Notes he made indicated that he admitted he hardly knew the instruments at his tender age. He worried needlessly as seen in this performance. Lorenz Gamma and Hallmark, violins, Elaine, viola, Peter Jacobson, cello, and Tom Peters, double-bass, handled the light music with attention to detail and a blended sound not often heard even from internationally famed ensembles visiting here.
Gluck’s work, “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from “Orpheus and Eurydice” added flutist Larry Kaplan to the string quartet for a delightful reading. The Gluck music was preamble to the centerpiece of the evening’s music, “Orfeo III”, by Thea Musgrave. “Orfeo III” was composed by the 80 year-old Scottish-American in 1975 and premiered in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, but the piece was written for James Galway and in a performance in England, used tape as a manner to electronically treat the shimmering language of the music. Orfeo, or Orpheus descends dramatically to Hades in a dream sequence and finally loses Eurydice. The music tells the story. Musgrave’s work is both rich and powerful. Kaplan brought Musgrave’s music to high drama with excellent workmanship.
The program closed with Jim Foschia delivering a warm and clear toned Quintet in A major for Clarinet and Strings, one of Mozart’s most popular compositions. All together the result was a fine evening of fine music surrounded by a group of outstanding musicians.
By Bill Peters
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