I am, of course, referring to chamber music. While most of us musicians are not anywhere near endowed with the power or wealth of royalty, we can transform our lot into something approaching that (at least in the artistic sense) by playing some of the great works of chamber music that have been written over the past 300 years or so.
This past week I was at the Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival, which plays its concerts in an acoustically wonderful barn at the Signal Hill Ranch (owned and acoustically tweaked by Howard Johnson) located between Twisp and Winthrop, Wa. It’s a stunning site for concerts, with views of much of the middle portion of the Methow (pronounced MET-how) Valley, and depending upon the timing, the rising moon.
Whereas last year I played the second week of the festival, this week I played the opening week. I was joined by a string quartet of musicians who have long played with the Sitka Festival, including that festival’s founder, Paul Rosenthal, who began it in 1972. A more generous and convivial artist I cannot imagine. Paul is a gentleman’s gentleman, and a virtuoso player. Moreover, he’s an erudite musician with untold depths of knowledge, and is fascinating personality, and possessed of a musical mindset of the highest order of the old school of violin playing (which is befitting, since he was a student of Dorothy Delay, Ivan Galamian, Josef Gingold, and Jascha Heifetz). The two works that I played happened to both be by Mozart, and both in the key of g minor. And they are still two of the greatest works in their respective genres – the piano quartet and the string quintet.
The g minor Piano Quartet (K. 478) of Mozart has an unfortunate stigma of being a ‘student’ piece. And many of us know it from that awful use of its opening motif as “an-swer the tel-e-phone” from those old tv ads. But it really is a mature masterpiece (possibly the first of its kind combining the string trio of violin, viola, and cello with the piano – at least a pure chamber music, with similar works by JC and CPE Bach functioning more as concertante piano works) that I was happy to sink my musical teeth into. Having as my colleagues pianist Craig Sheppard, violinist Paul Rosenthal, and cellist Paul Wianko, made the three hours of rehearsal we had over two days fly by, and also made for an passionately played and well-received performance.
The g minor string Quintet (two violas)(K. 516) of Mozart is another matter as far as its reputation goes. It is looked at almost in religious terms by virtually all musicians who have encountered it. Some commentators have described its movement structure as being based upon the psychological cycle of grief. The great Mozart biographer and scholar Alfred Einstein said this about the g minor Quintet:
What takes place here can be compared perhaps only with the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane. The chalice with its bitter potion must be emptied, and the disciples sleep.
Purple prose? Perhaps, but apt, given the depths to which Mozart brings us during the course of the first three movements, only to lift us back into the sunshine with the brilliant concluding Rondo finale. Agnes Gottschewski was the elegant and lithe first violinst, joined again by Paul Rosenthal, with the delightful violist Roland Kato, and cellist Paul Wianko again anchoring the ensemble. I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to play two such great works with such wonderful and enjoyable people and musicians! My heartfelt thanks go out to festival artistic director (and wonderful cellist) Kevin Krentz for inviting me back to play this year, and for all of the staff, volunteers, and host families that made it such a great experience both on stage and off!