HARDWICK – The Craftsbury Chamber Players gave the last concert of their season, on August 14, at the Hardwick Town House in a nicely varied program of four American composers: Copland, Kern, Holland and Bernstein in the first half and a clarinet quintet by Brahms in the second.
The performance began with Aaron Copland’s (1900-1990) “Nocturne for Viola and Piano,” written in 1926.
The nocturne form dates back to Haydn but got its impetus in the 19th century with John Field and Frederick Chopin. It is meant to evoke the quiet meditative beauty of the night, graceful and sometimes with a touch of melancholy, with the right hand on the piano keyboard carrying the melody and the left hand accompanying with broken chords. The sustaining pedal of the modern piano helps to enhance the mood. The nocturne was further developed by Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Faure, Debussy and Scriabin. Here Copland started off the piece slowly with a few sparse notes on the piano, which were then joined by the violin, but with both instruments staying in the darker realm of the lower registers. He sustained that suggestive ambiance through to an interesting ending. Mary Rowell on violin and Sarah Bob on piano gave a fine rendition of this work.
Jerome Kern (1885-1945) was a popular composer of Broadway musicals of which “Steamboat” (1927) is probably his best. He was a great melodist and two of his songs, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” (1933) and “The Way You Look Tonight” (1934) were arranged for string quartet by Kern and scored by his assistant Charles Miller in 1942.
In the first movement the cello initiates the tone, with pizzicato effects on the other strings, developed further into one of the classics of the American song book in the second section, the A-B-A sructure of themes has a particularly beautiful melody, which makes it touching and memorable. Mary Rowell and Mina Lavcheva on violins, Adria Benjamin on viola and David Russell on cello brought out the lyrical qualities of these pieces with their sensitive playing.
Jonathan Bailey Holland (b. 1974) is a contemporary composer whose work, “The Intimacy of Harmony for Solo Piano,” was written in 2013. It was characterized by bold ascending chords up the keyboard with a conscious juxtaposition of right and left hands, one more dissonant while the other brighter in tone. Trills added to the complex textures, all of which pianist Sarah Bob handled very skillfully.
The “Sonata for Clarinet and Piano of 1941-42” of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was an early work by that composer. Its two movements, Grazioso and an Andante-Vivaci e leggiero showed an articulate interplay of the two instruments, weaving in and out of the shared melody, with shades of dissonance, reflecting strains of earlier 20th century musical experimentation. The second part had staccoto rhythms in the piano played by Sarah Bob with a lively progression, while the clarinetist Eileen Mack had an excellent smooth tone that was very engaging.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) wrote some of his most moving compositions late in his life, such as his “Quintet in b minor, Op. 115 for Clarinet, two Violins, Viola and Cello” of 1891, which shows no loss of his musical powers due to aging. The Allegro starts off with a totally involving melody rich in harmonic color in the masterful scoring, which transitioned into a second theme of comparable beauty, combining warmth and intimacy. The Adagio continues with yet another entrancing melody, giving many exquisite passages to the clarinet, the haunting middle theme having a lot of feeling. The third section, an Andantino, had a faster tempo with a lovely tune developed further, having pizzicoto textures in the strings and more agitated rhythms. The final movement, Con Moto, had the clarinet thoroughly embedded in the quartet strings in a series of variations, again with glorious musical imagination, with Eileen Mack on clarinet, Mina Lavcheva and Mary Rowell on violins, Adria Benjamin on viola and David Russel on cello, ther excellent ensemble coordination brought them an enthusiastic standing ovation from the full house of sophisticated music lovers.
Next year will be the 60th anniversary of the Craftsbury Chamber Players, a season to look forward to celebrate.
David K. Rodgers
David K. Rodgers is a writer, mason and card carrying dilettante, who dabbles and babbles in art. He has lived in East Craftsbury for the past 40 years.
