Chamber music is strong in Philadelphia

Musicologist Steven Fisher deserves a similar mention for his notes for the Philadelphia Chamber Ensemble’s performance of Amy Beach’s Theme and Variations for flute and string quartet. Fisher described Amy Beach as “The first important American composer of classical music born and trained in this country.” Most of us feel compelled to mention that Amy Beach is an important woman composer, presumably on the assumption our readers may not realize Amy is traditionally a female name. But she was, in fact, as Fisher reminds us, an important American composer — and should be so remembered.

Between them, the PCMS and Chamber Ensemble events were good examples of the variety and liveliness that characterize Philadelphia’s chamber music scene. Both concerts programmed unfamiliar work alongside popular, time-tested masterpieces. At the PCMS concert, Hristova and pianist Amy Yang sandwiched 20th-century pieces by Lutosławski and Messiaen between the Kreutzer and Beethoven’s “Spring” sonata. The Chamber Ensemble placed Amy Beach’s piece between Carl Maria von Weber’s marvelously entertaining 1816 Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet and one of the best-loved pieces in the chamber repertoire — Brahms’s big, semi-symphonic Quintet for Piano and Strings.

The events covered the two types of programs that keep the local chamber music audience bustling from concert to concert. The crowded PCMS schedule features most of the performers traveling the international chamber circuit. The Philadelphia Chamber Music Ensemble is a venerable example of the kind of series that feature local musicians, its performers all being chamber enthusiasts who play in the Philadelphia Orchestra.

A complex cloud

Amy Beach’s Variations are based on her 1895 song Indian Lullaby. The piece opens in a subdued mood, with evocative harmonies for the strings, and concludes in the same mood, after a journey that includes a waltz, a presto, and a long middle movement that creates a dark, complex cloud. The flute is mostly used as an embellishment that adds intensity and contrast, but Beach employed a sure touch when she added it to the sonic mix.

The Messiaen that Hristova and Yang played at the PCMS concert was the eighth movement of Messaien’s most famous chamber work, the Quartet for the End of Time. Like most of Messiaen’s work, the movement transforms the composer’s Catholic mysticism into music that can speak to anyone who feels connected to the mystery at the heart of our existence. Its subject is the soul’s ascent to God, and Hristova and Yang played it as a long arriving that was completely fulfilled at the end.

Lutosławski’s Subito is harder to describe. It rests on a complicated formal structure, but those of us with less orderly minds can ignore the formalities and respond to the power and variety implied in its title, the Italian word for “suddenly.”

Hristova and Yang opened their collaboration with a lively, humane performance of Beethoven’s tribute to spring. The Kreutzer sonata ended the evening with an exciting masterpiece excitingly performed.

Vets and rookies

The Chamber Ensemble program teamed three Philadelphia Orchestra veterans with four younger orchestra string players. In the Amy Beach Variations, the orchestra’s associate principal flute, David Cramer, played the flute part. In the von Weber quintet, the orchestra’s former associate clarinet, Donald Montanaro, proved a retired musician can sound just as brash and perky as a young upstart making his first appearance. The quintet is primarily a display piece for the clarinetist, with the string quartet playing straight man while the audience has a good time listening to the clarinetist do his stuff.

The Chamber Ensemble’s pièce de résistance was the Brahms quintet, with the orchestra’s pianist, Kiyoko Takeuti, playing a piano part that rivals many of the big-time piano concertos. The quintet is a true ensemble piece, and she was matched with four players who could produce the collective mass and strong solos that balance the piano.

The big moments in the Brahms quintet can compete with the effects created by most of the standard symphonies, but you’re always aware all that music is being created by individuals. The flashes from the violin emanated from Jennifer Haas’s upraised bow. The cello solos were produced by John Koen. Burchard Tang and William Polk added the special sounds of the viola and the alto violin. That constant reminder that great art is created by hardworking individuals, with names and personal styles, is one of the major appeals of chamber music, and one of its most important extra-musical values.