SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

 

One of the staples of musical life in the 19th century, the so-called “miscellaneous concert” treated its public to a varied roster of instrumental and vocal performers, all taking turns to showcase their several talents. The pattern has fallen out of fashion since those innocent days. But the final program of the Olympic Music Festival’s 27th season, though it did not exactly replicate that model, might almost have been billed as a sort of minimal “round-robin” event. Paul Hersh, a frequent performer in Quilcene on the piano, started the afternoon playing instead his other instrument, the viola; and Teddy Abrams, already at 23 a familiar figure at the festival as a prodigiously gifted clarinetist, took his turn also at the piano–the instrument he studied with Hersh. The concert was indeed something of a family event for all concerned: the afternoon’s other violist, Mara Gearman, was a student a few years ago at the festival’s chamber music institute, and violinist Erin Schreiber was charmingly introduced by Abrams as his girlfriend.

 

All these links were doubtless partly responsible for the warm friendliness that a comparably friendly program fostered both on the platform and also, as is always the case at OMF, between the performers and their audience. I say “friendly program” because the music ranged in relaxed fashion between artistically ambitious items and others that were more in the nature of light-hearted jeux d’esprit, or, as the performers themselves noted in their introductory comments, between light and darkness.

 

The weightiest item on the program, in size if not in artistic stature, was a group of four pieces taken from the set of eight that Max Bruch wrote for viola, clarinet, and piano. These are fervently expressive compositions, leisurely in tempo, and reminiscent of Bruch’s slightly older contemporary Brahms in harmonic language. Unlike Brahms’s cogently structured music, however, they do not immediately convey at least to this listener any strong overarching sense of logic. Still, it was a pleasure to hear them, affectionately played as they were by Gearman, Abrams (on clarinet), and Hersh (on piano).

 

The program had opened with a sonata from the 18th-century French composer Jean-Marie Leclair’s Opus 12, played on two violas by Hersh and Gearman with sumptuous tone and a welcome flexibility of phrasing. That latter quality was evident too when Erin Schreiber, partnered at the piano by Abrams, made her festival debut with Kreisler’s schmaltzy but irresistibly tuneful Liebesfreud and Liebesleid–I particularly relished the fearless way she stretched transitional passages to every last seductive drop of succulence from this marvelously self-indulgent music.

 

After intermission it was the turn of the two greatest composers on the program, Schubert and Schumann. The D-major Marche militaire for piano duet may be only a minor chip from Schubert’s workbench, but it is still the work of a major master, and Abrams and Hersh dispatched it with winning verve.

 

It was, however, with Schumann’s Märchenbilder (Fairy Tales) for viola and piano that the program scaled its peak of musical eloquence. Prefaced by Paul Hersh’s perceptive and enthusiastic words of introduction, this emerged as the day’s masterpiece. The first three of its our movements cover a vast and potent range of expressive mode, and the last, directed to be played “slowly, with melancholy expression,” is fully worthy to stand beside–or even above–the equally slow tribute to Beethoven’s memory with which Schumann concluded his C-major Fantasy for piano. Projected by Gearman and Hersh with flawless concentration and the most delicate tone and phrasing, it imposed a sense of ineffable quietude on this unpretentious yet richly rewarding afternoon of music.

 

Here was an apt echo of the composer’s Kinderscenen, which Hersh had performed on the festival’s opening program seven weeks earlier. But in shaping his final program of the year festival director Alan Iglitzin must have decided that he wanted to end the proceedings on a less soul-stirring note. “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?”, T.S. Eliot asked in Gerontion. And we could well have asked, on this occasion, “After such beauty, what could worthily follow?”

 

It’s clear, at any rate, than any really serious piece offered after Märchenbilder would run the risk of falling flat. But Weber’s Clarinet Concertino is attractive but just sufficiently silly music to provide an unchallenging sequel to the Schumann work. Compact in form and exuberant in mood, its piano-accompanied version sparked a truly virtuoso reading from Teddy Abrams. I had had the feeling, when he played the Bruch in the first half of the program, that this phenomenal young clarinetist was a shade at odds with his instrument. The control of pianissimo had been as impressive as ever, but the tone in forte was a trifle thinner than when I last heard him. Now, however, even when pushed to extremes of agility by Weber’s helter-skelter writing, he was back to his warm-toned best.

 

We went home duly entertained. But it was Schumann’s work that remained indelibly etched on my memory, and left me impatient for next summer, when the Olympic Music Festival will present its 28th season.

 

Bernard Jacobson

 

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