Matthews Theatre
at McCarter Theatre Center. Balcony
(Seat AA110, $27.)
Program
Clarinet Trio in
B-flat Major, Op. 11 by Beethoven (1770-1827).
“Short Stories”
by Hallman (b. 1979).
Clarinet Trio in
A minor, Op. 114 by Brahms (1833-1897).
Readers of this
blog know that I am not keen on chamber music, that despite my having learned
the standard Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms violin sonatas decades ago. One of the reasons is I find them more
difficult to appreciate.
Today’s
performers are individually well-known.
We first heard Barnatan in 2015, and tonight was the fourth time we
listened to him perform. Weilerstein
comes from a family of musicians, and she was awarded the MacArthur Prize a few
years ago. I remember enjoying her play
Shostakovich’s cello concerto in Carnegie Hall.
McGill is the principal clarinet of New York Philharmonic, so we have
seen him quite a bit.
Calling the
compositions by Beethoven and Brahms Clarinet Trios is a bit unfair to the
pianist and cellist, as they are by any measure equal partners. I have some familiarity with what constitutes
virtuosity in the piano and cello, and can say there are some difficult
passages. I can’t tell in the case of
the clarinet, although McGill demonstrated how long a clarinetist can hold its
breath (I keep remembering 38 measures during my Cornell Symphony days.) In any case, the three musicians worked
together very well.
The Beethoven
movements are Allegro con brio; Adagio; and Tema: Pria ch’io l’impegno,
Allegretto. For the Brahms piece: Allegro, Adagio, Andantino grazioso, and
Allegro.
To demonstrate
my lack of appreciation of chamber music, my overall remark of the two
classical pieces is “they are nice, especially the slow Brahms movement.” I can probably say a bit more if I think
about it, but the Program contains good descriptions of the pieces. Indeed, they were useful for me to grasp how
the music is structured.
The Program also
describes how Hallman came up to Weilerstein (after, of all pieces, a Shostakovich
cello concerto performance) and said he would compose music for her. Eventually this led to this being
commissioned for the three artists, with tonight being the first performance of
a nine-city premiere tour over 11 days.
The piece does
contain some interesting constructs (for lack of a better term) and requires
the artists to deliver their notes in a non-conventional way. For instance, the cello played some of the
notes so close to the bridge that it made a weird sound, and the pianist plugged
at the strings at some point. There may
be something unusual with the clarinet, but again I couldn’t tell.
This piece is
quite long, around 30 minutes by my estimate.
A little beyond the half-way mark I felt either the composer had nothing
new to say, or at least I wasn’t interested anymore in what he wanted to
say. New “idioms” can only take you so
far – and there are quite a few of them – but eventually the music needs to
speak to the listener.
Not that the
composer didn’t try to. The markings for
the five movements are (i) the Breakup, (ii) familial memories at a funeral,
(iii) black-and-white noir: hardboiled with a heart of gold, (iv) regret is for
the weak, and (v) the path of the curve.
The Program says “Mr. Hallman insists that no specific narratives are
being invoked … each movement’s title is meant to serve as a prompt for the
listener. The listeners are called upon
to imagine their own ‘story,’ inspired by the musical content of each movement
and the prompt of the title.” For me the
titles could be randomly picked out of a hat, and the effect would be the same (mostly,
anyway.)
McGill, Barnatan, and Weilerstein after performing the Hallman piece.
We had a light
dinner before we headed out to Princeton.
Parking was right next to the venue.
On the way back we grabbed a quick bite at a Burger King.
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