Mozart String Quintets K.515 and K.516 performed by Ensemble PHOENIX on period instruments at the Eden-Tamir Music Center, Ein Kerem, Jerusalem

 

 Myrna Herzog,Lilia Slavny,Noam Schuss,Miriam Fingert,Amos Boasson (Eliahu Feldman)

I don't remember the last time I heard Mozart string quintets played on the concert platform. Yet it is no secret that W.A. Mozart soared to new heights in his late works for five instruments - the four quintets for strings, all scored for string quartet with a second viola and the quintet for clarinet and string quartet, K. 581.  Ensemble PHOENIX's performance of String Quintets K.515 and 516 at the Eden-Tamir Music Center, Ein Kerem, Jerusalem on June 17th 2023 was an opportunity not to be missed. Also drawing listeners to the event was the fact that Ensemble PHOENIX performs on period instruments (Baroque instruments, Classical bows, gut strings, here tuned to A430 and in 1/6 comma temperament, as were organs of Mozart’s time) offering insight into how the quintets may have sounded when Mozart and his friends played them for their own diversion. Performing the works were Noam Schuss and Lilia Slavny (violins), Amos Boasson and Miryam Fingert (violas) and PHOENIX founder and musical director Myrna Herzog - 'cello.

 

1787 was a pivotal year for Mozart. With Vienna ringing out with melodies from the "Marriage of Figaro" that had debuted the year before, Mozart turned to work on what would become his operatic masterpiece, "Don Giovanni". Indeed, 1787 saw the completion and the debut of the latter. Taking a break, Mozart composed the pair of string quintets that would eventually be regarded as his greatest chamber music masterworks - the K. 515 in C major and K. 516 in g minor, writing them within a month of each other, shortly after learning of the death of his beloved father, Leopold. No concrete evidence exists as to the occasion(s) or musicians for which Mozart composed these string quintets. One theory is that Mozart wrote the quintets to win the favour of Frederick William II, the new King of Prussia, who happened to be a gifted cellist. H.C. Robbins Landon, on the other hand, suspects that the composer was “hoping to sell manuscript copies to amateurs by subscription.” (Amateur players would have found them technically daunting.)  As to why Mozart chose to write for the viola quintet, we do know that the viola was the stringed instrument Mozart preferred to play himself. These works show his love for the viola, placing emphasis on rich inner voices as well as on prominent lead roles for the first chair. Indeed, the close completion dates of these two quintets suggests that Mozart might have intended them as a contrasting pair - K. 515, in C major, characterized by optimism and confidence; with K. 516, in G minor, speaking of pessimism and despair. 

 

From the mammoth opening movement of the String Quintet No.3 in C major (Noam Schuss-1st violin, Amos Boasson-1st viola) to the closing Allegro, all tempi were moderate, giving the stage to the work's largely intense setting, its expressive use of tonality and chromaticism, the unique partitioning and grouping of parts among the five instruments fortifying inner voices creating new textures, and to the resourceful interplay of duets, antiphonal quartets and everything in between. Shaping gestures into deep musical meaning, Noam Schuss led and soloed judiciously, meeting at eye level with Boasson, also with Herzog, to convey the work's humanistic substructure.  As to the final movement (Allegro), we were presented with the richly sonorous resources of the quintet as well as with mirthful grandeur, so unmistakably Mozartian.

  

For the K.516 Quintet, Mozart's choice of g minor, a tonality associated with agitation and despair, is clearly no coincidence, indeed strengthened by the fact that the first movement's second theme also appears in the tonic minor. As the artists (Lilia Slavny-1st violin, Miryam Fingert-1st viola) present the opening Allegro (the upper three instruments untethered by the bass) in playing expressing restless, yet quiet agitation with a touch of reticence, Lilia Slavny (1st violin) brings out the work's sense of anguish as she leans into key notes, expressively engaging with Fingert (1st viola), also with Herzog. The despondent mood (and tonality) continues into the Minuetto (hardly minuet-like in spirit) characterized by a dark-and-light polarity, with tension added by the repeated appearance of the motif of two bitter, off-beat, ejaculatory chords. Throughout, Slavny's playing incorporated some tasteful ornamentation. Played with strings muted, with each motif strategically placed, the artists' heartfelt, inward-looking performance of the Adagio, its tragedy at times temporarily whisked away but never completely out of earshot, was profound and soul-searching. (On hearing the Adagio, Tchaikovsky chronicled experiencing a "feeling of resignation and inconsolable sorrow....I had to hide in the farthest corner of the concert-room so that others would not see how much this music affected me.”)  As to the final movement, the artists convincingly recreated its enigmatic course as it weighed in with a lengthy adagio introduction wrought of dissonance and unresolved tension, this to be swept away with the gallant elegance of carefree rondo dances in G major.

 

Hearing these two monumental works on authentic instruments and at the hands of five outstanding artists in playing that was poised and emotionally balanced was a rare experience. Keeping a safe distance from music-making that is precious or overwrought, the PHOENIX artists' performance was balanced, buoyant, intelligent and powerful, a performance reflecting their own enquiry into- and deep experience encountered in playing the quintets, both of which they conveyed to the audience. 

 

The Kanazawa-Admony Piano Duo performs works inspired by tragic love at the Eden-Tamir Music Center Ein Kerem, Jerusalem

 

Tami Kanazawa, Yuval Admony (Clemens Wortmann)

For "Love Stories in Two Pianos", a concert of the Eden-Tamir Music Center's Glorious Sound of the Piano series on June 3rd 2023, duo pianists Tami Kanazawa and Yuval Admony performed works all based on love…an idyllic subject you would think for a morning concert on a sunny spring day in the magical Jerusalem village of Ein Kerem…  

 

The program opened with some of Johannes Brahms' "Liebeslieder Waltzer" (Love Song Waltzes) Op.52 (premiered Vienna,1870) a collection comprising eighteen songs originally scored for four vocal soloists (or choir SATB) and two pianos. Brahms chose to set poems from Georg Friedrich Daumer’s "Polydora", an 1855 German anthology of folk song texts from many countries. Due to the work's popularity and playability, many versions and transcriptions of the "Liebeslieder Waltzes" exist, including the setting we heard for piano duet (without voices), in which minor additions and intricacies were added to the original piano lines. Kanazawa and Admony conjured up the vividly pastoral texts relating to birds, stars, the moon and nature in general in playing that was both sensitive and subtle - at times reticent, gently lyrical and singing, positive and genial, even melancholy, at others, hearty, free-spirited and lavish. Their playing addressed each individual miniature, all of which deal with matters of the heart. And how birdlike and evocative No. 6 "A small, pretty bird" emerged. Much has been told of Brahms' amorous letdowns and his long-term friendship with Robert Schumann's wife Clara. However, it seems he had developed feelings for Robert and Clara’s daughter Julie. Distraught at Julie’s 1869 engagement, he completed his op. 52 "Liebeslieder Walzer" the same year.  

 

As to Franz Liszt's duet transcriptions of his own symphonic poems, they are not to be viewed merely as arrangements but as works that exist alongside the symphonic forms. Indeed, Liszt very often worked on the orchestral and two-piano versions simultaneously. At the Ein Kerem concert, we heard "Orpheus", Symphonic Poem No.4. The piece had its genesis in a performance of Gluck's opera "Orfeo ed Euridice" (1762), which Liszt produced in 1854 when music director of the Weimar Court. The composer was inspired by the depiction of Orpheus as seen on an Etruscan vase at the Louvre Museum and by the notion that Orpheus had a civilizing effect on humanity. With consummate teamwork, Kanazawa and Admony recreated the dilemma and struggle of the fateful Orpheus and Eurydice fable, represented on Liszt's broad canvas, with its pungent dissonances, and in the musical language of the 1850s, but also in pensive, fragile moments, showing Liszt at his most delicate, as well as at his most harmonically inventive. 

 

Liszt's "Réminiscences de Don Juan" (S. 418) is an opera fantasy for piano on themes from Mozart's 1787 opera "Don Giovanni". Composed in 1841 and published as a two-piano version in 1877, the piece is no paraphrase of the popular Mozart opera, rather, an interpretation, even a portrayal of the title character as seen through Liszt's eyes (understandably, the result being anything but condemnation of Don Juan's licentious life!)  Although extreme in technical demands, indeed, considered to be one of Liszt's most taxing works (Ferruccio Busoni referred to  the "Réminiscences" as carrying "almost symbolic significance as the highest point of pianism") Kanazawa and Admony concerned themselves with presenting the many-layered weave of the work that  draws on three themes from Mozart's opera, opening with the intense depiction of Don Juan's eventual confrontation with the flames of hell as vivified in sinister timbres of the pianos' lower register. As to the much-loved aria melodies threaded throughout, the artists presented them with cantabile good cheer and warmth. One could not object to the gentle humming of these jewels as was heard in the hall.

 

“The radioactive fallout from "West Side Story" must still be descending on Broadway this morning,” wrote Walter Kerr, critic of the Herald Tribune following the work's New York premiere. Considered by many to be Broadway's greatest contribution to the arts and Leonard Bernstein's most memorable work, "West Side Story" (conceived by Jerome Robbins, lyrics: Stephen Sondheim, based on a book by Arthur Laurents) was composed between 1955 and 1957. In 1961, Bernstein chose numbers from the score for his "Symphonic Dances from West Side Story", overseeing the orchestration carried out by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal. Performing John Musto's arrangement for two pianos, Kanazawa and Admony gave expression to the tragic love story set against the rivalry between two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds in New York's Upper West Side, to its tensions, to its slick undertones, devious characters and to its fragile, disarming tenderness. With strategic collaboration and consummate mastery, the artists presented the work's extravagant canvas, one rich and candid in jazzy rhythms, in temperament and moods, all coloured with dissonances and cross-rhythms, highlighting Bernstein's sophisticated writing. And how poignantly each of the memorable songs emerged, threaded between sensitively wrought transitions.

 

Remaining in the seething back alleys of America, the artists performed Percy Granger's "Fantasy on Porgy and Bess". Considered by many to be America’s first great opera, "Porgy and Bess" composed by George Gershwin (libretto: DuBose Heyward, lyrics: Ira Gershwin) tells the story of Porgy, a disabled black street beggar living in the slums of Charleston. It deals with his attempts to rescue Bess from the clutches of Crown, her violent, possessive lover, and Sportin' Life, her drug dealer. Kanazawa and Admony's performance called attention to Grainger's profuse and daring setting - its virtuosic two-piano "orchestration", complete with bell- and xylophone effects and its sultry, tough, noble and tender moods. The duo's playing of Gershwin's timeless melodies, one gorgeous, sparkling tune soaring up to meet another, created a pageant of intense human emotions, as the artists invited the audience to join them for the ride. 

 

Always informative and entertaining, Prof. Admony introduced each of the works. The stories of love represented here ended tragically, but the works written around them made for an elaborate and colourful program and  engaging performance. Real-life partners Tami Kanazawa and Yuval Admony, a piano duo for almost 30 years, perform internationally, take part in music festivals and were co-founders of the Israel International Piano Duo Festival, of which Yuval Admony is the artistic director. They conduct piano duo master-classes in Canada, Korea and Japan and are adjudicators of solo and chamber music competitions in Italy and Israel.