A Windsome Summer Evening at Lincoln Center Chamber Music
/By Raymond Beegle
7/24/2023
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presented a program of light summer fare for their Summer Evenings series on July 11th, at the Alice Tully Hall. Six superlative woodwind players did their best to breathe life into the not-so-lively Jean Françaix and Rimsky-Korsakov Quintets, and had an easier time of it with the other remaining works. Of course, the chamber music repertoire is vast, but the harvest of pieces for woodwinds is scant. An oboe, a flute, a clarinet and bassoon do not produce the smooth ensemble of a string quartet, and composers have shied away from the challenge, aside from commissions and occasional pieces. The only remarkable exceptions include Gounod’s charming Petit Symphony, and the handful of ensembles Beethoven wrote simply for the pleasure of making music with his virtuoso friends. One couldn’t help thinking that his E flat major Sextet would have ended this evening on a more ecstatic note than the Rimsky-Korsakov Quintet.
Poulenc’s Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano was the highpoint of tonight’s event. The brilliance of the work, and the brilliant performances of James Austin Smith, Marc Goldberg, and Michael Stephen Brown ignited the sold-out audience of loyal members, listeners who represent perhaps, the cultural backbone of our musical community. Paul Dukas’s Villanelle for Horn and Orchestra is also a delightful composition, but its demands on the horn player are immense. Dukas often uses the mute for dramatic color, but it requires pitch adjustments each time from the player, a player in this case, with chronic pitch problems.
The players, in various combination, showed incisive attention to their colleagues, where to support them, and where to let them (and the music) make a virtuosic display. Of course, such attention is the key to seamless ensemble, but the masterful playing and the joy taken in performance made the evening especially memorable.
[Editor’s note: stream this concert in the Digital Encore archive.]
Raymond Beegle reviews classical music and opera for the New York Observer and Fanfare Magazine. For many years he was Contributing Editor of Opera Quarterly, the Classic Record Collector (UK), and also appeared on The Today Show (NBC) and Good Morning America (CBS). As an accompanist, he has collaborated with Zinka Milanov and Licia Albanese. Currently Mr. Beegle serves on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music in New York City.