The chamber music presented by Music@Menlo is a gift of great worth and joy to the citizens of Menlo Park and its surrounding cities. It's not that the organizers stick simply to chamber music, or that they produce well-designed and insightful programs, or even that they invite outstanding artists. It is that they make a whole package out of it: the location, the season of exceptionally well-chosen and historically worthy subjects, the invitations to the most lustrous performers imaginable — and the fact that they do it all so brilliantly, with free concerts such as the one I fell into by accident, which was so beautiful, intense, well executed, and professional as to leave me shaken.
The program that should have occupied my full attention was promised to be a "prism to reveal a broad swath of musical styles," covering the years before Mendelssohn's birth to well after his death. The first work in this "Midsummer Night Dreams" program was György Ligeti's Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet. "Puckish" doesn't do justice to the work's cleverness and imagination. Hearing spots of it is like eating a sour lemon. The quintet consisted of Carol Wincenc, flute; William Bennett, oboe; Anthony McGill, clarinet; Dennis Godburn, bassoon; and William VerMeulen, French horn.
The work is a collection of six pieces arranged by Ligeti for wind quintet and taken from a piano composition of 11 pieces. I must admit that I was a little fearful after having heard Ligeti's music for 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I find both incomprehensible and irritating. But I was pleasantly surprised to find this composition to be a tuneful, even funny work that was very approachable.
The Ligeti was followed by a performance of Robert Schumann's Piano Trio in D Minor, Op. 63. I am sorry that most of Schumann's music holds little interest for me, and this piano trio is usually no exception. Except for the slow movement, the work was constantly played at a forte, as if Schumann's madness was coming on him and he was crying out as loudly as possible, "Hear me! Hear me!"
But that perspective did not diminish my complete admiration for pianist Jeffrey Kahane, violinist Joseph Swensen, and cellist Paul Watkins. They played the piece brilliantly and breathlessly. In fact, the performance was so intense that afterward the players appeared to be as physically and emotionally exhausted as was I. They had been digging in as if the devil himself were on their tails.
After intermission came a piano four-hand performance of two movements from the Midsummer Night's Dream, Op. 61, played by Jeffrey Kahane and festival codirector Wu Han. That Mendelssohn wrote for piano four hands — and frequently played with his musically gifted sister Fanny — echoes another musically gifted brother-sister team, Wolfgang and Nannerl Mozart, who invented the form for use on their European tour of 1763-1766. For this concert, the musicians chose the Nocturne and Scherzo movements. However, the uncertainty of entrances and other imprecisions made me sense that the performance was underrehearsed.
Finally we arrived at the evening's killer piece, the Ludwig Spohr Nonet in F Major, Op. 31. This work is immediately accessible and well composed, and the instruments are wonderfully compatible. The five Ligeti performers were joined by violinist Arnaud Sussman, violist Masumi Per Rostad, cellist Paul Watkins, and bassist Scott Pingel. Their performance caused the audience to explode with appreciation — everyone (including former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice who sat appreciatively in the row in front of me) rose to his or her feet following the last movement's stunningly played finale.
We hardly hear the music of Spohr today, but I consider him to have been a gifted composer. His long life (1784-1859) spanned the period from Mozart's most productive years to Wagner. I remember with great affection a performance of Spohr's Octet in E at the Carnegie Recital Hall some 40 years ago in which I personally participated, and I am familiar with his several clarinet concerti, his unique concerto for string quartet and orchestra, and other works. The Nonet performance simply reinforced my affection for this overlooked composer, who was a friend of Felix Mendelssohn.
I await next year's Menlo program with eagerness. This year's presentation is going to be difficult to beat, but I hope to see them manage the feat.