Ingolf Dahl (1912-1970).In the years just before and after World War II, Southern California became an oasis of sun, refuge and economic opportunity for several of the era’s most important European composers, Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schonberg chief among them.
Ingolf Dahl was another one of those composers, and in the fourth and final program of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, his lively and clever Concerto a Tre was the intellectual and musical high point. Written in 1946, this piece for clarinet, violin and cello has a lot of the flavor of Stravinsky, with whom Dahl closely worked, but it comes across as less calculated, more naturally musical.
Friday night at Palm Beach Atlantic’s Persson Hall, violinist Dina Kostic, clarinetist Michael Forte and cellist Susan Bergeron gave a deft and engaging performance of this work, which has neoclassicism in its veins but also takes in some of the popular musical language of its time. Although each of the players has very difficult, challenging music to play, it’s the sound of the clarinet that drives the piece more than any other, and Forte gave the enterprise fluid fingers and a large, pleasing tone.
He ran into trouble in the highest reaches of the florid cadenza that ends the second movement, a piece with a slow-stepping kind of archaic grace (it’s marked esitando) in which the violin carefully sets out steadily rising single notes as it climbs, too, into the instrumental stratosphere. But most of the piece has a slangy, vivid swing in which odd rhythms and bright colors dominate, and in the conclusion, where the rhythmic complexity reaches its apex, the three musicians dispatched it handily.
Another trio on Friday’s program had its world premiere: Odyssey, for flute, clarinet and bassoon by composer Clark McAlister, who has been the festival’s producer for each of its six recordings. McAlister, whose Lou’s Mountain Bread remains my personal favorite of the works he’s written for this company of musicians, has crafted here a modest, sober 6-minute work for the three musicians – Forte, flutist Karen Dixon and bassoonist Michael Ellert – who founded the festival in 1992.
Beginning with a moody solo motif down around the chalumeau register of the clarinet, Odyssey opens up into a tapestry of long-lined, slowly moving themes, with a recurring waltz-like motif and an overall aspect of almost Bachian gravity. McAlister knows his way around the tonal possibilities of the three instruments, which gave this interesting, worthwhile piece added breadth despite the inherent limits of flute, clarinet and bassoon.
Modesty also was the watchword for two other works on the program, beginning with a curious Duo for bassoon and double bass by the French composer Albert Roussel. This 1925 duet already is on one of the festival’s discs, and was one of the works chosen for revisitation in the event’s 19th season. This is not the Roussel of the Third Symphony or the ballet score Bacchus et Ariane; rather, this work is more of a sport, an exploration of how to write for two low-voiced instruments.
Roussel leaves the bassoon to do most of the work, and much of that is a march-like chattering for the wind instrument over spooky harmonics in the bass. Ellert and bassist Jason Lindsay played it well, and with the right whimsical touch.
The concert opened with a rarity by Donizetti, a Trio for flute, bassoon and piano featuring Dixon, Ellert and pianist Michael Yannette. Best-known for his operas, Donizetti also wrote a great deal of other music, including 19 string quartets, and this work probably dates from the early part of his career around 1820, when he was concentrating on instrumental music.
Again, the three players here did a good job with this light-as-a-feather piece, which was distinguished by attractive melodies and a thoroughly conventional harmonic format. Dixon and Ellert had plenty of straightforward tune to play, and they made a good case for this composer’s fondness for both of these instruments.
The final work on the program was the little-known String Quintet in G, Op. 77, of Dvořák, which despite the late opus number is a relatively early composition, written about the time of his Fifth Symphony. Composed for string quartet and double bass, it has a ravishing slow movement, a folk-flavored scherzo and finale, and a somewhat fussy, academic opening movement.
Kostic and Lindsay were joined by violinist Mei-Mei Luo, violist Rene Reder and cellist Christopher Glansdorp for the quintet. There were moments of fine playing here, especially in the slow third movement, in which all five musicians maintained a beautiful intensity that served the music well, and in the trio of the Scherzo, which was somewhat more successful than the main section.
But there were frequent intonation problems throughout the piece, and in general, the musicians didn’t sound quite in control of the material, to the point that little of the lilt and joy of Dvořák’s writing came through. As sometimes happens in this festival, this could be an example of opening-night unease, and I would wager that matters will improve by the final performance Monday night.
The Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival repeats this program at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Crest Theatre, Delray Beach, and at 8 p.m. Monday at the Eissey Campus Theatre at Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens. Tickets are $22. Call 800-330-6874 or visit www.pbcmf.org.