by his brother-in-law, Joseph Lange.
By Greg Stepanich
A sweetly radiant reading of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet added a poignant touch to the closing half of the third concert in the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s current summer season.
The quintet (in A, K. 581) was dedicated to the memory of the Rev. Perry Fuller, father of festival co-founder Karen Dixon. Fuller died earlier this month of liver cancer, and Dixon has bowed out of the series this summer to tend to family matters. Dedicating the quintet to him was a gracious gesture, and it was matched by a graceful performance.
On Sunday afternoon at Delray Beach’s Crest Theatre, clarinetist Michael Forte was joined by violinists Dina Kostic and Mei-Mei Luo, violist Rene Reder and cellist Susan Bergeron. There were some warm-up difficulties at first, with Forte sounding a little thin and Kostic under pitch, but those blemishes evaporated a couple minutes into the first movement, which was played overall with a gentle kind of serenity.
The beautiful second movement fit this mood excellently, and Forte’s lovely tone and long-breathed lines were matched by playing of maximum tenderness from the string quartet. And the quartet’s sense of unity and quiet purpose were much in evidence in the first trio of the third movement, which is for the strings alone.
The finale, a remarkable set of variations, was capably and professionally played, but it could have used more color and contrast. The main theme would have benefited from some crisper rhythmic snap, and the moody minor-key variation from more mystery. The last movement has a wide variety of moods, and here the musicians didn’t take enough advantage of all those differences.
The Mozart closed the concert Sunday, and it was preceded by music of the Czech Bohuslav Martinu, a frequently programmed composer for this series over the years. Kostic, Luo and Reder joined for the Serenata No. 2, a three-movement piece from 1932.
While this piece has the harmonic and rhythmic Martinu fingerprint, it differs from much of his other work in its pronounced lyricism. The second movement, marked Poco andante, is a straightforwardly pretty piece, and the three women played it winningly.
The outer movements have that full-sun quality common to many of Martinu’s speedy movements, and in both instances the three played with vigor, but it was a vigor with a light touch, and the final impression of this brief work was of warmth and geniality more than athleticism.
Dixon had been scheduled to play Eric Ewazen’s Mosaics on the program, but in her absence it has been rescheduled for next summer. Replacing it was a most unusual choice, the Duo Concertante for bassoon and marimba of Leon Stein (1910-2002), who taught for almost 50 years at DePaul University in his native Chicago.
Marimbist Michael Launius and bassoonist Michael Ellert teamed for this three-movement work, which is written in a jazz-inflected tonal style. What’s perhaps most interesting about it is that the material is worked out in a serious, thorough manner, when what you might expect in this instrumental combination is brevity and a comic lightness.
But the final movement of this duo is a fugue, and the piece opens with a jazzy chordal motif in the marimba whose rhythm can be heard running throughout the movement. Both soloists have a lot of work to do, and the effect is of two strong-minded voices having a reasonable conversation; rarely is the texture reduced to one accompanying the other.
Launius and Ellert demonstrated thorough commands of their instruments, and gave Stein everything he wanted, especially in the fugue, which has a bustling theme that had a nice way of hooking the ear into following where it was going. This was a fine performance of a worthy piece, a challenging work that offered listeners a fresh instrumental combination and a sober contemporary flavor, and one that was in keeping with the best traditions of this durable festival.
The Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival wraps its 20th anniversary season beginning at 8 p.m. Friday at Persson Hall on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic University with a performance of the Piano Quintet (in E-flat, Op. 44) of Robert Schumann, and Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat, featuring actors Barbara Bradshaw, Joe Gillie and Randolph Dellago. The program is repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens, and at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach. Tickets are $25. Call 330-6874, visit www.pbcmf.org, or buy them at the door.