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Boccherini, Mozart, Reger and Glazunov: Ensemble M, Clyde Theatre, Langley, WA, 4.4.2009 (BJ)

Boccherini: Quintet in E, op.13/5
Reger: Lyrische Andante (1898)
Mozart: Oboe Quartet in F, K370 (1781)
Glazunov: Quintet in A, op.39 (1891/1892)


“Oasis” may seem an odd word to use, given the famous prevalence of rain in the climate of western Washington State. But that, so far as classical music on Whidbey Island is concerned, is what a recent pair of concerts seems to have amounted to, The island’s Center for the Arts presents a wide variety of events through the year, but this was the only chamber music to be found on the current list of performances.

The concerts were the brainchild of Judy Geist, who three years ago built herself a house and studio – she is also a talented painter – on the island, presumably with the intention of moving there permanently when she comes to retire from her position as a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s viola section. Following on from a concert I reviewed here in March 2007, this year’s pair of concerts was presented under the title “Boccherini and Beyond.” For the one I attended, Ms. Geist was joined on the platform of the charming old Clyde Theatre by two of her Philadelphia colleagues, violinist Paul Arnold (who provided excellent spoken introductions to the music) and cellist Kathryn Picht Read; John Kim, concertmaster of the Bellevue Philharmonic; cellist Judith Serkin of the Marlboro Music Festival; and Rudolph Vrbsky, assistant principal oboe of the National Symphony in (the other) Washington.

As you might guess from that list, and from Boccherini’s presence in the concert’s headline, the program was heavily cello-oriented. Three string quintets for the same two-cello lineup that Schubert used were offered. The Boccherini on this afternoon, Opus 13 No.5 in E major, is the one that includes the famous minuet. (As the critic Eric Blom once pointed out, if Mrs. Wilberforce, the heroine of Alexander Mackendrick’s wonderful 1955 Ealing comedy The Ladykillers, had been a musicologist, she would have been wise to what Alec Guinness and his criminal henchmen were up to in their phonographically faked rehearsals of the movement, since their instruments included two violas and one cello instead of the other way round.) The minuet deserves its popularity, and the rest of the piece makes pleasant listening too, even though one may feel it would have been pleasanter still if the composer had thought of occasionally including a phrase other than four bars in length.

Certainly there was nothing to complain about in the rich-toned and tautly coordinated playing of the five performers. Equally skillful were the performances of the two other quintets. One was Glazunov’s Opus 39, an unfamiliar piece that was well worth resurrecting (though its finale suffers from the same lack of rhythmic variety as the Boccherini). The other was a short and uncharacteristically homophonic Lyrische Andante by Reger, for which Judith Serkin (daughter of the great Rudolf) took over the first-cello part from her colleague.

The odd work out in terms of instrumentation was also by far the greatest music on the program. Mozart’s Oboe Quartet is only about 15 minutes long (my only regret was that the second repeat in the opening movement was not observed), but it combines melodic charm with considerable depth of feeling. One passage in the finale, moreover, displays some nifty rhythmic invention, superimposing an alla breve excursion in the oboe over the prevailing 6/8 meter in the other instruments. Playing with refined if not especially sensual tone, Rudolph Vrbsky dovetailed neatly with the strings, and coped masterfully with the tortuous and taxing writing of the dramatically-tinged slow movement. This, then, was the musical high point of the concert, but the whole event clearly delighted the audience, and it’s to be hoped that Judy Geist’s initiative will be followed up and perhaps expanded on in future seasons.

Bernard Jacobson


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