SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Anton Diabelli-Third Grande Sérénade in A Major, Op.66 (flute, clarinet, guitar)

Luigi Boccherini-Guitar Quintet in G minor, G.450

Ludwig van Beethoven-String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major (with Grosse Fuge)

In a city as large and diverse as New York, one wonders why  there aren't more live classical performances on any given day. A quick glance at Paris and London's musical events calendar show them both as having over 40 concerts and operas scheduled next week. New York City for the same week has about 15. Granted, our government's funding and support for the arts have never matched those of other countries, but even with the near collapse of the world economy there are dozens more musically active groups in Europe than in the US. A running joke here has been that at any hour of the day or night somewhere in Paris there is group performing the Four Seasons.

The Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, which is now in its tenth season, must be doing something right to be successful enough to schedule 20 concerts, each one performed on a Monday afternoon and evening. I've been to lunchtime and mid-afternoon concerts at various churches over the years which are free or which ask for a donation, and they are never more than half-filled. It came as quite a surprise then,  that the group's first concert of the season appeared to be sold out. From the response to director Mei Ying's welcoming speech, it also seemed that the audience has been coming back year after year. In many ways what they are doing would seem to contradict the things traditionally assumed to cause an early demise for classical music organizations: performing each concert at an inconvenient time (2:00 PM), charging for tickets, having the venue be a church with the audience seated on folding chairs. And finally, not catering to the lowest common denominator by programming popular pieces. No warhorses here: Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, no, his neglected, underperformed masterpiece, the Piano Trio in A minor, yes; Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, no, his Clarinet Quartet (I never knew one existed), yes. How many of us have heard compositions by Anton Diabelli, Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, Niels Wilhelm Gade, Johann Georg Lickl, or Chistian Frederik Emil Hornemann, just to name a few? Certainly, from one performance it would be difficult to generalize about the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players' success given all the “wrong” things it's doing; but to my mind their success is obviously due to the quality of the players and performances as well as the intelligent and uncompromising selection of repertoire. The Diabelli and Boccherini heard here are seldom performed.

The opening guitar solo by Jason Vieaux set the standard for the rest of the concert. Mr. Vieaux played the piece, which has overtones of  Mozart and Beethoven overtures, with self-assurance and concentration, never once flinching at the voices and construction trucks outside that unfairly competed against his soft-spoken guitar. The piece is filled with fast-moving runs of triplets which Mr. Vieaux played with ease and tremendous flair.

Diabelli's Grande Sérénade in A Major, Op.66 is no masterpiece and “grande” is perhaps a misnomer, but it is an engaging piece, delightfully performed. Although written for flute, viola and guitar, the viola part had been transcribed here for clarinet. The guitar rarely soloed and served more like a basso continuo than as an equal partner. I question some of the choices in tempo: both andantes marked cantabile were played a little too fast and I have no idea what tempo the composer wanted when marking the brief rondo as pastorale. Certainly, as lovely as it was, it did not evoke the rustic feelings felt in Beethoven's Sixth Symphony for example. Nonetheless, the group seemed to draw from the work's slight interior whatever substance it possessed and I can't imagine a better performance of the piece.

The next item, Boccherini's Guitar Quintet No. 6 in G minor [sic] is cousin to the better known Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D Major, the latter containing the famous Fandango. The opening movement of the 6^th Quintet is a very bouncy, quite charming country dance in quarter time. Listening to it, I knew there was no way that this piece could be in a minor key, but not having absolute or good relative pitch I suspended my disbelief thinking that the performance was so good, which it was, that they were somehow able to make it sound as if it were in the  major.  The simple answer of course was that there was an error in the program notes: virtuosi these players might be, but not magicians. Slight liberties, once again, were taken with the tempo of the second movement which was played perhaps closer to Allegretto than the composer's marked Andantino lento. The third movement, marked Tempo di Minuetto, is notable for its use of a fughetta as the main theme and for its real forays into minor keys, putting it in sharp contrast to the cheery final Allegretto. All in all, a delightful performance of an equally delightful piece of music.

But nothing in the first half of this concert prepared me for the final piece, Beethoven's last string quartet with the Grosse Fuge, usually performed as a separate work, restored to its proper place as the quartet's final movement. From the opening Adagio to the last towering, monumental movement, the performers held me captive. They played it as if for the first time and I heard it that way. This is not a piece that is easy to play. It's a challenge for any chamber group to synchronize and then fine tune their individual contributions, but this was accomplished with tremendous energy and panache. The Grosse Fuge was performed as if by one person, so well integrated were the instruments and awe was the chief sensation I felt when at the end they lifted their bows from the strings. With no attempt to soften the raw edges or candy-coat the movement's dissonance, it clearly sounded a good 75-100 years ahead of its time: aside from Charles Ives maybe, who was writing this kind of music even in the early years of the twentieth century.  Will the future recitals by the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players hold up to this level of playing? I look forward to finding out.

Stan Metzger