The Music@Menlo chamber music festival presented its final ‘Carte Blanche’ program of the season on Thursday 4 August at Stent Family Hall on the Menlo School campus in Atherton. The “Carte Blanche” concerts are recitals organized by the performers. This concert featured veteran Menlo violinist Bella Hristova and rookie pianist Shai Wosner in a program accompanied by two Mozart sonatas.
Although written only three years apart in 1781 and 1784, Mozart’s two sonatas are quite different. K. 377 in F major is one of the first sonatas of this set in which the violin plays an equal role with the keyboard. (Previously, the violin only adorned and commented on a keyboard work.) Mozart alternates the main melody almost constantly between the two instruments, especially in the fast and bustling opening movement. It makes the music interesting.
Wosner played his huge Steinway grand piano in a light and delicate way as if it were one of the first pianos of Mozart’s time. It seemed quite appropriate for the music. Hristova played with a soft and graceful sound, especially when coming out of grace notes. The exchange of roles of the actors was perfectly balanced and excellently judged, a treat to hear.
The sonata continued with a simple and elegant slow movement of theme and variations and faded slightly from the end with a soft, gentle minuet.
The B-flat Sonata, K. 454, is more extroverted, with the violin taking a bold, declarative lead and the piano essentially reduced to setting and accompaniment. Mozart had written the piece to showcase the skills of a 20-year-old Italian virtuoso violinist who was attracting attention in Vienna. Hristova took her part with restraint and good humor, putting enough barn-scorching vigor into the lively finale to end the concert in awe.
The two pieces in between each had a different character from the sonatas and from each other. Mozart’s Fantasia in C minor, K. 396, is a fragmentary sketch that is mostly reserved for the piano, with an extra line of a few violin notes just before the piece ends. It is usually played only for the piano. A few years ago, pianist and musicologist Robert Levin reconstructed what he thought the violin part would have been throughout the piece. He also added a middle section and a pickup to complete the move. Based on Mozart’s own material, they fit in well. The hollow and irregular sounding piano part on its own is complemented by a proper violin part.
Wosner and Hristova demonstrated this by playing the work first as Mozart left it — including the violin additions at the end — and then as Levin reconstructed it most satisfactorily.
The remaining work on the program was ‘Swan Song’, a contemporary piece by American composer David Serkin Ludwig. Ludwig, who is the husband of Hristova and also the grandson of the famous pianist Rudolf Serkin, was present to present his work. He says that this piece was inspired by Schubert’s Fantasy in C for the same instruments. It doesn’t sound much like Schubert, although he occasionally quotes him.
“Swan Song” is a shifting fantasy of successive scenes. As a fantasy, it was hard to predict where the music was going next. Some passages were dark and passionate. However, it mostly gave the impression of light, searching music, concentrated on the piano on notes as fragile and hoarse as those of Mozart, with a few high notes plucked directly on the string. The violin part is nearly continuous, forming a lyrical flow, often at the highest position. Hristova’s sound was often thin and delicate, though often varied. A swirling solo cadenza formed a landmark towards the end.
Under these performers, “Swan Song” was continuously interesting to hear. It was one of many contemporary compositions of a similar breed that graced Menlo’s mostly traditional repertoire that year. One could wish for more of their kind.
Menlo announced its winter programs at Menlo School’s Spieker Center. On Saturday December 3, pianist Gilles Vonsattel will present a thematic concert in which works by Bach, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich will lead to Beethoven’s last piano sonata, op. 111. On Saturday, March 25, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor will conduct a program featuring music for winds and piano by composers who fell victim to the Nazi Holocaust.
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