April 9, 2022
Emerson Hall, Schwartz Center for Performing Arts
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Tom Blomfield, oboe; James Burke, clarinet; Julie Price, bassoon; Stephen Stirling, horn;Simon Crawford-Phillips, piano.
Carl REINECKE: Trio in A Minor for oboe, horn, and piano, op. 88
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART: Quintet in E-flat for piano and winds, K452
Johannes BRAHMS: Sonata in E-flat for clarinet and piano. op. 120, No. 2
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: Quintet in E-flat for piano and winds, op, 16
Giorgio Koukl | 19 APR 2022
The Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields Wind Ensemble — oboist Tom Blomfield, clarinetist James Burke, bassoonist Julie Price, and Stephen Stirling on horn, together with the pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips — played a concert featuring works of Reinecke, Mozart, Brahms, and Beethoven on April 9 at Emerson Hall, Schwartz Center for Performing Arts on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta.
The ensemble’s overall rendering of all this rather traditional choice of music was more than respectable. In a subtle manner, their approach echoed the very essence of the so typically British understatement, solidity, and a certain adversity against experimentation; all this presented in a mantle of solid musical craftsmanship.
In the two quintets of Mozart and Beethoven, fundamental cornerstones of the wind ensemble and piano repertory, they have carefully chosen relatively slow tempi and phrasing that reflected well an undeniable willingness for elegance and comfort.
Carl Reinecke (1824-1910), a German composer, now practically forgotten, was active as a composer, pianist, and teacher mainly in his city of Leipzig. He left an enormous quantity of music written for almost every existing formation.
His Trio in A minor for oboe, horn, and piano op.188 (Allegro moderato, Scherzo: Molto vivace, Adagio, and Finale: Allegro ma non troppo) reflects very well the ability of this composer to produce excellent melodies and some pleasant harmonic solutions. It gives much space to the oboe as a leading instrument. Nothing comes here as a real surprise, all is well within the preset rules, and in this sense, it was played accordingly by the British musicians.
A special mention must be made about the excellent intonation of the oboe player, Mr. Blomfield. He produces a pleasant and harmonious timbre, although occasionally lacking a more extensive range of dynamics. The piano accompaniment of Mr. Crawford-Phillips was very precise, with a certain quality only the very experienced pianists possess: the ability to blend in an otherwise tricky mix of two wind instruments with a very different sound emission.
That Stephen Stirling is an excellent horn player came as no surprise. Usually, the quality of brass players coming from Great Britain is one of the highest in the world, and surely Mr. Stirling can be considered among the finest.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) wrote his Quintet in E-flat for piano and winds, K.452 (Largo-Allegro moderato, Larghetto, Rondo: Allegretto) when he was 28 years old. He justly considered it to be an absolute masterpiece. In his times, this was precisely the type of music that could be extremely popular in the aristocratic societies eager to play some “Tafelmusik” for entertainment. So it is easy to imagine how much this music became an immediate success. Until today it is one of the most popular pieces for this ensemble, equaled maybe only by Beethoven’s op. 16.
Since this composition is rightly called quintet for piano and winds, most of the heavy-duty playing lays on the shoulders of the pianist. Here I must have to say that Mr. Crawford-Phillips found his showcase. His brilliant and seemingly easy-going technique was very much ideal for Mozart. Some minor issues found right at the beginning of the introductory bars, like the phrasing of the piano not equaled by the wind players, are probably only a result of lack of rehearsing time — a frequent problem for ensembles not usually playing in stable formations.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) wrote his second clarinet sonata op. 120 as one of his last chamber music compositions. There is a viola version also frequently played, but in the clarinet version, the genuine qualities of this stupendous masterpiece fully emerge: a certain “autumnal” melancholic and harmonically rarefied characteristic sound which was perfectly imagined and played by clarinetist James Burke. His clarinet timbre is not very easy to like from the beginning because of a certain amount of nasal and “wooden” components. But after a while, this gets entirely overshadowed by this musician’s pure elegance of phrasing. Once again, the choice of tempi was very traditional, mainly on the slower side, maybe sometimes damaging the intriguing Brahmsian quality of rhythmical complexity.
The last piece on program was the Op.16 Quintet for piano and winds by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). (Allegro ma non troppo, Andante cantabile, Rondo:Allegro ma non troppo).
It is certainly not a coincidence that the young Beethoven here reuses the key of E-flat major chosen by Mozart for his Quintet, but the successive flow of music shows us an entirely different compositional approach, far more virtuosic and a real challenge for every pianist. Under certain aspects, it is a miniature piano concerto with a reduced orchestra, with its technical difficulties certainly overshadowing even other works like the piano concerto no. 1.
Here the pianist was probably most impressive, playing with brilliance all the sixteenth passages and the many double octaves scales despite this remaining well integrated into the overall sound of the accompanying winds.
So in a general valuation, this concert proved quite a great possibility of hearing well-known pieces again in a rendering well suited to being easily accessible and surely appreciated by the public. ■
Giorgio Koukl is a Czech-born pianist/harpsichordist and composer who resides in Lugano, Switzerland. Among his many recordings are the complete solo piano works and complete piano concertos of Bohuslav Martinů on the Naxos label. He has also recorded the piano music of Tansman, Lutosławski, Kapralova, and A. Tcherepnin, amongst others, for the Grand Piano label. Koukl has most recently completed recording a second volume of the complete solo piano music of Polish composer Alfons Szczerbinski.
(photo: Chiara Solari)
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