Peachtree Chamber Players perform "Andante sarcastico" from Curtis Bryant's Sextet for Wind Quintet and Piano. (credit: Sam Smith)

Peachtree Chamber Players delight with well-chosen works for woodwind quintet

CONCERT REVIEW:
Peachtree Chamber Players
February 18, 2024
First Presbyterian Church
Peachtree City, GA – USA
Tamara Grizzle, flute; Erin Olson, oboe; Laurie Searle, clarinet; Becky Adams, horn; Neva Velasquez, bassoon; LuAnn Latzanich, piano.
Jacques IBERT: Trois Pièces Brèves
Maurice RAVEL/arr. M. Jones: Le Tombeau de Couperin
Curtis BRYANT: “Andante Sarcastico” from Sextet for Wind Quintet and Piano
Gordon JACOB: Sextet in B♭ Major
Brian DeFORD: Beer Music Finale
Philip BUTTALL: The Lone Ar-ranger

Christopher Hill | 22 FEB 2024

On Sunday, February 18, the Peachtree Chamber Players performed an ambitious concert of classical and semi-classical music for woodwind quintet, sometimes with the addition of piano, in the sanctuary of the First Presbyterian Church, Peachtree City, Georgia. Happily, the concert was well attended. Classical pieces on the program were written during the 20th century; the semi-classical pieces are from the 2000s.

Peachtree Chamber Players was formed in 2015. Their February 18 concert featured one founding member, Luann Lazanich, on piano, plus players Tamara Grizzle, their on-stage spokesperson, on flute and piccolo, Erin Olson on oboe, Laurie Searle on clarinets, Becky Abrams on horn, and Neva Velasquez on bassoon.

Their program fell into three parts: first, well-known suites by two French composers, Ibert and Ravel; second, works by American Curtis Bryant and Brit Gordon Jacob that augment the wind quintet with piano; and finally, light-hearted novelty pieces for wind quintet by American Brian DuFord and Brit Philip Buttall.


Advertisement
  • ABO - 2025-02
  • SPI13 Atlanta's Finest Organists

The concert opened with Jacques Ibert’s Trois pièces brèves (1930), an excursion into French-accented neoclassicism. They say brevity is the soul of wit, and these three pieces exemplify the sort of tasteful, often witty writing later employed by, say, composer Jean Français. After a merry “Allegro” and pensive, lyrical “Andante,” Ibert ends with a longer “Rondo” featuring a fetching waltz. Unfortunately, it was a chilly day in Peachtree City, and the players’ instruments, now warming up indoors, took a while to stabilize their pitches, with the result that octave and unison doublings especially were tinged with a touch of sourwood.

By the beginning of the second piece, four selections from Maurice Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin, the wind instruments had warmed up and were pitch-stable. Ravel’s work started life in 1917 as a six-movement suite for piano. Then, in 1920, the composer orchestrated four of the movements as an orchestral suite, and it was this selection of movements that arranger Mason Jones used for his fluent woodwind quintet adaptation, particularly delightful in the “Rigadon.” The ensemble might have benefitted from a bit more practice time, but the oboe and bassoon were solid throughout, and the flute had some fine moments. Horn and clarinet were at their best when they didn’t feel exposed.

Adding a piano in the middle portion of the program steadied the ensemble and resulted in the best-played music of the afternoon. Ms. Latzanich sounds in command of her keyboard, and you can sense her affection for the music.


Advertisement
  • EarRelevant Reader MailChimp sign-up link AD
  • Ad SCH JazzFest
  • AD TAO 03 Macbeth

First up was an “Andante sarcastico” by American composer Curtis Bryant, the first movement of his Sextet for Wind Quintet and Piano (1986). One can hear echoes of French neoclassicism in the clarity of Bryant’s writing, but now it is infused with a considerably richer harmonic palette, at times subtly bluesy. Like Ibert’s, Bryant’s melodies are motivically driven and clear in their phrasing, but they also have the contours of song and aria. (One could say the same about many of Copland’s melodies, though Bryant sounds nothing like Copland.) The writing is not easy, and the hornist can be commended for her performance of a solo in the instrument’s upper range. Based on this movement, I look forward to hearing the whole Sextet. It’s a most attractive piece.

Another attractive piece, and the most finished performance of the day, was Gordon Jacob’s elegaic Sextet in B-flat Major (1956). For four of its five movements, it’s one of those pieces built on a musical cell whose notes derive from letters in a person’s name – in this case, the letters are A-B-E-B-A. Perhaps taking the B-E-B as his cue, Jacobs extensively uses intervals of a fourth in this work. Harmonies also get spikey and chromatic at times and then gentle again and triadic at times. Taken all together, the mix of sounds displays coherence and mature musical judgment. The work’s instrumentation is masterful – I doubt anyone could make it more acoustically spacious or attractive than it already is.


Advertisement
  • ECMSA 24-25 AD 600x250
  • AD SPI12 Ranky Tanky

In the “Scherzo” the piccolo shone. In the central “Cortège,” the clarinet performed its lower-range solos with aplomb. In the “Minuet,” the piano had one of its most extended solos of the concert, played with sensitivity. The final movement, a driving “Rondo” and nostalgic “Epilog,” sounds almost like an homage to Arnold Bax – specifically, to the final movement of his Piano Trio of 1946. Jacob himself wrote a piano trio the same year as the Sextet, and he was, of course, well aware that it was Bax who introduced the narrative device of the Epilog into British music. If any piece on the program challenged the audience, it was Jacob’s, but they responded warmly.

Not so warmly, however, as they did after hearing Brian DuFord’s boozily comical Beer Music (2017). It was undoubtedly the biggest hit of the afternoon, and if sound meters were present, the needles no doubt rose into the red zone.

The concert closed with Philip Buttall’s likewise comical The Lone Ar-ranger (2000), which uses Rossini’s famous overture as a framework for several dozen familiar musical quotations, often drolly juxtaposed. If the warm reception accorded The Lone Ar-ranger was not quite as impressive as that for Beer Music, it’s also true that its performance did not follow on the heels of the Jacob’s longer, serious Sextet.

Long ago, local music-making was an important part of life in small and mid-sized towns. Not so much today. Yet, as this concert demonstrates, there are still talented musicians dedicated to fusing art music with the fabric of community life. We need more groups like Peachtree Chamber Players and more funding for such groups.

EXTERNAL LINKS:

About the author:
Christopher Hill has performed, in concert, as soloist, accompanist, and band member, classical, jazz, blues, and rock music on various keyboards and stringed instruments. He obtained a degree in musicology and has written about music, music theory, and music history for over five decades. He currently lives in Durham, North Carolina, from whence he travels to concerts throughout the Southland.

Read more by Christopher Hill.
This entry was posted in Chamber & Recital and tagged , , , , , , on by .

RECENT POSTS