Where: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s Sherwood Auditorium, 700 Prospect St., La Jolla
When: Next concert is 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Continues through Aug. 27.
Phone: (858) 459-3728
Tuesday night is Schumann night at SummerFest. The festival planned three concerts in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Schumann’s birth, and the first one this week at Sherwood Auditorium proved why one of the godfathers of 19th-century musical romanticism continues to be so elusive.
There was the Schumann of “Dichterliebe,” Opus 48, a song cycle so subtle, nuanced and concise, it almost seems post-romantic in nature.
Then there’s the sprawling, ultra-expressive Quintet for Piano and Strings in E-flat Major, Opus 44, which doesn’t just wear its heart on its sleeve, but anywhere that it possibly can.
And there was the Adagio and Allegro for Cello and Piano, Opus 70, that’s somewhere between those two extremes.
Just when you think you have a handle on Schumann, he turns around and does something unexpected. The ground is constantly shifting, especially in the Quintet for Piano and Strings.
That poses a special challenge, and an opportunity, for musicians who don’t normally play together. Violinists Chee-Yun and Cho-Liang Lin, violist Paul Neubauer, cellist Carter Brey and pianist Joseph Kalichstein captured the almost fantastical essence of the piece, but not without some rough edges along the way.
Kalichstein is hardly a reticent performer, but for the most part he kept the piano in the background in a work that is typically dominated, even bullied, by the piano. And while Lin, the festival’s music director, generously played second violin and gave the first violin part to Chee-Yun, a steadier (and more consistently in tune) hand in the first chair would have been welcome.
The exposed opening of the second movement, In modo d’una Marcia, where the first violin initially states the theme, threatened to fall apart as Chee-Yun had difficulty setting the tempo.
Still, the musicians quickly found their footing, and there’s no arguing with the ensemble’s exuberant view of the work, which seemed to favor extremes of mood and tempo. At several points where the music turns inward, Kalichstein almost took a timeout, easing the pace to where it was right on the edge of seeming to slow down, but didn’t. The interpretation was the very opposite of what you’d consider a safe, matter-of-fact approach, and the rousing ending brought the audience to its feet.
In contrast to the abandonment of the Quintet, in “Dichterliebe” baritone Kelly Markgraf and pianist Ken Noda offered a carefully calibrated rendering. These 16 songs, each a miniature world unto itself, offer no second chances. You just start to wrap your ears and mind around them and they are gone. Markgraf’s rich, assertive voice seemed to grow in warmth and flexibility as the cycle went on, while Noda seemed to channel Schumann’s unconscious intentions into his sensitive accompaniment.
Lynn Harrell, accompanied by Victor Santiago Asunción, surveyed the Adagio and Allegro with the expressiveness that has characterized his welcome contributions to three of the first four SummerFest programs. He now departs to make way for Brey and several other cellists. Schumann continues Aug. 17 and 24.
James Chute: (619) 293-1290; email@example.com