Camerata Deia

Camerata Deia is an ensemble of varying composition that came to Sacramento last night from their home base in Spain to conclude this season's Millennium Concert Series.  Two of our pieces included piano, so I have included a picture that shows one.  They played.

Joaquin Turina's Piano Quartet in A minor Op.67 (1931) in three movements.  The program seems to be full of mistakes.  This one says Turina's dates are 1833-1897 while Wikipedia says 1882-1949.  Based on the sound of the music, I am inclined to go with the latter.  There are hints of modernism but nothing too extreme.

Enrique Granados's Piano Quintet in G minor, Op.49 (1894) in three movements.  The program identified a fourth movement which did not exist.  I liked this piece.

Mendelssohn's Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20 (1825) in four movements.  This is for two string quartets together.  The third movement was interestingly named Scherzo:  Allegro leggierissimo.[the most amount of leggiero].  You remember a leggiero tenor?  This would sort of translate to the most amount of not legato.  There was a lot of bow bouncing.  A 16 year old might get off on this.  It's a fun piece.

This concert series usually emphasizes chamber ensembles.  I liked the music selection.

Takács Quartet

👍🏻

We finished the New Millennium concert series at Sacramento State with a grand performance by the Takács String Quartet, a founding member of the Gramophone Hall of Fame.  This is what quartet playing is supposed to sound like.  They are from Hungary and have been playing together for over 40 years.  Wow.  For our concert they played:

• Mozart's String Quartet No 14, K.387 (1782)  This is the first of the Haydn Quartets, in the standard 4 movements.

• Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 6, Op.80 (1847)  This is the last piece completed by Mendelssohn before his death.  I especially liked the first of four movements.

• Beethoven's String Quartet No.14 Op. 131 (1826) This piece listed 7 movements, but they all seemed to flow one into the other.  An especially fast section seemed a Presto to me--section 5.  I turned out to be correct.  They are famous for their Beethoven.

This was a treat.  They have recorded extensively for Decca.

New Millennium Faculty, Alumni and Friends Gala

I went last night to the Gala night at CSU Sacramento where Bach, Pilss, Liszt and Mendelssohn were played.

The Liszt was from Années de pèlerinage.  Pianists love Liszt, if they can play him, and Renee Pajer seemed to be enjoying herself.  We singers were puzzling to remember the name of the Liszt song we loved and finally came up with "Oh, Quand Je Dors."


In 2009 I preferred Barbara Bonney.  But this amazing rendition by Beverly Sills is stunning.

I digress.  Faculty members Anna Presler, Andrew Luchansky and Eric Zivian, played a gorgeous Piano Trio No 1 by Mendelssohn.  This was wonderful to hear, the highlight of my musical week.  I would definitely like to hear more of this group.

I reserve the right to make whatever irrelevant remarks I wish when reviewing.

Or perhaps this.

Concerts in the Sacramento Area

Andrés Cárdenes

The first Sacramento Philharmonic concert of the year featured the man pictured above.  All season each concert will be led by a different conductor.  With Maestro Cárdenes we got two for the price of one when he both conducted and played the violin solo for the Mozart Violin Concerto No. 3.  I especially liked Mendelssohn's The Hebrides which has very unusual orchestration for its period.  It was an enjoyable concert.

Cecilia at the Barbican

Cecilia Bartoli's concert Friday evening at the Barbican was a rousing success. The intention is to revive at least the flavor of the career of Maria Malibran, possibly the most wildly popular opera singer of all time.


I'm sure Cecilia's outfit is intended as part of the reminiscence, a suggestion of the nineteenth century. She wore a pink strapless gown with a long train and silver decorations. Her hair was beautifully done as well, like someone from another era. Cecilia's particular beauty fits comfortably into a romantic world.

So why do we love her so? Cecilia scrupulously researches her concerts and makes sure every detail is authentic. She prepares. And then she comes before the public and plays with each piece like this was the most fun thing she could imagine doing. It is her pleasure that we adore.


The concert was accompanied by La Scintilla, the original instruments group affiliated with the Zurich Opera. They are improving over time. Between Cecilia's numbers they played a varied repertoire that included overtures from Garcia's La figlia dell'aria and Rossini's Il Signor Bruschino. The latter was especially well done. They also played movements from Mendelssohn's Octet Op. 20, a clarinet concertino by Donizetti, and a violin concerto by Malibran's husband Beriot.

There is evidence of increased self-confidence by Ada Pesch who worked as soloist in Mendelssohn's Infelice and the Beriot concerto, as well as conductor/concert mistress throughout the concert. Usually she stood at her concert mistress chair and gave downbeats. Nevertheless there was still evidence of Cecilia conducting in a few numbers, especially the instrumental recitatives. My previous complaints were nowhere in evidence.

The balance of the concert was different from the recording. Cecilia has already recorded just about everything by Rossini. The Willow Song and Prayer from Rossini's Otello was on Cecilia's early Rossini album--it is a piece I very much enjoy in her voice and was glad to hear. The absence of Rossini makes the "Maria" album not quite reflective of the career of Maria Malibran.




Cecilia has recorded the big aria from La Cenerentola twice and sung it in concerts throughout her career, sometimes in very matter of fact performances. She has reinvigorated it with flash, and repeated it as her last encore, this time with added flourish at the end.

The La Sonnambula aria was the only Bellini from the album that appeared on the program. Cecilia performed the Hummel variations as comedy, virtuosic comedy to be sure. She doesn't see herself as a yodeler, I guess. When you hear her talking so seriously about this repertoire, you don't really see this coming.

"Ratt-a-plan" was done with a snare drum as the first encore. Viva.

My pictures came out surprisingly well. If you click the pictures, they will blow up for you.

The Romantic Generation

Professor Gossett has suggested that instead of writing books I should consider reading some. Ouch. I am taking this pretty well.

One of his suggestions is Charles Rosen's The Romantic Generation. This covers the period from 1830 to 1850, the period of Schumann, Chopin, Bellini, Berlioz, Liszt and Mendelssohn.

Rosen is a pianist, and his book reflects this bias, a bias that the era may also be seen to reflect. Schubert and Beethoven give hints of what the piano might achieve, but it is Schumann, Chopin and Liszt that bring it to its full idiomatic glory.

On the down side: he picks over every damn piece for an unbelievable 710 pages.

In the first chapter he talks about "Conception and realization" as it applies to the Romantics. I'm always looking for a good generalization, and this is quite a nice one. Looking back from the present we might assume that in any given era the composer imagines a specific performance for his composition. Stravinsky insisted on this--he optimistically rejected the whole idea of interpretation. This point of view, Rosen is saying, only extends into the past as far as the Romantics. They attempted to notate the precise expected sound the piano was to make.

In previous generations composers planned for improvisation. That's what the figured bass is all about--it is a plan for improvisation. In the modern world someone composes a keyboard part for the continuo player and sticks it in the score. Baroque composers would have expected it to sound different each time, especially when played by different people, like a fake sheet.

In the Baroque the conception created a structure for a variety of possible realizations. In the Romantic era the composer tried to spell out the precise expected performance, to imagine in advance how it would sound.

There is a chapter called Fragment, a prominent feature of Romanticism. He seems to be saying that the Romantics instead of changing or attacking the classical forms focused on fragments, bits often taken out of context, or deprived of a context.

I have always loved the song "Im wunderschoenen Monat Mai" by Schumann and used to play and sing it just to try to get the right expression. Rosen explains how it begins and ends on the wrong notes, achieving proper tonal cadences only in the middle of the verse. It is a fragment, and Schumann was the master of fragments.

More later. [See here, here, here, here, and here.]
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Robert McFerrin

I read that Robert McFerrin, Bobby McFerrin's father, has died. In my mind he is remembered for a glorious performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah in Sacramento. The great arias for baritone, "Lord God Of Abraham, Isaac, And Israel" and "It Is Enough! O Lord, Now Take Away My Life", are in my mind in his voice. He had a beautiful baritone voice and a great soul.