Mannes Alumni Recital: Finkel, Finkel, and Rutkowski

Yesterday afternoon there was an unusual recital at Mannes given by three alumni, two of whom - pianist Elliot Finkel and clarinetist Joseph Rutkowski - had first begun performing together in 1973 while still students.  They were joined in this program by Ian Finkel on xylophone.  As one would imagine from such a combination of instruments, the program was rather eclectic.  Though the majority of works were well known favorites, most had originally been intended for other instruments and were played here in transcriptions.

The program opened with the overture to Pique Dame ("The Queen of Spades") by Franz von Suppé.  Suppé was known in his own day as a popular and prolific composer of light pieces and at the time of his death in 1895 had more than two hundred works to his credit including any number of operettas.  At one point he even found employment as a bass singer in a production of L'elisir d'amore, though the fact that Donizetti was a distant relation may have had more than a little to do with this.  After the close of the nineteenth century, however, Suppé's posthumous reputation did not fare very well at all.  Though two of his comic operas had been performed at the Met, little of his work found a permanent place in the repertoire.  Many of the overtures to his operettas, however, are still performed regularly at "pops" concerts.  That chosen yesterday was so sprightly and energetic that it was easy to understand its continued popularity.

The next work was the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano by Mikhail Glinka.  Originally, this was a sonata for viola and piano in D minor written between 1825 and 1828 but only published posthumously in 1932.  The work had been left in an incomplete form by the composer and consisted of only two movements, both of which were played yesterday in a transcription by one Charles West.  Coincidentally, I had only heard for the first time last month, in a recital given by the Jupiter Symphony Players, the composer's Trio Pathétique for clarinet, bassoon and piano from roughly the same period, and I was thus able to make some comparisons between the two works.  What was most interesting was how how few Russian influences and motifs appeared in either piece.  This though Glinka is often referred to as "the father of Russian music."

The next piece, the Danse caracatéristique, op. 72 no. 4 (1893) by Pyotr Tchaikovsky was the fourth of the composer's 18 Morceaux and again was originally written for other instrumentation, in this case piano and cello.

Perhaps the best known work on the program, and another initially arranged for piano and cello, was the 1933 Suite italienne from the ballet Pulcinella by Igor Stravinsky.  The suite itself was completed by the composer with the collaboration of the famous cellist Gregor Piatigorsky who, like Stravinsky, had been born in Russia before being forced into exile by the Revolution.  After just having attended a performance of The Firebird on Thursday evening at Carnegie Hall, it was a fascinating experience to hear so soon afterwards music from Pulcinella, another commission given the composer by the Ballets Russes.  This piece too represented a milestone for Stravinsky in that it is usually considered the first significant work of his neo-classical period and as such represents a startling departure from his previous style of composition.  In mimicking the eighteenth century commedia dell'arte music that had at that time been incorrectly attributed to Pergolesi, Stravinsky modernized the concept through the use of updated rhythms and harmonies that transformed the ballet into a quintessentially twentieth century work.

At its premiere in 1828, the Fantasia in C major, D. 934 (1828) by Franz Schubert was a resounding failure and was only published posthumously in 1850.  Even today this piece, originally composed for violin and piano, is not often played and is usually not that highly regarded among Schubert's late works.  There is some awkwardness in the development of the theme and variations - taken from the 1821 song Sei mir gegrüβt - and a number of critics have pointed to changes in the "fantasy" genre itself between the Classical and Romantic periods as the cause.  

The concert closed with an adaptation, narrated by Brian McNally, of the delightful children's story Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67 (1936) by Sergei Prokofiev.  It was followed in an encore by another Prokofiev work, the march from The Love for Three Oranges.

Yesterday's recital ended up being a great deal more rewarding than I had originally anticipated.  Much of the credit for this goes to the three musicians, all of whom were extremely accomplished.  Moreover, hearing familiar pieces played by a novel arrangement of instruments cannot but help force the listener to approach those works from a fresh perspective and with renewed appreciation.  I thought the pieces that here worked best were the lighter ones by Suppé and Prokofiev, although the Glinka sonata was also fascinating in its own right.  On the other hand, I did not think the Stravinsky sounded as well as when played in its traditional arrangement, and the Schubert was much too turgid a piece to be truly enjoyable in any form whatsoever.