Juilliard Chamber Music: Haydn, Ravel and Schoenfeld

Friday was a miserable day in New York; torrential rains flooded the entire city.  By late afternoon, though, the heavy rain had given way to a light drizzle and I was able to walk down to Juilliard to hear a performance sponsored by the Honors Chamber Music program.  The artists on hand at Pual Hall were the Altezza Trio consisting of Momo Wong, violin; Khari Joyner, cello; and Qilin Sun, piano.  The had been coached for this performance by Joseph Lin, director of the program, Natasha Brofsky and Joseph Kalichstein.  It was a full length recital that featured works by Haydn, Ravel and Paul Schoenfield.  Before beginning, violinist Momo Wong briefly introduced the first two works and used the opportunity to express the musicians' gratitude to their coaches.

The program opened with Haydn's Piano Trio No. 44 in E major, Hob. XV:28 (1797).  This work, Haydn's next to last piano trio, is one of his most inventive chamber works and was composed at the height of his career in Vienna.  He had returned two years before from his second sojourn in London where he had made the acquaintance of Therese Jansen Bartolozzi to whom this work is dedicated.  Mrs. Bartolozzi was an extremely talented pianist whose skills were admired by Johann Peter Salomon, the impresario who arranged both Haydn's English tours.  Haydn must certainly had shared Salomon's admiration as he obviously devoted a great deal of effort to this work and its challenging piano part.  This can immediately be heard in the strings' pizzicato that opens the piece while the piano introduces a lovely melody of its own.  The heart of the work, however, is the dramatic second movement allegretto.  Haydn had passed through his sturm und drang period a quarter century before, but here he recalls something of its dark mood that is at times almost gothic.  The final movement is by contrast quite playful as it meanders about and seems in no hurry at all to end.

The second work was Schoenfield's Café Music (1987), a commission from the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.  I had actually heard this same ensemble perform this work late last year at a Wednesdays at One recital.  When blogging about that earlier performance, I had quoted the composer's own description:

"The idea to compose Café Music first came to me in 1985 after sitting in one night for the pianist at Murray’s Restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Murray’s employs a house trio that plays entertaining dinner music in a wide variety of styles. My intention was to write a kind of high-class dinner music – music which could be played at a restaurant, but might also (just barely) find its way into a concert hall. The work draws on many of the types of music played by the trio at Murray’s. For example, early 20th-century American, Viennese, light classical, gypsy, and Broadway styles are all represented. A paraphrase of a beautiful Chassidic melody is incorporated in the second movement."

The work is definitely one of the repertoire's more adventurous chamber pieces.  It's obvious from his description of the work's genesis that Mr. Schoenfield believes that serious music can also be highly entertaining.  He didn't hesitate here to incorporate jazz and ragtime rhythms that imparted an upbeat feeling to the music that wouldn't have been at all out of place in a dance hall.

After intermission, the program concluded with a performance of Ravel's Piano Trio in A minor (1914).  I've heard this work several times in the past and will probably do best to quote my thoughts from a previous post:

"Although the work was written on the eve of World War I and immediately before Ravel enlisted in the French medical corps, there is no sense of  impending doom in the trio.  Instead, it concerns itself more with Basque folk music as the composer, who was himself of Basque descent on his mother's side, began work on it while also composing a piano concerto, later abandoned, also based on Basque themes.  In the second movement, Ravel referenced a Malaysian form of poetry in which the second and fourth lines of a quatrain are repeated in the first and third lines of the following verse.  In the third movement passacaglia, Ravel looked back to the musical forms of the Baroque period.  For all its eclecticism, however, the work, written in the traditional four movement format, is thoroughly stamped with the composer's distinctive style."

Like the other ensembles in the Honors Chamber Music program, the Altezza Trio is a highly accomplished group of musicians whose performances are equal to or better than those of many more experienced ensembles.  I feel very fortunate to have been able to attend their recitals.