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The Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival continued last night at the TCC Leo Rich Theatre. It concludes
with a different program tomorrow at 3 p.m. By James Reel
The Arizona Daily Star
If the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival gets any more warm and fuzzy, the audience may break out in a rash.
The backstage conviviality among the visiting musicians and local organizers, the enthusiasm of the subscription audience - all this is genuine, not the superficial California kissy-face that masks boredom and routine at other festivals. And now that honest affability suffuses the programming, too.
Even composer Gerard Schurmann is getting in on the act. His Piano Quartet No. 2, commissioned especially for this festival, was premiered last night by the Los Angeles Piano Quartet. In mood and material, the work stands in contrast to its 1986 predecessor, a dour yet moving tribute to a deceased music critic. Schurmann's first piano quartet, by the way, was performed here four years ago by the L.A. group, and is available on one of the festival's souvenir CDs.
The new work opens with a melody of almost Brahmsian warmth and breadth. The theme's permutations are occasionally playful, often reflective, sometimes troubled, but never as threnodic as anything in the earlier quartet. Most of the second movement employs a lyricism defined by long, placid melodic lines rather than sweetness and light. A vigorous fugue dips in and out of the finale.
This is a work of fine structural craftsmanship and more surface appeal than one might expect. With sure preparation, careful balance and apparent sympathy for the style, the Los Angeles Piano Quartet delivered a persuasive performance.
Benjamin Britten's ``A Birthday Hansel'' opened the concert. It's not as austere as Britten's other late works, probably because this was written for the 75th birthday of England's beloved Queen Mum. Soprano Jennifer Foster and harpist Katerina Englichová offered a beguiling reading.
Equally attractive was violinist Carmit Zori's slinky, sexy, insinuating treatment with pianist James Bonn of Claude Debussy's Sonata for Violin and Piano. Less arresting but thoroughly enjoyable was an alert, middle-of-the-road performance of Antonin Dvorák's opus 77 String Quintet, in which the Chicago String Quartet was joined by the sonorous but never overpowering bassist Edgar Meyer.