MOZART, BRAHMS, AND REDEMPTION

Metaphors often are helpful guides to meaning and insight, but they can be stretched too far. Or can they? The Mozart and Brahms works on this program have no need for extra-musical analysis; their narratives allow each of us to enter a world of feelings that can never be adequately expressed in words. Judith Weir’s work for solo cello, which ChamberFest Cleveland’s Roman Rabinovich relates to “the theme of political oppression in Czechoslovakia” as portrayed in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, is another matter. These songs are pleas for redemption, to be set free, to be treated fairly and humanely. What all of the pieces on this program share is a spirit of generosity cast in music of striking eloquence.

British composer Judith Weir (born 1954) is the first woman, since the post was created in the 17th century, to serve as Master of the King’s Music, or, as she was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014, Master of the Queen’s Music. Her duties include writing music for royal events, among them the Queen’s state funeral in September 2022. Weir has written numerous operas and musical-theater works, as well as pieces in other genres. She composed Unlocked in 1999 for cellist Ulrich Heinen. She has said that the collection of five movements arose “out of my interest in the magnificent collection of American folk songs in the Library of Congress, Washington, collected by John and Alan Lomax in the 1930s. A significant proportion of the songs were collected from prisoners — mostly Black prisoners in Southern jails. The piece is made up of freely composed cello ‘fantasias’ inspired by five of these songs.”

The soloist on this program, Zlatomir Fung, who in 2019 became the first American in four decades to win first prize in the Tchaikovsky International Cello Competition in Moscow, discusses Unlocked in a YouTube video. The songs have a common thread, he says, “which I think is what makes these pieces relevant today, and that thread is the promise of hope for a better future.” Fung will play three of the songs. “No Justice” (No. 2) is a set of variations on a prison song from Georgia that uses such techniques as strumming, foot stomps, and tapping to reflect the urgency of the text. Yearning lines, pizzicato passages amid lyricism, and chords conjure a chorus from the Bahamas in “The Wind Blow East” (No. 3). In “The Keys To The Prison” (No. 4), skittish high statements, folksy gestures, and plaintive harmonics evoke a boy in prison singing to his skeptical mother about possessing the keys that will enable him to escape.

Speaking of skeptical, one can only wonder what Leopold Mozart must have thought when his son wrote to him in March 1784 about his newest work, the Quintet in E-flat major for Piano and Winds, K. 452: “I myself consider it to be the best thing I have written in my life.” Big words. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had already composed 37 symphonies, 16 piano concertos, 16 string quartets, and a number of operas, including Idomeneo and The Abduction from the Seraglio. Then again, who are we to argue with Mozart, who could be forgiven for changing his mind in coming years upon creating such works as The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, the late symphonies, and so much more? (But not enough, given his death in 1791 at the age of 35.)

The piano-winds quintet is a sterling score in which the instruments are equals — no easy feat, given the virtuoso piano part. But the keyboard, while occasionally a bit of a show-off (as was its original interpreter, Mozart), is mostly collegial in the three contrasting movements. Once the ensemble establishes the key of E-flat in the first-movement introduction and the piano plays the opening theme, the winds have their expressive say as they all wend their way to the main body. What follows is glistening and playful repartee, with Mozart taking the instruments briefly away from the home key before deftly thickening the plot and summoning acrobatic flourishes from piano and horn to bring the activity to a close. The winds are in a serene mood in the Larghetto, passing tender phrases to one another while the piano provides subtle commentary. A few stern moments aside, the aura is lyrical and empathetic, as if the Countess in Figaro — not to be born for two years — is sharing her bittersweet plight. The piano announces the main theme in the last movement, with the winds in perkiest form as they add their buoyant two cents. They shift into minor ever so briefly, chatter away, and arrive at a group cadenza during which they imitate one another and expound on the principal material. And before you realize it, “the best thing” Mozart had written to that point has taken its final bow.

By the time he composed his String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 18, in 1860, Johannes Brahms had already written some of his most indelible music, including the two serenades, the Piano Concerto No. 1, and a bounty of piano works, among them the three piano sonatas (but none of the four symphonies). Surely, his first string sextet is one of his “best things” — until that time or later. Aside from Luigi Boccherini, who wrote nine string sextets, Brahms was an early champion of the combination of two violins, two violas, and two cellos. His two string sextets (the second came four years after the first) are beloved for all of the reasons we hold Brahms so dear: the warmth, the contrapuntal interest, the rhythmic intrigue.

The opening movement of Op. 18 finds Brahms at his most rapturous and fertile. In the first two pages alone, the exquisite theme is passed from two cellos and first viola to violins, with the second viola soon arriving as the music expands and reaches an initial euphoric height. The second theme is marked “dolce” (sweet), the lyricism punctuated by pizzicato input from second viola and second cello. And then Brahms becomes even more poetic, as if this is possible, first with an ardent first-cello statement amid undulating figures and then moving higher into the first violin and first viola in octaves. The development section is made of fragments from the exposition shared throughout the ensemble. The mood darkens and brightens, with the various themes caressed and transformed before the ensemble tiptoes on light pizzicato feet and ends with a hearty bowed flourish.

In the second movement, the first viola states the stern theme, which is answered by the first violin and undergoes a series of elaborate variations. One of them features stormy figures passed among the instruments and is followed by episodes marked “molto espressivo” and “dolce.” The atmosphere shifts to country-dance mode in the Scherzo, which is layered and rhythmically sly, with no pause into an energetic trio section and later an even sprightlier coda.

Like the first movement, the Rondo finale begins with the first cello stating the theme. Brahms develops and varies material with magisterial command through contrasts of texture and evolution of lines. A central section full of bold echoes leads back to the primary theme and charming fluctuations in character as the six instruments race exuberantly to the finish line.

© Donald Rosenberg

thursday 22 june 7:30pm