LIGHTNESS OF BEING

And so, we come to the final program in the 2023 season of ChamberFest Cleveland, which has drawn inspiration from, but not been restrained by, themes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The program’s title, echoing that of this year’s festival, is reflected to supreme effect in the works by two of the most famous prodigies in music, Mozart and Mendelssohn. The living German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s Pression for cello stands as a stark contrast to the worlds of his Austrian and German predecessors. Such is the ever-changing nature of the human condition, as Milan Kundera probes in his novel: “The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?...”

Helmut Lachenmann, born in 1935, has alternated between weight and lightness as one of the champions of musique concrète, a style embracing recorded sounds but expanded by the composer as musique concrète instrumentale to define music that explores a range of acoustical sounds. As the composer has written, “This piece originated as an introduction to instrumental musique concrète. In this sort of piece it is common for sound phenomena to be so refined and organized that they are not so much the results of musical experiences as of their own acoustic attributes. Timbres, dynamics, and so on arise not of their own volition but as components of a concrete situation characterized by texture, consistency, energy, resistance. This does not come from within but from a liberated compositional technique. At the same time it implies that our customary sharply-honed auditory habit is thwarted. The result is aesthetic provocation: beauty denying habit.”

Pression for cello, written in 1969 and revised in 2010, exemplifies this aesthetic through sundry pressures via extended techniques. Fingers lightly touch the strings and slide up and down. The bow grazes the bridge and beneath the tail piece. The player taps and rubs the body of the instrument. Otherworldly sounds emerge as fingers stroke the strings from below and the bow glides along the bridge. The results are provocative and beautiful.

Nothing is remotely provocative about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in A major, K. 581, which resides in a realm of sublime beauty. As noted earlier in ChamberFest, Mozart considered his Quintet in E-flat major for Piano and Winds, K. 452, composed in 1784, to be “the best thing I have written in my life.” But he could have made the same claim about so many of his other works, including the Clarinet Quintet, from 1789. Mozart wrote the piece for his favorite clarinetist, Anton Stadler, on whom he would bestow the equally celestial Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in A major, K. 622, two years later (just two months before the composer’s death at 35).

“Lightness of being” couldn’t be summoned more luminously than in K. 581, in which the clarinet and string quartet enter into conversations at once poetic and entrancing. The strings open the first movement with a theme of infinite warmth answered by the clarinet in sophisticated, chipper fashion. This is clearly a meeting of equals: Each instrument contributes commentary as the narrative unfolds in all its graceful wisdom. The second violin introduces a tender new theme that the clarinet mirrors in minor. Mozart wanders from A major in the short development section and introduces fugal elements, with the clarinet playing buoyant arpeggios until the opening material returns with new expressions on its face.

As is often the case in Mozart, the slow movement, Larghetto, is a scene of operatic poignancy, with the clarinet spinning lines of ineffable delicacy. The first violin and clarinet trade phrases, and the clarinet rises softly above shimmering, muted strings before returning to the main theme and a gradual descent to the tranquil close. The hearty Menuetto, unusually, has two trios, rather than one. The first trio, for strings, shifts into A minor, with the first violin wandering above the others. The clarinet plays a charming, Ländler-like figure in the second trio, which includes two-octave arpeggios this instrument negotiates so nimbly.

Never at a compositional loss, Mozart offers a brilliant finale, Allegretto con variazioni, in which everyone has the chance to comment on the theme. The clarinet is typically acrobatic and lyrical, the strings alternate between support system and featured quartet. In the third variation, the viola plays a lamentation. The clarinet’s ability to scamper is celebrated in the fourth variation. An Adagio finds the players in a serene frame of mind, with the clarinet again touchingly agile. Light breaks through clouds for the jovial final Allegro, almost a gleeful foreshadowing of Papageno in The Magic Flute two years later.

“The Mozart of the nineteenth century.” That’s what Robert Schumann called Felix Mendelssohn, who showed gifts at a young age similar to those of his Salzburg counterpart. By the time he was 17, Mendelssohn had already composed his remarkable Octet and the glistening overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Both his exceptional compositional skill and pianistic prowess can be heard in the Sextet in D major for Piano and Strings, Op. 110, which he wrote in 1824 at the age of 15. The score wasn’t published until 1868, more than two decades after Mendelssohn’s death, but it has been taken up by musicians eager to explore more of this composer’s rich chamber repertoire.

Especially pianists, in this case. The Sextet — for piano, violin, two violas, cello, and double bass — features a keyboard part of eye- and finger-crossing intricacy. The strings introduce the graceful theme that will pervade the first movement, and the piano extends the delightful discourse, while skipping about the keyboard and exulting in Mendelssohn’s youthful lyricism. As the strings take up these ideas, the piano journeys through eighth-note figures and a triplet marathon of exhilarating sparkle — a hallmark of Mendelssohn style — that spills into the development section and all the way to the recapitulation.

The Adagio is marked “dolce,” and Mendelssohn delivers all of the sweetness at his teenaged beckon. Mozart hovers over the lyrical lines, with the piano embroidering amid string sighs. A stormy Menuetto in D minor follows, its trio shifting into F major and strings waltzing gently alongside graceful piano flourishes.

Mendelssohn the keyboard whiz and frolicsome spirit inhabits the finale. The piano simply can’t restrain itself while flickering around the strings, which do their best to mirror their colleague’s irrepressible, sixteenth-note glee. But wait! Mendelssohn thrusts the ensemble back to the Menuetto’s turbulent theme — and then just as quickly returns to the finale’s main material at a breakneck pace to bring the work, and ChamberFest Cleveland’s 2023 season, to a fiery finish.

© Donald Rosenberg