During the second weekend of La Jolla Music Society\u2019s SummerFest, the program was “romantic,” and the romance emanated from composers not usually placed in that category. To be a bit more precise, Saturday and Sunday programs Aug. 8-9 were titled “20th Century Romantics” and “(Nearly) Forgotten Masterpieces.” Between the music heard and the performers that brought eight works to life, there was something for most anyone who got themselves there, despite the term “20th Century,” a phrase many lovers of concert hall classics dread. After all, nothing beautiful or romantic was written after 1870, right? Wrong. The first piece to be encountered Saturday evening, Anton Webern\u2019s 1906 “Langsamer Satz (Slow Movement),” made one gasp at the composer\u2019s ability to write something so beauteous as to fill listeners with silently screaming ecstasy, and at the musicians\u2019 audacity in playing triple pianissimos that demanded the suspension of breath throughout Sherwood Auditorium. The youthful Jasper Quartet \u2014 violinists J Frievogel and Sae Niwa, violist Sam Quintal and cellist Rachel Henderson \u2014 proved worthy of their numerous awards and of the exalted position they hold as resident graduate string quartet at Yale School of Music. In startling contrast, the Jaspers showed off their personalities as well as musical acumen with more complex “sonorities” in Paul Hindemith\u2019s screamingly funny 1925 Overture on “The Flying Dutchman” as performed by a Terrible Health Resort Band at 7:00 a.m. at the Village Fountain. As my companion pointed out, “You have to be good to play that bad.” Included in Saturday evening\u2019s concert were performances of Samuel Barber\u2019s 1956 “Summer Music,” Opus 31, and Leos Janacek\u2019s luscious and amusing 1925 Concertino for Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, Two Violins, Viola and Piano. Concertino performers were clarinetist John Bruce Yeh, bassoonist Valentine Martchev, French horn Richard Todd, violinists Cho-Liang Lin and So-Jin Kim, violist Quintal and radiant pianist Orli Shaham. Powerful and charismatic, violinist Sheryl Staples was concertmaster of Saturday\u2019s performance of Max Bruch\u2019s melodious Octet in B-flat Major (1920) with violinists Frievogel, Niwa and SoJin Kim, violists Paul Neubauer and Quintal and bassist Chris Hanulik. As a prelude to Sunday afternoon\u2019s “(Nearly) Forgotten Masterpieces,” the Jaspers showcased their touted expertise with the dread 20th-century music in performance of Henri Dutilleux\u2019 (b. 1916) 1977 “Ansi la Nuit.” Violist Quintal charmed those present at the 2 p.m. prelude with his explication of the work, which is the composer\u2019s imitation of the sounds (and possible horrors) of the night. Then the quartet cleansed listeners\u2019 palates with a performance of melodist Hugo Wolf\u2019s “Italian Serenade.” Sunday\u2019s “(Nearly) Forgotten Masterpieces” featured Antonin Dvorak\u2019s melodic, folk music-flavored “Bagatelles” for Two Violins, Cello and Harmonium (violinists Lin and Kim, cellist Madeleine Kabat, and on harmonium, Liza Stepanova). The other two works were big guys, the first, Mikhail Glinka\u2019s Grand Sextet in E-Flat Major for Two Violins, Viola, Cello, Bass and Piano. The work is very nearly a piano concerto in three movements (the brilliant Shaham did the honors). Her impressive collaborators included violinists Alexander Kerr and Kim, violist Neubauer, cellist Fred Sherry and bassist Hanulik. Written when the composer was only 28, the work causes one to ponder what would have happened had Glinka not abandoned chamber music for opera. The romantic La Jolla weekend concluded with Ernst von Dohnanyi\u2019s Sextet in C Major, Opus 37. Not only operatic and symphonic, it is an extremely complex war of the worlds between the waltz and jazz \u2014 complex in that there are few moments when the assembled forces breathe and play as one and transcendent times when they do. Combatants and collaborators were heroic and included Staples, Neubauer, cellist Charles Curtis, Yeh, Richard Todd and the terrific pianist John Novacek. It was a truly revelatory weekend of glorious music making, for which artistic director Christopher Beach and music director Cho-Liang Lin are profoundly thanked. For SummerFest programming this week and next, go to www.lajollamusicsociety.org or call (858) 459-3728. \u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During the second weekend of La Jolla Music Society\u2019s SummerFest, the program was “romantic,” and the romance emanated from composers not usually placed in that category. To be a bit more precise, Saturday and Sunday programs Aug. 8-9 were titled “20th Century Romantics” and “(Nearly) Forgotten Masterpieces.” Between the music heard and the performers that […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":273303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"An extraordinary, romantic weekend in La Jolla","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11560,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}