The Mozart Society of California has found a new temporary home for its concerts. The concert given by the Stanford Woodwind Quintet on Friday, January 30, was the first the Mozart Society has presented at the Mayflower Presbyterian Church in Pacific Grove. Acoustically it was a great success, and a capacity audience filled both the church pews and the overflow seats lining the back walls. The question remains how many more concerts can be held in this venue before growing membership forces the Society to search for a larger location. Ultimately, I believe, Sunset Center in Carmel will be the final venue. Sunset Center will soon become the storage facility for a new Hamburg Steinway concert grand recently purchased by the Carmel Music Society. For the Mozart Society to move to Sunset Center for all of its concerts would solve the other major problem-providing a first-class piano for its events.
So, the recent concert at the Mayflower was acoustically a success. How about its musical values? Well, that depends on your expectations. If you were expecting a pleasant evening of what the German-speaking world lovingly calls "Hausmusik," meaning a group of excellent musicians coming together to read through some stimulating music, then your expectations would have been exceeded. The Stanford Woodwind Quintet consists of flutist Alexandra Hawley (no relation, we assume, to Mozart Society Board member Thomas Hart Hawley), oboist James Matheson, clarinetist Sheryl Renk, horn player Lawrence Ragent and bassoonist Rufus Olivier. Pianist Paul Hersh, a faculty member of the San Francisco Conservatory, joined the quintet for three out of four of the program selections. These are all excellent musicians, and each is master of his or her craft.
However, if you were expecting an evening of highly polished playing, the kind you hear from ensembles who perform together a great number of concerts on professional tours, then you would have been disappointed. We heard a stimulating run through of some excellent and worthy music, for the most part very well played, but lacking a veneer of professionalism in its ensemble and balance.
It has to be said that the ensemble sounded its best when pianist Paul Hersh was not present. Although the piano lid was at ensemble level before the concert, Mr. Hersh raised the lid to its full position (which, we have to admit, is being adopted more and more today as the concert standard). But, he proceeded to play too loudly at the times when he should have been playing a subordinate role. Inner accompaniment notes and bass supporting notes were constantly intruding into the musical texture and diverting our attention from the more important things happening at the time.
But another issue with Mr. Hersh is his stage presence and how it affects the listener's perception of the music. He is restless at the piano, shakes his head violently, does lots of cute things with his hands and occasionally jumps up and down off the bench. This is so utterly distracting that I had to find a way to sit so that the person in front of me mercifully blocked my view of the agitated Mr. Hersh. The words of Artur Schnabel kept ringing in my ears, that "we as musicians are tour guides and must never get in the way of the view." Whenever we show off, the music immediately suffers, and in Mr. Hersh's hands the music did indeed suffer.
The evening's concert began with Willem Pijper's arrangement of Mozart's Fantasie for a Mechanical Clock, K. 608 for wind instruments and piano, which would have been more interesting without the piano part, since it wasn't as skillfully arranged as the wind parts. The Beethoven Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 16, was nicely performed by the ensemble, except for the heavy-handed playing of Mr. Hersh. The Mozart Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 378, featured the lovely flute playing by Alexandra Hawley, except that again Mr. Hersh's textures at the piano constantly intruded when the piano was playing a secondary role. The Mozart Serenade in C Minor, K.388, arranged for wind quintet by Mordechai Rechtman, which ended the program, received a nice performance, but unfortunately doesn't make the same effect as the original version.
The Mozart Society's next event will present conductor and pianist Joshua Rifkin in a free lecture and demonstration on March 8 at 8 p.m. at Monterey Peninsula College's Music Hall.
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