Baritone Sanford
Sylvan & Mendelssohn String Quartet
by
Lyn Bronson
Sometimes a concert program
appears better on paper than it ends up in performance. Such a program was
presented last night at Sunset Center in Carmel by Chamber Music Monterey Bay as
members of the Mendelssohn String Quartet performed a program that promised to
be quite interesting. The program contained not one of the staples of the
repertoire —quartets by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann or Brahms.
The only quartet on the program was by Verdi, there was a brief chamber work by
Puccini, and the remainder of the program featured songs with quartet
accompaniment by Samuel Barber and Hugo Wolf featuring baritone Sanford Sylvan,
a frequent guest artist with the Carmel Bach Festival.
Probably the hope was that
Sylvan’s popularity locally might serve to enlarge the audience by attracting
some of his many fans from Carmel Bach Festival audiences. The reality was,
however, that few regular members of the Bach Festival audience attended last
night, and even some of the Bach Festival staff who live locally were
conspicuous by their absence.
The concert kicked off with a
work for string quartet, Puccini’s I Crisantemi, an elegy composed in
1883 for the death of Amadeo, the Duke of Aosta. Although this work is a rarity,
it is an interesting one that deserves more frequent performances. The lovely
playing of cellist Marcy Rosen was prominent at the beginning of this piece and
her rich, warm tone was a knockout. The other members of the quartet, violinists
Miriam Fried and Nicholas Mann and violist Daniel Panner, are fine musicians who
played this work with engaging tenderness. Although in the spirit of an elegy,
much of their playing revealed a sensitive restraint, we also heard occasional
moments of an almost Brahmsian intensity. This was gorgeous playing.
Following the Puccini we heard
baritone Sanford Sylvan as soloist in “Dover Beach, Op. 3,” by Samuel Barber.
This performance turned out to be a major disappointment. In addition to the
weakness of Barber’s writing, which fails to equal the power and significance of
Matthew Arnold’s text, the loudness of the quartet playing over balanced the
vocal part to the extent that we had difficulty hearing Mr. Sylvan. Perhaps if
he had stood in front of the quartet instead of behind them, we would have heard
a more effective performance.
Interestingly enough, during the
next work, selected songs from Hugo Wolf’s Möricke Lieder, transcribed
for baritone and string quartet by Claus Adam, Sylvan was once again standing
behind the quartet, but suddenly the balance between string players and vocalist
was quite acceptable, suggesting that Claus Adam’s writing for quartet and voice
is intrinsically more effective than that of Samuel Barber. Here Sanford Sylvan
was in his element and managed to project a constantly changing kaleidoscope of
images and feelings in his approach to the six songs. The romantic exuberance of
youth and longing was captured quite nicely by Sylvan. Especially effective in
his performance were Beregnung (Encounter), Verborgenheit
(Seclusion) and Auf eine Wanderung (Wandering). This was lovely singing
from an artist we hear more often singing 18th century repertoire.
The program ended with the
Quartet in E Minor by Giuseppe Verdi. This is decidedly a curiosity, for it is
the only work he ever wrote for string quartet. In itself, it is a skillfully
written work and it received a fine performance. That it does not come up to the
quality of his Requiem or Otello is to be regretted, although Verdi at his
second best is still very impressive.
As an encore, members of the
Mendelssohn Quartet played the slow movement from one of Mendelssohn’s quartets
—allegedly written as an elegy shortly after hearing of his sister Fanny’s
untimely death. This was very long for an encore — I would much rather have
heard the slow movement from Samuel Barber’s string quartet.
