Carmel Music Society in Season Opener
by
Lyn Bronson
We’ve all heard of “the house
that Jack built.” Well last night at Sunset Center in Carmel we heard an
eight-member chamber ensemble from “the house that Neville built” — the famed
Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields that Sir Neville Marriner founded in 1959
and developed into one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world, and
certainly the most recorded chamber orchestra in the world.
This chamber ensemble consists
of violinists Kenneth Sillito, Harvey de Souza, Martin Burgess, and Jan Peter
Schmolck; violists Robert Smissen and Duncan Ferguson; and cellists Stephen
Orton and John Heley. Kenneth Sillito, leader of the ensemble, has been Artistic
Director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields since 1980, and during this
concert acted as spokesman for the group. Exuding lots of charm on stage, he
reminded the audience that two of the works performed during this concert, the
Prelude and Scherzo, Op. 11 by Shostakovich and Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings,
Op. 20, were written by precocious 16-year-olds.
With each passing year
Shostakovich’s reputation grows in stature, and his works are now much more
frequently performed than Stravinsky’s. Is this an example of fashion in music
being sometimes fickle and constantly changing? Or is it that the music of
Shostakovich is more relevant to today’s audiences? I will wait for a music
historian to settle this question, however, there is no argument that performers
and audiences today are constantly discovering how powerful and moving the works
of Shostakovich are.
In the Adagio of the
Prelude and Scherzo, Op. 11, the musicians were fully warmed up and in top form.
Violinist Kenneth Sillito, who sounded a tad thin and reedy in the opening work,
Dvorak’s Sextet for Strings, suddenly was producing vibrant and commanding tone
and artistic playing of the highest order. We also heard some lovely playing
from the other musicians, especially cellist Stephen Orton and violist Robert
Smissen. The Scherzo movement was a knockout — so exciting and precise
were its rhythmic drive and almost overwhelming energy.
Hearing the Mendelssohn Octet
for Strings is always a special event, and so it was on this occasion. Although
the first two movements were somewhat laid back and low key, it was the final
two movements that rang our bell, so to speak. The Scherzo of the Octet
bears more than a passing resemblance to the Overture to a Midsummer Night’s
Dream, and has many moments of gossamer light string passages that spin lots of
magic and leave us thirsting for more. The Presto was magnificent in its
perfection and unrelenting energy. It was fabulous!
Although the beginning of
Dvorak’s Sextet for Strings, got off to a slow start and seemed somewhat
uninvolving, in the lovely Dumka the ensemble found its voice and began to charm
us with the gypsy-like elements of this fascinating movement. It was, however,
in the final two movements, that we heard Dvorak at his finest, and some of the
best playing of the evening.
The audience gave the musicians
a rousing ovation at the end of the program. Sillito announced from the stage
that they were going to play Gershwin’s “Summer Time” in an arrangement by
Timothy Jackson. It was a fine arrangement that was jazzy, but also
contemporary.
