Colburn Chamber Music Society

Menahem Pressler, piano

Zipper Hall
April 2, 2011

By Steven Woodruff

The Colburn Chamber Music Society series concluded its innovative programming for the year
with Menahem Pressler and Colburn students in a concert for piano and strings. The program
included Mozart’s E-flat Piano Quartet, K. 493 and the vorak Piano Quintet in A Major. The
year, beginning with the Tokyo String Quartet, has been wildly successful and I hope that we are
going to see the model remain as part of the music scene at Colburn. For those of you who have
missed the action, each of the concerts has paired luminaries in the chamber music firmament
with Colburn students and occasionally faculty, to explore some of the bigger works that lie
outside the standard quartet or wind repertory. The concerts have included the Mendelssohn
Octet, the Mozart Gran Partita, and all of the Brandenburg Concertos among others.

There is so much about the Colburn Series that is worth mentioning. The ten dollar tickets are
more than affordable, the playing as been exceptional and you couldn’t ask for a better venue
than Zipper Hall for chamber music, short of commandeering a gold-leafed great hall in Prague or
Salzburg. And the connection and appreciation among the musicians and across the age divide
has provided its own sort of inspiration. With this concert we are reminded that it has been
chamber music pioneers like Pressler with the Beaux Arts Trio and others of that generation, such
as the original Busch, Budapest, and Juilliard Quartets, who have made the touring chamber
music ensemble a professional reality of today’s concert and recording scene.

In reading through some of Pressler’s recent comments about playing music, I was moved by one
of his statements. He mentioned his hunger for music. When he plays you feel it and you can also
see that he is communicating that hunger to those he plays with. I have been lucky to hear a
number of musicians of Pressler’s stature in concert. Nathan Milstein, Stephan Grappelli,
Mstislav Rostropovich and Rudolf Serkin are those that immediately come to mind. They all
played with stylishness and an easy authority that you could believe in. But whether it’s eighty-
something or twenty-something, it has been the emphasis on the playing and the equality of spirit
that has given us so much vibrant music making all year long.

The music on Saturday was all about the slow movement. In the Mozart (Larghetto) and the
vorak (Dumka: Andante con moto), the slow movements are the emotional centers. Add to that
the Andante, un poco adagio from the Brahms Piano Quintet F-minor op. 34 which was played as
an encore and you get a good sense of the concert’s arc. There was no intermission, only a brief
pause to change musicians for the piano quintet but it was clearly Mr. Pressler who was the
evening’s quiet engine.

The Mozart, leaning heavily on the more prominent role of the piano, soared in Pressler’s hands.
The quartet is structured as a dialogue between the keyboard and the strings as a group. Always
extremely tasteful and full of classical clarity, the three movement work glowed with the piano’s
bell like quality in the second movement. The strings played with an elegiac quality that made the
most of the Larghetto’s shifting tonalities and frequent cadences in the relative minor. The
relaxed tempo and uncomplicated statement of the motivic little tune that dominates the final
Allegretto was full of classical style and Mozart at his most playful. The instrumentalists were
violinist Danielle Belén, violist Yi Zhou and cellist Indira Rahmatulla.

The Dumka came across with all of the dreamy quality it deserved. It’s quirky, other worldly
harmonies and complex shifting moods flowed without hesitation. A vigilant Pressler often
played from memory, here and throughout the piece, while reaching out to the ensemble and
putting a chiming, faraway touch on the movement’s opening melody. The opening theme of the
quintet’s first movement always reminds me of the American folk tune, Shall We Gather at the
River, until it finally veers down a dark melodic corridor. The quintet’s folk inspirations remain
more faux than fact, but that melody and other moments make you wonder whether the germ for
the Symphony from the New World and the F Major Quartet was not already loose in the
composer’s mind, even prior to his Iowa sojourn. The ensemble made the work seem more
balanced than its front loaded structure indicates. In the end, the playing felt more like one
uninterrupted statement than four separate movements. The ensemble included faculty cellist
Ronald Leonard, violinists Hugh Palmer and Ryan Meehan, and violist Christopher Zack.
The evening finished with the yearning, pulsing rhythms of the Andante from the Brahms Piano
Quintet. And after a program that was already complete Mr. Pressler seemed eager for more. Why
stop when the hunger for music is on your side!

The Colburn Orchestra conducted by Yehuda Gilad will be presenting two final concerts on April
30th and May 1st in Santa Monica and Northridge respectively. The program will include works
by Brahms and Dvorak as well as the Chihara Viola Concerto, (“When Soft Voices Die”).
Faculty violist Paul Coletti will be the featured soloist. Save the dates.