The Buffalo Chamber Players

Buffalo Chamber Players

Buffalo is a great place to live if you want to hear chamber music in live performance. The Buffalo Chamber Music Society, currently in the midst of its 84th season, is one of the oldest such organizations in the country. The University at Buffalo, home to the Slee Beethoven Quartet Cycle for more than 50 years, and other area colleges have a rich tradition of presenting classical chamber music events. Moreover, just two years ago, retired BPO concertmaster Charles Haupt launched his exciting new chamber music series, A Musical Feast, at D’Youville College’s Kavinoky Theatre.

With all the chamber music concert events already taking place, is there any room for another new series on the local music calendar? Based on the inaugural concert given by the Buffalo Chamber Players last November, the answer to that question has to be a resounding yes. The group is a flexible ensemble, made up mainly of younger musicians from the ranks of the BPO and talented freelance musicians. The Buffalo Chamber Players make their home in the Chapel of the Buffalo Seminary on Bidwell Parkway in Buffalo. Any questions about the suitability of the venue for the presentation of chamber music vanished when the surprisingly warm acoustics of the Chapel enveloped the first notes played during their initial concert.

The Buffalo Chamber Players are committed to exploring the lesser known masterworks of the chamber music repertoire, or at least those less often heard in live performance. In their first concert, the musicians offered a rhythmically exciting performance of the rarely heard Stravinsky Octet for wind instruments, as well as a spirited performance of one of Paganini’s quartets for guitar and strings, with JoAnn Falletta performing the guitar part with a casual élan.

On Wednesday, March 12 at 7pm, Catherine Estes, who made a strong impression as the oboist in Britten’s Phantasy Quartet, will be featured in Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in F Major, K. 370, along with Shieh-Jian Tsai, violin, Kate Holzemer, viola, and David Schmude, cello. Mozart wrote the Quartet, along with his Concerto for Oboe, for Friedrich Ramm, the oboist of the famed Mannheim Orchestra, and perhaps the greatest oboist of his era. Mozart was wildly enthusiastic about what he described as Ramm’s “delightfully pure tone,” and did not even try to blend the accompanying string chords with an instrument as individual in tone as the oboe, while nevertheless creating a work of gentle intimacy.

Estes is also oboist in the Prokofiev Quintet in G Minor, Op. 39, along with Patti Dilutis, clarinet, Jacqueline Galluzzo, violin, Janz Castelo, viola, and Edmond Gnekow, bass. The music for the Quintet started its life in 1923, commissioned by a traveling ballet troupe, when the composer was living in Paris. The result was titled “Trapeze,” but in the end, the piece proved too difficult for the dancers, especially the third movement with its fast tempo and use of mixed meters. Prokofiev eventually reworked the unpublished ballet music into its current form, a six-movement quintet, which premiered in 1927.

Following in the wake of the very successful performance of the Mozart String Quintet No. 4 in their inaugural concert, the musicians have chosen to perform the Beethoven String Quintet in C Major, Op. 29. Violists Castelo and Holzmer will join violinists Tsai and Jacqueline Galluzzo, along with cellist Schmude in the only original composition of Beethoven’s in the string quintet genre. A work composed on commission, with exclusive performing rights for a disputed period of time, led to two competing editions and a legal mess for the composer. A court case, which Beethoven lost, no doubt contributed to the uniqueness of the work.

The most unusual work on the program is the 1696 Harmonia Artificiosa-Ariosa, Partia IV, by Bohemian composer and violin virtuoso Heinrich Biber. The instruments that Shieh-Jian Tsai, the violin player and Janz Castelo, the viola player will be using for performing this work have been “cross-tuned,” using the technique known as scordatura, (Italian for “mistuning”). The “artificiosa” of the work’s title refers to the use of scordatura, an extended technique which both makes the instruments more resonant and allows the playing of otherwise impossible harmonies or chords when conventional tuning is used. Ellen Barnum, bassoon, and Roland Martin, harpsichord, will provide the continuo part for the work.

Buffalo Seminary, 205 Bidwell Parkway. Tickets are $15 general admission and $5 for students with ID and can be purchased at the door. For more information visit buffalochamberplayers.com or call 462-5659.

Schubert’s choral masterpiece

Westminster Presbyterian Church presents a rare performance of Franz Schubert’s great choral masterpiece, the Mass in E Flat, on Sunday, March 9 at 7pm, with the Westminster Choir and soloists under the direction of Richard Herr. The performance features two quartets of soloists, the first including choir members Leah Schneider and Maggie Zindle, sopranos, Bruce Bell, tenor, and includes visiting tenor and Fredonia State faculty member Joe Dan Harper. The second quartet includes choir members Janet Balloch, soprano, Marilyn Barber and Mary Alice Divine, mezzo-sopranos, with baritone Victor Schuel. MaryLouise Nanna, the founder and Music Director of the Ars Nova Chamber Musicians will lead the performance.

The Mass in E Flat was the last of the six Masses that Schubert composed. He wrote it in June 1828, on a commission from Michael Leitermayer, during the final year of his all-too-brief lifetime, after he had finished his final symphonic masterpiece, the Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 94, known as the “Great” C Major. The Mass in E Flat follows the Viennese tradition of writing liturgical music without the use of flutes, using only horns, trumpets and trombones to support the choir. Rich harmonic modulations and repetitions, as well as long-phrased melodies, recall the expansiveness of texture in the “Great” C Major. Schubert also took certain liberties with the traditional text of the Mass, omitting or repeating certain words, or even full sentences in the Gloria and the Credo, a practice that the composer had also used in his earlier Masses.

The Gloria, Credo and Sanctus sections of the Mass feature the extensive use of fugal counterpoint, rare in the earlier works of Schubert. Shortly before his death, the composer expressed a desire to study contrapuntal exercises with the Viennese master of counterpoint, Simon Sechter. Decades later, from 1855 to 1861, the composer Anton Bruckner devoted several years of his life to studying with Sechter, who forbade him to compose a note of his own while he was completing innumerable exercises in counterpoint. The English symphonic composer and musicologist Robert Simpson, a leading authority on the music of Bruckner, believed that “Sechter unknowingly brought about Bruckner’s originality by insisting that it be suppressed until it could no longer be contained.” The effects that studying with Sechter might have had on the melodic genius of the prolific Schubert must remain entirely speculative, but it seems highly unlikely that the composer would have ever stopped composing during the course of his studies.

The Ars Nova Chamber Musicians are indelibly associated with their Viva Vivaldi series of music by that composer and his Baroque contemporaries, held every November in local area churches. The much-loved Viva Vivaldi series celebrates its 30th anniversary season this year, a remarkable achievement, due above all else to the vision and the dedication of Maestra MaryLouise Nanna.

Westminster Presbyterian Church, 724 Delaware Avenue. A $10 donation is requested at the door.