Classical Music	Chamber Music Seasons End on High Notes by Jan Jezioro

A Musical Feast

Next week should prove to be special for fans of chamber music in Buffalo, as two of the finest local chamber music groups wind up their seasons. On Tuesday, May 27, at 8om, A Musical Feast, the dynamic chamber music organization founded by retired Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra concertmaster Charles Haupt in 2006, presents the final concert in its successful second season at the Kavinoky Theater of D’Youville College. The program is presented in conjunction with the series’ co-sponsor, the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music at University at Buffalo.

David Taylor

A special guest, bass-trombone virtuoso David Taylor, will make a welcome return to A Musical Feast. Taylor’s only previous appearance on this series, in 2006, featured his much-praised performance of his own transcriptions of works by J.S. Bach and Franz Schubert. At the May 27 event, he will perform his transcriptions of songs by the 20th-century French masters Maurice Ravel and Darius Milhaud, and by Arthur Honegger, Swiss-born member of the influential French group of composers known as “Les Six,” accompanied by Claudia Hoca on piano.

Besides his many varied activities in promoting the role of the bass trombone in both contemporary jazz and avant-garde classical music, Taylor also has been long interested in expanding the role of the instrument in the performance of more traditional repertoire beyond the usual works available for brass players. He has found the French art song, or chanson, to be a musical form particularly well adapted to transcription for the instrument. Taylor’s transcriptions of these vocal works, originally made for bass trombone and two harps, often make use of the plunger mute, as in the Ravel piece, which he feels “makes the instrument more vocal.” Taylor’s interest in French music can be traced at least in part to the influence of his late teacher Davis Schuman, for whom Darius Milhaud composed his Concerto d’hiver (Winter Concerto) for bass trombone. The cross-fertilization between early 20-century jazz music and French classical music has interested and influenced Taylor throughout his career.

Taylor is also on the cutting edge of the contemporary classical music scene, nowhere more so than in his collaborations with Johnny Reinhard, who is among the leading American composers of microtonal music in his generation. Microtonal music is music that is not exclusively based on the 12-tone equally tempered scale, which is the dominant scale in Western music. Reinhard believes that all music is microtonal, and he asserts that “The number of pitches is infinite…just because more importance is placed on the Western system today does not mean it’s the best.” Reinhard’s soulful Zelig Mood Ring is an exotic and deeply felt, yet chameleon-like solo performance piece for spoken word and bass trombone.

Pausing midway in his traversal of the fiendishly difficult set of six Sonatas for Violin Solo by Eugene Ysaye, virtuoso violinist Charles Castleman, accompanied by pianist Claudia Hoca, will offer transcriptions of works by Antonin Dvorak, perhaps equally challenging to perform, made by Fritz Kreisler and Frantisek Ondricek. The Austrian-American Fritz Kreisler was the most universally loved violinist of the first half of the 20th century, and he is now best remembered for the miniature gems that he composed or transcribed for the violin. Ondricek was a member of the leading family of 19th-century Czech violinists—his father Jan was the soloist in the premiere of the Dvorak Violin Concerto.

Making his welcome first appearance at A Musical Feast, UB faculty member Jonathan Golove, cello, will join Haupt, violin, in a performance of the Passacaglia for violin and cello by Handel, in the brilliant, well-known arrangement by the Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen. Golove, one of the finest cellists currently performing in Western New York, is both a composer and an outstanding concert performer, whose performances with the Baird Trio have garnered universal acclaim. The intriguingly varied program concludes with Mozart’s Piano Trio No. 5, in C major K. 548, featuring Haupt, Golove, and Hoca. Composed toward the end of the composer’s all too brief life, the work has a natural elegance, combining great vitality with intimacy and, ultimately, a wonderful sense of serenity.

For tickets and information, visit amusicalfeast.com or call 829-7668.

Buffalo Chamber Players

At 7pm on Wednesday, May 28, the Buffalo Chamber Players, the newest kids on the local chamber music block, finish their inaugural season at the Buffalo Seminary on Bidwell Parkway. The group’s first two concerts this past season featured surprisingly rare and unusual pieces, performed at a level of excellence one might expect from musicians who are mostly all members of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Sometimes, though, for certain works, even the most well rounded group of musicians must reach outside to recruit additional artists. Baritone Alexander Hurd, assistant professor of vocal music at the University at Buffalo, will be the soloist in a rare performance of Respighi’s Il tramonto (The Sunset), the most famous of the composers’ several settings of the poetry of Shelley. This intensely atmospheric, lyric piece bears more than a passing resemblance to Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. The soloist evokes the beautiful calm of the evening and the night of love shared by the young lovers, then the sudden death of the man followed by the long, lonely days of the woman, until she too finally finds peace in her grave. It should be interesting to hear the darker effect of the male voice on the work, originally scored for mezzo-soprano and string quartet, transposed an octave down for baritone. Hurd will also perform a group of four songs by Charles Ives—In the Alley, A Christmas Carol, An Old Flame, Berceuse—originally written for voice and piano in arrangements for voice and string quartet.

Guest artist Alison D’Amato, visiting assistant professor at UB, who has been praised as “an expert pianist” by the Boston Globe, will be at the keyboard in Gabriel Faure’s Piano Quartet in G minor. Faure composed the work in 1877 after suffering romantic rejection and the dissolution of his betrothal, and the beautiful adagio movement might be heard as his attempt to work his way through his grief, which is surely overcome in the rhythmically lively final movement with its joyous coda.

Overwhelmingly famous as an opera composer, Giacomo Puccini composed a few instrumental works, with his 1890 string quartet Crisantemi being by far the most often performed. Music from Crisantemi, with its rising and falling themes later made its way into the composers’ hyper-romantic opera Manon Lescaut. The String Sextet that is the opening music in Capriccio, the last of Richard Strauss’ great operas, should provide a fitting beginning to a highly original program of musical works centered on the joys and sorrows of love.

For tickets and information, visit buffalochamberplayers.com or call 462-5659.