Mozart: Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat major, K. 452
Mozart: L'amero, saro costante from Il re Pastore
Schubert: Die Forelle, op. 32, D 550 (The Trout)
Schubert: Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D 965 (The Shepherd on the Rock)
Schubert: Quintet in A Major for piano and strings, op. Post 114, D. 667 (The Trout Quintet)
With Linda Jones, piano; Marla Berg, soprano; Terry Orcutt, oboe; Alix Reinhardt, clarinet; Lauren Moore, horn; Tod Jelen, bassoon; Paul Kanto and Peter Salaff, violin; Lynne Ramsey, viola; Stephen Geber, cello; Jeffrey Bradetich, bass.
Bear with me for this random thought... While I was in New York I caught the new(ish?) musical Next to Normal, which I enjoyed at the time and have developed more of an appreciation for since purchasing the original cast recording* -- anyway, one of the songs, Everything Else, includes the lyrics:
Mozart was Crazy. Flat F___ing Crazy. Bat S__t I hear.
But his music's not crazy. It's balanced, it's nimble; it's crystalline clear.
There's harmony, logic; you listen to these. You don't hear his doubts, or his debts or disease.
Which happened to be running through my head while I waited for this evening's program to begin.
The program was played, and in the case of L'amero and Der Hirt sung, passionately -- and was quite enjoyable to listen to. However it wasn't until the scherzo of Schubert's Qunintet that my ear really perked up, reinforcing the notion that I've never met a scherzo I don't like and making me realize that perhaps the only tempo I (generally) like more than an Allegro is Presto.
My recent challenge with the learning to play the violin has been my near complete inability to maintain any semblance of a steady tempo while practicing. Through that filter, Peter Salaff's playing for Mozart's L'amero, saro constante caught my eye and ear with his ability to match the vocalist's tempo, including holding sustained notes.
Lincoln
*- I've also developed an unhealthy addiction to the string melody to Masquerade from Phantom of the Opera, but that's an entirely different post.
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