Brahms, Proper, Dvořák @ Blue Candlelight Music Series

—Review by Gregory Sullivan Isaacs

The Blue Candlelight Music Series presents internationally known musicians playing masterpieces from a wide range of musical eras, from Haydn to an assortment of living composers. Last Sunday (Nov. 20), we heard two related but very different examples of chamber music from the Romantic era. There was even a virtuosic violoncello lagniappe, also vaguely related, tossed in for zest.

The works were Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quartet in C Minor, No.3, Op.60, and Antonín Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, Op. 81, B. 155. Both pieces figure prominently in chamber music competitions because of the significant musical, technical, and ensemble challenges they present. Besides, they are much-beloved by audiences, and thus welcome on any program.

Both performances were splendid, played with a combination of intensity and lyricism. Occasionally the performance was a bit too loud for the space—a lovely Dallas home. This was an ad hoc group of fine musicians, assembled for this one performance—and perhaps some were unfamiliar with the excellent but unusual acoustic situation. After all, we were seated within a few feet of the musicians.

However, the performances dramatically caught the stylistic differences between the romanticism of the more stoic Brahms and the passionate Dvořák. Hearing them together, one could hear that the Germanic Brahms was the champion of the conservative Beethovenian approach to the Romantic era, while the Bohemian Dvořák was much more intrigued with the radicalism of Richard Wagner.

The artists who came together for this exceptional evening are a distinguished group indeed.  Since both works have “piano” in their titles, the pianist is the core of both performances. Pavel Nersessian is an amazing pianist, trained at the famous Central Music School of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory who concertizes internationally as both a soloist and collaborative pianist.

Giora Schmidt was the violinist for the Brahms; he has performed all over the world, and is currently on the Artist faculty at New York University (NYU Steinhardt) and Orford Musique Academie (Quebec). Two violinists are required for the Dvořák, and here Gary Levinson joined the ensemble. He is the Senior Principal Associate Concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth.

That leaves the two lower voices, viola and cello. Michael Klotz is a superb violist as well as a violinist. He is one of the few individuals to be awarded a double Master’s degree in violin and viola from the Juilliard School. What makes him so valuable in chamber music is the unusually rich sonority of his viola, which perfectly bridges the gap between the violin and the cello. 

Cellist Julian Schwarz first came to attention after being awarded first prize at the inaugural Schoenfeld International String Competition in 2013. Since then, his crowded schedule is filled with both soloist and chamber music performances. It was Schwarz who gave us a whiz-bang tour of the virtuosic possibilities of the evening’s third piece, David Popper’s short but spectacular Hungarian Rhapsody.

While waiting for the concert to begin, I reflected on this exceptional event. Hearing wonderful music in an elegant home was the genesis of what we call concert or chamber music. Before the era of mega orchestras and actual concert halls, music was either written for the church, the theater, or for solo (or small groups of) instrumentalists. Lacking the medium-to-huge recital halls of the future, musicians performed wherever they could—and more often than not, in private homes.

In the Vienna of the 18th and 19th centuries, concerts moved to the homes of the wealthy, and featured composers from Haydn through Beethoven. In Paris, at the time of Frédéric Chopin, the master of the miniature, the salon became a thrilling mix of the social, political, and musical. The advent of symphony orchestras took music in a different direction, as the larger, less “human scale” recital hall became the venue of choice. The intimate, salon-based performance of chamber music never disappeared, but was less and less the focus of rising young artists.

But step inside the Blue Candlelight Music Series, and you will have a glimpse of how it must have been. They have found (and fine-tuned) a way to present a modern, more egalitarian version of the salon, while still delivering an elegant experience. Hooray!

WHEN: Look for the next concert of the series, “Bohemian Tunes,” on January 15

WEB: bluecandlelight.org