The Music Academy’s 2019 Festival Artists Series continues at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 30, in the Lobero Theater. The program, which they call Brahms Piano Trio after the last work on it, consists of three compositions:
François Poulenc‘s “Sonata for Horn, Trumpet, and Trombone, FP 33” (1922/1945) with Ralph Sauer, trombone, and academy fellows (TBD); Wolfgang Mozart‘s “Oboe Quartet in F-Major, K. 370” (1781), with Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, oboe, Pamela Frank, violin, Cynthia Phelps, viola, and Marcie Kolacki,* cello; and Johannes Brahms‘ “Piano Trio No. 1 in B-Major, Opus 8” (1854), with Kathleen Winkler, violin, David Geber, cello, Jonathan Feldman, piano. [*=Academy Fellow]
Like much of Poulenc’s music, this sonata sounds, at first, deceptively simple, even naive. Nor is this, necessarily, an erroneous judgment.
“Keep it simple” is a rule all great composers naturally follow. Music is for listening, not thinking about. With Poulenc, however, as with his mentor, Erik Satie, we sometimes suspect this simplicity is a pose, that they are mocking us.
Not so. If they are mocking anyone, it is themselves. It is a measure of Poulenc’s greatness, though, that he can write music that glitters with irony and still connects with the most unsophisticated of listeners.
The Mozart “Oboe Quartet” is, as Robert Craft would say, “another perfect mansion in the Kingdom of Mozart. It is, simultaneously, joyous and heart on sleeve, carefree and heartbroken. Typical Mozart: irresistible.
To my taste, Brahms never wrote more beautiful music than this, the first of his three piano trios.
The first time I heard it, in a live performance by Joseph Kalichstein, Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson, taped for Public Radio, it was a summer performance, and the windows of the hall were wide open. During the Adagio, a fire truck went by, sirens blaring. No matter: nothing short of a nuclear war could have broken the spell.
I was at the time woefully ignorant of the composer’s chamber music. Now I consider his chamber music the heart of his oeuvre. It was also the occasion for my discovery of that other trio — that which, since Haydn, has come wrapped like a sweet delicious nougat inside a minuet or scherzo.
Wait for it: you’ll see. A taste of bliss.
Tickets to this Faculty Artists Concert are $46 (Community Access $10, if available; 7-17s free), and they may be obtained by calling 805-969-8787, or by going online to www.musicacademy.org/whats-on/mafas-vi/book/24606/.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.