Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Springfield, MA
Through May 21, 2021
by Michael J. Moran
Following short weekly “Homegrown” videos of themselves performing individually at home and several lecture/music education events via Zoom, SSO musicians have now launched a series of three hour-long chamber music concerts. The first one, filmed at Focus Springfield Community TV and available for on-demand streaming at the SSO web site through May 21, featured three SSO ensembles: a string trio; a string quartet; and a percussion trio.
SSO Music Director Kevin Rhodes introduced each piece with his trademark ebullience, noting how happy the musicians were to be playing together after a year apart. Program notes by the performers offered additional background information. Since they couldn’t observe his 250th birthday anniversary in live performances last year, the first three pieces were early works by Beethoven.
The string trio (violinist Beth Welty, violist Noralee Walker, and cellist Joel Wolfe) started with a robust, sinewy account of the energetic opening movement of the 23-year-old composer’s first string trio, which already sounded bigger than similar works by his older contemporaries. The string quartet (violinists Masako Yanagita and Marsha Harbison, violist Delores Thayer, and cellist Boris Kogan) next presented an intense, urgent rendition of the dramatic first movement of Beethoven’s fourth string quartet, written with growing maturity five years later.
The percussion trio (Martin Kluger, Nathan Lassell, and Robert McEwan) then played Kluger’s imaginative arrangement for two marimbas and nine other percussion instruments of the somber slow movement from Beethoven’s fourth piano sonata. The result was surprisingly delicate and ethereal, with the main themes played on the marimbas, and the non-pitched instruments supplying what Kluger calls “sustain” and “depth” contrast.
The string trio returned with a lilting performance of Zoltan Kodaly’s brief 1905 “Intermezzo for String Trio,” reflecting the folk music he was then collecting in his native Hungary. The concert ended with the world premiere of Kluger’s own “Sudoku 75” for three percussionists, each playing nine instruments. Inspired by the number puzzle which Kluger began playing daily during the pandemic, the gradually accelerating piece brought the program to an exuberant close.
Acoustics were intimate and clear, while the videography mixed group shots with revealing close-ups of the masked and distantly spaced musicians.