United States Numerous: Anthony McGill (clarinet), Pacifica Quartet (Simin Ganatra, Austin Hartman [violins], Mark Holloway [viola], Brandon Vamos [cello]). San Francisco Performances, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, 3.12.2024. (HS)
Dvořák – String Quartet in F main, ‘American’, Op.96
Ben Shirley – Excessive Sierra Sonata
Brahms – Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op.115
Anthony McGill’s sound on the clarinet may make the angels in heaven concentrate. The delicate tones of sustained pianissimo that composers so love to jot down for this instrument emerge like a heat hug, barely there however in some way all-enveloping. Within the greater register, he can form a clarion beam, and fast passages tumble out just like the strikes of a limber dancer.
The composers on the Pacifica Quartet’s program made nice use of those components. Mixed with fastidiously phrased work from violinists Simin Ganatra and Austin Hartman, violist Mark Holloway and cellist Brandon Vamos, music by Dvořák and Brahms framed a brand new piece by Ben Shirley to create ear-massaging magnificence, the latter two benefiting from the participation of McGill, the New York Philharmonic’s principal clarinet.
Shirley’s Excessive Sierra Sonata, recorded in 2023 on the Pacifica’s Grammy-nominated American Tales, begins (and ends) with a delicate, low-lying meditation by the unaccompanied clarinet. The piece options the clarinet in lots of guises over the three actions, usually withdrawing towards the string quartet’s shifting moods, typically by itself. There’s a superbly laid-out cadenza ending the primary motion, and a few pretty weaving with the strings within the finale. In between, stormy shifts and a jittery spirit play a form of pinball in music.
The composer was impressed by a sojourn at Owens Valley within the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, as a volunteer at an support station for the Bishop Excessive Sierra Ultras ultra-marathon. Struck by the continuously shifting climate, from the sunshine clouds of sunny intervals to the menacing black clouds of fast-approaching storms, he common the music to activate a dime from sweetness to a form of restrained violence.
Dissonance doesn’t play a serious function. Moments within the opening motion, ‘Buttermilk Morning’, created a peaceable magic. The second motion, ‘Indignant Secrets and techniques’, by no means received too riled up and the temper handed rapidly. The finale, ‘Reflections on a Day’, rose to a relatively mild climax from a placid begin and receded into hazy serenity.
It labored effectively as a automobile to indicate off the clarinetist’s musical belongings. My solely cavil is with the shape. Having spent many weeks within the mountains through the years, the shifts from one temper to a different in Shirley’s music felt too abrupt. True, mountain climate can undergo a number of seasons in someday, however the segues are seldom so abrupt.
Brahms cherished the clarinet, particularly within the final decade of his life when he wrote two sonatas, a trio and the heavenly Clarinet Quintet in B minor. The latter occupied the second half of the live performance – 35 minutes of attractive music delivered with explicit readability.
In no way a showpiece for the clarinet, the quintet is a sterling instance of use the sonorities of strings and a reed instrument to nice impact. The clarinet seldom stands out, because it did within the Excessive Sierra Sonata, however emerges from the harmonies of the strings so as to add an additional factor and, with McGill, a radiant gloss. The magic on this efficiency was the way in which he and the quartet discovered subtleties of tone and texture that at occasions felt like a slowly turning kaleidoscope.
The opening Allegro started with acceptable hesitation, transferring via mini-variations of the primary gestures. It reached a climax wherein the clarinet took off in dazzling virtuosity earlier than the motion closed with the identical hush with which it began. That led to the calming simplicity of a deftly spun Adagio, a easy music that gained extra depth with a few of Brahms’s most contrapuntal writing, so clear to listen to at this gradual tempo.
The Andantino related properly with this earlier than leaping off into some full of life gymnastics, managed by this group with each flexibility and precision. The finale, a set of 5 variations, danced merrily till, as if remembering how issues began, it arrived dwelling with a reprise of the opening phrases.
The live performance opened with Dvořák’s String Quartet in F main, the ‘American’, doing its finest to convey dignity to the composer’s appropriation of what he perceived as Native American tunes. It’s both charming or disturbing, relying on one’s politics as of late, however all of the pentatonic-scale motifs had been executed with sufficient deftness and variation in type to keep up curiosity. The Pacifica’s lavish consideration to contrasting dynamics and bowings may sometimes slide into one thing mannered, however the focus of this piece arrange the sonata’s freedom as a welcome distinction.
Harvey Steiman
