With Schubert’s heart-rending “Cello Quintet” on the menu Saturday afternoon, you couldn’t have kept me away from the Dock Street Theatre with a court order. But program XI – the final one – sported some other goodies worth mentioning, too.
Michael Torke, one of today’s “hot” American composers – wrote an extended piece called Telephone Book, offering his own rather jazzy approach to the minimalist style. The performers were Tara Helen O’Connor (flute, piccolo), Todd Palmer (clarinets), Daniel Philips (violin), Edward Arron (cello) and Stephen Prutsman (piano). “Yellow Pages” – the first of the two movements we heard – was a jumpy, percolating stew of instrumental textures that sounded just about impossible to play. It sounded kinda like Copland on amphetamines. “Blue Pages,” the other one, was much more laid-back, with a lounge-lizard sort of vibe. Interesting stuff – and fabulously played.
Remember the MacDowell Colony centenary tributes I blogged about early in the festival? Host Charles Wadsworth got one last commemoration into his final festival program: a touching piece by composer Edward MacDowell himself, for whom the colony was named. In fact it was his most famous work, “To a Wild Rose.” Written as a piano miniature, this gentle piece was played here in an arrangement for flute and piano. O’Connor did the tender solo honors, with some sweet support from Wadsworth at the Steinway.
And then came what many of us had been waiting for: Franz Schubert’s glorious String Quintet in C Major, called the “Cello Quintet” for the pair of them it calls for. And, being a favorite work of Festival founder Gian Carlo Menotti, Wadsworth offered it here in the last program as a final tribute to his old friend and mentor. In fact, Wadsworth told us that Menotti originally asked him to schedule the piece every festival – though this hasn’t been done (at least not since Menotti and Spoleto USA parted ways).
Ask any chamber musician what the greatest chamber piece ever written is, and there’s a solid chance this is the work she’ll come back at you with. This was one of Schubert’s final works – written under the shadow of his impending death at age 31. The first two movements are among the most emotionally devastating, yet utterly gorgeous music ever penned. Let me make it a matter of record that this is the music I want played at my funeral (may it be long in coming).
The St. Lawrence Quartet, reinforced by cellist Edward Arron, gave this towering masterpiece the finest live performance I’ve ever heard of it, delivering the work’s gush of sentiment with searing intensity. I don’t mind telling you that I simply lost it, right there in Dock Street – but then I seldom get through this music with dry eyes. As I’ve said, I can think of no more fitting or poignant musical memorial to the founder of the musical feast we call Spoleto.
