Chamber Music Society's all-Schubert program

As all Schubertians know, Franz Schubert's chamber music received some of its earliest performances at the "Schubertiads," the private parties his friends threw so they could play his music. The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society's all-Schubert program acquired some of that informal atmosphere when the Society had to replace two of its scheduled soloists.

The show had to go on without Arnold Steinhardt, the former first violin of the now disbanded Guarneri String Quartet, and Efe Baltacigil, who's combining a thriving personal career with a position in the Philadelphia Orchestra cello section.

The replacements, fortunately, came from the same high positions on the chamber music benches. Soovin Kim is a chamber music star whose name drew oohs from the audience when they heard he was subbing for Steinhardt; and the Guarneri's last cellist, Peter Wiley, filled Baltacigil's position.They didn't play the two sonatas listed in the original program, but there was nothing wrong with their alternate. Their collaboration with pianist Cynthia Raim opened the program with a deeply poetic performance of Schubert's Notturno.

A nighttime pile driver

Schubert may have been exposed to a nighttime pile driver when he composed the Notturno, according to one story, and the sound of two sweet strings and a gentle piano playing a pile driver rhythm creates an unforgettable picture of a serene, mildly agitated night. Kim and Wiley might have produced a freer, less controlled reading of their parts if they'd been given more time to practice together, but they couldn't have sounded more touching.

Cynthia Raim followed the Notturno with three more poetic interludes. Schubert's Drei Klavierstucke are beautiful examples of their creator's gift for melody, and they received the benefit of a pianist who knows how to make her instrument sing when it's appropriate.

The ultimate pickup piece

Schubert's "Trout" quintet is the ultimate pickup chamber piece, thanks to its unique mixture of instruments— piano, string trio and double bass. It's one of the most popular pieces in the repertoire, but it would be hard to point to a definitive performance since you'll never hear the same musicians play it twice.

In this case, my inner nitpicker would have preferred more of the fuller string sound that Kim and Wiley produced in the Notturno, but that's a matter of personal taste. The "Trout" provided a perfect ending to an evening that fulfilled a major objective of the Chamber Music Society's schedule (even if it didn't offer the exact program originally promised): Master performers serenaded a knowledgeable audience with masterly performances of well-loved masterworks.

Practical joke

One of my unfulfilled literary projects is a story that begins with the hero applauding the false ending in the last movement of the "Trout." The catch is that he's an undercover agent posing as a music critic and he's just revealed he's never encountered the most notorious practical joke in the repertoire.

I've never come up with a plot to follow that opening, but my musical spy might have evaded detection at this performance. Raim and Company managed to trap several members of the most musically sophisticated audience in the city. I felt the string players cheated a bit when they lowered their bows as if they thought they'd actually reached the last page of the score. But that's part of the spirit of the "Trout"— the kind of thing that captures the youthful camaraderie of the Schubertiads, even when you're sharing the experience with 500 kindred souls.