Ricardo Morales plus

The big revelation at the Ricardo Morales clarinet recital was Leonard Bernstein's youthful two-movement sonata for clarinet and piano. Bernstein's first published work opens with an inventive movement with a full share of unexpected twists. The second movement begins with a moody clarinet line that could provide the background for a New York nightscape, shifts to the clatter and bustle of the street, and alternates the moods after that. This sonata contains everything you hear in West Side Story, and it's all done with two instruments.

This Chamber Music Society program was primarily intended to showcase the Philadelphia Orchestra's principal clarinet. In that aim it certainly succeeded. But it also turned the spotlight on some unfamiliar music. Clarinet recitals aren't that common, after all.

Morales's accompanist for the evening provided another major plus. As most local chamber music enthusiasts have learned by now, Natalie Zhu is a sensitive pianist with an incredible control over the sounds she produces with her instrument. In the Debussy sonata that opened the program, she strummed like a harpist in some places, hit delicate little flute notes in others, and stormed away at the center of attention when Debussy deigned to let the clarinetist rest his lip for a few bars.

Good ideas that go nowhere

Thomas Dunhill was an English composer who flourished during the first half of the 20th Century. His 1941 Phantasy Suite earned a place on the select list of works that I wish were longer. The fantasy consists of seven short sections that include a grave andantino serioso, a country barn dance vivace, and a slow, lovely final melody. It was an interesting, enjoyable piece, but the sections were so short that none of them seemed to go anywhere. Dunhill simply stated a series of musical ideas and dropped them without any attempt at development.

The second half added another ranking Orchestra member to the ensemble: associate principal cellist Efe Baltacigil. The trio that closed the evening introduced a composer who is currently emerging from obscurity. Alexander Zemlinsky was an Austrian, but his 1896 trio for clarinet, cello, and piano contained everything most of us like in 19th-Century Russian music: dark songs for cello and clarinet, big concert-level outbursts for the piano, a sadly romantic middle movement, and a zesty final romp, tinted here and there with dabs of the second movement elegy.

The rich old guy wins, for once

I couldn't remember any previous encounters with Zemlinsky's work, but one devoted local concertgoer told me he's been campaigning for a local performance of a one-act Zemlinsky opera that sounds intriguing. The plot revolves around a familiar comic opera situation: the tribulations of a young wife married to a rich elderly husband. Zemlinsky is apparently the only composer in history whose version of this story ends with the old guy defeating a callow young rival and winning his bride's heart.

That might not go over well with a typical movie audience, but it would probably evoke a few huzzahs from the mature personalities who appreciate the kind of artistry Morales and his companions brought to a thoroughly satisfying musical evening.