Three chamber concerts

The Trio Camille gets the Most Enjoyable accolade because they presented three of Franz Schubert’s most enjoyable pieces, in a setting that enhanced the enjoyability. The concert took place in the lounge at the top of Penn’s high-rise Harnwell House dormitory, as part of the university’s Music from the Houses program, with 30 or 40 people sitting around in armchairs and the nighttime cityscape visible behind the musicians. It’s a perfect setting for chamber music, and the Trio Camille presented performances worthy of the atmosphere.

The most active member of the trio was Michal Schmidt. Matt Bengtson is the Camille’s pianist and chief organizer, but Schmidt is a double threat player who can fill the keyboard and cello positions with equal expertise. For the opening sonata for violin and piano, Bengtson assumed the page-turning chores, while Schmidt collaborated with violinist Min-Young Kim. Bengtson and Schmidt then sat down side by side and launched into Schubert’s A Major rondo for four hands — a romp that’s just as appealing visually as it is sonically. Bengtson then took over the piano, Schmidt picked up her cello, and the threesome concluded their nonstop, no intermission outing with the beauties and surprises Schubert packed into the four movements of his lengthy piano trio in E-flat Major.

Most Varied

The Musicians from Marlboro program the next night opened with another Schubert for piano trio, followed by a modern piano piece for four hands by the Romanian composer György Kurtág. Schubert’s Notturno received a performance that featured an incredibly flowing piano line by Dénes Várjon and whispery, precisely modulated restless-night music for the violin and cello. The Kurtág was played by Várjon and his wife, Izabella Simon, and it’s a bit harder to describe.

Kurtág’s Games is essentially a library of fragments, commenting on classic works, that includes thirty pieces for four hands. It may sound like an academic exercise, but the five pieces selected by the pianists ranged through moods that were charming, jazzy, bangy, and melodious. The fifth piece, played by Simon alone, concluded the series with a soft finale that was so perfectly executed it hovered right at the edge of inaudibility.

The centerpieces for the evening were two sets of songs sung by soprano Sarah Shafer and mezzo Rebecca Ringle. Dvořák and Brahms supplied the scores, but this was one of those times when the exact nature of the music was less important than the sheer beauty of the voices. The composers mostly blended the two voices instead of weaving them around each other, and Shafer and Ringle fulfilled their vision with the mesmerizing harmonies and sonorities created by two perfectly matched voices. Simon gave them the kind of accompaniment that adds an extra singer to the mix.

The evening ended with Beethoven’s “Ghost” trio, a work that gets its name from a middle movement that may or may not be related to the ghost scene in Hamlet, but could definitely serve as background music for it.

A-List Undisputed Classic

Anthony McGill is a prime example of one of the perennial truths of the music world. World-class violinists and pianists can travel the world, soloing in the great concertos that pair their instruments with big orchestras. World-class wind players like McGill can’t do that because the great works for their instruments are mostly chamber pieces and concertos for small orchestras. They usually take principal positions with major orchestras and fit their solo work into busy schedules.

McGill is currently the principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, after a decade as principal clarinet of the Metropolitan Opera. In the last 13 months, Philadelphia audiences have heard him play with Orchestra 2001 and Dolce Suono, and at several PCMS events. He’s currently making appearances around the country with the Pacifica Quartet, playing one of the acknowledged masterpieces for his instrument, the Brahms clarinet quintet.

McGill plays the clarinet with the same poetic quality Hilary Hahn brings to the violin. He can move from Brahms’s dreamy opening to the big outbursts in the second movement. But he’s also a true chamber player, who can slide into a supporting role when the script includes a piercingly sweet solo for the violin or an interlude that emphasizes the blending of the instruments.

The Pacifica preceded the Brahms with Elliot Carter’s fifth string quartet and the quartet Mendelssohn wrote after the death of his sister. The Carter reproduces the sounds of musicians trying out different approaches to a score, but it’s another piece, like the Kurtág, that you can just listen to without worrying about the composer’s backstory. The Mendelssohn seemed more understated than the performance the Johannes Quartet gave it at their November PCMS concert, but it still sounded like music you could turn to on the death of a spouse or a close friend.

For Victor L. Schermer’s review of the Musicians from Marlboro concert, click here.