MUSIC REVIEW : Opening of Mixed Note for SummerFest ’88

To no one’s surprise, Saturday night’s opening concert of SummerFest ’88 was a tony affair. Sherwood Auditorium was packed to the legal limit, and the assembled cadre of first-class musicians performed their Mozart, Faure and Dvorak with stylish ardor.

In terms of organization and execution, the La Jolla Chamber Music Society, the festival’s sponsor, was dressed to the nines. But with artistic director Heiichiro Ohyama’s cautious musical itinerary, the La Jollans really had no place to go. The whole program had a precious air about it: a nervous and sometimes giddy exchange of hothouse emotions substituted for more probing challenges to either mind or spirit.

The Mozart Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452, a tepid opener to say the least, squandered the talents of stellar wind players oboist Allan Vogel, clarinetist David Peck and bassoonist Dennis Michel in a decorous drawing room conversation with pianist David Golub. Unlike the wind players, who did not return after the Mozart, Golub was able to show his true colors in the Faure Second Piano Quartet in G Minor. The sole remarkable aspect of the quintet performance was French Horn player Richard Todd’s exquisite sense of line and his uncanny ability to make his horn sound as if it really belonged in the company of those sonically malleable woodwinds.

Golub, a true aristocrat of the keyboard, led his colleagues through a passionate rendition of the Faure quartet, surely as emotionally charged as the work could bear. Violinist Ani Kavafian, cellist Ralph Kirshbaum and violist Ohyama formed a fine-tuned string complement of uncommon blend and refinement.

This team sensitively balanced the composer’s aggressive outbursts and moments of spiritual tranquility. Written a year before Faure commenced his now popular Requiem, this piano quartet may be seen as a preliminary drawing for the much larger-scaled choral work. Not for a moment did the SummerFest players lose either the quartet’s intensity or its undergirding sense of purpose.

As the evening’s culmination, Dvorak’s E-flat String Quintet proved disappointing. In the first place, the work lacks depth--it was not a piece to follow the Faure. Secondly, the performance did not always come together, suffering from problems of intonation and coordination.

There were two saving graces, however. First violinist Eugene Drucker gave thoughtful shape to Dvorak’s themes, which in this work tend to be dominated by rhythmic rather than lyrical ideas. Drucker’s lead was a model of understated direction, and his tone flexible but authoritative.

Violist Robert Vernon’s ample timbre gave full measure to the many solos Dvorak lavished on the first viola part. Vernon’s plangent melodies captured the Romantic soul of the work in a way that eluded the ensemble, whose overall interpretation was too modern, too clipped. The performers, including violinist Frank Almond, violist Ohyama and cellist Kirshbaum, sounded as if they would have been happier playing Hindemith.