MUSIC REVIEW : Friday’s Concert Seemed to Last a Week

Predictability can be a virtue. Fireworks on the Fourth of July, the weekly paycheck arriving on Friday: such regularity is welcome. But predictability in musical performance is deadly. Friday’s Kingston Mainly Mozart concert was shackled by predictability, as well as by uninspired programming.

For the record, violinist William Preucil proved the notable exception to these indictments. Throughout the long Spreckels Theatre performance, Preucil’s elegant, finely detailed solo lines riveted the listeners’ attention. Even during the most pallid stretches of Mozart’s String Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563, Preucil kept his interpretation fresh and invigorating. Everyone else on stage played the notes, and quite respectably. But he delivered the music with unabated inventiveness.

The Mozart Divertimento seemed to last about a week. A superficial decoration--serenades and divertimenti were the 18th-Century’s background music--the Divertimento displayed none of the complex, probing emotions of Mozart’s best string quartets and quintets. The ensemble of Preucil, violist Cynthia Phelps, and cellist Ronald Thomas labored valiantly but unsuccessfully against the Divertimento’s inherently shallow form.

In the concert’s showpiece, Schubert’s lovable “Trout” Quintet, Preucil found an unlikely ally, contrabassist Peter Lloyd, who crafted his unremarkable part with finesse and playful clarity. Of course, the composer intended the violinist’s foil to be the piano, but Gregory Allen’s immaculate but monochromatic keyboard playing floated right into the ether. His refusal to accent an important note, to articulate a string of notes, to do something-- anything --to call attention to his solo part was downright maddening.

In the Schubert Quintet, the five festival players, including cellist Thomas and violist James Dunham, exhibited laudable balance and precision. But they had nothing urgent to say about the familiar work. This “Trout” was not the wily fish frolicking in Schubert’s Romantic brook, but a trout fillet, carefully trimmed and taken right out of the freezer.

To open Friday’s concert, festival music director David Atherton conducted Munzio Clementi’s forgettable but perky “Nonet” for winds and strings. Why this bauble for nine players needed a conductor is quite unclear. Atherton waved his arms, but the players watched the music on the stand and each other. That is the way chamber music is usually executed.