MUSIC REVIEW : Festival’s Last Performance Tops Them All

Sunday afternoon’s Mainly Mozart Festival program might have been a mere coda to music director David Atherton’s nine-day festival. Instead, this chamber music concert on the festival’s final day turned out to be the piece de resistance .

A combination of serious programming--no padding with ornamental dance movements or sugary sonatinas--and intense involvement by four of the festival’s most eloquent soloists brought this musical offering to the level of San Diego’s benchmark festival, the La Jolla SummerFest. Pianist Andre-Michel Schub took charge of Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat, K. 493, a thinly disguised piano concerto that invites keyboard dominance. Schub’s crisply articulated, highly animated approach kept each movement sparkling, and his knowing, playful repartee with violinist William Preucil in the finale discreetly underlined the composer’s wit. The well-balanced strings--violist Cynthia Phelps, cellist Ronald Thomas and Preucil--achieved a laudably intimate blend and matched Schub’s stylish pace.

Schub pulled out all the stops in Mozart’s F Major Piano Sonata, K. 332. The solo sonata’s dramatic character elicited a bravura performance that encompassed intellectual appeal as well: brilliant passage work, a rich palette of colors and articulations, and insightful illumination of each musical idea.

Thomas’ reading of J. S. Bach’s Suite No. 5 in C Minor for unaccompanied cello was like a Zen meditation compared to the athletic puffing and scraping associated with Pablo Casals and earlier generations of virtuoso cellists who essayed the Bach unaccompanied suites. Thomas’ understated dynamics, gentle attacks, and immaculate intonation drew the listener into a pristine and very private chapel of Bach contemplation.

For the festival valedictory, the four Mozart Piano Quartet players returned to the Spreckels stage to play Brahms’ mighty G Minor Piano Quartet, Op. 25. The three strings proved too light and decorous, especially for the finale alla zingarese . Only Schub was up to the emotional and sonic demands of Brahms’ lusty opus. Probing deeply, Schub found grandeur in the slow movement and unleashed genuine abandon in the finale.