MUSIC REVIEWS : Southwest Chamber Turns to Blake Again

In complement to the exhibition of William Blake’s illuminated prints at the Huntington Library, the Southwest Chamber Music Society offered its second program of music from Blake’s time and on his words.

Unfortunately, that included Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” String Quartet, grand-prize winner (unofficial) for the most overplayed work locally in the last few seasons. Doubly unfortunate was its actual performance, before a sold-out audience in the Main Gallery of the library, Monday night, which the gods seemed to frown upon. Perhaps they were saying, “Enough, already!”

The normally solid Southwest String Quartet--with a new second violinist, Susan Jensen (it wasn’t her fault), and its regulars, violinist Peter Marsh, violist Jan Karlin and cellist Roger Lebow--gave an extremely rickety run-through of the work, poorly tuned and executed on both the individual and ensemble levels, and at the same time over-the-top expressively as if to make up for it.

The disease appears to have infected the program notes as well, which made such statements as: “Without any exaggeration, it can be said that within Schubert, and most impressively within this composition, lies the foundation of 20th-Century Expressionism,” and worse. A similarly disheveled and forced account of Beethoven’s String Quartet, Opus 95, had opened the concert. An off night.

Happily, in between, tenor Jonathan Mack and oboist Stuart Horn gave polished readings to Vaughan Williams’ “Ten Blake Songs.”

Spare, unassuming and graceful settings, these songs unfold in modal, lyrical counterpoint, the tenor and oboe parts surprisingly independent, but cut from the same pastoral, folk-style cloth. The two performers uncovered the blush, bloom and sadness of the work with both intellectual and technical refinement.