SummerFest Opens Strong, Despite Acoustic Muffling

Igor Stravinsky’s dictum that music expresses nothing but itself--that is, notes and rhythms and such stuff--has intimidated generations of composers and critics. But recently the tide has begun to turn.

So it is that Bruce Adolphe boldly states that his Quartet No. 4, “Whispers of Mortality,” the centerpiece of the program that opened SummerFest La Jolla ‘98, has a program and a purpose. The work, the composer writes, “integrates my shock, frustration and eventual acceptance” of a close friend’s diagnosis of a life-threatening illness.

Moreover, it includes “a portrait of my friend.”

So much for mere notes.

Adolphe, who is composer-in-residence at SummerFest, introduced the piece from the stage of Sherwood Auditorium on Friday. It was played authoritatively by the Miami String Quartet--violinists Ivan Chan and Cathy Meng Robinson, violist Chauncey Patterson and cellist Keith Robinson. (Written for them, they gave the world premiere at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena in 1994.)

In honesty, however, one wishes the five-movement work, lasting about 22-minutes, were stronger than it is in order to deliver the coup de gra^ce to Stravinsky’s problematic ukase.

That the music is serious, reflective, full of abrupt declamations and agitation is self-evident. That it hits the listener in the psychic solar plexus or the equivalent isn’t.

Sherwood Auditorium is a problematic venue, dampening overtones, boxing in sound and soaking up tonal nuances, at least as experienced from a seat on an outside aisle a little past halfway back.

Even so, it didn’t seem likely that the work, with its accessibility and indebtedness to Bartok and Janacek, failed to make its intended points. It was probably most powerful in its modal “whisper” theme, especially as entrapped in the canonic structure of the final movement.

The concert opened with violinist Julie Rosenfeld and pianist Gilbert Kalish playing Beethoven’s 10th and final Violin Sonata, Opus 96, deeply attuned to the composer’s transported, lyrical and rhapsodic moods. The sound, though, was occasionally tubby.

It closed with Rosenfeld, cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han (the latter two are the SummerFest artistic directors) playing a passionate and committed performance of Mendelssohn’s Trio in C Minor, Opus 66. Despite the force of their music-making, again one had the feeling that the players, who worked together like long-term partners, were putting much more detail into the work than crossed the front of the stage.

* SummerFest La Jolla ’98 continues Tuesday through Aug. 22 with a variety of concerts at various times at the Museum of Contemporary Art/San Diego, Sherwood Auditorium, 700 Prospect St., La Jolla (619) 459-3728.