Camaraderie Abounds at SummerFest

SummerFest grows ever more impressive under the direction of David Finckel and Wu Han. A finer collection of American chamber music players will not be found anywhere else this summer.

If La Jolla has yet to become a chamber music vacation destination like Santa Fe, that is surely the next step, given this popular resort with its veneer of elegance and sparkling beaches. French and German journalists have gladly made the trek, and now the BBC is busily packing its microphones and sunscreen for a week here. The biggest complaint from out-of-towners is the lack of a decent bookshop in the village.

This summer’s festival is the third under Finckel, the cellist of the Emerson String Quartet, and his pianist wife, whose project has been to transform a provincial affair into a sophisticated festival. The first weekend’s theme was Mendelssohn and friends. Those friends are unlikely ones the 19th century composer never knew--the 20th century Russian, Sergei Prokofiev, and the contemporary American, Joan Tower, a composer-in-residence--but they got along just fine in the Sherwood Auditorium.

The “friends” playing this music were also diverse. Mendelssohn’s D-Minor Trio on Sunday afternoon, for instance, featured the concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra (William Preucil), the principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic (Carter Brey) and a young pianist (Max Levinson) with an emerging solo career.

The festival is, in fact, a celebration of camaraderie. Before Sunday’s concert, New York composer Bruce Adolphe, who joins the festival every year, engaged in friendly, amusing banter with Tower and Finckel. And the community is invited into SummerFest’s world, as well. Besides pre-concert talks, noon encounters with critics, artists and administrators examine everything from the workings of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (several of its members will be in residence next weekend) to cyberspace and the intersection of art, money and politics. The public can attend workshops with young ensembles. Two visual artists-in-residence are connected with the West Coast--the Italian painter on the UCSD faculty, Italo Scanga, and popular Seattle glass-blowing colorist Dale Chihuly. In addition to Tower and Adolphe, Augusta Read Thomas will be a composer-in-residence later in the festival.

Another community feature is the series of Adolphe-led “explorations” in connection with the university that involve the relationships between music and genetics, music and dance, and music and art. Last week, Scanga and Chihuly made public paintings to the music of Tower, and the unframed canvases provided the backdrop for Sunday’s concert, adding a splash of color but looking trivial from a distance where no details could be discerned.

A chamber music lover can find a great deal of satisfaction in much of this, but there is also a level of condescension that should anger a Southern Californian. The brochure describes one talk about music in California by bizarrely claiming that it is not common knowledge that Schoenberg taught at UCLA and died in Los Angeles. The festival’s Schoenberg work is “Transfigured Night,” an early Vienna score. There is no music made in California; and the vast majority of performers are escaping the East Coast summer. Perhaps the BBC will be able to tell them of the young British string quartets who mimic the Kronos, or of London’s incomparable Arditti Quartet, which champions the string quartets of UCSD composer Roger Reynolds.

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Sunday’s concert felt, instead, like the best imported chamber music concert that money could buy. But since there is quite a lot of money around La Jolla, it can buy plenty. The performances were, on their own terms, marvelous. Haydn’s Piano Trio in A, Hob. XV:18, sparkled with wit. Wu Han (the Taiwanese pianist likes to be known by both names) connects with players in a way that is rare and wonderful for a pianist in chamber music; she was as an ebullient spark, both on the somewhat restrained Preucil and her more emotive cellist husband. Finckel played Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata in a grand manner, intense and romantic; Wu Han gave it sinew and point--a perfect balance.

Tower’s new piano trio, “Big Sky,” is a short companion piece to an even shorter, earlier trio, “And . . . They’re Off!”--the two works together lasted about 10 minutes, and for them the violinist Chee-Yun joined the festival directors. There is nothing to dislike in Tower’s music. “Big Sky” is beautiful, glossy music; the second we glimpse the big sky after a cloudy, solemn opening, the music sounds downright luminous with sustained lines in the strings and a piano part that glistens like a bright sun. “And . . . They’re Off!” is a fast, virtuosic and entertaining bit of horseplay that is hard to play and fun to hear.

The Mendelssohn trio ended Sunday’s program with a world-class performance. Brey disappointed many of his fans when he quit a solo career to join the New York Philharmonic four years ago. He is a concentrated, eloquent player, and he made Mendelssohn’s long melodies sound deeply human. Preucil had a long chamber career with the Cleveland Quartet before joining the Cleveland Orchestra, and though he exhibits less character, he is a gracious violinist. Levinson brought to the trio his bounding piano tone and sculptural phrasing. The result may have erred on the side of brawn, but the interaction of three distinct personalities united for a single goal was inspiring.

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* SummerFest continues through Aug. 20, $25-$50, Sherwood Auditorium, 700 Prospect St., La Jolla, (858) 459-3728.