The Catskill Chronicle

Review by Barry Plaxen

SOUTH FALLSBURG, NY (May 18, 2011) – Chamber Music at St. Andrew’s offers concerts twice a year, in April and October.

The full-house audience in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on April 30, 2011, was treated first to one of Mozart’s masterpieces, the String Quintet in G minor, K. 516, comprising four movements of sensual sounds played by New York City instrumentalists Erika Sato (violin), Theresa Salomon (violin), Veronica Salas (viola), Richard Brice (viola) and Lutz Rath (cello), gratifying our ears and stirring our emotions.

Because Mozart wrote a number of Quintet fragments, the numberings and publication dates have been confused and don’t agree with the Kochel listings.

Today, they are numbered 1-6 and K.516 is #3 in some publications and was #4 in the concert program. “Viola quintets” (a string quartet plus a second viola) are surprisingly not common.  Surprisingly because the added viola, similar to Schubert’s Quintet with a second cello, adds sonority to the string quartet, and Mozart intuitively balanced two violins and two violas as two separate “choirs” of equal weight and thereby created a richer variety of textures making the quintet somewhat more symphonic than chamber-like.

The G minor quintet is expressively tragic and was written when he was at the peak of his success – The Magic Flute premiered just one year before to great public acclaim, though the Emperor did not take kindly to its jibes at the aristocracy – and when he was at an emotional low, coping with the loss of his father. Perhaps his dealing with those opposite poles gave him the emotional maturity to express the profundity of his feelings in the quintet. It is without question one of the giants of the entire chamber music genre and the above mentioned world class musicians included all the phrasing nuances possible. It was a joy to listen to them and get lost in the sensuous sounds.

Mozart’s Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, K. 581, was written in 1789. It was Mozart’s only completed clarinet quintet, and is one of the earliest and best-known works written especially for the instrument. It is another masterpiece, perhaps a bit less so than the Viola Quintet, and if the Quintet is one of the giants of the repertoire, the Clarinet Quintet is one of the most popular.

Second violist Richard Brice “retired” for this piece and his center chair was assumed by Stanley Drucker and his magic clarinet.

Drucker has celebrated 60 years as a member of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and he became an honorary member of the Philharmonic Society of New York, the first orchestral musician so honored. The Philharmonic estimates that he has performed in 10,200 concerts, which is approximately 70% of the total number of their concerts since 1842. He has been Principal Clarinetist for a record 48 years, making close to 200 appearances as soloist and chamber musician with the orchestra. He played under nine Music Directors, among them Bruno Walter, Dmitri Mitropolous, Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez and Zubin Mehta. In recognition of his highly respected and widely acknowledged musical excellence and dedication, he was named Musical America’s 1998 Instrumentalist of the Year.

All his honors are richly deserved. My guest turned to me after the first movement to say to me that “his playing was ‘sublime’.” It certainly was. And there was more to come because the second movement of that Quintet is one of Mozart’s usual powerful, beautiful and depth-filled slow movements. Drucker’s playing left nothing to be desired, and he proved once again that he might be the greatest living clarinetist on the planet.

For this world class concert we can thank producer Peggy Friedman, the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance and NY State Council on the Arts, the Town of Fallsburg and the congregation and members of St. Andrew’s for one of the series most moving and “sublime” concerts in recent years.