Review: "BrightMusic: Another perspective on OKC’s new chamber music addition"
THURSDAY, JANUARY 21 2010 14:18 BY LIBBY PRICE, The City Sentinel
If ever the name of a musical group was perfectly matched to its music, the concert by Brightmusic at Casady School showed such a fit. Its music was truly bright in the three works for clarinet and string quartet and the Dvorak Quintet for Strings.
Chad Burrow, former principal clarinetist for the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, admitted, however, at a reception following that the name actually came from Ned Rorem’s Brightmusic which the newly formed group for chamber music played in its first season. Now at the University of Michigan as assistant professor of clarinet, Burrow is co-director of Brightmusic with his wife, Amy I-lin Cheng.
Alan Shulman’s “Rendezvous” for clarinet and string quartet, opened the program with its bright and brilliant dialogue between clarinet and strings. After a brief introduction by the strings, as soon as Burrow’s clarinet answered it became a jazz piece, with soaring riffs above a string background with lilting melodies, fascinating rhythms and chord harmonies.
Originally called “Rendezvous with Benny,” the piece was written in 1946 for Benny Goodman to play on a weekly radio show, along with Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with the Stuyvesant Quartet. However Goodman never played it again, and Artie Shaw only recorded it once, so the local “Rendezvous” became a national debut of sorts.
The string quartet here consisted of Dr. Gregory Lee, concertmaster of the OKC Philharmonic; Katrin Stamatis, second violin, now at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, after performances with symphonies in New York and elsewhere; Royce McLarry. violist, principal violist with the Philharmonic for three years, and cellist Jonathan Ruck, principal with philharmonic.
Quincy Porter’s Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet followed with its lyrical and rhythmic excellence. Porter a music professor at Yale university for several decades in the 20th century, wrote this work in 1929 while he had a Guggenheim fellowship in Paris.
A more ambitious work, Heinrich Joseph Baerman’s Quintet No. 3 in D-flat Major Op. 23, with its three contrasting movements, written in 1821, continued to prove that the clarinet - which Baerman played and helped it evolve into the contemporary instrument -works with strings better than other woodwinds, particularly in the capable hands of Burrow and his ebullient technique.
After intermission, clarinetist Burrow gave over to George Speed, principal bassist for the Philharmonic, to present the Dvorak Quintet for Strings in G Major, Op.77. Dvorak, known for his dependence on his Czech heritage for Bohemian folk music, wrote this at the height of his maturity as a composer.
The Dvorak is graceful music which calls for the brilliance that all of these musicians have. Of its four movements, the second Scherzo interlude in particular gave each stringed instrument its chance at solos. In this work, Lee even was called upon to “pluck” his violin strings, a notion now used in contemporary music.
Brightmusic also gave an identical program the following evening at St. Paul’s Cathedral downtown, where the group had initiated his concerts several years ago. The musicians will return to Casady for an April program, to take advantage of the new audience it gained last week.
