Today on CMCR (Classical Music Concert Reviews), we’ll take a look at chamber music renovations throughout the centuries—four of them to be exact.
To keep the performance times under a decade, but still significant, Festival Mosaic Music Director Scott Yoo judiciously chose one opus from each century for the 2025 Summer Festival chamber concert presented on Wednesday, July 23, in the sanctuary of the historic Mission San Luis Obispo. The acoustics of the old adobe-walled chamber were excellent, although the sightlines and seating comfort were a tad excruciating.
Once again, Yoo’s battalion of stellar performers brought the audience to its feet in ovations more than once. The following will illustrate how that was done.
A short work for five instruments from the early 17th century composer Giovanni Gabrieli hailed the beginning of each half of the program. These pieces were not exactly renovations of previous compositions, but were the result of repurposing the design of an existing structure in new “media.”
As aptly described by Cal Poly professor Alyson McLamore in her pre-concert lecture, Gabrieli was one of the most famous composers of his day to pioneer using the architecture of popular vocal music to create new works for mechanical instruments alone. In honor of the originating music, Gabrieli called these pieces “canzoni,” meaning “songs” in Italian.
Gabrieli did not specify what instruments should be used. The second canzone performed, for example, included the words “per sonare con ogni sorte di stromenti” (“to be played by all sorts of instruments”) in the title. Yoo chose a brass quintet: two trumpets (James Vaughen, Jack Brndiar), horn (Lisa Conway), and two trombones (Ko-ichiro Yamamoto, Hakeem Bilal). The effect of these works being performed on these instruments at the beginning of each half of the concert gave the distinct impression of horns heralding a royal commencement. Having the quintet sound the second canzona from the Mission’s choir loft enhanced that effect. Truly brilliant!
Who better to introduce the music of the 18th century than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? In 1773, when he was 17, Mozart was already a seasoned composer—he had written a full-length opera at age 11 after all. But that did not keep him from exploring and expanding his skills.
As recounted by McLamore, Michael Haydn—Joseph Haydn’s younger brother—had written a piece for a string quintet, adding a second viola to the standard string quartet. Upon hearing it, Mozart decided to do the same by writing his “Viola quintet, No. 1 in B-flat major,” K. 174. His first attempt was acceptable. After hearing a new quintet by Haydn some months later, though, he decided to rework it. This is what was performed to excellent effect by another Festival ensemble.
Moving ahead to the late 19th century, Yoo chose to feature Johannes Brahms’s “String Sextet no. 1 in B-flat major” op. 18. According to McLamore, Brahms’ creative effort was greatly enhanced by honest critiquing from his late best friend’s wife, Clara Schumann. What resulted was an excellent example of lush German Romanticism. A well-finessed performance by Festival Mozaic string players included their usual high-precision execution with excellent blend, rhythmic continuity and warmly expressed tempi and dynamics. The standing ovation was well-deserved.
As mentioned, the second half of the concert was ushered in by the awesome declamation of Gabrieli’s “Canzona per sonare con ogni sorte di stromenti.” What followed was what John Cleese of Monty Python’s Flying Circus could have said: “And now for something completely different.”
The 20th century was one of enormous inventiveness and change, especially in the arts. Music was no exception. From the abandonment of tonality by composers like Stravinsky, Schönberg and Ives, to the embracing of non-traditional devices—typewriters, starting pistols, and airplane motors—as musical instruments, to exploring every conceivable aspect of sound and compositional architecture via electronics, vast new regions of audible expression have come into being.
Composer John Adams is one of the composers riding these waves of acoustic novelty. In his 1992 work “Chamber Symphony,” he uses some of these new methodologies with a healthy dose of humor and a dash of technical complexity to create an experience that is both refreshing and astonishing.
The titles for the symphony’s movements give a hint that what you are about to hear is not your grandmother’s chamber work.
Movement 1, “Mongrel Aria,” is in response to a British critic’s deeming Adams’ music as “not of good breeding.” The sound is a seemingly chaotic mash-up of ideas and sonorities of other modernist composers such as Stravinsky and Milhaud, driven by the percussionist’s demonically pedantic tapping of a cowbell. Many extremely frenetic roulades pop in and out, especially from the woodwinds. The movement ends with a brief “shriek.”
“Aria with Walking Bass,” the second movement, is a pleasant contrast to the first movement. A number of sonorous, melodic passages consisting of solos and duos either between single instruments or combinations overlays a less hectic background featuring a pizzicato contrabass violin (the “walking bass”). For example, it opens with a beautiful trombone solo segueing to violins against clarinets to a trumpet and trombone ensemble, cellos, a piccolo and trombone duet. Another strenuous outburst from the percussion leads to three closing duets.
The final movement, “Roadrunner,” is a musical recognition of the fact that family can still be a vital part of any creative endeavor. As the title implies, Adams’ children were a factor in his creative process: it refers to the Warner Brothers Studios cartoon creation. The music becomes more cacophonous as it expresses the goings-on of one or more of the cartoon episodes, perhaps mingled with childish banter.
In his “Notable Encounters” lecture the day before the performance, Yoo even called attention to a point in the movement where a series of downward glides from a trombone musically depicts one of the many Roadrunner scenes finding antagonist Wile E. Coyote in a long fall toward imminent failure. Happily, the orchestra does not self-destruct, and its dramatic ending flare bought the audience to its feet in enthusiastic appreciation.