The Beethoven Festival Park City, Utah’s
oldest summer classical music festival, is celebrating its 33rd season
this year and continues to do what it’s done so well for so many years —
presenting great chamber music played by some of the country’s best
musicians.
The secret to the festival’s continued
success is simple — present standard repertoire side by side with
overlooked works, all played by veteran musicians as well as rising
young stars.
That was exactly what the audience
expected, and got, at a concert last week — Felix Mendelssohn paired
with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, with a pair of delightful violin
showstoppers by Pablo de Sarasate thrown into the mix. Performing this
music were festival directors Leslie Harlow, viola, and Russell Harlow,
clarinet. They were joined by festival favorites Manuel Ramos, violin;
Doris Stevenson, piano; and Cheung Chau, cello. Rounding out the roster
was the young violinist Simón Gollo, making his festival solo debut,
although he has played here previously as a member of the Dalí Quartet.
***
The second half was taken up by one work,
Coleridge-Taylor’s substantive Quintet in F sharp minor, for clarinet
and strings. Written in 1895 when the composer was 20 years old, the
quintet has hints of Brahms and Dvorak running through it, although it
by no means is an imitative work. Coleridge-Taylor, a composer who was
prolific and popular in his day but who has fallen to the wayside in the
intervening decades, has a distinctive voice that melds romantic
passion with florid lyricism and moving expressiveness in a uniquely
original manner.
The five players — Russell Harlow,
clarinet; Ramos and Gollo, violin; Leslie Harlow, viola; and Chau, cello
— brought depth and feeling to their reading. It was an incisive and
wonderfully textured and lucid performance that emphasized the romantic
sensibility of the music without compromising its integrity.
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