Review: Richmond Festival of Music

April 12, Second Presbyterian Church

Most "neglected" compositions don’t get heard for sound qualitative or practical reasons. Occasionally, though, you encounter a little-known piece so worthy that its neglect defies rational explanation. I have a list (an occupational hazard of music critics), and when I get around to posting it, Amy Beach’s Theme and Variations, Op. 80, for flute and string quartet will be near the top.

Beach (1867-1944), who in her less liberated times publicly styled herself as Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, was the earliest female composer of first rank in this country. A pianist, largely self-taught in composition, she wrote in a late-romantic style that accommodated some early modern developments, especially impressionism.

Her Theme and Variations, dating from 1916, is rooted in an elegaic theme recalling that of Elgar’s "Enigma" Variations; but Beach’s variations go in directions – a North African or "Moorish" flute motif, an evocation of the "Liebestod" from Wagner’s "Tristan und Isolde" – that Elgar wouldn’t have imagined, let alone attempted. In addition to a substantial, often intoxicating, flute part, the piece features substantial solos for cello and violin, and ensemble writing of great sophistication and expressiveness. Why it hasn’t been taken up by more flutists and string quartets is a mystery.

Flutist Mary Boodell, violinists Jessica Lee and Carmit Zori, violist David Cerutti and cellist James Wilson concluded the second concrert of this spring’s Richmond Festival of Music with a performance of the Beach that was both affectionate – those who hadn’t known it pretty clearly fell in love with it as they rehearsed it – and keenly focused.

The festival, which Wilson directs, usually boasts at least one surprising musical discovery. The Beach Theme and Variations may be that one this time – although, in a series devoted to little-known American chamber music, with three programs to go, it may turn out to be one of several discoveries.

George Whitefield Chadwick’s String Quartet in E minor (1896) sounded to be another case of "why haven’t I heard this before?” at least in its first two movements, built around rustic dances and hymn-like themes, clearly modeled after the American works that Dvořák produced shortly before the writing of this quartet. Chadwick, however, seems to have run out of inspirational steam, or at least compositional discipline, in a disjointed polka scherzo and a final movement that weirdly subjects an old-English-style modal tune to Brahmsian development.

Zori, Lee, Cerutti and Wilson, playing the Chadwick for second time in nine hours (it was the subject of a lecture-recital earlier in the day at the Chester Library), made as persuasive a case for the piece as any musicians could.

Richmond’s James River Singers, directed by Jeffrey Riehl, sampled a wide range of American vocal music, from William Billings’ comic "Modern Music" (1781) to William Bradley Roberts’ introspective, soulful "I Am in Need of Music" (a new setting of Elizabeth Bishop’s "Sonnet," commissioned for this ensemble in memory of Sharon Peebles Manson), but sounded most attuned to a set of golden-age pop tunes by Cole Porter and Jerome Kern.

The chamber chorus was at its best in an a cappella rendition of Porter’s "Night and Day" and, with pianist Russell Wilson, in Kern’s "All the Things You Are" (maybe the best song ever produced by an American composer).

Boodell, in excellent and highly versatile form on a very busy weekend (her festival date was bracketed by Virginia Opera performances of "Lucia di Lammermoor," in which she accompanies Manon Strauss Evrard in Lucia’s mad scene), joined pianist Carsten Schmidt to open this concert with another rarity of American chamber music, the Sarabande and Rigaudon (1921) of Arthur Foote, an attractive example of modernized "ancient" music of the same vintage and in the same vein as Ravel’s "Le Tombeau de Couperin" and Stravinsky’s "Pulcinella."

The Richmond Festival of Music continues with concerts at 8 p.m. April 29 at Second Presbyterian Church, May 2 at Bon Air Presbyterian Church and May 3 at the Virginia Holocaust Museum. Tickets: $25. A free "Ear Project" lecture-recital will be staged at 11 a.m. May 3 at the Richmond Public Library’s downtown main branch. Details: (804) 519-2098; www.richmondfestivalofmusic.org