La Jolla SummerFest Finale Features Captivating Bernstein and Dependable Dvorák

La Jolla SummerFest 2024 presented its grand finale Saturday at The Conrad, and the program’s first half displayed the qualities that have made this year’s festival so successful. We heard an exciting, virtuoso piece by an undeservedly neglected contemporary composer—Paul Schoenfield’s 1990 Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano—and familiar music from Leonard Bernstein’s beloved musical West Side Story in a sophisticated, rarely encountered arrangement for two pianos and two percussion players.

Although Leonard Bernstein wrote three symphonies over the course of his illustrious career as composer and orchestra conductor, his only major orchestral work that has gained a secure place in the orchestral repertory is his Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, which he arranged with the assistance of Sid Ramin and Irving Kostal in 1961, four years after West Side Story made its stage debut. Saturday’s SummerFest concert featured pianists Inon Barnatan and Gilles Vonsattel along with  percussionists Sidney Hopson and Dustin Donahoe in an impressive but uncredited arrangement of Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances for two pianos and a percussion ensemble that included drum kit, timpani, and vibraphone.

Pianists Barnatan and Vonsattel gave this nine-movement suite its requisite dramatic fervor while Hopson and Donahoe added exciting colors and heightened the composer’s spectacular rhythmic motives. Although no dancers appeared on the stage of The Conrad, these four musicians evoked a well-trained troupe of Jets and Sharks in our imagination as we felt the vibrant rhythmic pulses of “Mambo,” “Cha-Cha,” and the “Rumble.” The musical’s iconic arias–Bernstein would have appreciated calling his songs ‘arias’–“Somewhere,” “Maria” and “I Have a Love,” make appearances in this score, not as mere nostalgic recollections of favorite hit tunes, but as strategically placed prompts that unfold this now classic revision of the Romeo and Juliet story.

Music of the late American pianist and composer Paul Schoenfield is not well known, but hearing three movements from his 1990 Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano revealed that he is an accomplished post-modern composer who deserves our attention. The Trio’s vivacious opening movement, “Freylakh,” is driven by rousing piano runs and agile, high-pitched clarinet calls graced with bent tones that indicate the composer is not a mere inventor of pretty tunes. Although the composer titled his amusing middle movement “March,” the score tells the players to proceed “grotesquely,” and Schoenfield’s marchers sound more that a bit tipsy. Themes race by at breakneck speed in the final movement, “Kozatske,” and their abandon suggests a klezmer ensemble having a great night. Violinist Jack Liebeck, clarinetist Anthony McGill, and pianist Gilles Vonsattel gave a smart, crisply executed account of Schoenfield’s Trio.

Noted violinist James Ehnes was slated in both publicity and the SummerFest program book as the soloist in Ralph Vaughn Williams’ The Lark Ascending. Ehnes also failed to appear in other SummerFest programs this week, but on Saturday violinist Jack Liebeck took his place in The Lark Ascending, assisted by 12 strings of the SummerFest Chamber Orchestra. Although Liebeck displayed a lithe, supple sonority that fit the requirements of Vaughn Williams’ shimmering single movement tone poem, his line lacked a  clear sense of direction. This Lark took off, but landed in a nearby bush and stayed there. We missed the ascent.

The Chamber Orchestra brought the festival to a close with Antonín Dvorák’s Serenade for Strings in E Major, Op. 22. Without a conductor, the ensemble took its cues from concertmaster Jack Liebeck and gave a polished, pleasantly detailed account of the popular Serenade.

This concert was presented by the La Jolla Music Society as the closing event of SummerFest 2024 on Saturday, August 24, 2024, at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center.