Soaring Clarinet Flights and String Reveries at La Jolla SummerFest

Wednesday’s La Jolla SummerFest programming proved too eclectic to have a common theme, but its continuity came from the evening’s virtuoso performers. Clarinetist Anthony McGill was featured in Béla Bartók’s Contrasts for Violin, Clarinet and Piano as well as in Michi Wiancko’s Lullaby for the Transient. Violinist Yura Lee was featured in the Bartók Contrasts and played first violin in Johannes Brahms’ String Sextet in B-flat major, No. 1. Violist Jonathan Vinocour and cellist Cyril Zlotnikov performed in both the Wiancko Lullaby and the Brahms String Sextet.

In 1938 two of America’s most celebrated performers, clarinetist Benny Goodman and violinist Joseph Szigeti, commissioned a virtuoso showpiece from Béla Bartók: Contrasts for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano. This amazing three-movement work displays all the flashy, complex figurations you might find in a Fritz Kreisler violin encore, but infused with probing musical substance.

McGill performed Contrasts for La Jolla SummerFest 2018 with violinist Paul Huang and pianist Shai Wosner on one of Cho-Liang Lin’s final season offerings, and it was thrilling to hear him again navigate this daunting project with such command and finesse. Wednesday he was joined by violinist Yura Lee, who gracefully equalled his depth and technical prowess at every turn, and by pianist Gillles Vonsattel, who delivered everything the piano part required. Bartók himself played the piano part in the 1938 première and on first recording, but the composer was careful not to let a brassy piano part get in the way of the intended virtuosos.

Aside from the subtle, very quiet ostinatos that open Wiancko’s Lullaby for the Transient, there are few musical moments in her piece that suggest typical moods implied by the term “lullaby.” Johannes Brahms’ saccharine “Lullaby” this is not. The clarinet’s first entrance is a high-pitched screech over churning string parts, and Wiancko keeps the clarinet wailing in its piercing upper register. Later, when the clarinet gurgles in its more mellow middle register, the strings engage in fierce contrapuntal battles. Kudos to violinists Simone Porter and SooBeen Lee for their rhapsodic incantations, especially SooBeen Lee’s striking whirring cadenza that brings Wiancko’s Lullaby to its conclusion. McGill, Vinocour, and Zlotnikov also brought sophisticated technical prowess to this hardy opus from 2018.

Perhaps Wiancko’s Lullaby for the Transient is simply a case of reverse psychology. Instead of gently coaxing the listener into peaceful slumber, Wiancko so exhausts the listener, that upon conclusion of her lullaby, the emotionally depleted listener is ready for the Sandman’s ministrations.

The young Johannes Brahms composed his first String Sextet in B-flat Major, Op. 18, when he was working as a court composer in tiny Detmold, Germany. In a short year he would move to Vienna and become immersed in that city’s cosmopolitan musical life. While listening to this arduously constructed sextet, I forced myself to forgive Brahms for not having discovered the gracefully arched thematic style of his later Vienna years, and I attempted to concentrate on his contrapuntal mastery of an abundance of shorter, less alluring themes. Fortunately, the SummerFest strings provided their most burnished sonorities and elegant phrasing to give this sextet its due and then some. In the opening  “Allegro ma non troppo” first violinist Yura Lee and first cellist Paul Watkins eagerly exchanged charming themes, although the cellos and lowest voices happily monopolized this movement. Violist Jonathan Vinocour boldly outlined the minor mode theme of the “Andante” second movement that would undergo the composer’s urgent, muscular variations. Cellists Watkins and Kyril Zlotnikov beautifully exploited the busy figurations assigned to them throughout this movement.

Frequently left counting rests in earlier movements, violinists Yura Lee and Jack Liebeck led the spritely thematic chase that defined the sextet’s short, bouncy “Scherzo.”  Brahms’ gentle rondo theme–given exquisite shape by cellist Watkins–opens the final movement, “Poco allegretto e grazioso,”, but it turns out to be a feint for a movement that soon expands into unabashed symphonic intentions and scope. The SummerFest strings–I believe second violist Brian Isaacs is the only player I have not yet mentioned–filled the Conrad with their ardent, generous interpretation of Brahms’ majestic conclusion.

This concert was presented by the La Jolla Music Society as part of SummerFest 2024 at La Jolla’s Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center on Wednesday, August 21, 2024.