Soaring Strings, Sounding Brass

A preview of appealing classical music programs, for the seasoned concertgoer and novice alike

By Thomas Bohlert

Durell Godfrey What has 52 white keys, 36 black keys, seven octaves, and a range from A to C?

(05/24/2007)    Outstanding musical events have become as much a part of summer on the South Fork as sand in the sheets and itinerant antiques shows. From the many concerts to be offered in the coming months, here are some highlights.

    A musical group made up of all local residents, the Hampton Chamber Orchestra, led by concert master Boris Jourawleff, will give two performances in different styles. A program highlighting Anton Dvorak’s “Serenade” will be given at the Southampton Cultural Center on June 9 at 7 p.m. Dvorak wrote his “Serenade” as a wedding gift to his bride in 1875, before the composer came to the United States, and thus it still has a strong Slavic influence, unlike his later works.

    One of the standards of the Baroque period, Vivaldi’s “Spring” from “The Four Seasons,” will also be heard, along with “Alleluia and Fugue” by the 20th-century composer Alan Hovhaness, whose music evokes a mood of mystery and contemplation.

    On the lighter side, the chamber orchestra will play a pops concert in Agawam Park in Southampton at 6:30 p.m. on August 8, ranging from Broadway and jazz standards to recent movie themes.

    “The Prairie,” a cantata about the American Midwest by Lukas Foss of Bridgehampton, will be featured in “An American Awakening,” presented in two performances by the Choral Society of the Hamptons, Mark Mangini, musical director, along with the Greenwich Village Singers and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra.

    “The Prairie” debuted in 1944 when Mr. Foss was 22 years old. It brought him immediate recognition as a major American composer, but it has rarely been heard since. Marking Mr. Foss’s 85th birthday this year, the Choral Society’s aim is to see the composition, set to a poem by Carl Sandburg, “take its place in the standard repertoire of choral music,” according to a release.

     “The Prairie” will be performed at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City, on June 28 at 8 p.m., and again at the Channing Sculpture Garden in Bridgehampton on July 7 at 8 p.m. Also on the program is Mr. Foss’s “Renaissance Concerto for Flute and Orchestra” and selections from Aaron Copland’s “Old American Songs.”

    The Bard Music Festival of the Hamptons, the new incarnation of the former Music Festival of the Hamptons, will span two weekends of music: July 13 to 15 (with a theme of “Virtuosity and Romanticism”) and July 19 to 22 (“The Music of Prague”). Under the direction of Leon Botstein, Christopher Gibbs, and Robert Martin, all from the summer music program at Bard College, the concerts will range from the Baroque figurations of J.S. Bach to the atonal dissonance of Alban Berg.

    A noteworthy program of the music by Mozart, Berg, and Beethoven is scheduled for July 14 at 8 p.m. at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor. It will include Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A, subtitled “Stadler’s Quintet” after Anton Stadler, the principal clarinetist of the court orchestra in Vienna. (Mozart apparently admired the musician and the instrument enough to produce a superb work, even though Stadler, while living in Mozart’s home, did not repay borrowed money and is said to have sold some of his host’s pawn tickets.) Especially notable for its unusual timbre is the Larghetto, in which the accompanying strings are muted, allowing the melody of the clarinet to rise plaintively above them.

    Also on the Old Whalers Church program is Alban Berg’s “Lyric Suite” (1925), which has become one of the most enduring works written in an atonal style. Using the 12-tone technique developed by his teacher Arnold Shoenberg, Berg based the work on a predetermined series of the 12 tones rather than a traditional major or minor scale. Another interesting technique employed in the suite is mood intensification, in which not only do succeeding movements alternate in tempo but each fast movement is faster than the previous one, and each slow movement is slower. “Lyric Suite” is a work of great emotion and drama; it has been described by Berg’s student Theodor Adorno as a “latent opera.”

    Even with its unusual scoring of violin, viola, clarinet, French horn, basson, cello, and double bass, Beethoven’s Septet in E flat was performed often soon after it was written, probably because it is a thoroughly cheerful work. However, for the very same reason, the composer eventually disavowed it as lacking seriousness. He later said of the septet, “It should be burned,” and “It was written by Mozart!” Especially beautiful are the lyrical melodies in the Adagio, and the light and bouyant closing Presto.

    For families with children, the Bard festival also includes a concert of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” on July 14.

    From July 25 to Aug. 19, the 24th season of the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, under Marya Martin, music director, will offer its traditional concerts at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, as well as two evenings devoted to new, nonclassical music, under the title “bcmf (offbeat),” at the Children’s Museum of the East End.

    The festival’s classical program on Aug. 1 at 7:30 p.m. will showcase two works of contrasting emotional content. Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklaerte Nacht (“Transfigured Night,” 1899) is an early, highly romantic work that quickly became popular in concert halls. It is a tone poem (an instrumental work inspired by a poem), and although the music can stand on its own, following its dramatic storyline and strong emotions — from deep despair and anguish to a final brief, fleeting moment of exultation — adds new dimensions to one’s listening.

    By contrast, the String Sextet No. 1 in B flat by Johannes Brahms is very optimistic and pleasant in each of its five movements. In 1857, when Brahms wrote the sextet, he seems to have left a period of sadness behind him. (It was in October of that year that he wrote, “The ideal, genuine man is calm in joy and calm in pain and sorrow.”)

    The festival also has a new feature this year: a pre-dinner concert of string quartet classics from 6 to 7 p.m. on Aug. 17. It should be a relaxing way to round out the concert season.