Portugal Verão Clássico Festival 2024 [3] – MasterFest Concert III: Anna Samuil (soprano), Tedi Papavrami, Alissa Margulis (violins), Jennifer Stumm (viola), Giovanni Gnocchi (cello), Silvia Careddu (flute), Pascal Moraguès (clarinet), Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro, Matthias Samuil (piano). Museu Nacional dos Coches, Lisbon, 31.7.2024. (LV)
Mozart – Flute Quartet No.3 in C major, K.285b [listed in the program incorrectly as K.285a]; Violin Sonata No.21 in E minor, K.304; Serenade No.10 in B-flat major, K.361, ‘Gran Partita’ (based on an arrangement by Christian Friedrich Schwencke)
R. Strauss – ‘Allerseelen’, ‘Morgen’, ‘Cäcilie’
There was a beautiful Mozartian symmetry to the Verão Clássico Festival’s third MasterFest concert. It was deeply sad at times, and silly and joyous at others. At its heart, Richard Strauss sounded radiant, consoling notes.
In Mozart’s Flute Quartet, Sylvia Careddu’s embouchure was impeccable, sweet and fluent, to which Tedi Papavrami contributed bouncing bows and lyrical grace. And Giovanni Gnocchi in his big, second movement solo, showed that it is not only Haydn and Beethoven who enjoyed outrageous rustic humor. However, a more lachrymose than usual air hung over the penultimate variation before the cheerful ending.
When Papavrami returned with Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro to play one of Mozart’s saddest works, it was as if another world was being explored. They played the Violin Sonata in E minor that he wrote at the time his mother died. It was one of only three times Mozart wrote a rondo that ended in a minor key; it was something he reserved for special moments. While Papavrami played with an inward, intimate tone, Pinto-Ribeiro’s responses were openly charged with love, spun out into Mozartian space as if they would never end.
Three songs by Richard Strauss followed, sung by Anna Samuil alongside her husband, pianist Matthias Samuil, and they caught and transformed the love and loss we felt for Mozart at that moment. As she had opened her heart to her students during coaching, Samuil gave herself fully to the remembering. In ‘Cäcilie’, with Matthias playing poetically like her lover and just a lingering sadness in her voice, she unfurled a radiant Straussian sunrise.
The concert ended with the same Mozart curiosity that had ended my previous stay at the Verão Clássico nearly five years ago to the day: Christoph Friedrich Gottlieb Schwencke’s early nineteenth-century arrangement of Mozart’s Serenade K.361 for twelve winds and double bass, arranged for oboe, violin, viola, cello and piano. The earlier Verão Clássico performance added a double bass, but this year a clarinetist replaced the oboe, and they lost the double bass. If you knew the original it was disorienting at first, but once it was underway, the musicians took over and, after all, it was Mozart they were playing.
Schwenke’s arrangement meant that we could hear clarinetist Pascal Moraguès. To be swept away by his sublimely cool, miraculously virtuosic, emotionally sensitive phrasing was to gain deep insights into Mozart and into music itself. Violinist Alissa Margulis made the oboe parts sweeter and more elegant than any oboe could ever dream of being and let herself fall increasingly under Mozart’s sway. Violist Jennifer Stumm did the same for the bassoons with her strong, assertive air, and gave the sound a rich and tawny tone. Cellist Gnocchi was often required to play a bass or a bassoon, and longed to have, as all cellists do, parts above their station. All the while, Pinto-Ribeiro stayed sensibly in the background, providing energy and leadership when necessary, or just being content to add curlicues in the repeats. Towards the end, after Moraguès had held the audience spellbound one last time, in the last slow variation of the sixth movement a rumble of cello pizzicatos preceded Pinto-Ribeiro’s launching the entire crew into a fun and fast Finale that danced happily into the night.
In addition to the musical delights they undoubtedly enjoyed, the concert allowed the coaches to give their students and the public a unique lesson: a Schwencke arrangement, with help from great musicians, can be made to sound like a Mozart serenade.
Laurence Vittes