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Monday, November 22, 2004
Riverside Chamber Players
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review
Riverside Chamber Players
Sunday at St. Andrew Catholic Church in Roswell.
www.riversidechamberplayers.com
The fall foliage along Riverside Road in Roswell, along the muddy Chattahoochee, is wonderfully agreeable just now. Suburban development continues its rude advances, but along one isolated stretch — of hardwoods pigmented from chrome yellow to blazing orange, muted by the pastel greens of loblolly pines and rows of peeling white beech trees, with the river behind — one had the illusion of nature serene and perpetual.
This is the atmosphere, in the damp of Sunday afternoon, which carried into the inaugural concert by the Riverside Chamber Players at St. Andrew Catholic Church, a sprawling complex on water’s edge. The musicians are members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, organized by cellist Joel Dallow.
In performing Schubert and Beethoven — two immortals of the music world — the chamber ensemble made its rationale obvious. With the city spread wide, metro Atlanta needs more neighborhood chamber music groups. The musicians themselves profit from more opportunities to perform and, significantly, it’s a chance for them to polish their own interpretations, away from the creative tyranny of a conductor. The Atlanta Symphony, as an orchestra, also benefits when its musicians know each other through the intimate bonds of trios and quartets.
Dallow, violinist Kenn Wagner and violist Catherine Lynn began with Schubert’s B-flat String Trio No. 2, a cheerful, elegant work here dispatched with humble understatement and sweetly singing tone. Like hearing birds in the forest, a listener had the feeling of eavesdropping on a scene that was happening for its own reasons, not because an audience was present. In Schubert’s music, that attitude works well.
No so with Beethoven’s extroverted String Quartet Op. 74, nicknamed “The Harp.� Joined by violinist Sou-Chun Su, who took the first violin part (with Wagner playing second violin), the Riverside players initially groped for a coherent interpretation. From the opening <i>sotto voce </i>through the forceful allegro section, the playing was mostly clear but they weren’t quite listening, or breathing, with each other.
It finally came together with this work’s most astounding episode: at the coda of the first movement, a violent, exhilarating tempest of 16th notes is played by the first violin. Su sawed away at full fury while his colleagues, in support, built the foundation around him. As the music reached for, and hit, its resolution, the foursome — now thinking and singing as one — created a goosebump moment. People will return again and again to experience that sort of momentary euphoria.
With their debut a success, Riverside’s next concert is scheduled for Sunday afternoon, March 6. By then look for the Chattahoochee bank in early spring colors, and a musical mood appropriate for the season.
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