Greg Stepanich

Eschenbach and Philly players bring chamber rarities

Palm Beach's Society of the Four Arts can usually be counted on each winter season to offer an interesting series of concerts, lectures and art exhibits. One in particular that I remember in recent years was a recital by the eminent pianist Richard Goode. He played a rich, rewarding program, including several Debussy preludes that I found nothing short of revelatory.

On Monday night, another fine pianist, Christoph Eschenbach, comes to Palm Beach for an evening of chamber music with some of the musicians with whom he works at his current job: music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. (Web site: http://www.philorch.org/styles/poa02e/www/index2.html)

On the program is one relative rarity, the Horn Sonata (Op. 17) of Beethoven, written in 1800 for the touring hornist known as Punto (his real name was Johann Wenzel Stich). As a former hornist, and not a good one, either, I'm always eager to hear any part of the small literature for solo horn. (For years I've tried to get a recording together of my own Horn Sonata to enter in a contest sponsored by the International Horn Society -- Web site: www.hornsociety.org -- but it's never worked out.)

Also on the program are the Phantasiestucke, Op. 73, for clarinet and piano, of Robert Schumann. These pieces, written early in 1849, are also played by violists, and I remember them well from my younger days, when I used to play the piano parts with my then-girlfriend, who was a violist.

The concert, which will be given without an intermission, closes with the Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat major, K. 452, of Mozart. Written in 1784, it's the first quintet for piano and winds (oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon) ever written, as far as anyone knows (so says Roger Hellyer, writing in The Mozart Compendium). I used to have a nifty Vox Box of all the Mozart wind music on LP, and it surprised me then -- flute quartets! An oboe quartet! -- to discover how much substantial chamber music Mozart wrote for wind instruments.

Earlier this week, Four Arts hosted the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, which has been around since 1991 (www.chamberorchestrakremlin.ru/). I couldn't make it to the concert, which I regret, just based on the program: a Mozart divertimento, the Mendelssohn Octet, Ernst Bloch's Prayer for cello and strings, and one of the seminal works of the last days of Romanticism: Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht. I hear from the society that Wednesday's heavy rains led to several cancellations, but that the concertgoers who came out heard an impressive concert. Anyone out there make it? Post a comment, if you did.

I'm planning to head to the Eschenbach/Philadelphia concert Monday night, which begins at 6:30 p.m. There's a special price for tickets: $15 and $20, and music fans with an interest in some lovely, rarely played wind literature might want to stop by.

Here's a link to the society's Web site for more information: www.fourarts.org.