Though I’ve had some surprises from Music@Menlo in the past (most notably when they introduced the Danish String Quartet on these shores), I find myself attending their concerts mainly to have my high expectations fulfilled. Predictably excellent performances of good chamber music programs are not something to be sniffed at, and these summer festivals—run every year in Menlo Park by the folks who also run CMS in New York—almost always fit that bill.
So I had no ambitions beyond the usual pleasure-seeking ones when I traveled down the Peninsula last Sunday to hear Concert Program III, entitled “From the Heart.” Though it was part of a summer season devoted to Beethoven, there was no Beethoven on this program: just Schubert, Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, and a name I had never heard before, Louise Farrenc. The composers sounded fine, but the draw for me lay in the roster of performing musicians—especially Nicholas Canellakis, a terrific cellist whose career I’ve followed since its very beginnings, a couple of decades ago.
In the event, Canellakis was as entrancing as always, and so were his fellow players in the Farrenc piano quintet: Orli Shaham on piano, Arnaud Sussmann on violin, Matthew Lipman on viola, and Anthony Manzo on bass. They played as if they had been playing together forever, not as if they had simply gathered for this one piece; and they played the music itself as if they had known it all their lives, which they couldn’t have done, because Farrenc is not a composer any of them would have heard of in their conservatory days. This nineteenth-century Frenchwoman had no doubt been dug up from the archives as part of the current desperate search for female composers, and this time someone managed to strike gold.
That was the first surprise: how absolutely wonderful Farrenc’s 1839 Quintet in A minor was. I won’t say it rivaled Shostakovich’s or Brahms’s or Schubert’s piano quintets, but it came pretty damn close. Every movement of the half-hour piece brought something exciting and new, especially in the interplay among the musicians. It was never merely pretty (the way, I’m afraid, the Schubert string trio that opened the program was); there was something somber even behind the liveliest passages, and something witty behind the pensive bits. Because I’d never heard it before in my life, I had trouble grasping it fully, but I was gripped by it and thrilled to be hearing it.
The Farrenc was played right before the intermission, and during the pause I wondered why it hadn’t been placed last, since it was such an obvious hit. But then I got my answer. Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1, the final piece on the program, was the second surprise of the day.
You wouldn’t think that such an old chestnut could surprise anyone anymore—especially me, who listens to it repeatedly in the marvelous Beaux Arts Trio version. But I hope the beloved ghost of Menahem Pressler will not be rattled if I say that this live rendering was even better than my favorite recording. Part of the credit goes to the sensitive pianist, Juho Pohjonen, and the eloquent cellist, David Requiro, both of whom I’ve heard at CMS or Music@Menlo before. But a great deal of the effect, and the primary source of my surprise, lay in the performance of the violinist, Francisco Fullana. A young Spaniard with degrees from Juilliard and USC and prizes from all over the world, he plays with a fiery intensity that makes itself visible throughout his whole body (including in his hilariously glittery shoes). His large hands—in fact, his whole large person and personality—seemed to dwarf the borrowed 1735 Guarneri instrument he plays, even as they brought forth the most beautiful, tender, ecstatic notes from it. It was almost as exciting to watch him play as it was to hear him. There is a special feeling you get when you first hear a great musician in performance, especially if you are not expecting it, and that is what happened to me on Sunday with Fullana. I can’t wait to see and hear what he does next.