Charles Petzold

I think musicians must love playing chamber music the most. How else to explain the many opportunities to see chamber music at no or minimal cost?

Today, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players began a 20-concert season of both afternoon and evening performances, with honor-system tickets at $10, $17, and $25. Performances are held at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church on West 66th Street, just west of the Juilliard Store (which regrettably remains limited to online sales). Vaccination cards are checked at the door, masks are required for the duration of the concert, and seats are socially distanced.

Here we are awaiting the entrance of a string quartet from the perspective of my side-view seat, which was behind the violist’s right shoulder:

The program was called “Love Triangles,” but it could just as well have been titled “Clara Schumann and Her Male Friends.” It’s Clara’s 202nd birthday today, and the concert featured music by her, by her husband Robert, by Theodor Kirchner (who had a brief affair with Clara after Robert’s death), and by Brahms, who adored Clara, and who received a great deal of musical advice and criticism from her. (What else Johannes and Clara did remains speculative.)

The concert began with a set of seven miniatures for string quartet by Theodor Kirchner, a composer with whom I am unfamiliar. Called Nur Tropfen: Ganz kleine Stücke ("Mere Drops: Very Tiny PIeces"), these pieces are melodically inventive and often wistful in mood, with slow or gentle andante tempos until the faster 5th and 7th pieces.

Next up was the Brahms Clarinet Sonata Op. 120 No. 2. I’m afraid the two Brahms Clarinet Sonatas are my least favorite Brahms chamber music, rather too mellow and meandering for my tastes. They were composed after the 60-something Brahms had decided to retire from composing, so I suppose the autumnal aura shouldn’t be surprising. (Yet, the Clarinet Quintet, which Brahms composed around the same time, is one of my favorites, so go figure.) I enjoyed the performance nonetheless, sitting very close to clarinetist Vadim Lando and hyper-focused as concerts allow.

Following a brief intermission was Clara Schumann’s Three Romances for Violin and Piano, which I love more every time I hear it. Emotionally lush, by turns haunting and transcendently beautiful, these pieces make me ache for all the Clara Schumann music that was never composed as a result of unfortunate societal and spousal attitudes.

We can never forgive Robert for suppressing Clara’s compositional instincts, but fortunately that doesn’t prevent us from enjoying his music, and that necessity was emphasized with a dynamite performance of my favorite Robert Schumann work: the Piano Quintet from 1842, his famous “year of chamber music” that also included a piano quartet and three string quartets.

Schumann’s Piano Quintet is classically structured, but within those confines just explodes with ingenuity and startling contrasts. I love the slow movement that begins with a Schubertian funeral march but actually reveals itself to be a rondo with lovely unexpected lyrical sections. The 3rd movement is energetic enough for a finale, but it’s really a scherzo with two different trio sections, and then the best is yet to come.

Here are the members of the Jupiter Players that performed the Schumann Piano Quintet, again from my odd perspective way over at the side but close to the action: