Inherit the Winds

by Lou Camp

classical

The Philadelphia Orchestra is justly famous for all its sections, and the winds had their day Sunday in a superb concert called Nordic Music for Winds before a capacity crowd at the Art Museum. Jeffrey Khaner, the Orchestra's principal flute, Daniel Matsukawa, principal bassoon, Ricardo Morales, our new principal clarinet, David Wetherill, co-principal French horn, and Richard Woodhams, principal oboe, comprised the quintet. They are all great artists, and the large audience acknowledged this with enthusiastic applause. The quintet obviously loved playing for us.

Each piece was introduced by one of the quintet members. Matsukawa noted that the opening Quintet in F by the Danish composer Peter Rasmussen (1838-1913) was composed just two months after the death of his wife. Despite this, the piece turned out to be lots of fun. Particularly the concluding fugal, Allegro con brio, put virtuosity at the service of good humor. There followed the Allegro and Arioso for Five Wind Instruments by Ingolf Dahl (1912-1970), a Swedish-German composer, who fled the Nazis in 1939 to teach at UCLA. The work was composed in wartime 1942, and as Woodhams pointed out, was probably the most dissonant piece on the program. After the relentless early part, there came a wonderful slow section introduced by a duet by the flute and clarinet. This grew to include the other instruments, and the work ended most movingly. The first half concluded with the surprisingly light and deft Sciarada Spagnuola, a divertimento for winds by a scion of the Dutch Andriessens, Jurriaan, who died in 1996. Clearly classical, with brief movements with names like entrata and pavane, the frottola and finale had a Poulenc-like feel.

The second half opened with the brief Rondo Amoroso of Harald Saeverud (1897-1992) in an arrangement for winds of this nostalgic piano piece of 1914. The concert ended with Carl Nielsen's Woodwind Quintet, op. 43. Matsukawa called it one of the great 20th-century works for winds. It is quite late -- 1924 -- since Nielsen died in 1931. It inhabits the same world as his last symphony, the sixth, composed in these years. We are left with barren stretches of notes punctuated by sardonic, near-crazy tunes. The menuetto is off-kilter, with unease at the base. The performance was magnificent.

Sustained applause for an encore brought us relief, in a nocturne for piano by Grieg. As Woodhams suggested, Grieg is at his best in small piano pieces, like his physical stature, and he enjoined us all to visit Grieg's small-scaled home in Bergen.

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