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Genius on Second Stage
World-class musicians come to Center for the Performing Arts in chamber music series

by Diana Reynolds Roome

A succession of world-class musicians will be arriving to play at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts' Second Stage this spring, boosting Mountain View into the musical stratosphere.

The series of five Monday evening concerts, from March 9 through June 1, has been organized by Chamber Music San Francisco, with most concerts "piggybacking" on weekend performances in the city.

Normally heard in venerable venues such as Carnegie Hall, and difficult to fund in smaller venues, these stellar musicians have agreed to stay an extra day or so under a scheme dreamed up by Daniel Levenstein, director of CMSF, who plans the series as the first of an annual spring chamber music event in Mountain View.

The musicians, too, have been unreservedly enthusiastic about the opportunity.

Violinist Jaime Laredo, for example, has played all over the world, both as a soloist and with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, which has been celebrated in the world of chamber music for 32 years (the trio made its debut at Jimmy Carter's Inauguration at the White House in 1977). Also a viola player, Laredo has performed and recorded with such musicians as Isaac Stern, Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Glenn Gould.

Despite these credentials, Laredo said that a small recital hall on the Peninsula is "the kind of place I love to play the most. There's something about the interaction with audience where you really feel the intimacy, playing for someone you can almost touch, whereas it's not that kind of feeling when you're playing in a large hall."

"I was absolutely delighted," said Lynn Harrell, the world-renowned cellist, who has played with Itzhak Perlman and Vladimir Ashkenazy (their recording of Beethoven's Piano Trios won a Grammy Award), and as a soloist with many of the world's great orchestras.

"We love to play in small venues and intimate surroundings, because that's how most of the music for a small string ensemble was intended, meaning that the subtleties and gentle strokes of color and sound painting can be capitalized upon. ... I think the communication of the music itself is enhanced."

Harrell's wife, Helen Nightengale, a well-known violinist, will be playing with him, along with three other distinguished musicians.

Both Harrell and Laredo know the Bay Area, having performed often in San Francisco. Laredo spent part of his childhood in Menlo Park, living on Middlefield Road in the mid-1950s. His family had moved from Bolivia, where Jaime was born, to San Francisco where he could get a more specialized music education.

"Every time the plane lands in San Francisco, I look at my wife and say, 'Oh God, it feels so good to be back,'" said Laredo, whose wife Sharon Robinson is the trio's cellist. Famed for their performance of the Beethoven piano trio cycle at Lincoln Center's Great Performers Series, they will be playing Beethoven's most famous trio, known as the "Archduke," Op. 97, at Second Stage on March 30.

The concert will include a piece by Shostakovich, who was "obsessed by Beethoven," according to Laredo. While Shostakovich was writing the Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67, "he found out about the death of a close friend in a concentration camp," said Laredo. "He was an incredibly depressed, brooding individual ... but this is one of the most powerful pieces I've ever heard."

The 1717 Stradivarius violin that Laredo plays will also be returning home to California, where it spent many years under glass, as part of a collection of rare instruments owned by the banker Samuel Crocker and displayed at the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento. It was there that Laredo played his first big recital when he was 8 years old, though he did not possess the instrument until years later.

The violin "has the power to carry a 5,000-seat hall if I need it, yet it has a sweetness and tender quality that suits an intimate place, even a living room. It's more than my baby, it's part of me," he said.

Pianist Nelson Freire, who will give a solo piano recital on April 27, is usually found performing with the world's great orchestras. His program will include several lively Chopin pieces, works by Debussy, Brahms and Bach, as well as the dancing rhythms of Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos (Freire is also Brazilian).

The series opens Monday, March 9, with the Prazak Quartet, which originated in Prague and performs all over Europe and North America. They have released over 35 award-winning CDs. Their concert will showcase the uniquely rhythmic music of Eastern Europe, with Dvorak and Janacek, as well as an early quartet by Haydn.

On April 13, the young violinist Corey Cerovsek and pianist Paavali Jumppanen will play Janacek, Schubert, Faure and Symanowski. Cerovsek completed his doctoral course work in mathematics and music at age 18. Jumppanen is a pioneer in the field of new music, and has already distinguished himself in new interpretation of established repertoires. Their prodigious talents offer a hopeful glimpse into the future of chamber music.

INFORMATION:

All performances are on Mondays at 7:30 p.m. at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts' Second Stage, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Subscription price (five concerts) is $200, or tickets may be bought separately. For more information, visit www.chambermusicsf.org or www.ci.mtnview.ca.us/mvcpa/mvcpa.html, or call (415) 759-1756 or (650) 903-6000.