PACIFICA OVERTURES

posted by James Reel

    At the beginning of last night’s Arizona Friends of Chamber Music concert, I did an onstage interview with Dmitri Tymoczko, whose brand new Eggman Variations for piano and strings would be premiered a few minutes later. Then I jogged back to the green room to alert the Pacifica Quartet that it was showtime. Before they’d go out, though, first violinist Simin Ganatra asked if I could follow them on and close the piano lid; she didn’t want it reflecting the group’s sound in strange ways while they played the concert’s opening work, a Mendelssohn quartet.
    That’s the first time in years a woman has had to ask me to put the lid down.
    Because I help run the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, anything positive I say about the concert will be suspect. Despite my vested interest in the organization, though, I must tell you that the Pacifica’s performance of Mendelssohn’s Op. 12 quartet was superb, the best-balanced, most emotive yet not overdone performance I’ve ever heard. It even surpassed their excellent recording, released last year and reviewed by me in an issue of Fanfare that for some reason doesn’t have its feature articles online. (Yeah, I know, I’m also Fanfare’s webmaster, but I have no control over the archive part of the site.)
    The group’s performance with pianist Ursula Oppens of Tymoczko’s Eggman Variations (it’s a reference to the Beatles song “I Am the Walrus”) was also good and focused, although I think there were a couple of brief moments of imprecision in what sounds to be a very tricky score. The work went over surprisingly well; surprising, because the writing is quite pointillistic, and in new music our audience tends to prefer pieces with interesting, strong rhythm rather than complex texture. But the folks always respond enthusiastically to any performance with the requisite commitment and intensity, and those qualities certainly came across last night. I regret missing the Pacifica’s performance of Beethoven’s Op. 132 after intermission, but … early to bed and early to rise.