Boston Artists Ensemble opens new season with late works by Haydn and Brahms
Brahms wrote the Clarinet Quintet for Richard Mühlfeld, and the work was performed by Boston Artists Ensemble Sunday in Brookline.
It’s not easy coming out of retirement. But when Brahms heard clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld play, he was so inspired that he threw caution to the wind and began composing again. He wrote to Clara Schumann in 1891, “One cannot play the clarinet more beautifully than Herr Mühlfeld.”
As a result, he penned his Clarinet Quintet, completed in the same year, and his final chamber work became one of the genre’s beloved masterworks.
The Boston Artists Ensemble opened its 45th season by taking on Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115, amid pouring rain Sunday afternoon at St. Paul’s Church in Brookline. The quintet was paired with Haydn’s String Quartet in B-flat, Op. 76, no. 4, “Sunrise,” both late works that showed the composers’ mature depth and musical experience.
The roster included violinists Samuel Andonian and Lucia Lin, violist Rebecca Gitter, and cellist, BAE founder and artistic director Jonathan Miller. Christopher Elchico, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s second clarinetist, joined the group.
Haydn’s string quartet gets its nickname from the opening melody in which the first violin climbs over a held chord in the lower strings before the movement breaks into its true Allegro con spirito. From the first bars, the ensemble showed it could handle nuance and work as a unit. The stop-and-start gestures were perfectly timed, and Andonian found a supple touch in the upper line. The ensemble’s technique was clean, almost clinical.
The church acoustic did the musicians few favors in the fast music, where the reverberance tended to blur the runs. The development brought some softening and with it, a more fitting atmosphere for an echoey venue.
Andonian led the Adagio with assurance, his high register cleanly balanced against the lower voices, and bow changes across the ensemble were nearly imperceptible. The Menuetto brought out Haydn’s charm, with Andonian swaying jauntily through its rhythms. The players seemed to relax into the music overall, bringing this dance-like movement energy and witty spontaneity.
For the Brahms, Andonian and Lin traded chairs, and Elchico joined the group. The clarinetist provided the afternoon’s most persuasive voice. In the opening Allegro he moved fluidly through the texture, sometimes crowning it, sometimes doubling a string line, shaping every phrase with sensitivity and lyricism. The movement’s hushed close was beautifully judged.
Miller anchored the group from the cello with steady professionalism, though in moments where Brahms brought the cello to the fore, one occasionally wanted a more forceful presence.
The Adagio opens in a mood close to a funeral march, and here the players found the movement’s gravity. Elchico’s soft playing added exquisite color to the strings’ muted lines.
The Andantino was pastoral and cheerful if a bit undercharacterized. Likewise, the finale could have used more of the con moto in its marking, but the variations gathered momentum as they went, with Elchico and Lin steering the group en route to the soft fade of the final bars.
The Boston Artists Ensemble continues its season with works by Janáček and Beethoven 8 p.m. Friday, November 6 at Hamilton Hall in Salem and 3 p.m. Sunday, November 8 at St. Paul’s Church in Brookline. bostonartistsensemble.org
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