Arts & Events

Cellist Tanya Tomkins, fortepianist Eric Zivian with their ten faculty and performing artist colleagues and five apprentices have brought in greater scale to the new Valley of the Moon Music Festival—going into its final weekend—part of what they've been working at creating for years with their Benvenue House Concerts in Berkeley—a more complete environment for performance and enjoyment of chamber works from the Classical and Romantic repertoire—played on period instruments and copies. 

While some orchestras that specialize in period instruments, like the Philhamonia Baroque, play full orchestral compositions on these original instruments that featured gut strings and wood, rather than metal, frames for piano, usually the repertoire is drawn from the Baroque and some Classical repertoire. (Philharmonia has ventured into Romantic orchestral pieces.) As a chamber festival dedicated to this repertoire on original instruments, Valley of the Moon is unique in America. 

And as last Sunday's late afternoon concert at the Hanna Boys Center auditorium west of Sonoma—acoustically satisfying and filled with summer light—proved, the experience of the house concert, a feeling of music and those who make it in situ—has been translated to a 300-seat venue almost seamlessly. 

The All-Schubert program went from his Sonatina for Violin and Fortepiano in A minor, composed when Schubert was 19, in 1817, to his "late" Quintet for Strings in C major (he died at 31, as Tomkins pointed out, never having heard the piece played), which Zivian called one of his candidates for the finest music ever composed, and mentioned how time seems suspended at points in its playing. 

Ian Swenson, accompanied by Zivian on an 1841 wood-framed Rausch piano, played the movingly "dark, melancholy" violin part of the Sonatina with unusual evenness, which emphasized its emotional probity even more. "There might be more temptation to milk it emotionally on a modern instrument," said music writer Jeff Kaliss in conversation at intermission. The different resonance of the period instrument, under Swenson's sure hand, caught its subtle nuances without any show of drama, Zivian's light but decisive touch at the keyboard a perfect compliment. 

The Quintet, led by Vera Beths from the Netherlands, wife of Tomkins' teacher there, led the group with a fine touch on violin, with Augusta McKay Lodge on second violin, Elizabeth Blumenstock—who has been concertmaster for Philharmonia Baroque and the American Bach Soloists—on viola (with great energy!), Tanya Tomkins essaying the deeper lines, sometimes pizzicato, on cello and Laura Gaynon on second cello. 

And there was the other hallmark of the Festival and Tomkins and Zivian's ongoing project: Lodge and Gaynon were two of the apprentices, which as Tomkins explained, would be integrated into the whole life of making the music and the Festival, something she experienced as a young student, living with her teacher's family in the Netherlands."I learned more by living with, playing with musicians than with the most intense private lessons, taken by themselves." 

The Quintet, a familiar piece, in this ensemble's concentrated playing, made good on the promise of the Festival—an unfamiliar, more original complex richness of sound and dynamics than in most recordings and concert performances of memory—a web woven of interlocking themes and harmonies, moving from mood to mood with a rare perfection—and commanding the deep attention of the audience, which gave it an immediate standing ovation. 

With a charming touch during that ovation, Gannon and Lodge alone were presented with bouquets, a nice public recognition of their achievement as young performers. 

The Festival continues Friday (tonight) at 7:30—free!—with an all-apprentice concert at 7:30, featuring Mozart's Quartet for Fortepiano and Strings in G minor, Robert Schumann's Sonata for Violin and Fortepiano in A Minor and Beethoven's String Quartet in E flat major. Saturday at four the program includes Mozart's String Quartet in C major and Quartet for Fortepiano and Strings by Schumann—and on Sunday, Mozart's Sonata for Fortepiano and Violin and Trio in C minor for Strings and Fortepiano by Mendelssohn. The latter two concerts will feature violinists Cynthia Miller Freivogel (of such orchestras as the Amsterdam Baroque orhestra and Philharmonia Baroque), Monica Huggett (co-founder of the Amsterdam baroque Orchestra and founder of London's Sonnerie ensemble) and Kati Kyme (Baroque Philharmonia, American Bach Soloists and Musica Angelica), as well as Tomkins and Zivian. 

Readers of the Daily Planet will receive 10% off by using promotional code VMMF dailyplanet at check-out, ordering ticket at valleyofthemoonmusicfestival.org