Sedonans were escorted to a “Rendezvous with Benny Goodman” courtesy of Chamber Music Sedona on Sunday, Jan. 12, in a jazz-classical fusion concert featuring the Miró Quartet with regular members Daniel Ching on violin, John Largess on viola and Joshua Gindele on cello, joined by clarinetist David Shifrin. The quartet’s regular second violinist, William Fedkenheuer, was unavailable due to illness in the family, so Aaron Boyd, of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, sat in as a substitute.
Delaying the anticipation of Shifrin’s appearance, the Miró opened with Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 2 in G Major, an early, elegant piece not fully reflective of Beethoven’s mature style, and one built around a starring role for the leader. The first movement reflected the high classicism of the 18th century, managing to be both formal and yet unserious at the same time, with mood shifts between skipping gaiety and broody argumentation, and the sparkling flourishes and short bursts of elaboration required of the first violin were appropriate for Ching’s quivering energy. More thematically integrated than the first movement, the second movement was very well suited to the Miró’s light touch.
A brief burst of energy intruding into the adagio deceptively foreshadowed the scherzo to follow, while the cello echoed some of the first violin’s parts in the slow passages. The scherzo itself erupted with a series of phrases that resembled a quirky question-and-answer session and called for repeated dramatic chords rendered in an intense unison; Ching’s playing was again a contrast to the sedate calm of his colleagues. Marked “quasi presto,” the final movement exhibited more of the color and power usually associated with Beethoven, in combination with a more conversational approach to the interaction of the four instruments. A generally upbeat movement with only occasional interruptions, the Miró rendered it with great fire and a sweeping energy in their climaxes that fittingly capped their brisk tempi throughout.
Shifrin then rendezvoused with the quartet in a mid-century piece by Alan Shulman called “Rendezvous for Clarinet and Strings,” which Shulman, a member of the Stuyvesant Quartet and an advocate of chamber music in a time of American disinterest in the form, had written for the quartet to play with Goodman on a radio broadcast. The quintet flung itself into the space above Manhattan with a wail from the strings that could have been taken from the opening of an Alfred Hitchcock film, and into this the clarinet inserted itself like a spunky kid in a T-shirt and jeans sauntering through Brooklyn, dragging the strings along with it. They slowed him down a bit — as it were, into a contemplation of the turbid waters of the Hudson River in summer as the heat beat down on Robert Moses’ latest expressways — but sped up again as he snapped out of the trance. The juvenile Lenny on a hunt for a hookup? An intriguing and suggestive piece, Shifrin gave it a vivid, pictorial performance.
The augmented quartet next proceeded to deliver the goods on Goodman with three arrangements of his own tunes. “Smooth One” was exactly what one might hear from a small cabaret band on a night out in the heyday of swing, with the cello as a snare drum and lots of pizzicato from the other strings as a background to Shifrin’s incredible liquidity. “How Am I To Know” included appropriately plaintive, alternate leading roles for the violins. More interesting was the “Temptation Rag,” with its infusion of Latin spiciness that had the Miró jumping — and which fans of classic Disney films were sure to recognize as having influenced the Sherman Brothers’ scoring for the scene in “The Sword in the Stone” in which Merlin enchanted the kitchen to finish the Once and Future King’s chores for him. They gave it a foot-stomping performance in which the clarinet flowed seamlessly in and out of the string players’ antics and the audience commented admiringly on Gindele’s bowing.
But where was Wolfgang? Lurking in Goodman’s past, apparently — Gindele pointed out to the audience that one of Goodman’s Mozart recordings was the bestselling record of 1952. In that spirit, the fivesome presented Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major after intermission, the first and fourth movements of which contain some of the composer’s most familiar and moving melodies. Shifrin proved equally talented in handling both the bubbly and the moody moments, in which the solo writing for the clarinet was reminiscent of the work of Franz Anton Hoffmeister, and the Miró produced a sense of intimacy in their interpretation. The second movement, marked larghetto, began with Shifrin drawing long, pure notes over the gentle background provided by the strings, more cantabile than larghetto, handing ideas back and forth with Ching, whose speed and smoothness in fingering was very similar to Shifrin’s own approach.
The gentleness of the second movement carried over into the minuet, at least at first, but that feeling didn’t last. A potpourri movement of assorted thoughts, the third demanded a soft touch that the quartet was most capable of providing. In contrast, the fourth movement, an allegro with variations, returned once more to the familiar and comfortable. The quartet took it gently, never rushing, with Shifrin setting a moderate pace. At times the clarinet’s role was so prominent as to almost obscure the details of the string playing, and retrieved the situation irrepressibly when the composer’s mood threatened to become too somber. The Miró’s rendering emphasized the variations’ highlights rather than their shadows, with their playing and coordination becoming so seductive as to invite their listeners to breathe in time with them. Mozart’s mind was certainly at its most playful when writing the first and fourth movements. The Shifrin-Miró combination then rounded off the evening with a rousing cabaret-style encore of Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing” that had the crowd swinging in their seats.
