It could not have been a mere fluke. Surely a year and a half ago, while crafting his 2014-15 program, Camerata Pacifica artistic director Adrian Spence was consulting an astrologer when he happened upon the peculiar coincidence of 2015’s vernal equinox with the new moon. This was not any new moon, mind you, but one that would cast the shadow of a total solar eclipse over all of Europe, North Africa, and Northern Asia. And so was conceived last week’s splendid program of night-inspired and night-associated music. Included were popular wonders like Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14, which acquired its association with moonlight only after his death, and Debussy’s Clair de lune (“light of the moon”), as well as works by American composer Arthur Foote and Irishman John Field. Like the sun emerging from eclipse, the program ended with a blazing performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s unusual sextet, Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”).
A nocturne is a romantic or fantastic — though sometimes gloomy — work, usually in one movement. Just as a night stroll liberates the mind from the hard edges that define the visual day, so the nocturne is a refuge of liberty, informality, and intimacy. This feeling was apparent from the start of Friday’s concert, with a wonderful pairing of lesser-known quintets. Arthur Foote’s flute quintet Nocturne & Scherzo opened with the flute (played by Spence) leading a series of plaintive statements, the strings filled in each time with murmurs and echoes. The Camerata Pacifica musicians moved together beautifully, communicating the undulating, almost swirling sensation that Foote’s Nocturne magically suggests. First violin then took over for the flute, and the audience was treated to the bright tone and lyricism of Camerata newcomer Kristin Lee. The Korean-American musician was honored just two days earlier in New York City with an Avery Fisher Career Grant, an annual award given, under the auspices of Lincoln Center, to promising American classical musicians. In a delicious coup for Camerata Pacifica, violinist Paul Huang (who was not playing at this concert) was also among the five winners this year. That was a “40% representation for Camerata Pacifica,” crowed Spence in his comments from the stage. Spence and Lee shared the stage with Camerata familiars Richard Yongjae O’Neill, viola, Ani Aznavoorian, cello, and Erik Arvinder, violin — who debuted with the chamber ensemble last season.
No program of nocturnes would be complete without a work by John Field. The Irish pianist and composer influenced great pianist-composers like Frédéric Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, and Franz Liszt, and has been labeled “the father of the nocturne.” Liszt himself published an edition of Field’s nocturnes, introduced with airy praise for the Irish composer’s twilight imagination: “None have quite attained to these vague Aeolian harmonies, these half-formed sighs floating through the air, softly lamenting and dissolved in delicious melancholy.” Two more Camerata newcomers took the stage: pianist Gloria Chien and cellist Ole Akahoshi, who joined Lee, Arvinder and O’Neill for Field’s Piano Quintet in A-Flat Major.