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Feature Articles
A Tuesday in the Barn
The Monadnock Ledger
By Dave Eisenstadter
June 25, 2009
The Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music summer concert series is extremely successful despite several details one might consider obstacles. The concert venue is well off the beaten path, on a dirt road in Nelson. The concerts happen on Tuesday nights. And they happen right around the time mosquitoes like to come out.
However, people like myself come back year after year. This is mostly—mostly—because of the incredible quality of the music.
I recently had the opportunity to see a choral work called the “War Requiem” by Benjamin Britten performed by the New York Philharmonic. I say that I had the opportunity because I actually missed most of it.
I fell asleep.
While listening to Apple Hill’s opening concert Tuesday, I could not help but think how impossible that would be listening to their music. The music was exciting, engaging, and beautifully performed literally 10 feet away from me.
In a brief description of the second piece performed, clarinetist Eric Thomas described the piece they were about to play, which was a clarinet quintet by Samuel Coleridge Taylor. I was unfamiliar with the piece and with the composer, but Thomas reassured the 150 of us in the performance barn that it would be amazing, and that the slow movement would be “to die for.”
Instantly, as the first movement started, energy sprouted from each of the instruments. Thomas played an opening theme on the clarinet, supported by violinists Movses Pogossian and Sarah Kim, violist Kate Holzemer, and cellist Greg Hesselink.
Good music defies words, which makes writing about the notes themselves difficult, but I can absolutely say that the sound swept me up right away. The repeated themes allowed my thoughts to dance with one another, and I lost myself in the places where the instruments blended together.
Movements came fast and furious—there were four in all. At all times there was the respectful silence of an entranced audience. There was no coughing and no stirring in the seats despite the fact that it was warm and humid.
At all times, surrounded by the rustic setting of the barn and with chirping birds occasionally adding their sound to the evening’s program, one could not help but think of how in the middle of nowhere this beautiful and professionally played music was being performed. As for myself, all I could think about was how much better a time I was having than in New York.
Musicians moved their bows across strings slowly and gracefully as well as quickly with rigor. Although at times difficult to characterize, there was always the feeling of strong emotion behind the music.
Classical music can be exhausting, but well done performances send the listener on a journey, and elicit a love affair with the piece. During the quintet, there were sad moments, happy ones, a few frightening and several funny ones as well where some of the audience laughed out loud to a well-placed pluck.
The final movement was the most exciting of all, drawing on the experience of the previous three. With the journey almost complete, the stakes are higher. Everyone knows that the piece, however nice, must end. The music seemed its strongest and most passionate, yet the most mature. The clarinet speaks, the violin instigates, the cello grounds, and the viola, the peacemaker, holds it all together.
A final revitalizing burst of energy finishes off the piece. There will be more music. There will be other journeys.
After two rounds of applause, the concertgoers retired for intermission. “That was fun.” And “I love the clarinet,” could be heard among the hearty approval of the crowd.
At the beginning, I said that the concerts are well attended mostly because of the quality of the music. It is also because of the great food ($10 dinner before the show), good company, and the overarching mission of the Apple Hill Center—a place to play music for peace. It is an idea that music is a force that connects even people from places that are at war with one another.
On a Tuesday night during the summer, there are few good excuses to be elsewhere.
For more information, visit www.applehill.org.