“the rarities glittered like jewels”  more... 

Fred Kirshnit, The New York Sun, July 16, 2008

“At Jupiter... the familiar receives a rare treatment. One of the most powerful concerts that I have ever experienced was their September 11, 2001, memorial, which featured a complete performance of the Mozart Requiem”  more... 

Fred Kirshnit, The New York Sun, April 30, 2008

“Sweets not withstanding, the real nourishment at Good Shepherd-Faith was the music. The Jupiter players do afternoon and evening concerts on 20 Mondays a year, and in tribute to Jens Nygaard, who founded the Jupiter Symphony in 1979 and died in 2001, they offer both familiar and nonstandard repertory. This year’s brochure lists August Klughardt, Bernhard Henrik Crusell, Woldemar Bargiel and other barely known composers alongside Tchaikovsky and Schumann. Most major classical organizations shy away from such material, fearing it will intimidate listeners, but for Mei Ying…manager of the Jupiter, it can engage them even further.”  more... 

Ben Sisario, The New York Times, January 18, 2008

Fred Kirshnit, The New York Sun, January 9, 2008

Joanne Moryl, Heritage Villager, Friday, June 1, 2007

Fred Kirshnit, The New York Sun, November 24, 2006

Fred Kirshnit, The New York Sun, September 27, 2006

Andrew Farach-Colton, The Strad, June, 2006

“If we chart on a graph musical quality versus ticket price, few venues in town could match this one.”  more...

Fred Kirshnit, The New York Sun, March 29, 2006

“When an entire neighborhood was leveled to make room for Lincoln Center, this church was the only building to survive. Now, 45 years on, it houses musical performances that are the legitimate rival of the colossus all around it.” 

Fred Kirshnit, The New York Sun, February 8, 2006

Adam Baer, The New York Sun, December 4, 2002

Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, January 26, 2002

The New York Sun
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Rare Jewels From the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players
By Fred Kirshnit

If you Google the composer Vincenzo Gambaro, the search engine attempts to redirect you to Vincenzo Gambino, a Milanese doctor who has apparently discovered a miraculous cure for baldness. This gambit is understandable, as there is considerable doubt about the existence of Gambaro. His chimerical qualities, however, have not deterred the intrepid explorers of the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, who presented his Quatuor Concertant for Four Winds as part of an excellent concert at the Church For All Nations on Monday evening.

Every summer, the players abandon their digs at the Church of the Good Shepherd, the only survivor of the renovation that created Lincoln Center, and hit the road for an air-conditioned environment. This season, the venue is three blocks west of Carnegie Hall.

So who is Vincenzo Gambaro? Is he a P.D.Q. Bach character, an invention, a fiction? The best historical guess is that he is the nom de plume of clarinetist and composer Giovanni Battista Gambaro, an Italian living in Paris in the early 19th century, whose specialties included a lot of music for military bands. Judging from this example, his music is lively, fresh, brash, and appealing.

The quartet (Barry Crawford, flute, Vadim Lando, clarinet, Karl Kramer-Johansen, horn, and Gina Cuffari, bassoon) was especially adept at bringing out the élan vital and, even more challenging, the humor of this piece. Good spirit abounded and interplay was remarkably precise. As a companion piece, the group — minus the horn — presented another rollicking work for winds, the Trio in G Major, Op. 47, No. 2 by Ignace Pleyel, a very well-known figure in Paris — the newly refurbished Salle Pleyel is roughly the equivalent of our Carnegie Hall — but certainly underplayed in America.

What do Bela Bartok, Zoltan Kodaly, Ernst von Dohnanyi, Leo Weiner, and Emmerich Kalman have in common? They all had the same composition teacher, a German named Hans Koessler who held sway at what is now called the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. The featured work of the evening was his String Sextet in F Minor.

Written in 1902, this piece of dripping Romanticism is really a full symphony for chamber group. The ensemble (Misha Keylin and Lisa Shihoten, violins, Robert Meyer and Kathryn Lockwood, violas, and Ani Aznavoorian and Caroline Stinson, cellos) presented it with an expansive sense of scope, big gestures, and superb blending. Every player had an opportunity to shine, as Koessler occasionally gives the melody to the second viola and thematic introductions to the second violin. A cousin of Max Reger, Koessler sometimes emulates his relative’s thick chamber textures, but the composer who kept coming to mind was the Arnold Schoenberg of “Transfigured Night,” realized just three years earlier in 1899. True, Koessler colors only inside the lines, but his sense of the febrile and his expertise in sonority elevates this piece to significant heights. Every now and then, a rarity in concert can inspire further study. I would certainly want to experience more of Koessler after hearing such a white-hot reading.

The familiar was also represented with a lovely flute quintet of Boccherini and the Adagio and Menuetto in B Flat Major, K. 266 of Mozart. The former was sprightly and warm, but the latter suffered from too quick a tempo. The Adagio was hurried to the point of a loss of elasticity, as if it were a tossed off middle section in a Baroque piece rather than a profound standalone work of Mozart, while the dance was hardly danceable at this advanced rate of speed. But this night, the rarities glittered like jewels.

The New York Sun
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Franz Berwald Gets His Due
By Fred Kirshnit

Who is the most unjustly neglected composer? A strong case can be made for Franz Berwald, whose Septet was performed this week at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church by members of the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players. Berwald wrote four magnificent symphonies in the 1840s that were the equals of those by his contemporaries Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann, but his being Swedish left him out of the loop of German hegemony in musical matters.

The parallel career in American music is Charles Ives's. Toiling in obscurity, both men wrote masterpieces that became increasingly radical as they got older. Both men were disappointed to hear so few performances of their works in their lifetimes. Both settled on careers in business. But Berwald, lacking the financial acumen of Ives, lost much more money than he made. Although he was praised by Franz Liszt as a card-carrying member of the "music of the future" crowd, Berwald lacked a champion. Ives had, albeit posthumously, an ardent advocate in Leonard Bernstein; no maestro has taken the same trouble with Berwald.

Fortuitously, groups such as the Jupiter still spend their precious time unearthing treasures like this charming chamber work. A relatively youthful endeavor, not as revolutionary as the later symphonies, it nonetheless is a major work of early Romanticism. Several of these musicians are former first-chair players from the groundbreaking and courageous Jupiter Symphony, created and led by Jens Nygaard. They have devoted much to the cause of musical archaeology.

The Septet is scored for strings and winds and has a remarkable bottom highlighted by bassoon and double bass. From the first chord it was clear that this was a rich sonic universe with considerable reverberation. Positively symphonic in its heft, it creates a naturalistic landscape through which pass noble and jolly melodies. Had this same piece been presented as the work of, say, the German Louis Spohr, it would undoubtedly have had more of a continuous performance history.

At Jupiter - or is it on Jupiter? - the familiar receives a rare treatment. One of the most powerful concerts that I have ever experienced was their September 11, 2001, memorial, which featured a complete performance of the Mozart Requiem, except that the group chose the string quartet version sans chorus. This current concert featured Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 11 in F major, but instead of a chamber orchestra, the Jupiterians accompanied pianist Seymour Lipkin with a string quartet augmented in key spots by double bass. The result was illuminating, what Ives would have called "not for the lily-eared."

Mr. Lipkin is a superb practitioner who has at least as distinguished a career as a pedagogue than as an artist. He calls to mind Rudolf Serkin, clear and focused, steadfast in rhythm and meter, gentle but eloquent of touch. The unusual backup group allowed the piano to be that much crisper in tone, the sound complimentary but distinct. There was one moment in the opening Allegro where the soloist and the ensemble were not exactly together. The delineation of line in this version was so distinct that this minor peccadillo was magnified a bit. But the compensation for the listener was an overall performance of remarkable clarity.

On the unfamiliar scale, Franz Anton Hoffmeister is probably about an eight, known more to readers of musical biographies than to actual listeners. The group offered his lovely Trio in D for flute, cello, and piano. But Anselm Huttenbrenner is definitely a ten, and judging by his thick, dark, and mysterious String Quintet in C minor, he does not deserve such obscure status. With excellent performances like this one, perhaps his champion will emerge from the landscape of Jupiter.

The New York Times
Friday, January 18, 2008
A Joyful Noise: Midday Music
By Ben Sisario

I HAD never seen anyone walk through a church so fast.

It was 2:42 on a Monday afternoon, and the last sweet note of a piece by the obscure 18th-century composer Amédée Rasetti had just rung out in the Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church near Lincoln Center. Almost as soon as the applause began, audience members began darting to one corner of the room, and it took a moment to see what everybody was after: doughnut holes!

My stomach had rumbled a bit through the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players’ lunchtime reading of the Rasetti piece, a lighthearted, Mozartean trio for piano, bassoon and flute. So I queued up and got my snack of tea and Munchkins, which really hit the spot.

The evening performance is the standard event in the classical calendar, when moneyed patrons patronize, premieres get their premieres, and reviewers review. But an equal, if humbler, part of the musical landscape is the weekday afternoon recital, when artists take to churches, corporate atriums and even big concert halls to play for lunching workers, retirees and all other daytime music lovers. And with tickets to evening events at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center typically exceeding $30, noontime shows have another attraction: They’re usually much cheaper, if not free.

In sheer range and quality these events rival their evening counterparts. Over two weeks of daytime concerts, I was entertained in some of the most beautiful houses of worship in New York by world-class professional musicians; saw the New York Philharmonic with the pleasant buzz of my morning coffee still lingering; and dodged palm trees and 9-to-5ers as part of a music-theater performance at the World Financial Center downtown.

Sweets not withstanding, the real nourishment at Good Shepherd-Faith was the music. The Jupiter players do afternoon and evening concerts on 20 Mondays a year, and in tribute to Jens Nygaard, who founded the Jupiter Symphony in 1979 and died in 2001, they offer both familiar and nonstandard repertory. This year’s brochure lists August Klughardt, Bernhard Henrik Crusell, Woldemar Bargiel and other barely known composers alongside Tchaikovsky and Schumann.

Most major classical organizations shy away from such material, fearing it will intimidate listeners, but for Mei Ying…manager of the Jupiter, it can engage them even further.

“I look at it as Music Appreciation 101,” she said. “Brahms, who is so huge to us today, has overshadowed so many wonderful composers that also worked in his time and were his friends and colleagues, people like Friedrich Gernsheim and Anselm Hüttenbrenner. We’ve done their pieces, and the audience gets to see not only that Brahms is alive, but that there were other people in his time who are alive.”

…American Express, Merrill Lynch and Brookfield Properties sponsor an extensive series at the World Financial Center…. Informal contexts like this have a higher threshold for noise than do formal concert halls. Inside the gorgeous Central Synagogue on Lexington Avenue…I was barely fazed by the honks and screeches coming in from the street. Sacred or profane, it all just seemed a part of the city.

At the same time, daytime concertgoers can be the best behaved of all. At Good Shepherd-Faith, where the Jupiter clientele is mostly retirees, all sat in rapt silence once the music began. I have never witnessed such decorum even at the Metropolitan Opera, where tickets cost up to 15 times as much.

At first I thought people might have fallen asleep, something I’ve seen plenty of times at the Met. (And at the Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall.) But every eye was focused on the musicians and every face was lost in thought. They were all there for the most important part of their day, the music. The free snacks were just the icing on the doughnut hole.

The New York Sun
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Both Sides of the Story
By Fred Kirshnit

The Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players would be a welcome addition to the New York music scene regardless of repertoire because of the consistently high quality of their presentations. But what makes them a particular treat is that they tend to concentrate on rarities. On Monday at the Good Shepherd Church, the team offered that most rare of rarities, a popular work re-created in its original version.

Igor Stravinsky composed “L’histoire du soldat” for whatever instruments he could muster in Switzerland during the Great War. Like Olivier Messiaens “Quartet for the End of Time,” written in prison camp during the next war to end all wars, the work is spare by design, partly due to the paucity of timbral choices at its creation but, more significantly, as an acoustical metaphor for brutality. Both works are concerned with the end of the world, Messiaen’s being inspiringly hopeful, due to his deep Catholic faith, and Stravinsky’s fatalistic with more than a touch of gallows humor.

Like Ravel’s Bolero, “L’histoire” was envisioned to include dancers, but how often is it ever performed that way? Jupiter factotum Mei Ying explained in her opening remarks that her musicians insisted on performing the piece respecting the wishes of the composer, and so she hired choreographer Takehiro Ueyama to dance with a partner, Jill Echo. I would not presume to judge the quality of this terpsichorean endeavor but, as a naïf, I found it fascinating, combining a smooth grace with impressive athleticism and contrasting fluid movement with marionette-like motions reminiscent of other of Stravinsky’s efforts. What I can state with confidence is how the inclusion of the dancing altered the audience’s perception of the music. Those of us who know it only from the suite have no sense of how the paroxysms of instrumental color truly shine when accompanying live kinesis.

The narrator can function alone or as one of a trio of thespians. Here, Thomas Buckner did a fine job of creating three distinct voices — four, really, as the devil alters his speech when in disguise. He tended to speak in pitch when the instrumental music was martial, but was often inaudible in the louder passages, a problem ameliorated by the issuance of the text in the program. As a total experience, these players created an engaging piece of theater.

The music itself was well played, with two of the instrumentalists deserving special mention. Vadim Lando is an exceptional clarinetist and handled his solos extremely expressively. Violinist Ilya Kaler is steeped in the Russian tradition and was suitably sardonic in his passagework, varying his tone when the soldier was playing and when Old Nick had his turn.

The work had its premiere under the great conductor Ernest Ansermet, but modern performances often miss a good bet by attempting to communicate without a leader. Just as the Berlin Philharmonic players did earlier this season, the Jupiterians dispensed with a guiding hand. Trumpeter Louis Hanzlik — a Brahmsian, no doubt — had some problems with articulation at the opening of the Royal March but made a quick recovery. Overall, this was solid playing, but not as tight as the Berliners had been just two months ago.

Bassoonist Frank Morelli anchored the rhythm section and was also featured in the first half of the program, performing in the delightful “London” Trio of Franz Joseph Haydn for flute, violin, and his instrument, and enjoying himself immensely in a circus-style pastiche by Amadeo Rasetti, the Trio for Piano, Flute and Bassoon from 1799.

This must be the year for “L’histoire du soldat” in New York, as Alan Alda will be directing it at the 92nd Street Y in April. Even a Stravinsky hater like me can appreciate its infectious rhythms and colorful writing.

The New York Sun
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Rarities From Jupiter
By Fred Kirshnit

The Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players inaugurated their summer season on Monday evening at the St. James’ Church with a jaunty quartet by Conradin Kreutzer, one of two rarities on display.

The group is a living tribute to the memory of Jens Nygaard, the quixotic and heroic founder of the full-sized Jupiter Symphony and a frontline warrior against the scourge of philistinism on the New York music scene. Mr. Nygaard held his musicians and his audience to the highest of standards and never allowed the sensationalism of userunfriendly contemporary music to darken his door. Instead, he resurrected deserving pieces from the past.

The East Hall of the church is oddly shaped for musical performance, being much wider than it is deep, a little like Orchestra Hall in Chicago. The sound is clear, if not warm, for a small ensemble and the visual impact of a dozen Louis Comfort Tiffany illuminated panels is striking. A foursome led by former Jupiter principal clarinet, Vadim Lando, traversed Kreutzer’s Quartet in E flat major.

This was a rollicking rendition, notable for crisp rhythm and good humor. Especially intriguing was the middle Andante grazioso, with the woodwind line punctuated by the strumming alla Italienne of the viola.

More interesting and a shade better performed was the Fantasia concertante Op. 256 of Carl Czerny. Known as a pedagogue and the author of those torturous finger exercises for the piano, Czerny was a fine composer, and was the subject of a recent evening by the American Symphony Orchestra. Barry Crawford was the flutist for this dramatic work of Lisztian proportions. He and his mates navigated the crazyquilt of emotions expertly, one minute tragic, the next a harlequinade of slapstick humor. Pianist Inga Kapouler caught the spirit of exaggeration for effect with impressive result.

Less satisfying, however, was Mozart’s Trio No. 4 in E major, K. 542. Here Ms. Kapouler had a rough outing, losing rhythmic flow on several occasions and never quite finding the smooth phrasing necessary for this seemingly simple yet fiendishly difficult keyboard part. Violinist Xiao-Dong Wang, also a regular in the brilliant chamber group Concertante, was uncharacteristically hesitant in his phrasing and disappointingly uneven in his normally excellent singing line. Cellist Ani Aznavoorian provided steady grounding throughout.

But a bit of a mixed bag before intermission led to a rousing finish as the string players, now including Lisa Shihoten, violin, and Dov Scheindlin and Eric Nowlin, violas, jelled nicely in Antonín Dvorÿák's mighty Quintet in E Flat Major, sometimes known as the viola quintet because of the addition of a second alto instrument. Here all was well. Mr. Wang was in beautiful voice, his long violin line eloquent. The dyad violists, with a little help from the cello, weaved a diaphanous magical spell, especially in the achingly exquisite Larghetto, generally considered the greatest movement in all of the Bohemian master’s prodigious output.

Heritage Villager
Friday, June 1, 2007
Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players Presented a Flawless Concert
By Joanne Moryl

Vadim Lando clarinet
Roman Rabinovich piano
Dmitry Berlinsky violin
Lisa Shihoten violin
Dov Scheindlin viola
Bronwyn Banerdt cello

On Sunday, May 20, Heritage Villagers and friends were treated to a world-class performance by the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, a remarkably accomplished group of musicians! They opened the program with the Overture on Hebrew Themes, a little-known work by Sergei Prokofiev that consisted of Jewish folk melodies and rhythms woven together into an interesting and highly evocative piece. The audience really liked it, and it was the perfect beginning of a flawless concert. Next came the Mozart Clarinet Quintet in A Major, understandably one of his most beloved works. Over years of concert going one has occasion to hear this piece many times, but never has this reviewer heard it played more beautifully. All the tenderness and melodic sweetness were brought forth with technical and musical perfection – especially in the clarinet, where there was a mellowness of tone and a sensitivity to phrase that are rare, and that cause one to think: “Yes! That is the way Mozart must have meant it.” The players were in complete accord with the music and with each other.

The New York Sun
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Topping a Trio of Youthful Works
By Fred Kirshnit

By a fortuitous coincidence, the rich tapestry of concert life in New York offered three concerts in three days that each presented the work of an 18-year-old composer — and none of them was Mozart. On Saturday, the Waterville Trio played Chopin; on Sunday, the Cassatt Quartet followed with Ernst von Dohnanyi, and on Monday, the excellent Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players trumped everyone — twice — with the Piano Trio in G Major of the young Claude Debussy.

The New York Sun
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Improving on History
By Fred Kirshnit

In an inspired bit of programming, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players presented a concert Monday at the Good Shepherd Church that featured not only the trio inspired by a famous Austrian archduke but also a trio written by the man himself. The man in question? Not Franz Ferdinand, but rather the most famous archduke in music history, Rudolph von Habsburg, brother of the emperor of Austria.

Of course, no composer ever said a bad word in public about his patron, but Beethoven appears to have genuinely loved Habsburg, keeping him on as a student for many years. The Piano Trio in B Flat Major, affectionately known as the Archduke, is not even the greatest piece of music dedicated to the man, since Beethoven named him as the honoree for both his fourth and fifth piano concertos. Further, it was Habsburg’s elevation to bishop once he decided to take holy orders — it was good to be born noble in those days — that engendered the writing of the great, but now virtually forgotten in live performance, Missa Solemnis. Habsburg reciprocated by setting up a monetary fund for Beethoven, the only condition of which was that the composer remain in Vienna to reap its rewards.

Clarinetist Vadim Lando, cellist Ani Aznavoorian, and pianist Ilya Itin presented the Trio in E Flat Major written by the aristocrat in 1813. It turned out to be an inventive, ebullient piece, more evocative of Schubert than of Beethoven. The Allegro moderato is gently rocking in that signature Viennese way, the middle Larghetto begins like a hymn and proceeds into a lively set of variations, and the Scherzo is light and airy. Full of melodic freshness, the work entertains, if not inspires, and certainly is the equal of thousands of other efforts of the period.

Monday’s performance was smooth and argued convincingly for its inclusion into the repertoire. It was also likely much more successful than the historical performance Mr. Lando discussed: Beethoven himself was at the keyboard then, but was, by the time in question, stone-cold deaf. His lowered tones were inaudible, his fortes clangorous. Mr. Itin was decidedly more in control.

When I read on the schedule that this soiree would also include a work by Foerster, I assumed this was Joseph Bohuslav Foerster, the significant Bohemian composer of opera and a friend of Gustav Mahler in Vienna. In actuality, though, the Foerster in question was the obscure composer Emanuel Aloys Foerster, a mentor and friend to Beethoven and a prolific producer of chamber music, with 48 string quartets to his credit. The work presented Monday was the String Quintet in C Minor, and it proved to be an essay of substance. Ms. Aznavoorian was joined by violinists Dmitri Berlinsky and Lisa Shihoten, as well as violists Max Mandel and Eric Nowlin. I was especially taken with the gravitas of the work, which was splendidly displayed by this well-blended ensemble. The musicians’ virtually flawless playing made me yearn to hear more of this shadowy figure of the past, whom Beethoven referred to as his “master.”

Finally the “Archduke” itself. Arguably the finest trio for violin, cello, and piano ever written, it begins marvelously and expansively with an unforgettable, glorious melody that immediately establishes its nobility. This broad stroke sets the tone for the entire piece, a monumental work of larger-than-life architecture in which thoughts develop organically and unhurriedly. The players, including Mr. Berlinsky as the fiddler, were true to this big gesture style, notably in the apple-cheeked Scherzo. Ms. Aznavoorian was particularly spirited in the pizzicato section, singing out the optimistic melody with a good deal of brio.

The New York Sun
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
A Winning Concert Despite Competing Sounds
By Jay Nordlinger

At the beginning of Monday afternoon’s concert by the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, an interesting problem arose. Workers outside the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church, home of the Players, would not cease until 2:15; the concert was starting at 2. Mei Ying, who runs this series (splendidly), told the audience that she had had a conversation with the workers: They said it would cost $5,000 for them to stop. She also consulted with her musicians, who said, “Let’s start on time anyway.”

As usual, said Mei Ying, the union “Goliath” could not be fought. (She was referring to the workers, not to the musicians!) And, for that quarter-hour, string players competed with construction sounds — usually winning.

It was a winning concert, too. The program offered some rarities, including by canonical composers, and some familiar, cherished works as well.

We started with a piece by Rossini, written when he was about 12. This is a sonata for two violins, cello, and double bass (a kind of string quartet). It was nice to hear a work by Rossini outside opera — although his last movement, marked Tempesta, sounds like one of his madcap opera scenes. The movement ends calmly, however, the “tempesta” evidently having subsided.

The Jupiter foursome played well, with an unusually rich, darkish sound. (Perhaps the church’s acoustics had something to do with this.) There was some scary intonation, but it was shortlived. And, in that tempest, the players were wonderfully agile.

We next heard a vocal work by Schubert, his Salve Regina, D. 676. It was good to have some little-known Schubert — even if this is not an immortal piece.

The soprano soloist was Christine Goerke, who has been heard at the Metropolitan Opera and other major houses around the globe. Readers may remember particularly her Donna Elvira (in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”) and her Madame Lidoine (in Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites”). But she is singing ever more Strauss and Wagner, and seems set to become a Wagnerian.

She was not her best self in the Schubert: Entrances and onsets were messy, and her sound was pillowy. Moreover, she fought the flats (and not too successfully). But that is still a lush carpet of a voice, and she would sing far better later in the afternoon.

Following the Schubert, we heard some Beethoven, his Wind Sextet in E flat, written when he was about 16. It is an excellent piece, with a beautiful Adagio and a masculine — you might even say macho — minuet. Go figure.

The piece was played by a crack team, too: not that they cracked. Horns and all others were well-behaved. A bassoonist, Gina Cuffari, showed a fine sense of phrasing in the Adagio. And you might appreciate a biographical fact about the second bassoonist, Adrian Morejon: In addition to his bassoon credentials, he has a diploma in harpsichord performance from the Curtis Institute. Beat that.

After intermission, we had a piece by Ernesto Cavallini, who, as Charles Neidich explained, was known as “the Paganini of the Clarinet.” Cavallini lived from 1807 to 1874.

And who is Charles Neidich? He, too, is a Paganini of the clarinet. He played Cavallini’s Adagio and Variations, and did so brilliantly. He was all facility and savoir-faire — tons of fun, too. He reminded me of an especially good Rossini soprano, or mezzo-soprano. And, when he was through, the crowd cheered for him as for a diva.

I felt a bit sorry for Christine Goerke, who had to follow that display — but she came through beautifully. She sang one of Wagner’s “Wesendonck Lieder,” the most popular and transporting, “Träume.” The composer wrote it in preparation for “Tristan und Isolde”; perhaps Ms. Goerke is singing it in preparation for that opera as well. She was backed up by a small chamber army, including a flute, a string quartet, those bassoons — everything the Jupiter Players had.

And she sang “Träume” marvelously, at a proper pace, and with a sure sense of legato: A legato in a dramatic soprano is a very attractive thing.

When the song was concluded, the audience would not quite clap. Maybe it was transfixed (as Wagner can do to you); maybe it just didn’t know the song had ended. Ms. Goerke smiled and laughed, and, before she sang the next piece — the last work on the program — she said, “I promise you’ll know when this one’s over.”

That final piece was Beethoven’s “Ah, perfido,” the composer’s bestknown work for voice (along with dear “Adelaide”). (No fair counting “Fidelio” or the Ninth Symphony.) This is a great, great concert aria, and Ms. Goerke rocked the house — rocked the church — with it. She was incisive and dramatic, lyrical and sensitive, correct and glorious. She showed a juicy mezzo range, with a very strong low B flat — to go with impressive high ones.

And she was right: We knew, for sure, when the piece was over.

The New York Sun
Friday, November 24, 2006
Obscure Works in Excellent Form
By Fred Kirshnit

In 1818, when 9-year-old Frederic Chopin made his debut in Vienna, the work he performed was a piano concerto by Adalbert Gyrowetz. This was not the last time a piece by this obscure composer was performed, but it is difficult to find any recent presentations of his music before the one on Monday by the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players at the Good Shepherd Church.

Gyrowetz was a friend of Mozart but not his student, even though he did compose a ballet titled “The Marriage of Figaro.” He serves rather as an interesting example of the path many composers other than Beethoven took as heirs and epigones of Haydn.

The work this day was the Flute Quartet in D Major, Op 11. No. 1. Written in 1795, it could easily be presented as a mature composition by Haydn — the way Fritz Kreisler used to regularly unveil new discoveries of solo violin music by such composers as Vivaldi and Tartini that in actuality he wrote himself — and not one member of any audience would be the wiser.

Flute music plays a prominent role in Jupiter concerts because one of the group’s most active members is Barry Crawford, former principal of the now defunct Jupiter Symphony full ensemble. A bit of a musical archaeologist, Mr. Crawford consistently shares these mined treasures and always performs them with steely accuracy and a superb singing tone. Joined by violinist Misha Keylin, violist Max Mandel, and cellist Ani Aznavoorian, Mr. Crawford led a lively account that was not only well blended but allowed each individual voice to enunciate clearly. Mr. Mandel was extremely animated in the final rondo.

Franz Krommer, or if you prefer, Frantisek Kramár was a Moravian composer with a decided kinship to the American Moravian string quartet movement. He composed more than 70 of these pieces and, parenthetically, would have been none too pleased with the Jupiter’s title of “Bohemian Brothers” for this concert (perhaps they meant “unconventional”).

Mr. Crawford’s counterpart at these proceedings is the fine clarinetist Vadim Lando. Also a former Jupiterian under conductor Jens Nygaard, Mr. Lando is an intrepid explorer, who sometimes even reconstructs obscure repertoire for his instrument when the printed music is no longer available. In this case, he had a rich literature from which to choose the Clarinet Quartet Op. 82, and he mentioned in his opening remarks that he will advocate for the players to begin to offer some of Krommer’s string quartets.

In his day, Krommer was considered by many the equal of Beethoven, and it only took a few seconds once this piece began to hear the difference between his profound sense of harmonic color and Gyrowetz’s more monochromatic approach. This was a revelatory performance, one that made me want to plunge into the Krommer catalog myself. Of special note was the rollicking Menuetto allegretto third movement.

Of course, not every piece on a Jupiter program is obscure — this afternoon the group presented one of the towering works of the chamber repertoire, Antonin Dvorak’s Piano Trio in F minor. Some say this is the finest work of chamber music since Beethoven’s. This might be hyperbole, especially considering that it is modeled so closely on the trios of Brahms that are its superior, but there is no question it is an extremely powerful and gripping essay. In fact, the work is so majestic it needs an especially intense sonic combination, muscular and lavish, gritty and yet lovely, to pull it off. Unfortunately, this was not in the cards on this particular program.

Pianist William Wolfram anchored this reading with Mr. Keylin and Ms. Aznavoorian in tow and did a creditable job, but never achieved that degree of strength and confidence necessary to elevate this rendition to a higher level. One concern was his rather narrow scope of dynamics, his decision to keep his volume level rather uniform leading to a lack of interpretive coloration. Also a bit robotic in touch, he neither intrigued nor captivated his listeners. The strings were also adequate and remarkably accurate, but there was a decided deflation of tone that ultimately rendered this realization a bit monotonous. Still, it is such a great work that the crowd rewarded it with a hearty ovation.

Speaking of that crowd, one of the most telling pieces of evidence about the overall excellence of the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players is that the audience is virtually identical every week. Those in the know just keep coming back.

The New York Sun
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
An Evening of Scandinavian Sound
By Fred Kirshnit

The Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, the creation and legacy of Jens Nygaard, who passed away in 2001, presented their latest program Monday at the Good Shepherd Church.

I admired Nygaard for a number of reasons, but two come immediately to mind. First, he was an advocate, as am I, of the Scot musicologist Donald Francis Tovey. Second, how can you not love a guy who stops his forces during a rehearsal of the Beethoven Five to exclaim, “Save the pretty playing for Juilliard!”

Nygaard was American but of Danish ancestry. One would think that he would have approved of the all-Scandinavian concert that his colleagues gave this week (though the concert actually began with the work of a Germanic composer).

Former principal flutist Barry Crawford led a lively account of Joseph Martin Kraus’s Quintet in D Major, Op. 7. Kraus was a contemporary of Mozart and adopted his insouciant style for the outer movements of this piece. The string quartet — Misha Keylin and Annaliesa Place, violins; Max Mandel, viola, and Andrey Tchekmazov, cello — was well blended and accurate. The Largo was beautiful, filled with flowing, long legato lines. There is a seemingly endless stream of these flute gems from the Viennese Classical era, and Mr. Crawford is doing his best to present them all.

Clarinetist Vadim Lando, hornist Karl Kramer-Johansen, and bassist Joseph Bongiorno joined the quintet for a performance of the septet version of En Saga by Jean Sibelius. Those readers who have already had their morning coffee will notice that it took eight people to play this septet. Why? Because Mr. Kramer-Johansen, the Scandinavian in the group, felt this arrangement by Gregory Barrett could use augmentation.

I have loved En Saga in its massive orchestral form since childhood, but I am an instant convert to the chamber version as a result of this performance. There is considerable evidence that Sibelius originally envisioned En Saga for some combination of small groups of winds and strings. When this composition was complete, however, it was already fully fleshed out for orchestra. This chamber version is superior primarily because of timbral combinations. Colors are more vivid in solo wind parts, while the landscape is incredibly stark.

In fact, the spare instrumentation magnifies exponentially Sibelius’s signature atavistic feel. This was fantasy writing at its most affecting. Every sonic combination was a new shock. This was the best performance of any work I have encountered thus far this season.

The other work on the program was obscure Norwegian composer Christian Sinding’s Piano Quintet, Op. 5, his first successful composition. Pianist Yung Wook Yoo led the string quartet through this massive work. He has a gigantic keyboard voice, too large and resonant for that little room, which made it sound as though he were consistently intoning the opening passages of that other Norwegian composer Edward Grieg’s famous Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall. It was tempting to consider Mr. Yoo a pounder, but I don’t think this is fair. He was simply performing in the wrong space.

His Brobdignagian utterances were consistent with the rest of the piece, a rather blowsy work full of sound but little substance. If you like this sort of 1930s nightclub thing, then this was a superb version of it. Apparently there is more to Sinding than Rustles of Spring.

The New York Sun
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Plenty of Style Even Without Red Carpets
By Fred Kirshnit

There were no red carpets, no giant television screens, no puppets, just high quality music-making at the back end of Lincoln Center Plaza as the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players presented a program of German rarities at the Good Shepherd Church on Monday.

It is hard to overemphasize the importance of the Brahms-Wagner feud when discussing the history of German music in the last quarter of the 19th century. Careers were made or destroyed based on which side of the Januarian head a composer decided to hang his hat. If an artist were neutral, however, experimental on the one hand but traditional on the other, the popularity he achieved in his lifetime quickly dissipated after his demise, when there was no group ready to accept his legacy.

This is what happened to Joachim Raff, heralded in his own time as a titan but almost immediately thereafter falling into the pit of obscurity. Eight energetic string players presented his Octet in C major, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the brilliance of this now forgotten composer.

There is a trend in chamber music these days to have string players stand. Mostly it makes little difference, but in this case the performance was so febrile as to lend credence to the sonic power of the evening’s particular configuration. Violinists Stefan Milenkovich and Harumi Rhodes and violist Dov Scheindlin faced off on one side and fiddlers Julianne Lee and Bracha Malkin, joined by violist Eric Nowlin, stood on the opposite side like frontline players in a high velocity game of volleyball. Cellists Julie Albers and Margo Tatgenhorst Drakos sat on either side of the imaginary net.

The Raff turned out to be a major work of intense Romanticism. The sound of the eight instantaneously took over the room and was as fullthroated as an entire string orchestra. This piece is a symphony conceived in large terms, with considerable Sturm und Drang and an andante moderato of great beauty. I heard the density of Max Reger and the ebullience of Antonin Dvorÿák. Considering that this is Raff’s opus 176, there is obviously a lot to explore. This was a fabulous performance of a work so rare that members of the Joachim Raff Society flew over from Britain to be in attendance. I’m sure that they were not disappointed.

But this was hardly the most obscure offering on the program. That honor had to go to the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. No, not the famous one, but rather a prototype that Felix composed when he was 13. In its original form, the piece was a real discovery and was once performed by the now defunct full forces of the Jupiter Symphony under Jens Nygaard. Now that the group is resurrected as the chamber players, former principal clarinetist Vadim Lando wished to play the transcription for his instrument and string quartet that had been fashioned by Mendelssohn’s friend Heinrich Baermann. However, the printed music seems to be lost, so Mr. Lando wrote out all of the parts after listening to an old recording. He felt free to make his own alterations, producing, as he said in his opening remarks, a transcription of a transcription.

Like the transcriptions for horn of the Brahms cello sonatas, the challenge here is that Mendelssohn’s original violinist didn’t need to stop playing to breathe, whereas Mr. Lando, at least theoretically, had to take a breath sometime. He must be a very good underwater swimmer, however, as he was able to fashion long and extended runs and otherwise lyrical passages seamlessly. The piece is more than just juvenilia, sporting a solid sense of melodic development. After all, Felix composed it only three years before he penned “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” The final Allegro was one of those movements that express the German notion of authentic Gypsy music — compare the finale of Brahms’s G minor Piano Quartet. Since he made his own arrangement, Mr. Lando might have considered a tambourine obbligato for this rousing conclusion.

Various other works rounded out the program. Steven Beck led a driving version of a piece by an old codger of 15 named Ludwig van Beethoven. The Piano Quartet WoO (without opus number) 36, No. 2 is quite a dramatic essay, notable for foreshadowings of interpretive majesty. Also on the program was a trio for flute, cello, and piano by Friedrich Kuhlau, another fascinating character who deserves a lot more attention. But I’m out of space for today; at the Jupiter concerts, there is always so much about which to be enthusiastic.

Mondays through May 14 (152 W. 66th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, 212-799-1259).

The New York Sun
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
An Adagio Accented by Sad Remembrance
By Fred Kirshnit

American conductor Leonard Slatkin found himself in London on September 11, 2001, and understandably wished that he were home instead. Preparing to lead the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the first night of the Proms concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, he altered the program to open with the Adagio for Strings of Samuel Barber.

Over time, this movement from a string quartet has taken on a life of its own and was the solemn opening work on Monday, September 11, 2006, as the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players presented a very moving afternoon at Good Shepherd Church. Mei Ying, volunteer factotum (her own description of her all-encompassing status at the organization), offered an extremely well–planned bill of fare, and in her opening remarks pointed out that Jupiter founder Jens Nygaard died less than two weeks after the terrorist attacks, and that the firehouse in front of the church lost 11 of its brave men on that horrible day.

Of course, Mr. Slatkin employed the full string forces of his orchestra to handle the Barber Adagio five years ago, but for this performance, the piece returned to its roots as an elegy for quartet. Violinists Sergey Ostrovsky and Lisa Shihoten, violist Dov Scheindlin, and former cellist of the American String Quartet Margo Tatgenhorst Drakos played with a great deal of sensitive power, the cello in particular agonizingly resonant and disturbingly eloquent. Tommaso Albinioni’s Adagio in G minor may have been espoused by better directors — notably Peter Weir and Orson Welles, while Barber has only Oliver Stone to his credit — but in this particular context, the emotional level was very high. As often happens at New York concerts, sirens were heard from the street midway through the performance, but on this day the effect was almost too much to bear.

So what was the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 doing on this program? Good question, answered quite convincingly by harpsichordist extraordinaire Gerald Ranck. There is simply no more uplifting piece in the entire literature, and none that shares its utter sense of joy more generously. This was certainly the case in this snappy performance, in which Mr. Ranck and the quartet were augmented by bassist Kurt Muroki and by flutist Barry Crawford.

The first part of the program was necessarily a bit on the short side, because after intermission the Jupiter players honored the heroic dead with a complete performance of Mozart’s Requiem Mass. This was not your father’s Requiem, but rather an arrangement for string quartet fashioned by Peter Lichtenthal, a medical doctor who studied in Vienna, but practiced in Milan, Italy. Good friends with Wolfie’s son Karl, Lichtenthal arranged many of the master’s works for smaller groups so that he could introduce this new-fangled contemporary music to the northern Italian public. The Requiem is his most ambitious work and must be heard to be believed.

The first experience that the listener undergoes is a spiritual one indeed. Of course, since the instrumentation consists only of a string quartet, there are no words. And yet, I heard the words as distinctly as if they were being physically sung — with the added enhancement that in my mind the choir was always on pitch. And lest you think this a hallucination unique to this reviewer, the author of an essay on Dr. Lichtenthal discusses this same, very ghostly phenomenon.

Musically, the piece varies a bit in its adaptability. Sections in which the instruments are paramount in the original, the tuba mirum, for example, work very well in this thickly constructed, compact version. Others in which the singing is dominant are open to a spirited debate, although it did occur to me to mention that Mr. Scheindlin has an exceptionally pleasing singing line. Still others, such as the Confutatis maledictis, simply don’t measure up.

But this performance was really quite good, notable for its unhurried sense of development and its thoughtful balance. At just over 45 minutes, there was an awful lot of ground to cover — the performance was also repeated in the evening — and it is legitimate to ask if this piece is simply a historical curiosity or the most significant writing for string quartet before late Beethoven. Whatever its musicological value, it was certainly fitting and proper for such a hallowed occasion.

Returning Mozart’s Requiem Mass to a church was a splendid idea. All of us grieve in our own way — I still have friends who can’t bring themselves to go downtown to look at the sight of the attack — but, for me, this experience was not only cathartic, but beautiful, transcending even the wonder of the music itself.

The New York Sun
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Mining the Rare Jewels of Chamber Music
By Fred Kirshnit

Anton Bruckner's String Quintet in F is often referred to in German-speaking countries as the “pearl” of the chamber repertoire. But here in the United States, it is extremely rare to hear it live. The audience enjoyed that chance on Monday evening, as the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players journeyed from their normal digs at the Good Shepherd Church to play Bruckner's jewel in the air-conditioned confines of the Jewish Community Center on Amsterdam Avenue.

At just about 50 minutes, this fully developed symphony for strings is filled with surprises. Rather than following the example of his beloved Schubert and employing two cellos, the Austrian composer mimics Brahms by using two violas. Instead of weighty dramatic development, his quintet offers sweet, lovely progression. And he bypasses his propensity for thick textures by spinning his melodies horizontally rather than vertically, expanding them to delightful lengths.

This performance was first-rate. Violinist Xiao-Dong Wang, a founding member and frequent first violinist of the excellent chamber group Concertante, led mates Lisa Shihoten (second violin), Max Mandel and Eric Nowlin (violas), and Ani Aznavoorian (cello) in a well-planned rendition with a comfortably relaxed pace. The first movement, performed in three-quarter time, offered several opportunities for enjoyment, including an unhurried exploration of its lovely thematic material and interplay of the five strings in glorious alternation of singing tone. Although the blending of the group could have used a little more attention, the lyricism traveled well from chair to chair.

The Scherzo is one of Bruckner's patented Upper Austrian dances: Part of its folksy charm lies in its clumsiness.The insertion of this type of unsophisticated dance into an otherwise urbane symphony inspired Bruckner's pupil Mahler in several of his later symphonies. The group captured the ingenuousness of the movement expertly.

As in most Bruckner symphonies, the gem was the slow movement, painstakingly constructed by this talented quintet. Although the loveliest example of this type of movement in a string quintet must be reserved for Antonin Dvorák's marvelous “Viola” Quintet, Bruckner's effort runs a close second. On Monday night, these superb players caressed its quiet loveliness, giving the piece a sensitive treatment.

Two works rare in any part of the world also enjoyed play on the program. Ms. Aznavoorian, joined by clarinetist Vadim Lando and pianist Steven Beck, performed Ferdinand Ries's Trio, Op. 28, a lively if quotidian work presented in the spirit of good fun and encyclopedic completeness. Ries, a pupil of Beethoven's who wrote forgettable music, became somewhat famous later in life as a raconteur whose singular subject was his great teacher. (That most of his stories were fictional only added to their charm.) As a composer, he lacked inspiration but proved a competent craftsman. The musicians performed his work solidly enough, although I wished for considerably less self-effacement and more dynamic leadership from Mr. Beck.

Haydn's “London” Trio No. 1, written for two violins and cello on his second trip to Britain, used to be performed quite frequently but has since fallen into disfavor. Flutist Barry Crawford took one of the fiddle parts and teamed with Ms. Shihoten and the evening's cellist for a less heralded iteration. They offered tuneful, straightforward, and infectiously rhythmic music making.

Like the rest of us, the Jupiter Symphony players may be on a half boil during the summer, but their important and high-quality performances continue with one more concert at this venue on August 7, featuring a Beethoven Piano Quartet and a trio by Alexander Zemlinsky.

The New York Times
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
A Quirky Sampling from the Small Print of the 18th Century
By Allan Kozinn

The Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, resident at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church during the season, have moved to the JCC in Manhattan for their summer series. The programs are in the style to which this ensemble’s audiences have become accustomed: a balance of the familiar and the agreeably odd. The oddities had pride of place on Monday, when the musicians devoted the first half of their concert to music by Josef Myslivecek, Carl Stamitz and Antonio Rosetti, 18th-century composers who, though beloved in their day, now live on in the small print of books about Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven.

The works at hand, though, deserve an occasional revival, if only for their scoring variety. Rosetti’s Sextet for flute, two horns and strings, for example, often seemed like an orchestral score seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Its attractions were in its graceful stretches of solo writing for the flute (Barry Crawford), violin (Lisa Shihoten) and cello (Inbal Segev), all deftly executed here, and in the tandem horn lines, played with a rich tone by Karl Kramer-Johansen and Lauren Robinson. Stamitz’s Quartet for violin, clarinet horn and cello was equally colorful and more compact. Stamitz came off as the best of these three composers, and the players responded to his urbane writing with a warm, focused sound and ample drive in the finale. Myslivecek, by contrast, was represented by a charmingly courtly Trio for flute, violin and cello that showed him up as lightweight, but that was the luck of the draw: he wrote more substantial music as well, and Mozart admired him. After the intermission the ensemble played Dvorak’s Double Bass Quintet. The reading had its rough-hewn moments, but the energy of the performance was sufficiently appealing to outweigh the flaws, and there were strikingly sweet moments as well, most notably in Anne Akiko Meyers’s reading of the first violin line. The flexible ensemble also included Joseph Bongiorno, bassist; Dov Scheindlin, violist, in the Dvorak and Rosetti; and Vadim Lando, clarinetist, in the Rosetti.

The New York Sun
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
The Shaman of Estonia
By Fred Kirshnit

In this age of apostasy, many Westerners turn their backs on religion only to find that they soon develop an increased craving for spirituality. Many in the former Eastern bloc, their religion quashed under the heel of communism, experienced a similar journey.

The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt quit creating new works in the late 1960s, turning instead to the study of medieval music. Out of these scholarly endeavors, he developed a style of composition that he labeled tintinnabulation, taking his cue from Poe’s poem “The Bells.” Exploring the campinilian quality of each individual note, Pärt fashioned an entire genre of spiritually regenerative music that took the Soviet Union and its enslaved satellites by storm. Like the Georgian composer of cosmological music Giya Kancheli and the Pole Henryk Gorecki, Pärt developed a reputation as a shaman, a healer through music.

Pärt’s now classic work, “Fratres,” for violin, string orchestra, and percussion, was the centerpiece of a particularly interesting concert by the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players on Monday afternoon at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church. Violinist Vadim Gluzman, an Israeli born in the Ukraine, spoke eloquently about the Soviet oppression of composers before fronting this affecting performance. In “Fratres,” the soloist must intone one note from both ends of the range of his instrument, forcing him to constantly juxtapose his playing from G string to E in a furiante manner while the orchestra fleshes out the overtonal residue. The result is a quivering lamentation of rare power. The performance this day was excellent. Overall, this recital had the convivial feel of a musicale, friends playing for friends. There is no stage, and the audience can practically reach out and touch the players. Even the spoken introductions are accomplished sans microphone.

 Luckily, the stable of artists who frequent this venue includes some of the most capable in New York. The Jupiter concerts have a long and storied history, and this one featured as a special guest harpsichordist Gerald Ranck, who in 1967 was the first to perform Bach’s “Art of the Fugue” in New York. He has been appearing with the Jupiter players for at least two decades. Mr. Ranck was scheduled to lead a performance of Bach’s “Orchestral Suite in B Minor” in a chamber arrangement, which he did expertly. But he also took the opportunity to augment the original program and perform three of Domenico Scarlatti’s 555 sonatas. I was especially impressed with his realization of the famous E major – many of us will remember its espousal at the piano by Vladimir Horowitz – in which he made a serious case for his original instrument and its more brilliant timbre. Bach’s Suite also showcased flutist Barry Crawford, performing with a string quartet and a double bass, and, of course, Mr. Ranck. This was deeply invested music-making: The opening “Ouverture” was markedly serious, while the dance movements alternated between courtly and lively, the interplay of sonorities highly satisfying. There is something to be said for old-fashioned toe-tapping, much of which was going on during these proceedings.

Any serious student of Mozart or Beethoven knows the name of Franz Anton Hoffmeister, a music publisher in Vienna who aided both of these composers in their efforts to establish themselves as major artistic presences. But how many realize that he was a prolific composer who wrote more than 40 string quartets and 60 symphonies? In his day, he was compared favorably to Haydn, but, over time, he has been relegated to footnote status. Thus it was a rare treat to hear one of Hoffmeister’s Clarinet Quartets – the No. 2 in E-flat major – in such a refreshingly playful performance. Clarinetist Vadim Lando mentioned that the group had wanted to play a different piece in the series but that the printed music was not available, rather ironically considering what Hoffmeister did for a living. Still, this work compares quite favorably to Mozart’s “Kegelstadt Trio,” especially in the use of the upbeat, sunny side of the wind instrument’s personality. It was a joy to hear this extremely lively rendition.

One more treat for us Jupiter junkies was the announcement of next year’s schedule. The season will open with an important concert on a very solemn day. Monday, September 11 will witness two performances of the string quartet arrangement of Mozart’s Requiem Mass, prepared by his contemporary Peter Lichtenthal.

The New York Sun
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
One of the Best Deals in Town
By Fred Kirshnit

Brahms spent the summer of 1886 on Lake Thun in Switzerland. He was so enamored of the place that he returned for his next two vacations. His bucolic bliss is most eloquently re-created in the Andante of the “Double” Concerto, written in 1887. But his first summer there was his most productive, and saw the creation of the second sonatas for both violin and cello with piano, the basic skeleton of the third violin sonata, and the mighty Piano Trio in C minor. The latter was presented on Monday afternoon at the Good Shepherd Church by the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players.

The trio contains a very unusual movement, the Andante grazioso, written originally in 7/4 time. Considering that Tchaikovsky's Allegro con grazia - composed in 5/4 time - from the “Pathetique” Symphony of 1893 caused many orchestras to reject it for almost 40 years, Brahms was clever in adding two additional bar lines per original measure, which transformed the movement into consistently repeating sequences of 3/4, 2/4, and 2/4 without altering the music one iota. (Curiously, as Brahms became more sophisticated, his melodies became simpler, and by the end of his life, they even approached Mozart's.)

The Piano Trio was given a dramatic performance as part of a very meaty program at the church. Pianist Steven Beck, violinist Sergey Ostrovsky, and cellist Mark Kosower intoned the opening in a granitic manner, establishing from the outset the piece's import. But there is also that Brahmsian calm, and the threesome captured this profoundly as well. Mr. Beck expertly drove the 7/4 movement from the keyboard. He avoided the sin of self-effacement, and both string players were superb in their generous but masculine use of vibrato. The violin and cello meshed both sonorously and stylistically, a fine foreshadowing of that incipient concerto. This was a wonderful realization of a vibrant work.

Karl Goldmark's String Quintet in A minor is so rare that the Jupiter Symphony apologized for not being able to print a date of composition in the program (my cursory research indicates the mid-1850s). Goldmark was a Wagnerian's Wagnerian, the founder of the Wagner Society in Vienna - the thought of one of his pieces being on the same program with Brahms would have given an Austrian listener of the 1870s the vapors. He was a minor composer of note for previous generations, and the New York Philharmonic regularly programmed his “Rustic Wedding Symphony” during the Bernstein era; his Violin Concerto was also reasonably well-known. But for whatever reason, he is now but a footnote. The quintet, early though it may have been in Goldmark's career, is quite a mature piece with considerable amounts of lovely passagework. Goldmark was closely allied to Bruckner, and this work reminded me of that majestic symphonist's only piece of chamber music, also a string quintet. Joining the two string players already mentioned were Lisa Shihoten, violin; Dov Scheindlin, viola; and Denise Djokic, cello. This performance was very wellblended and a joy to explore.

Wind music was also on the program. Flutist Barry Crawford offered a delightful version of Mozart's Flute Quartet in D major, K. 285. With Ms. Djokic supplying an insistent sense of propulsion, Mr. Crawford was free to employ his singing tone freely, dexterously tripping the light fantastic in the concluding Rondeau. Mozart professed to loathe the flute, but still composed some of its most beautiful showpieces.

The best performance of the day, though, was Beethoven's raucous “Gassenhauer” Trio for clarinet, cello, and piano No, this is not the punk band, but there is a rebelliously rude spirit imbedded in this early chamber work. Clarinetist Vadim Lando joined Messrs. Beck and Kosower, and they just seemed to click perfectly. Mr. Lando was not at all shy or respectful; rather he was boldly aggressive, almost circus-like in spots. Mr. Kosower conducted a clinic in modern cello technique, combining a healthy and lyrical vibrato with a strong-handed approach to rhythmic phrasing. His solos in the Adagio were generously lush but also tightly controlled. This was music-making of a very high order.

One more note about this unheralded series. I usually don't pay much attention to the price of admission - I sneak in for free - but I did notice that, according to my ticket stub, my superb seat in the church normally goes for a whopping $10. If we chart on a graph musical quality versus ticket price, few venues in town could match this one. Plus you get a free libation at intermission. But let's keep it our secret. I don't want to lose that good seat. The Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players will perform again on April 10, 24 and May 1, 15 at 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church (152 W. 66th Street, 212-799-1259).
 

The New York Sun
Wednesday, December 4, 2002
The Jupiters Play On
By Adam Baer

Some great musicians get a statue when they pass away. Some get their name imprinted on the roof of a well-known concert hall. But the late conductor Jens Nygaard has a living tribute: an entire ensemble of musicians and a concert series to go along with it.

When Mr. Nygaard passed away last year at the age of 69, people thought that the end was near for his Jupiter Symphony. For 20 years, he ran this hard-working band as a refuge for the city’s young, talented musicians who need a place to play. Concertgoers could hear seldom-performed works of the great composers and enjoy an intimate performance experience and independent brand of inspiration.

Mr. Nygaard, an Arkansas transplant with the ability to play nearly every instrument in the orchestra, had a rousing, infectious passion for teaching from the podium and was a compelling leader. Musicians in the orchestra often talked about Mr. Nygaard like a second father.

The Jupiter Symphony concerts at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church on West 66th Street, just around the corner from Alice Tully Hall, were always thought-provoking and moving, if not note-perfect. Famous soloists like pianist Ruth Laredo and Sara Davis Buechner would often play concertos with the orchestra for free.

Today the Jupiter Symphony lives on as a chamber music series developed, in the words of its makeshift director and “volunteer factotum” Mei Ying, to “acknowledge and perpetuate the legacy of conductor Jens Nygaard…continuing a marvelous journey through the universe of music that includes works from the standard repertoire and the rarely-performed, and featuring outstanding musicians.”

The series offers 20 concerts a year—each performed twice at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on the same day—and has recently expanded its reach with noonday concerts at Trinity Church on Broadway at Wall Street. It is one of the city’s cultural jewels.

And so are its musicians, as evidenced in Monday’s 2 p.m. concert featuring flutist Barry Crawford and pianists Adam Neiman and William Wolfram.

The concert began with Mr. Crawford and Mr. Neiman in a rendition of Prokofiev’s Sonata in D for flute and piano. This piece was made famous by violinist David Oistrakh, (On hearing it performed on the flute, he immediately asked the composer for a violin version.)

Mr. Crawford is a young musician with guts. He played the piece viscerally, especially considering the small size of the room and his close proximity to the front row of the audience. He found the quirky spirit in Prokofiev’s mercurial melodies and brought a robust flute sound, more throaty than many others. With a heavy vibrato, he sounded less like an orchestral flutist and more like a Moscow fiddler. His high jumps from low notes were also exciting, not grating. And his honest approach to making each colorful phrase go somewhere different was palpable.

Mr. Neiman was timid at the beginning of the piece but later let go of his inhibitions, displaying fine piano work and an appropriately fickle, sardonic approach to Prokofiev’s pointed articulations, angular motives, and slightly off-kilter harmonies. He could have paid a little better attention to Mr. Crawford, but his sparse solo displays of virtuosity eclipsed any minor ensemble problems the two might have had.

In a two-piano arrangement of Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances,” Mr. Neiman and Mr. Wolfram became true chamber-music partners thanks to the position of their instruments. The pianos were aligned not in the usual “mating style”—as Mr. Wolfram joked—but in a mirror image, with one pianist looking right and one looking left but still side-by-side, the instrument closest to the wall cutting a 45-degree angle with it. As Mr. Wolfram predicted, this allowed the audience to hear two pianists playing with each other, not the combined piano sound that often results from the traditional positioning of the instruments.

And yet nothing would have helped the pianists if they weren’t completely on top of their game. Watching the young Mr. Neiman, an Avery Fisher Career Grant winner, play with Mr. Wolfram, an acclaimed concert-scene veteran, was absolutely engaging. Mr. Neiman bopped his head and aggressively threw his wiry frame into the fiery notes of the piece as Mr. Wolfram displayed the power and majesty for which he is known. The overall spirit was an explosive blend of young insistence and hard-won authority.

In the end, if Mr. Nygaard was known for anything, it was unmitigated verve. That’s what the audience regularly returned for, and that’s what they got Monday afternoon. To have a grassroots community of musicians continue to celebrate Mr. Nygaard with indomitable performances like these week after week, even without the power of world-famous guest soloists, is proper tribute. And with more large orchestras and ensembles needing more corporate sponsorship year after year, I, for one, hope the Jupiter’s individual subscriber-base remains strong.

New York’s musical life needs the spirit of Jens Nygaard, and Mei Ying should be proud she’s keeping it alive.
 

The New York Times
January 26, 2002
“The Jupiter Orchestra Is a Lively Survivor”
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

No one really expected the scrappy Jupiter Symphony to survive the passing of its founder and conductor Jens Nygaard, who died of cancer at 69 in September. Not even Mr. Nygaard.

For over 20 years, this perpetually rumpled Arkansas native, a maverick in the New York music scene, earned the loyalty of orchestra players, especially students and fledgling professionals, who were drawn to his artistic vision, infectious love of offbeat repertory and deep musical understanding, despite the fact that Mr. Nygaard paid them modestly, at best. Renowned soloists typically played with the orchestra free. Concerts by the Jupiter Symphony at Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church on West 66th Street, in the shadow of Lincoln Center, were always interesting and often inspiring.

The orchestra is no more, but the musicians associated with it have formed the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, which earlier this month began a concert series at the church to perpetuate Mr. Nygaard's legacy. Tuesday afternoon's rewarding program was the second in the series.

It was the kind of program Mr. Nygaard might have devised: French chamber works from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, only one of which, the Franck Piano Quintet, was familiar. It began with a fascinating 1919 Sonata for Cello and Piano by Gabriel Pierné, a student of Franck who was respected greatly in his time. The work displays Pierné's ear for adventurous chromatic harmony and lush Impressionistic colorings. Composed in one 25-minute movement, the sonata is full of ideas but structurally amorphous. Still, the splendid performers — the cellist Ariane Lallemand and the pianist Sara Davis Buechner — made every moment count. And the resonant sacristy is ideal for chamber music.

Chausson's wistfully beautiful “Chanson perpetuelle,” for mezzo-soprano, piano and string quartet, another rarity, offered the rich-voiced Desirée Halac as soloist. The Franck quintet received a gripping performance from Ms. Buechner, Ms. Lallemand, the violist Lev Zhurbin and the violinists Grigory Kalinovsky and Jane Chung.

The most moving moment of the program came before the Franck, when Ms. Buechner, who performed over 20 concertos with Mr. Nygaard and the orchestra during the last 16 years, gave a lovely, undulant account of a Fauré barcarolle in his memory.

There are nine more concerts in this fitting series through May 14.

The New York Times
February 11, 2001
“Slick Routine Makes Way For Vitality”
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

GOOD SHEPHERD PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH on West 66th Street stands in the shadow of Lincoln Center, dwarfed by the back side of the Juilliard School. Yet in the church's dusty old sanctuary you can hear some of the most meaningful music-making in the city: concerts by Jens Nygaard and the Jupiter Symphony.

The church has a high ceiling and resonant acoustics but not much floor space. So the audience sits on folding chairs encircling the orchestra, right up close. A radiator in the corner hisses on and off during the winter months, but it doesn't matter, because the performances Mr. Nygaard elicits from his mostly young players are utterly honest and crackling with vitality.

There are times at Lincoln Center, far more than there should be, when orchestras and ensembles give slick, routinely professional and uninvolving performances. There is nothing routine about the concerts of Mr. Nygaard and the Jupiter Symphony, which he found