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CHAMBER REVIEW

Trumpeter Ayako Nakamura

HEROIC TRUMPET AND ORGAN MUSIC AT INCARNATION

by Jerry Dibble
Friday, October 12, 2018

The strong connections between Santa Rosa’s musical community and California State University Chico were on display Oct. 12 as David Rothe, Professor Emeritus in the Chico Music Department, and Ayako Nakamura, trumpet with the North State Symphony, presented a concert titled “Heroic Music for Trumpet and Organ” at Santa Rosa’s Church of the Incarnation. Joining them for the finale, Handel’s “Let the Bright Seraphim,” were soprano Carol Menke, Incarnation Music Director, herself a graduate of the Chico State Music Department, and cellist Laura McLellan, who took on the work of an entire string section.

A concert mostly of music for trumpet and organ, no matter how heroic, can weary the ears, and the program was carefully arranged to avoid that. In tackling Telemann’s “Heroic Marches,” for example, the program separated six selections into two offerings, one Marches 4, 5 and 6 (“Tranquility,” “Armament” and “Love”) midway through the first half of the concert; and the other, Marches 1, 2, and 12 (“Majesty,” “Grace” and “Joy”) near the end of the second. In between there were excursions into solo pieces for organ (Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Minor and Buxtehude’s Praeludium in G Minor), and Arutiunian’s Elegy from 2000, played on flugelhorn.

In a similar spirit, the concert opened with Martini’s Sonata in D Major, immediately followed by Hovhaness’ equally familiar but more contemporary and often darkly haunting Prayer of Saint Gregory, composed in 1946.

The performers, especially Prof. Rothe, offered helpful and insightful comments on the composers, the structure of the music and its history, including the differences between French and German instrumental reeds and, more tellingly, the contrast between the solo organ selection from Buxtehude’s later years and the far more youthful and less troubled offering from his admirer and occasional student, Bach.

Throughout the interaction between the trumpeter and organist was smooth and professional, not surprising since the duo has presented the same concert, with only minor variations, several times in and around Chico since the beginning of the summer. As with most live performances, some runs on the trumpet were less than fully realized and got partially lost in the large space of the church. But I will always trade the risks of a live performance for a digitally perfect recording of the same pieces, especially when the performance takes place in a lovely and sonically rewarding venue like the Incarnation, with its arching old-growth redwood rafters and delicately carved wood fixtures.

One or two quibbles: first, I would have preferred to hear the final notes of the trumpet passages in the baroque pieces held out full value, with more vibrato. As it was, they were too often played staccato or marcato, with a corresponding loss of resonance, beauty and passion. That flaw vanished during the Handel, when the call and responses passages with Ms. Menke’s vocal lines provided Ms. Nakamura a more reliable model to follow.

The performance could have benefited by a bit more passion in the trumpet and organ pieces overall. Baroque music is the work of the Enlightenment, the period that brought us Kantian logic, essayistic poems in heroic couplets, and the rise of the middle class. But for that very reason this music needs more fire and fervor in the interpretation than related music, not less. At times the playing seemed workmanlike and technically precise but lacking in the ecclesiastical impulse that provided the occasion for the pieces’ composition.

Finally, there was a need of amplification for the voice and cello in the final work. Both tended to be overpowered by the organ and trumpet. Handel’s Let the Bright Seraphim is a wonderful piece of music, particularly as a finale for the concert, but much of its power depends on the equal aural presence of all the parts.