Ronen Chamber Ensemble: Lifting the flute into the main role in Mendelssohn classic

When a long-established concert series can make a smooth transition and gradually personalize new artistic leadership, the prospect for continued success becomes brighter. "Celebrating Connections" is thus an apt title for one group's current season. 

Alistair Howlett drew upon friendship for a new work. 

The latest sign was the modest novelty that opened the second program of Ronen Chamber Ensemble's season.  Alistair Howlett, one of Ronen's four artistic directors, reached back toward his roots in Australia and his friendship with a former orchestra colleague, a bassoonist-composer named Ben Hoadley.

Howlett engineered the commissioning of  a piece for the artistic leadership, and so "Porch Music" received its first and second performances over the weekend. I heard the second of them, which opened a sparsely attended but well-received concert Monday evening at Indiana History Center.

Howlett, playing alto flute, was joined by Jennifer Christen, oboe; Jayna Park, violin; and Gregory Martin, piano, for the double premiere. The flutist had told the audience that the visiting composer fashioned the work from impressions he had sitting on a porch  enjoying the summer weather.

The restful atmosphere and the feeling that everything was in order comes across in the unison line for oboe and flute against a rippling piano accompaniment. Before long the violin gets a tune while the oboe and flute pause briefly. The quartet layout of the work gradually emerges prominently, and bird song is evoked in isolated chirps. There are hints of tango along the way, though the energy gives way to a dreamy mood. At six minutes, "Porch Music" is a tribute to relaxation in balmy weather, with friendship as a backdrop.

Two other pieces completed the program. Howlett, Martin, and cellist Stephen Hawkey played Mendelssohn's much-admired Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, op. 49. Picking up the conventional C flute, Howlett took the spot the composer originally assigned to the violin. That's how this work is generally known, but Mendelssohn bowed to his publisher's pressure to also authorize a version for flute, cello, and piano. The edition used by this trio wasn't published until 2015.

In the first movement, the unison lines had a special quality when heard in the contrasting timbres of flute and cello. There were many places when flute seemed especially fitting for the sparkle with which Mendelssohn infused the score. To hear the flute soar above its partners in the busy finale provided a thrill matching the best performances of the original.  

The heading Allegro assai appassionato suggests the idea, but I've long thought of the description other composers have used for this kind of music: con fuoco (with fire). The reminder is ever-present when I hear this piece, because I first got to love it as a listener after picking up an Istomin/Stern/Rose LP in a bargain bin from among records that had apparently absorbed some smoke damage elsewhere. In my mind's ear-and-nose memory/ (is there such a thing?), I caught the fiery feeling in this performance topped by the flute.

Another ISO cellist had a major role in the other work: Austin Huntington performed Beethoven's String Quartet No. 1 in F major, op. 18, no. 1 with ISO colleagues Jayna Park and Vincent Meklis, violins; and Zhanbo Zheng, viola. The performance had the requisite common purpose and an execution that proved a close fit. Yet it needs to be said that oral program notes that suggest how to hear a piece may be helpful to some listeners, while inclining others to interpret it in advance. 

The dark earnestness of the second movement, which Meklis drew attention to, was evident. But what I hear as the maturity and forward-looking quality of Beethoven's initial attempt in the genre came through in the other movements as well, especially the first, with the kind of subito outbursts of loudness characteristic of the composer overall.

Nonetheless, some kind of informal orientation toward the music from the stage can help cement the continuing bond between performer and listener. And the Ronen Chamber Ensemble has a distinguished history of providing that.