Festival fashions Viennese sampler

By JOHN FLEMING

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 11, 2000

SARASOTA -- Could any two composers be more different than Johann Strauss II and Arnold Schoenberg? Strauss wrote jolly waltzes and polkas. Schoenberg was a prophet of modernity, the exponent of atonality and 12-tone music.

But the best chamber music programming reveals links between composers whose kinship may not be immediately evident. In fact, Strauss wasn't as schmaltzy as the musical snobs would have you believe, and Schoenberg knew his way around a melody.

Take Friday night's Sarasota Music Festival concert called "Three Centuries in Vienna." The performance of Strauss' Emperor Waltz by an eight-member ensemble seemed unusually bracing. Sure, the infectious dance music was just the sort of rich dollop of Viennese whipped cream you'd expect from the "Waltz King," but there was also a tartness and bite brought out in the arrangement by none other than Schoenberg.

"The simmering stew pot that was Vienna," in the words of preconcert lecturer Robert Levin, spawned a vast, varied body of music during the Hapsburg empire, including that of Strauss, Schoenberg and Mozart, who was also represented on Friday's program at the Sarasota Opera House.

Mozart's C-minor Serenade for winds, which opened the concert, was another surprise, with a dark, mysterious quality that goes against its title denoting lightweight entertainment. A 10-member group, anchored by oboist Neil Black and clarinetist Charles Neidich, took special care with the languid tempos and delicate phrasing of the Andante, giving the music a dreamy, almost narcotic effect.

The Mozart and the Strauss were merely the warmup for Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Schoenberg's work of near-symphonic proportions for string sextet that took up the second half of the program. Written when Schoenberg was only 25, and long before he initiated the 12-tone method, it boasts keening harmonics in the style of Wagner's opera scores. And what a treat it was to hear Joseph Silverstein in the searching first-violin part.

The music festival, in its 36th year, has concerts Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Performances are in the Sarasota Opera House and Holley Hall. Tickets are from $15 to $30. There are also free student concerts Thursday and Friday. For information: (941) 953-3434; http://www.fwcs.org.