Pianist Orli Shaham has been hosting, curating and playing in a chamber music series, Café Ludwig, since 2008. Presented by the Pacific Symphony in Costa Mesa’s Samueli Theater, these Sunday afternoon concerts invite patrons to have coffee and “decadent desserts” while principal members of the PSO take turns performing music old and new.
The series is little-known outside of Orange County—not surprising since chamber music in general is not covered as extensively as it used to be. Perhaps this album of new music presented on the series, American Tapestry (Tonsehen), is an attempt to increase Café Ludwig’s exposure a notch.
Overall, the pieces on this album seem to fit the described casual ambience of the concerts, with not much that would challenge—nor heaven forbid, irritate—the ears. Reena Esmail’s Saans, as adapted for piano trio from the slow movement of her Clarinet Concerto, is a mellow wedding nocturne that comes to a Romantic-era climax. The Currents for solo piano is an example of the Sarah Kirkland Snider’s penchant for writing attractive, melodic, instantly relatable music very much at odds with the hostile times in which she lives and works. Ari Barack Fisher continues the Romantic mood with a Romance for Cello and Piano, while Peter Dayton’s Fantasy for viola and piano is rather uneventful.
Some pieces push a little further. Viet Cuong’s Wax and Wire is a lively toccata driven by chromatic scales and “smears” in the clarinet, violin, and cello that represent the melting of wax in the process of creating a wire sculpture. Avner Dorman’s Sextet generates the most fun, starting with a madcap Allegro that morphs back and forth between a perpetual motion machine and a furious bang-fest. Then, an Andante intermezzo gives way to two de facto scherzos; the first one, “Hocket,” is soon buried in subdued brooding, while the second one stays lively throughout, with a jazzy touch in the syncopation down the stretch.
Last comes a pair of works from COVID times. Jessie Montgomery’s Peace for violin and piano leans a bit into impressionism. Margaret Brouwer’s Parallel Isolations for flute and piano trio is full of anxiety and short-lived nervous energy.
Everything is superbly recorded in the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, located in the same building as the smaller, aforementioned Samueli.
