Harmonic Order Of Succession

The Spoleto Festival USA chamber group is on tour in the Pacific Northwest under the direction of the festival’s founding director, the venerable and irrepressible Charles Wadsworth. Friday night in the Spoletinians’ (new word) concert at The Seasons, Cellist Andres Diaz and violinist Chee-Yun played the Pascaglia for Violin and Cello, a ravishing set of variations by Johan Halvorsen on themes by Handel. At one Steinway, Wadsworth and Stephen Prutsman roared through three Hungarian Dances by Brahms, reinforcing my conviction that Brahms is the true father of stride piano. Chee-Yun, Diaz and Prutsman did a splendid Haydn Trio for Violin, Cello & Piano.
After intermission came the familiar Sonata for Clarinet & Piano by Francis Poulenc with Wadsworth and the young virtuoso Todd Palmer, a clarinetist with amazing facility, feeling, and consistency of tone in every register of the horn. Smetana’s big, powerful, seldom-heard Piano Trio in G-Minor was the official closer, but introducing it Wadsworth told the audience that the group had prepared an encore and were going to play it even if the Smetana was a dud and got no reaction. The Smetana was not a dud.
There being no such animal as a classical piece for two pianists, cello, clarinet and violin, Prutsman had written the encore. It was a riotous set of variations on Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” that started with crippled cadences and ending up swinging hard. Palmer was operating in Benny Goodman territory, even higher; Artie Shaw territory. He managed one of those classic 1930s poses with his clarinet pointed practically straight up. At dinner after the gig, I asked Palmer and Wadsworth how much of the “Rhythm” extravaganza had been improvised. “Much more than you might think,” Palmer said. Wadsworth merely laughed.
Wadsworth had the hippest spoken line of the night. Introducing the Poulenc and discussing the chords of that impressionistic French classic, he told the audience, “Poulenc used these harmonies even before Bill Evans used them.”