
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 8, 1991                   TAG: 9104080014
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON/ SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD NEWS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

TECH SERIES ENDS ON SATISFYING NOTE

Saturday night saw the final recital in this year's Virginia Tech chamber music series as well as the last such event to be held in the school's Donaldson-Brown auditorium, and a bang-up finale it was.

The Audubon Quartet and guest David Schifrin, a world-class clarinet soloist, ended the year with a program of Mendelssohn, Berg and Brahms. Next season's chamber series will take place in the new recital salon that's nearing completion in Squires Student Center.

The Audubons began the evening with a warm and genial reading of Felix Mendelssohn's Quartet in D Major, Op. 44, No. 1.

It was good to hear this music, which has not been frequently recorded and is currently available only in one hard-to-find CD version. First violinist David Erlich was in particularly fine form Saturday night and played beautifully throughout, especially with his prominent part in the first movement.

If Alban Berg were around today, chances are he would regard Southwest Virginia as behind enemy lines. He is not, to put it mildly, a big request item in local classical music radio, and his sometimes difficult music - characterized by his critics as "wrong-note Romanticism" - is not frequently programmed by local musicians.

But the Audubons did a fine job of diplomacy with their rendition of his String Quartet, Op. 3. It was a muscular performance that emphasized what some see as a split personality in Berg: Was the composer a late-Romantic to the nth degree, or a ground-breaking radical?

David Schifrin joined the Au dubons for the Quintet in B Minor for Clarinet and Strings, Op. 115, of Johannes Brahms. Schifrin's lovely reading Saturday night had the same rich autumnal lyricism that has led collectors to cherish his recording of the work on the Delos label with Chamber Music NorthWest.

It was a delight to hear this fine artist in a chamber music setting.

Schifrin made playing the clarinet seem the most natural thing in the world, and his playing was full of subtlety and passion. He was exciting in the first movement's central Hungarian gypsy section, but he was equally moving in the slow romanza-style second movement.

Among the many world-class artists the Audubons have brought to the Tech campus, David Schifrin surely rates near the top.

He and the Audubons received a standing ovation at the end of a truly satisfying performance.

by CNB