Review: Music@Menlo, California
By: Allan Ulrich

Silicon Valley’s contribution to the advancement of chamber music culture in northern California is evolving with flair in its eighth summer season. Thematic programming, hitherto hazily developed, is acquiring focus, while an increased concentration on the vocal repertoire is adding further lustre to proceedings.

This year, pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel, the festival’s founders, have arranged their main-stage concerts around the quest for national identity in music. “The English Voice” proved a game place to start; this profile of a culture awakening from a 200-year musical slumber was instructive. In his 1918 piano quintet, Elgar reluctantly bids farewell to the past and the spectre of Brahms, asserting an individual voice in an adagio that aches with nostalgia for what was. Here, a sensitive pianist, Inon Barnatan, and the bright Miró Quartet stated their case eloquently.

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