A concert celebrates 40th anniversary for Music at Kohl Mansion

Music at Kohl Mansion has been holding chamber music concerts in the stately and acoustically vibrant Great Hall of that Burlingame hills mansion for 40 years now. To commemorate this, the organization held a 40th anniversary celebration concert on Sunday, Nov. 13.

To mark the occasion, it commissioned a new work from local composer Shinji Eshima. He titled his 15-minute piece “Hymn for Her.” This is both a play on words (hymn/him) and a tribute to the women who founded Music at Kohl Mansion, Liz Dossa and Sister Amy Bayley. Bayley was at the time principal of Mercy High School which occupies the mansion.

Eshima chose to write his piece for an unusual quintet of instruments.

First, a double bass, for melodic purposes as well as harmonic underpinning. This is Eshima’s own instrument, so he’s partial to it. It was played by Charles Chandler, a San Francisco Symphony bassist who is Eshima’s former student.

Second, a cello. This goes well with a double bass in chamber music, but the main reason for including it was the realization that San Francisco Opera Orchestra cellist Emil Miland had played in all three of the previous original commissions at Kohl. Why not make it four of four?

Then a marimba, another favorite instrument of Eshima’s. This was played by percussion virtuosa Haruka Fujii.

Fourth, a piano, played by Karen Hutchinson, a frequent Kohl performer and one of the earliest members of its Board of Directors.

And last, a clarinet, played as a last-minute substitute by Jeannie Psomas, who has also been a substitute at the San Francisco Symphony.

This combination of instruments could make a chaotic mess, but Eshima has a talent for writing light, clear chamber music. He began with various pairs of instruments, one playing a gentle melody, the other providing rhythmic support. Gradually he built up to all five. This displayed a wonderful mix of timbres, with the marimba giving an exotic touch of rhythmic punctuation, as the long-breathed melody mutated into hymn-like character. The music was thoroughly tonal, airy and not self-indulgent, well-crafted and coherent in structure. Had the players decided to repeat it from the beginning, the delighted audience would have been just as satisfied the second time.

As this was a historical celebration, Eshima’s piece was accompanied by revivals of abridged versions of the first two commissions, with Miland reprising his original cello part.

One and a half movements of Ernst Bacon’s Trio No. 2 for Violin, Cello and Piano, the first commission from 1987, were played with young but fully professional violinist Shaleah Feinstein joining Miland and Hutchinson. This was a tougher work than Eshima’s but still broadly tonal, with long melodies for the strings over fast chords in the piano, building up into a stomping conclusion.

Miland and Hutchinson also played half of David Carlson’s Sonata for Cello and Piano from 1993. This is a complex and difficult work featuring long glissandos for the cello and dissonant but quiet, fuzzy passages for both instruments. The final pages turn clearer, louder and unexpectedly moving.

The concert was filled out with Feinstein, Miland and Hutchinson playing a repertoire classic for violin, cello and piano, Felix Mendelssohn’s Trio No. 1, Op. 49. This too built up tension as it went along but less dramatically so than the other pieces. Its main feature was the audible as well as visible delight with which all three performed it.

The next concert at Kohl Mansion will feature the Miró Quartet on Sunday, Dec. 4. This group will play Beethoven’s Op. 131 string quartet, one of his late masterpieces, along with music by Beethoven’s teacher Joseph Haydn and contemporary composer Kevin Puts. The quartet will give a pre-concert talk that Saturday afternoon at the Peninsula Jewish Community Center in Foster City.