Chamber music has long served as the more intimate alternative to the expansive arrangements of orchestral concerts and the individual expressiveness of solo performances. It also has a long history of collaboration between professionals and amateurs.
“Walter Ponce and Friends,” a chamber concert taking place tonight at Schoenberg Hall, exemplifies both traditions with Professor Walter Ponce playing beside UCLA Vice Chancellor for Finance, Budget, and Capital Programs Steven Olsen, graduate music student Mary Hofman, and Edwin Kaplan, a third-year music student.
Ponce’s own tradition of collaboration began in his youth, when he was playing at the Marlboro Festival in Vermont. One of the world-renowned festival’s defining features is the mixture of professional and amateur musicians.
“The idea was that the most experienced people played with the younger people,” Ponce said.
Ponce recalls the moment he not only came to terms with the collaborative element of chamber music but also came to appreciate amateur musicians.
“The violinist (performing with us) was OK, but he wasn’t the greatest violinist, and I complained,” Ponce said. “He wasn’t a professional musician. He turned out to be Abe Fortas, a Supreme Court justice in Washington.”
For centuries, chamber music has given amateurs reason to continue pursuing excellence in spite of professional obligations, by providing opportunities for them to perform. To Ponce, those who persevere in their musicianship, like Fortas and Olsen, the quartet’s cellist, should be an encouragement to others to keep practicing.
“The dedication and discipline (Olsen) has is amazing. He comes before work. When students are just arriving, he’s playing,” Ponce said. “It’s wonderful to see the dedication of this man who has an enormously (challenging) job but is still growing and developing (as a musician).”
Olsen admits it is sometimes difficult to maintain a practice schedule.
“There are times during the year when I’m extraordinarily busy and it’s not possible for me to keep up with the music,” Olsen said. “Late spring is usually action-packed because I’m finalizing the budgets. I might not be (in Schoenberg Hall) every single day, but I get to campus early, and if I’m not preparing for meetings, I’m practicing.”
Last year, Olsen, who was an undergraduate student at UCLA over two decades ago, decided to put together a chamber music program with Hofman. They approached Ponce for a recommendation on a graduate student pianist. Instead, Ponce volunteered himself.
“Walter is a world-class pianist,” Olsen said. “It was a great honor for him to do this.”
Finally, Ponce invited Kaplan to play viola in the ensemble. Like Olsen, Kaplan has a long-standing association with UCLA. His father, Mark Kaplan, taught violin, and his brother, David Kaplan, studied piano under Ponce.
More than feeling intimidated, Kaplan knows that everyone has a part to play in a chamber music concert.
“Part of the idea of chamber music is that it’s a very democratic style of music,” he said. “Everybody plays an equal role even if there’s more and less important parts.”
The first composition that will be performed is Mozart’s “Piano Quartet in G Minor,” a work that was long considered too difficult for the amateur musicians that typically played piano quartets.
The work is unconventional not only because it places equal importance on the strings and keyboard, but also for its juxtapositions of drama and lyricism, which mimic Mozart’s operatic works.
“His piano quartets sometimes sound like operas. There a moments when the … soprano is about to burst out onto the stage with a beautiful aria while the countess is sleeping with the soprano’s husband,” violist Kaplan said. “There are moments when the viola has one long note and I wonder, “˜How did the singer hold the note that long?'”
For Ponce, chamber music serves the same social function now as it did centuries ago.
“Chamber music developed in the 18th century when the piano became the main instrument of the house,” Ponce said. “There were no movies, no sports events, no night clubs. The real entertainment for the middle class was (music), the getting-together of people to play and sing. This is the musical tradition.”
“Ponce and Friends” may not take place in a salon, but it otherwise aims to recreate the intimate experience of chamber music played for lovers of classical music by musicians from varying backgrounds.
While it may have served as the sole source of entertainment for our predecessors, Kaplan concludes that there is more to chamber music than just entertainment.
“It’s not just about having fun. Chamber concerts are also about making beautiful music,” he said.