Review: Hall Ensemble creates close encounters of the best kind at Avoca Coffee

Anyone who may think that chamber music can’t be exciting as well as deep hasn’t been to the Hall Ensemble’s programs.

Often they’re in private homes (that series is sold out this season), but they go public, as well, in interesting places like Avoca Coffee, where they played on Sunday evening (this was a sellout, too).

Wherever it is, they give close-in performances whose proximity to their listeners (as close as 3 or 4 feet, in some cases) gives their music-making an immediacy that can raise goosebumps.

On Sunday they got me to thinking of the Metropolitan Opera’s telecasts in movie theaters. Courtesy of close-in shots, the audience gets right up onstage with the performers. This packs a punch you’d never feel at the rear, or even middle, of the hall.

Having the Hall Ensemble live and right-there produces a similar effect, especially when they’re playing music of a giant such as Beethoven or Brahms.

On Sunday evening it was Brahms who produced the biggest effect — specifically, his Clarinet Quintet in B minor, one of the greatest pieces of chamber music.

In this work, the clarinet joins a traditional string quartet: two violins, a viola and a cello. The performers were four Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra players and a guest. The orchestra members were clarinetist Ana Victoria Luperi, violinist Jennifer Chang, violist Aleksandra Holowka and cellist Karen Hall. The guest was violinist Sergey Tsoy.

They gave a deeply moving performance whose haunting effect was strongly enhanced by the clarinet, an instrument whose sound is often and accurately described as “autumnal.” Luperi, who’s the principal clarinetist in the Fort Worth Symphony, was superb, and her colleagues were first-class.

The remainder of the program included music by the British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the contemporary French-Canadian composer and bassoonist Mathieu Lussier, and J.S. Bach.

Lussier’s Sérénade for violin, cello and bassoon brought orchestra principal bassoonist Kevin Hall on board. The work was lovely and maybe a little sad. The Bach involved everybody, except that the strings alone played the familiar Air in G.

This story was originally published March 2, 2015 at 2:43 PM with the headline "Review: Hall Ensemble creates close encounters of the best kind at Avoca Coffee."