Anchorage Daily News

In other jurisdictions, Paul Rosenthal would likely have a government pension and chestful of medals for service to the arts. At the conclusion of this year's Alaska Airlines Autumn Classics chamber music series on Sunday, the Grant Hall audience was on its feet shouting and clapping and yelling after hearing a dazzling performance of Brahms' G Minor Piano Quartet. Rosenthal had not played in that piece, but after two curtain calls, cellist Eugene Osadchy and violist Marcus Thompson grabbed him by the elbows and pulled him onstage, apparently under protest. The crowd cheered all the louder when it saw him.

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Paul Rosenthal

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Ian Fountain

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Sarah Kapustin

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Marcus Thompson

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Eugene Osadchy

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Which is the least tribute due to the founder of the feast. In four decades in Alaska, this transplanted New York violinist has performed and arranged performances across the state, including places where the village piano was missing strings. He created and continues to direct the Sitka Summer Music Festival, arguably Alaska's most illustrious artistic event.

From that festival, these Anchorage programs have sprung and been the occasion, by my reckoning, of the city's first (and often only) hearings of almost every masterwork in chamber music literature, from the pantheon of cultural treasures by Schubert, Brahms, Dvorak, Mozart and more (including, in one heroic run, ALL of the Beethoven quartets -- which was hard on the musicians and darned near killed the audience but had to be done sooner or later).

I thought of this on Saturday night after a sensational rendering of Brahms' C Minor Piano Quartet featuring pianist Ian Fountain, in which Rosenthal did play. (All three of Brahms' piano quartets were presented over the weekend.) Rosenthal seemed particularly ignited by the music and let the passion flow at full volume. The sizzling, whip-snapping Scherzo had the audience holding its breath; a few listeners began to applaud, and we all would have been justified, I think, in shouting for the players to repeat the movement. However decorum prevailed and, heck, spontaneity lost, though the drive and excitement continued to the last note and drew a speedy standing ovation.

But what struck me was that, without Rosenthal to make it happen, this extraordinary music would never have been played in Anchorage. Nor the Elgar Piano Quintet we heard the previous Saturday. Nor the rest of a list so long that I can't begin to recall it.

Saturday's was probably the finest single program in this year's series. Pianist Ian Fountain opened with the second book of Janacek's "On an Overgrown Path" -- again, I'll bet, the first time the piece has been played in an Anchorage concert.

Kapustin approached Mozart's compact, cerebral Quartet, K. 421 with respect and savvy. The whole thing seemed laced with unrelenting tension, a taut energy that rippled even through the slow movement. In this piece, the sound level seldom rose above a mezzo-piano, which, curiously, made it easier to listen more intently.

The most interesting thing on Friday's program was Osadchy's arrangement of Shostakovich piano preludes for cello and violin, which he performed with Rosenthal. The version highlighted the Soviet composer's klezmer influences.

A curiosity opened Sunday's final program, the two-movement String Trio by Sergei Taneyev, a brainy thing that nods to Russian folk music on one hand and seems to foreshadow Bartok on the other. The amount of fascinating music by Russian romantics that Rosenthal has dug out of libraries and revived in Alaska is probably unmatched in any chamber music circuit this side of Minsk.

Kapustin had the first chair for Mozart's Quartet K. 464, not quite as perfect a piece as K. 421, at least not on Sunday. Some jokes about how to stay awake were exchanged over coffee during intermission. But, after intermission, when Kapustin returned to the hot seat for the Brahms' G Minor Piano Quartet, no one could have nodded off.

The powerful, continually surging first three movements were magnificently played. The "Gypsy Rondo" finale brought down the house. Kapustin laid into the wailing, racing lines with brilliance and skill and soul. Fountain pushed the limits on the piano. Every note -- and there were swarms of them -- was clear and sure right up to the moment when the bows snapped away from the strings for keeps.

At which point the roaring crowd was already heading to its feet, making a sound like "Wooooooo!"

Reach assistant features editor Mike Dunham at mdunham@adn.com.

Autumn Classics players this year

PAUL ROSENTHAL, VIOLIN -- student of Jascha Heifetz, founder of the Sitka Summer Music Festival and Alaska Airlines Autumn Classics.

SARAH KAPUSTIN, VIOLIN -- graduated from Juilliard in 2005, is set to play the Tchaikovsky Concert in New York.

MARCUS THOMPSON, VIOLA -- student of the great Walter Trampler (a former Autumn Classics performer) and the rare educator who has jobs at both the New England Conservatory of Music and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

EUGENE OSADCHY, CELLO -- originally from Kiev, Ukraine, now lives in Denton, Texas, where he teaches at the University of North Texas and regularly performs in the Dallas area.

IAN FOUNTAIN, PIANO -- youngest-ever winner of the Authur Rubenstein International Piano Masters Competition back in 1989, now professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

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