Mozart died in 1791, and a year later Beethoven showed up in Vienna. He was a rough-hewn, ambitious prodigy from the German provinces, determined to make a name for himself in the capital of musical Europe, and the first thing he did was take a few composition lessons from the 60-year-old Haydn.
Within the space of a short time, in other words, there was a very concrete passing of the musical torch from one generation to the next. That period of transition was the subject of a nimble chamber music concert presented on Wednesday, July 17, as part of the Music@Menlo festival, which offered a compelling, if slightly blurry, snapshot of the moment in question.
In general, it’s a good idea to be skeptical about historical accounts that seem to tell a pat, overly simple story, and this one is no exception. There’s a tendency to depict musical Vienna in the late 18th century as populated by three towering geniuses and a bunch of guys named Moe, which of course is hooey.
But it’s also true that there was a sense, even at the time, that these men were at the center of a generational shift (in a telling and often-quoted line, one of Beethoven’s hometown patrons assured him that he was heading off to Vienna “to receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn”). Something important and transitional happened during the 1790s, and these three were at the heart of it.
Unfortunately, chamber music, which is the province of Music@Menlo, isn’t always the clearest or the most forceful way to tell that story. A lot of the most significant stylistic transformations took place in orchestral, keyboard and vocal music — as well as the string quartet, which was oddly absent from Wednesday’s program at the Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton.
Instead, the old guard was represented by comparatively uncharacteristic works. Haydn’s Piano Trio in D Minor, Hob. XV:23, got a wan, rather bloodless reading to start the evening. Mozart’s String Quintet in E-Flat, K. 614, was his last effort in a genre that he pioneered and that no one after him took much notice of; not even a lush and evocative performance by violinists Soovin Kim and Aaron Boyd, violists Paul Neubauer and Pierre Lapointe, and cellist Brook Speltz, could make it feel entirely on point.
Instead, the program snapped into focus after intermission with two vivid and somewhat unruly works by the young Beethoven. The Trio in B-Flat, Op. 11, brought together the festival’s founding artistic directors, pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel, with clarinetist Tommaso Lonquich for a performance full of crisp rhythmic interactions and broad, eloquent melodic phrasing. Lonquich and hornist Kevin Rivard, in turn, emerged as the heroes of a bustling closing rendition of the Quintet in E-Flat for Winds and Piano, Op. 16.
Both works find Beethoven, in his mid-20s, in the process of making his musical technique simultaneously more assured and more problematic. The elemental learning curve of his juvenilia is straightening out, and at the same time you can hear him peppering the music with the kind of deliberate surprises and harmonic disruptions that would soon make him a daring figure — hard to grasp and equally hard to ignore.
Music@Menlo: Through Aug. 3. $15-$84. Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton, 555 Middlefield Rd, Atherton. Menlo School, 50 Valparaiso Ave., Atherton. 650-330-2030. www.musicatmenlo.org