Composing specifically for a competition is a perilous task. The seasoned composer tends to avoid such "opportunities," often ill-disguised attempts at getting a new work for prize money constituting a fraction of the price of a decent commission. Yet we are fortunate that in the twilight of her years, Ruth Crawford Seeger saw fit to take such a risk, as the Stanford Wind Quintet proved in a performance of her Suite on Sunday afternoon at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Composed in a whirl to beat a deadline for a National Association of American Composer and Conductors composition contest, this prize-winning work showed the grande dame of the American avant-garde at the height of her craft.

There are temptations (to which many a program-note writer has succumbed) to portray the last works of a composer as a summing-up of their creative career. In the case of this last concert work of Crawford Seeger's, the self-referential quotes seem more like a bit of fun, the composer exploring well-known and celebrated pathways of her ingenuity with a lighter touch and a more open mind. And the piece retained its freshness in the hands of the Stanford Quintet. The motivic first movement had snap and charm, the pensive second an arresting quality and a sense of emotional durability. The players managed both the bustle and introspection of the third with natural grace and aplomb.

Some of the best part-writing of the afternoon was in the Sextet of Jeanne-Louise Dumont Farrenc. Part chamber fantasy, part piano concerto, it gave pianist Paul Hersh a chance to show his mettle with heroic gestures and darting phrases amidst the copious, well-placed wind lines. The symphonic feel was underlined by the full vertical texture throughout the three-movement work, bringing to mind the early chamber efforts of Schumann. The second movement, with its opening chorale of bassoon, horn, clarinet, and oboe, had the full savor of unreachable nostalgia, a trace of the sentiment of an era we no longer have the cultural equipment to truly comprehend. But it was interesting to speculate that part of this equation might have been a sense of musical fraternity that would only have been natural to the composer, who as a Paris Conservatoire professor may well have seen the creation of this work and others of her repertory as opportunities to "jam" with her fellow pedagogues.

Echoes of earlier times

Sharing the distinction of final work with Seeger's Suite was the Sextet of Joseph Rheinberger, a Lichtensteiner composer of the late 19th century. Avoiding the emerging language of the fin-de-siècle era in which it was devised, the music delighted in unashamed Romanticism, its structural contours doling equal parts emotion and cleverness. The customary virtuosic excesses notwithstanding, this was Germanic soul music, tragic yet measured angst in the second movement, radiant pastoral ebullience in the first and last.

The Beethoven-inspired minuet movement was nearly a scherzo in its verve and lift.
A transcription by the composer of his piano trio of the same opus number, it featured by necessity a profusion of lovely low melodic episodes played as sweetly and capably as any cellist by Rufus Olivier on bassoon. The rewriting was skillfully done. Only in some few places did a starker simplicity of polyphonic writing reveal the trio arrangement beneath the glowing curtain of wind texture.

The curtain-raiser of the afternoon was well-chosen. The jazz-folk-contemporary fusion of Hungarian composer Frigyes Hidas' Quintet No. 2 was the perfect piece for showing off the talents of the Stanford Quintet's players. Touches of Gershwin splashed over a Benny Goodman clarinet line, deftly hooted by clarinetist Mark Brandenburg. Flutist Alexandra Hawley and oboist James Matheson had no shortage of Charlie Parker licks and Miles Davis riffs, trading off lines with Olivier's Mulliganing on bassoon. In a sostenuto moment, the simplest of ostinato motives was overlaid with sensitive chordal textures, evolving into a gospel-flavored East-European folk tune. Each of the five movements took the form of carefully-crafted miniature showcases which, like the overall concert itself, were completely satisfying without quite sating the musical appetite for this unusually gifted group of players.

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