Aged in the Cask

The chamber players sat before a massive-walled old building topped with a stone champagne glass. Through the open doors came the aroma of wine breathing through huge oaken casks. Ducking an occasional low-swooping swallow, the audience settled back near the twisting vines of the Pinot Noir grape for an afternoon of music and champagne. If the wine was only domestic, the music was great or rare: Beethoven, 18th century German Composer Johann Schobert, 76-year-old Italian Composer G. Francesco Malipiero.

The occasion for this idyl was the second concert in a series called Music at the Vineyards, held at the century-old Paul Masson Vineyards in the Santa Clara Valley, 40 miles southeast of San Francisco. The inspiration for the series came from four remarkable brothers--Paul, Herbert, Alfred and Norman Fromm. All of the Fromms except Herbert (who is a fulltime organist and composer) make their living in the wine trade, and regularly funnel handsome sums into the support of music. When Norman decided to give California some really fine summer music ("the kind the concert manager can't afford to offer"), he thought of the perfect acoustics provided by the gently sloping Masson vineyards, in which he has a part interest. (The Masson estate was the scene of Anna Held's notorious champagne bath at the turn of the century.) The Fromms hired the San Francisco Symphony's Solo Violinist Ferenc Molnar (no kin to the late playwright) as series director, promptly sold out 500 folding seats for each of three concerts.

The Fromms expect to lose $8,000 on this year's series. At intermission last week, one matron asked Norman Fromm if the program was not just a little too highbrow. Said Norman severely: "This is not just a Sunday outing." As if to prove him right, the audience downed a modest 108 bottles of champagne before returning soberly to their seats to sample Beethoven's Septet in E Flat Major.

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