On the Radio

Tune your radio dial to 90.9 FM on Mondays at 9 pm to hear Front Row Washington, broadcasts of recent concerts in the area's concert halls. Here is the program of this evening's installment:

March 23, 9 pm
Jens Elvekjær, piano
Dumbarton Oaks

The only place where you could have read a review of this recital, Elvekjær's Washington debut, was right here at Ionarts.

The concert opened with Danish music, Carl Nielsen's Tema med variationer, a set of fifteen more or less continuous variations on a gentle neo-Baroque theme with unexpected harmonic shifts, composed in 1916-17. The variations were alternately devilish (no. 6), playful (no. 5), and gentle (the interweaving lines of no. 10), evoking flavors redolent of Schumann (the crossing hands of no. 1), Chopin (the mournful inner voices of the mazurka-like no. 8), and Debussy (the cascading tolling of bells in no. 15, reminiscent of La cathédrale engloutie). Elvekjær gave a range of finishes to the different genres referenced, a gloomy funeral lament for the homophonic no. 7, flashing sparkle for the toccata of no. 11, soft pedal and whirring tremolos in the music box-like no. 12, and obsessive harping on the ostinato half-step in the top voice of no. 13.

Charles T. Downey, Jens Elvekjær at Dumbarton Oaks (Ionarts, January 15)