Dautricourt and Jokubaviciute Go Modern

Charles T. Downey, Belgian work highlights duo's lyrical contemporary evening
Washington Post, April 15, 2010

Violinist Nicolas Dautricourt (photo by Guy Vivien)

On Monday night La Maison Française presented another concert of contemporary music, by French violinist Nicolas Dautricourt, who inaugurated this series in 2005. For a program on the theme of musical modernism, it was an evening distinguished more by lyrical beauty than the harshness often associated with experimental music.

At the heart of the first half were pieces by the triumvirate of the Second Viennese School. In Berg’s op. 1 piano sonata, dating from the period of his studies with Arnold Schoenberg but before the development of the twelve-tone compositional process, pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute played with confident virtuosity and a moody spontaneity that emphasized the work’s chromatic, almost jazz-like harmonies. Webern’s more atonal four pieces for violin and piano, op. 7, were compressed almost to the point of implosion: the soft movements sounded like nothing more than a few drips of water into a puddle and some hoarse whispers. Only in Schoenberg’s op. 47 fantasy did Dautricourt’s technique weaken slightly, with some of the harmonics sounding scratchy and elusive. [Continue reading]

Nicolas Dautricourt (violin) and Ieva Jokubaviciute (piano)
All-contemporary program (Messiaen, Berg, Webern, Schoenberg, et al.)
La Maison Française

PREVIOUSLY:
Nicolas Dautricourt and Dominique Plancade (Ionarts, November 21, 2007)