Zuill Bailey Takes to Brahms

Read my review published today in the Washington Post:

Bach, Cello Suites, Z. Bailey (released on February 2, 2010) Telarc TEL-31978-02 | 140'32" Beethoven, Complete Works for Cello and Piano, Z. Bailey, S. Dinnerstein (released on August 25, 2009) Telarc CD-80740 | 68'46"

Charles T. Downey, Zuill Bailey and Orion Weiss at the Kennedy Center
Washington Post, May 6, 2010

Growing up in Alexandria, Zuill Bailey dreamed of playing the cello in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater one day. He returned to Washington on Tuesday evening to live out that dream, in a concert with pianist Orion Weiss presented by Washington Performing Arts Society.

Brahms's Cello Sonata No. 2 was the best fit for Bailey's edgy, sometimes overly percussive sound and for Weiss's ability to create a meaty, full-handed texture at the keyboard. The sonata's first movement was turbulent, while remaining appropriately balanced, and the slow second movement was poetic rather than sentimental, with Bailey producing a warmly expressive tone on his highest string. Both musicians relished the dancing hemiola figures in the third movement, shifts of the downbeat between duple and triple groupings, and played with impressive bravura and accuracy.

The first half combined variations and dance works of a lighter character. Weiss's over-forceful hand at the piano undermined Roberto Sierra's suave "Suite de Canciones y Danzas," commissioned by Bailey, but the 20-something pianist dazzled in the virtuosic keyboard passages of Mendelssohn's "Variations Concertantes" in D. Pieces from Bailey's latest two CDs, released by the Telarc label, were featured in an impulsive and slightly disjointed version of Beethoven's "Judas Maccabeus Variations" and an energetic but hardly immaculate prelude from Bach's Cello Suite in G. [Continue reading]

Zuill Bailey (cello) and Orion Weiss (piano)
Washington Performing Arts Society, Kreeger Series
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

Beethoven, Twelve Variations on 'See the conqu'ring hero comes' for Cello and Piano, WoO 45
Mendelssohn, Variations Concertantes, op. 17
Brahms, Cello Sonata No. 2, op. 99