Venice Baroque Orchestra @ Dumbarton Oaks

Vivaldi, Concertos and Sinfonias for Strings, Venice Baroque Orchestra, A. Marcon (Archiv, 2006)

Although the Venice Baroque Orchestra has been on American tours more recently, the last time they visited Washington was in 2011, at the National Gallery of Art. In his recordings of Vivaldi's instrumental music thus far, Andrea Marcon has focused on the pieces featuring string instruments, often in partnership with gifted violinist Giuliano Carmignola. For their program at Dumbarton Oaks, heard on Monday evening, the ensemble brought along five woodwind players, to play four of the composer's concertos scored "con molti strumenti," with a larger consort of instruments than Vivaldi generally used.

Vivaldi composed at least two of these concertos, RV 576 and 577, for the Kammermusik, instrumental ensemble, of Friedrich August, the Prince Elector of Saxony. According to Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot, the German prince came to Venice for his "clandestine conversion to Catholicism." Visiting the Ospedale della Pietà with their employer, the prince's musicians hit it off with Vivaldi, especially a violinist named Johann Georg Pisendel. The prince and his musicians acquired copies of many Vivaldi pieces and, especially when Pisendel became concertmaster in Dresden, they inaugurated what Talbot refers to as a "Vivaldi cult" in the prince's Hofkapelle in that city.

The VBO's period-instrument oboes, recorders, and bassoon made a splendid, slightly raucous noise in RV 577 ("Per l'Orchestra di Dresda"), especially in the intense slow movement, accompanied only by theorbo. The third movement had a more extended part for solo violin, too, an example of Vivaldi's admiring writing for Pisendel. The concert ended with RV 576 ("Per Sua Altezza Reale di Sassonia"), again buzzing with active details in the first movement, with concertmaster Gianpiero Zanocco not necessarily distinguishing himself in the first two movements, redeemed by a more focused third movement. Two other concertos with prominent woodwind sections, RV 566 and 564a, rounded out the concept, with the Largo of RV 566, a genial intertwining of two recorders, bassoon, harpsichord, and theorbo, standing out as a moment to be treasured.

Other Reviews: Stephen Brookes, Venice Baroque Orchestra goes for broke at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington Post, April 12) James R. Oestreich, Venice and Vivaldi, Center Stage at the Metropolitan Museum (New York Times, April 11)

A concerto for the not quite effective pairing of solo oboe and violin, RV 548, was a bit of a disappointment, not due to the beautiful melodic lead of the oboe lines. The most splendid solo vehicle was RV 316a, a concerto adapted by Bach for the organ, heard here in a version for flautino, a high recorder, played with brilliant finger technique, flowery embellishments, and endless breath support by soloist Anna Fusek. Two concerti grossi, Corelli's op. 6/4 and Handel's op. 3/1, rounded out the program, featuring the string sections in some of their better moments, although the violins often seemed just slightly out of touch with Marcon in the concert's least satisfying aspect.

Marcon conducted while playing the continuo part from the harpsichord, an instrument modeled on a 17th-century Italian instrument by Thomas and Barbara Wolf, which made some beautiful sounds. Two encores, Handel's chaconne from Terpsichore and a reprise of the third movement of RV 577, brought the evening to a close -- as well as the season at Dumbarton Oaks, which the audience toasted at intermission with a glass of prosecco.

The Venice Baroque Orchestra returns to the area next season, on the concert series at Baltimore's Shriver Hall (February 12, 2017).

Ionarts Exclusive: Dover Quartet @ Dumbarton Oaks

The Dover Quartet formed at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music in 2008. After their sweep of the awards at the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2013, they have been regular visitors to Washington. The latest stop was at Dumbarton Oaks, where I heard their second performance on Monday night. In the Dover's 2013 local debut on the Candlelight Concert Society series in Columbia, the highlight was their performance of Shostakovich's third quartet, "hands down the best Shostakovich performance by a young string quartet to reach these ears since the Jerusalem Quartet," as I wrote then.

The piece was just as good as the post-intermission climax of this concert, a work about the obliviousness of a society heading into war and its lament afterward, if the composer's movement subtitles are to be believed. Even the bloodthirsty third movement still felt manicured in a way, thrilling and forceful but never ragged, with a deliberate and sarcastic tone in the second movement. The anguished threnody of the fourth movement featured some gorgeous playing by violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, followed by a fifth movement that grew in power into shrieks of rage, even then without turning unnecessarily ugly, the dissonances and attacks all carefully calibrated. The nostalgic ending, a glowing major chord, featured the lean, limpid tone of first violinist Joel Link sobbing against the others, unable to forget the past.

An opening Mozart quartet, "The Hunt" (K. 458), was the only disappointment, because in the first two movements, the quartet seemed to misjudge the effect of their ensemble sound in the Dumbarton Oaks Music Room, resulting in a sound just not as rarefied as we are accustomed to hearing from them. This may have been due to being less familiar with this piece or perhaps being satisfied with a lower standard, but fortunately by the start of the third movement, the quartet's best, that expected warm, balanced sound was back.

While there was work to be done on the Mozart, the quartet gave a supremely polished rendition of Caroline Shaw's Plan and Elevation (The Grounds of Dumbarton Oaks). Created last year for the museum and actually premiered at a private concert here in November, it is not really much of a piece, five short movements inspired by locales in the estate's gardens. The main motif of the first movement, for example, is the three-note pattern mi-re-do (the opening of Three Blind Mice, among other things), which when combined with varied accompanying material sounds like sol-fa-me in other contexts. The second movement is built on citations from Ravel's F Major Quartet and Mozart's K. 387, with a simple rising scale as the lead motif, and most of the piece is little more than a game of sonorities, with the most memorable moment involving Shaw's trademark microtonal glissandi that explode the mostly tonal harmonic fabric from within.

Christopher Taylor

W. Bolcom, Twelve New Etudes, C. Taylor (JDR, 2000)

Charles T. Downey, Pianist Christopher Taylor cranks the bombast dial a little too high (Washington Post, January 12)

Christopher Taylor is a concert showman of virtuosic excess. At the last solo recital he gave in Washington, in 2009, he played on a special two-manual Steinway for double the effect. This time around, on Sunday evening at Dumbarton Oaks, he had only a single keyboard, but in many ways he seemed to strive for sounds that were more massive and more complicated than the instrument could achieve.

The high point was a bombastic rendition of the first opus of Johannes Brahms, one of the early piano sonatas that many pianists avoid in favor of the composer’s later variations and character pieces... [Continue reading]

Christopher Taylor, piano
Friends of Music
Dumbarton Oaks

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, Christopher Taylor Doubles His Trouble (Ionarts, October 16, 2009)

Dominique Labelle at Dumbarton Oaks

Moments of Love, D. Labelle, Y. Wyner (Bridge Records, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, Dominique Labelle masters a subtle style at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington Post, March 17)

Canadian-born soprano Dominique Labelle gave a recital of sometimes frustrating contrasts on Sunday evening at Dumbarton Oaks. Some of her selections, mostly on the second half, showed her voice in its best light, with limpid and floating high notes, while others revealed musical struggles.

Both Labelle and her talented accompanist, the composer Yehudi Wyner, were at their best in Ravel’s enigmatic “Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé.” Here Wyner gave just enough sound to the rustling, often static harmonies of the keyboard part so that Labelle did not have to force her sound. The result was just the right amount of suggestive... [Continue reading]

Dominique Labelle (soprano) and Yehudi Wyner (piano)
Friends of Music
Dumbarton Oaks

SEE ALSO:
Charles T. Downey, Gluck Sells out the Concert Hall (Ionarts, February 3, 2010)

Joel Fan @ Dumbarton Oaks

Charles T. Downey, Joel Fan, an often-eclectic American pianist, sticks to the romantics at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington Post, November 6, 2013)

Music of the Americas, J. Fan (2009)

Competitions launch many a musician’s career, but usually they do not define it for long. American pianist Joel Fan got his first breaks because of competitive victories, but he has made a career on a willingness to juxtapose traditional and unexpected repertory. In a recital at Dumbarton Oaks on Monday night, he offered a program of four romantic composers, first performed at the Ravinia Festival this summer.

It was a far cry from the eclectic programs Fan has played in the past few years at the National Gallery of Art. Wagner, for example, is not a name that leaps to mind when one thinks of a piano recital, but Fan opened with a transcription of the prelude to “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” made by Glenn Gould and rearranged by Fan for a single pianist. From it, one had the sense of the romantic striving beyond what an instrument or genre can give. [Continue reading]

Joel Fan, piano
Friends of Music
Dumbarton Oaks

SEE ALSO:
Joe Banno, Fan gives fantastic close to National Gallery's American Music Festival (Washington Post, December 3, 2009)

Charles T. Downey, Pianist Joel Fan performs at the National Gallery of Art (Washington Post, June 6, 2011)

Quicksilver's Washington Debut

Charles T. Downey, Quicksilver offers night of discoveries at Dumbarton Oaks
Washington Post, January 15, 2013

Stile Moderno: New Music from the 17th Century, Quicksilver (2011) [Sample tracks]

When Dieterich Buxtehude is by far the best-known composer on a concert program, you know you are in for a night of discoveries. The others surveyed by the historically informed performance ensemble Quicksilver at its Washington concert debut, on Sunday at Dumbarton Oaks, also worked at some point in Germany or Austria in the 17th century. Their names — Matthias Weckmann, Antonio Bertali, Johann Schmelzer, Johann Kaspar Kerll, Nicolaus a Kempis — are mostly found in the footnotes of music history textbooks.

These pieces for instruments, mainly sonatas, were meant to divert the ear, with several moods and tempos in succession over a concise single movement. This musical approach was called the “stylus phantasticus,” because miniature, intricate worlds can be contained in the 10-minute spans. [Continue reading]

Music of 17th-century Germany
Quicksilver
Friends of Music
Dumbarton Oaks

A Far Cry

A Far Cry: Debut (music by Golijov, Handel, Tchaikovsky)

We missed hearing the young chamber orchestra from Boston that calls itself A Far Cry last season at Dumbarton Oaks. They came back this weekend to end that venue's season, where we heard them on Monday night. It is easy to see why audiences and concert presenters would be fired up about the group, which is young, dynamic, and visibly passionate about what they do. It is not so easy to hear. These musicians have spirit, but musical details like intonation and ensemble cohesion were left wanting at times. Another danger of direction by committee -- the group has no conductor and often rotates the leadership position in each section with each piece -- is that some programming choices were laudable, in a concert that was a "greatest hits" from the past four years' worth of performances, and others were not.

The two pieces that had the most success were series of short movements that seemed to engage the imagination the most. Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber's Battalia à 10 (D major, C. 61), which opened the concert, was rollicking good fun, a programmatic work that described a battle (with stamps of the feet), the rattle of the drum (with paper covering double-bass fingerboard), a drunken party (with a cacophony of parts in different keys and time signatures all at once, preceded by a couple boozy burps -- not indicated in the score), and the crack of the cannon (percussive pizzicati). It was paired with an "arrangement" of Beethoven's "Serioso" quartet (F minor, op. 95) that really added nothing to, and may have detracted from, the original quartet version, since it just expanded the number of players on each part, aside from sometimes adding double-bass to the cello line and sometimes not. The greater numbers made the forceful unisons of the first movement stronger, but rushing in the third movement was a little out of control, diminishing the effect of the generally brash sound.

Other Reviews: Stephen Brookes, A Far Cry at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown (Washington Post, April 24)

A half-baked piece by Osvaldo Golijov, Tenebrae, was another mistake. The work is a static set of progressions cribbed from Couperin's Troisième Leçon de Ténèbres ("lifted" is the word Golijov used in his program note), with little added to it but some moody oscillations that pulsate in ostinato figures and dynamic markings, a meditative mush that could be the soundtrack of a Hallmark commercial. Its pairing with Benjamin Britten's Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, op. 10, was damning. From the same palette of instruments, Britten drew forth a much broader range of colors and effects, in a score burgeoning with ideas arranged in ten short movements, each an ingenious and virtuosic work of mimicry. The models are all easy to distinguish -- a sardonic Shostakovich march, a melodic tribute to Verdi, Prokofiev-like neoclassicism, a Dvořák furiant (more than a Viennese waltz), and an Offenbach galop -- but the music is always unmistakably Britten's. Those who have followed Golijov's woes on meeting deadlines will be amused to know that Britten completed this commission "in a matter of weeks," using one of the lovely melodies composed by his teacher, Frank Bridge, as the basis of inspiration. The ninth variation, Chant, achieves essentially the same effect that Golijov is after in Tenebrae, but it does it far more effectively and in a tenth of the time.

Next season, the Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks will feature performances by pianist Alessio Bax, violinist Ray Chen, the a cappella group Cantus, the Assad Brothers (guitarists), and the Wind Soloists of New York.

Boston Camerata Still Building Bridges

The Sacred Bridge: Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe, Boston Camerata, J. Cohen

Joel Cohen's The Sacred Bridge, with the Boston Camerata, was one of the recordings that made a big impression on a certain undergraduate music major, one of many early music dreams that inspired me to study historical musicology. Five of the performers featured on that album, released two decades ago on the Erato label, returned to the Music Room of Dumbarton Oaks on Monday night, with an updated and expanded version of Cohen's original idea. To help draw connections not only between Jewish and Christian music in the Middle Ages, but also with Muslim music, the Boston Camerata is collaborating with the Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble. Much of the repertoire has changed -- gone is Hans Neusiedler's "Der Juden Tanz," for example, in its notorious (and notoriously erroneous) "bitonal" transcription -- but the mode of performance remains austere, perfect listening for Advent.

Cohen is slightly more cautious these days about drawing connections between music from different religious traditions, since the book from which the concert's title is drawn -- Eric Werner's The Sacred Bridge -- refers to one of the great musicological canards, the putative origins of Gregorian chant in Jewish synagogue music. Cohen still underscored the similarity of the tonus peregrinus and a Jewish psalm recitation formula, by having them sung side by side to the words of Psalm 113 (114). The tones are obviously very similar, not only to one another to but to lots of tunes in that mode: the similarity does not in itself imply any historical influence. In fact, because the older written sources are the Christian ones, one could just as easily argue that the Jewish tone was taken from a Christian model. Music from the Muslim tradition added an extra layer of complexity, as in the three evocations of the dawn, from the Piyyut "Shahar Abaqeshkha," the cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio, and from the Koran -- all sung monophonically, with no accompaniment, a soundscape meant to evoke the tapestry of traditions in medieval Spain.

Other Reviews: Joan Reinthaler, Boston Camerata adds Muslim dimension (Washington Post, December 6) Jeffrey Gantz, ‘Sacred Bridge’ a meeting of ensembles - and faiths (Boston Globe, December 6) David Weininger, Joel Cohen, Boston Camerata celebrate diverse traditions (Boston Globe, December 2)

Soprano Anne Azéma, who is now the group's artistic director (although Cohen directed this concert), sounded in excellent form, her limpid voice floating ethereally from a distant room in the opening piece and in unaccompanied pieces like the 13th-century Par grant franchise, a bitter love song by the trouvère known only as Mathieu le Juif. By contrast, the voice of veteran countertenor Michael Collver has not weathered the passing of time quite so well, often somewhere between over-straining and cracking, but with some pretty moments in between. The austerity of the group's sound came from the relative simplicity of most of the instrumental contributions, Cohen's plucking at the lauta, the long lines of the flute and recorder of Jesse Lepkoff (with the exception of the the countermelody he contributed to Eftach sephatai berinah, which sounded like a Vivaldi concerto), and the dry vieille of Carol Lewis, which consisted largely of simple drones.

Cohen admitted, in somewhat rambling commentary, that the connections implied by the program were difficult to prove definitively. In particular, the selection of folk songs, most of which were not written down until very recently, is problematic, but no less beautiful for being historically tenuous. The percussion players of the Sharq Ensemble, Ziya Tabassian and Boujemaa Razgui, enlivened so many of the pieces with endlessly varied beats and sounds. The only thing one wished could have been omitted was Cohen's lengthy, and somewhat free, reading of an account of a poet's life, written by Yitzhak Gorni in the 13th century, with a little oud improvisation to accompany it. The couple laughs it got were not worth the leaden effect it had on the overall line of the program. A single encore, another Moroccan folk song, was offered "as a Christmas present," with its syncopated refrain serving as a sort of Arabic "fa la la la la" to wind us home.

The next concerts on the Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks will feature the piano duo of Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia, in music of Bach, Stravinsky, and Mendelssohn (January 22 and 23).

Gypsies Invade Dumbarton Oaks

Vivaldi: The Baroque Gypsies, Ensemble Caprice, M. Maute (2007) Telemann: The Baroque Gypsies, Ensemble Caprice, M. Maute (2009)

Dumbarton Oaks’ Friends of Music Series
(The Washingtonian, October 19)
[EXCLUSIVE]

In their home in Georgetown, Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss had a room dedicated to music performances. Now that their house -- better known as Dumbarton Oaks -- is a museum, it hosts a series of concerts in that room to continue the tradition. It’s one of the most intimate and beautifully appointed venues for chamber music in the city, a place where one can listen to historical music while surrounded by Renaissance tapestries, paintings by Jacques Daret and El Greco, a medieval altarpiece panel by Bernardo Daddi, and a wood Madonna by Tilman Riemenschneider.

The Friends of Music series opened its concert season this past weekend with a performance by the Montreal-based Ensemble Caprice, heard on Monday night. The program was selected to prove a minor point sometimes made by historians about the palette of musical sounds that influenced the compositional style of Antonio Vivaldi. Although based for much of his life in Venice, Vivaldi traveled widely in Europe, including trips to Prague and Vienna to oversee performances of his operas. In addition, his base of operations in Venice, the Ospedale della Pietà, was on the Riva degli Schiavi, the canal where visitors coming from Eastern Europe arrived in Venice. Both of these facts suggest that he was exposed to the playing of itinerant Romani (Gypsy) musicians; that as a talented violinist he may even have played with them; and that he imitated some of their folk idioms in his own compositions. Ensemble Caprice, a small group of musicians playing on historical instruments, tried to demonstrate that connection with selections from Vivaldi’s instrumental works, mostly concertos, alternated with arrangements of folk tunes from the extraordinary 18th-century collection of Romani music Uhrovská zbierka, a book found in a town in modern-day Slovakia.

[Continue reading]

Two Jons at Dumbarton Oaks

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Brahms Clarinet Sonatas [REVIEW] Novacek / D'Rivera / Gershwin

Charles T. Downey, Clarinetist Jon Manasse and pianist Jon Nakamatsu at Dumbarton Oaks
Washington Post, April 19, 2011

The clarinet is a chameleon among instruments, finding a habitat in classical music, jazz, the marching band and klezmer. The intersection between the first two of those was the subject of a recital by clarinetist Jon Manasse and pianist Jon Nakamatsu on Sunday night at Dumbarton Oaks. The program included one of the Brahms clarinet sonatas from the duo’s debut recording and selections of jazz-influenced American pieces from their latest disc.

Manasse, former principal clarinetist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, has an impeccably smooth tone on the instrument, highlighted to mellow effect in the warm, restrained opening of the Second Brahms Sonata. Nakamatsu, who won the gold medal at the Van Cliburn Competition in 1997, matched and supported Manasse in polished tone, helping to create a sense of surging but contained passion in this autumnal work. Throughout the evening, neither player forced his instrument, aware of the intimate scale of the museum’s Music Room and focusing only on beauty of sound. [Continue reading]

Jon Manasse (clarinet) and Jon Nakamatsu (piano)
Friends of Music series
Dumbarton Oaks

Altenberg Trio @ Dumbarton Oaks

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Piano Trios (Ravel, Fauré, Martin), Altenberg Trio Wien

Sometimes a performance can be pleasing in many ways without ever becoming the sort of concert that inspires or lingers in the memory. This is perhaps nowhere more true than chamber music, where the alchemy of great music making is the most elusive, because of the restricted musical means. It was true for most of the program offered on Monday night by the Altenberg Trio Wien, in the stunning Music Room at Dumbarton Oaks. The group, formed by some of the former members of the Vienna Schubert Trio, has had a distinguished performing history in the Washington area, last appearing at the Library of Congress in 2010 and at Dumbarton Oaks in 2008: while this concert presented much to admire, the group did not seem as gifted as their compatriots, the Wiener Klaviertrio, for example.

Two Haydn trios -- so many of them, so rarely played! -- mostly highlighted the consummately tasteful playing of pianist Claus-Christian Schuster, reining in the Dumbarton Steinway, whose noisy, crunchy action has bothered me on previous occasions (Paderewski played on the instrument and left his signature). The action was particularly present on the box side, where I sat for the first half, and less so from my later position on the keyboard side. Schuster was an attentive partner, always with one eye on his colleagues, although he sometimes tended to rush them just slightly when he had fast passage work. His Rococo decoration, as in the luscious slow movement of no. 12, had admirable lightness, and he gave remarkable energy to the frothy final movement of Hob. XV:23. Neither violinist Amiram Ganz nor the group's newest member, cellist Alexander Gebert (joined in 2004), made solo sounds that captivated the ear, but melded their performances to Schuster for Haydn that was reserved, stylish, and very musical.

Stronger group performances came on more recent pieces, especially the gorgeous A major piano trio by Ravel that closed the concert. Ganz had a lovely, translucent tone high on the E string in the sultry opening of the first movement, matched by a more tender sound from the cello (although the harmonics from the strings at the close of the movement were more than a little dicey). The second movement -- labeled a pantoum by Ravel, a reference to a Malaysian poetic form -- had the feel of a sweeping waltz, while the third-movement Passacaille continued the Asian influence in the use of open harmonies and pentatonic melodies. The first half concluded with the relatively rare piano trio by Ernest Chausson (op. 3), which again featured the remarkable finger facility of Schuster at the piano, flying through a part that consists largely of busily animated harmonic patterns and anchoring bass lines. The influence of Wagner was most prominent in the seething slow movement, with its chromatic and otherwise heavily perfumed harmonies. At times, it was the sort of exotic-flavored music -- and the encore, the scherzo from Debussy's youthful piano trio, too -- that might have tamed the cobra recently escaped from the Bronx Zoo, who already has a Twitter account, if she had made her way this far south.

The final concert on the Dumbarton Oaks series will feature clarinetist Jon Manasse and pianist Jon Nakamatsu (April 17 and 18).

Trio Settecento at Dumbarton Oaks

Trio Settecento: A German Bouquet An Italian Sojourn

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

We have been admirers of the playing of violinist Rachel Barton Pine since hearing her in Washington, twice, in 2006. In addition to the music we have already heard her play, it turns out that Barton Pine also has an interest in the Baroque violin repertory. She plays with a group called Trio Settecento, which made its Washington debut on Sunday night in a refined concert featuring music by French composers of the grand siècle. This French program, called A French Soirée, will be released on a disc this fall by Cedille, continuing a recent series of albums that has featured selections of German and Italian music.

The first half began with a mélange of music for the combination of violin, viola da gamba, and harpsichord, mostly dances from the 17th century, by Lully, Couperin, and Marin Marais. In this repertory, Barton Pine plays on a most unusual and historically appropriate instrument, a violin made by Nicolò Gagliano in 1770 and preserved with almost no historical alteration to the present day. Gagliano's father, Alessandro, trained in the Cremonese workshops of Amati and Stradivari, and he founded a Neapolitan tradition of violin making. The way she played these works, with a slender and precise tone, sweet and meaty but never forced, is another indication of one of the best results of the historically informed performance movement: real violin virtuosos combined with historical instruments and techniques make for more exciting renditions than those by some of the earlier specialists. (Viktoria Mullova also comes to mind.) Barton Pine's tuning was impeccable, and her left hand remarkably agile even as she added little embellishments to already florid lines. Standout pieces in the set included a forlorn sarabande (taken from Couperin's Concerts royaux) and a chromatically rich chaconne by Marais.

John Mark Rozendaal was a talented partner to Barton Pine on the gamba, often in rhythmic dialogue with her. In the pieces that featured him as a soloist, as in the technically demanding Les guitares by Marais, one noticed shortcomings more than being wowed by virtuosity, with some infelicities of intonation on the high strings and finger tangles here and there. At the harpsichord (a William Dowd copy of an instrument made by Blanchet), David Schrader was rigorous and reliable but not all that noteworthy, until he had more to work with in the demanding pieces by Rameau, from the Deuxième Concert, and Antoine Forqueray's dazzling harpsichord solo La Leclair, an evocation of the violin virtuoso whose work concluded the concert. For the most part, though, this was the Rachel Barton Pine show, nowhere more than in the astounding performance of Leclair's G major violin sonata (op. 3, no. 1). In all of the movements except the elegiac Largo, Leclair seemed to be trying to recreate the texture of the trio sonata in this work -- with both of the violin parts taken by the one violinist in extremely difficult double stops. Barton Pine treated these movements as the contrapuntal tour de force they were, giving both of the lines independence and beauty.

The next concerts on the Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks will feature the Altenberg Trio from Vienna (March 27 and 28).

Harmonious Blacksmith's Almost Christmas

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Sentirete una canzonetta Harmonious Blacksmith

The early music ensemble Harmonious Blacksmith, last reviewed in 2009, was tapped by Dumbarton Oaks to close out the 2010 part of its season of subscription concerts with a concert of Christmas music. The program they chose consisted of French noëls, English carols, and villancicos from the New World, all resulting from attempts to combine Christian devotion with models of popular song and dance. That unification of style made for lots of jocund rhythms and texts reflective of simple piety (two Peruvian cachuas, from the Trujillo Manuscript, were particularly basic), but it also made the ear and mind long for something more substantial than so many repetitions of strophic forms and catchy refrains.

The performances were all enjoyable, led by the graceful soprano of Linda Tsatsanis, clear-toned but not straightened to the point of colorlessness. The voice was rarefied enough to match nicely with only the lute as accompaniment -- for example, in the 16th-century French song Une jeune fillette -- yet solid enough to rise over the full ensemble of gamba (Emily Walhout), harpsichord (the unshakable Joseph Gascho), recorder (Justin Godoy), violin (Scott Metcalfe, heard recently with his Blue Heron ensemble), and lute (or guitar or theorbo, all played by William Simms). Just when you thought you had heard everything in the remarkable Tom Zajac's bag of multi-instrumental tricks -- percussion and the marvelous sound of the medieval bagpipe, as well as recorders, all heard again here -- he does something like play the castanets, as he did in some of the Spanish selections. Some of the music had little to nothing to do with Christmas: the aforementioned Une jeune fillette, for example, which is not about the Virgin Mary but about a young girl dying on the vine after being forced into a convent by her family (it does not exactly put one in the Christmas spirit); much of the instrumental dance selections, like those from the Mulliner Book; and the anonymous Maria, todo es Maria, which was probably intended for Immaculate Conception).

Blue Heron Fly-Over

Aston / Jones / Mason (from the Peterhouse Partbooks), Blue Heron Du Fay: Motets, Hymns, Chansons, Sanctus Papale, Blue Heron

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Blue Heron ensemble captivates at Dumbarton Oaks
Washington Post, November 10, 2010

The Boston-based vocal ensemble Blue Heron made its Washington debut this week on the Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks. The ensemble's captivating program of 15th-century polyphonic chansons, heard Monday night, featured five of the group's singers in various combinations and sometimes supported by instruments.

It is rare to hear live performances of this secular music of the early Renaissance, perhaps because its pre-tonal dissonance and sometimes forbidding rhythmic complexity make audiences and performers uncomfortable in a way not unlike the reaction of some to post-tonal music. Blue Heron's approach was to present this music as works intended for soloists, with the singers mostly one on a part. The long, flowing melismas, or chains of notes on a single syllable that conclude many phrases especially in Burgundian chansons, were interwoven by the singers like the tendrils of vines in the tapestry hanging behind the performers in the Music Room at Dumbarton Oaks. [Continue reading]

Blue Heron
A 15th-Century Cabaret (music by Binchois, Busnoys, Du Fay, Frye, others)
Dumbarton Oaks

Plus Points for No 'Silent Night' Sing-along

Read my review today in the actual Washington Post, the thing they print on paper:

Charles T. Downey, Anonymous 4, sounding like a comeback
Washington Post, December 2, 2009

Anonymous 4, the quartet of women known for singing medieval chant and polyphony with faultless intonation and translucent vocal color, brought its comeback tour to Dumbarton Oaks on Monday night. After almost 20 years of acclaimed work in concert and on disc, the group stopped performing a few years ago, a suspension that has happily proved temporary.

In the new configuration Ruth Cunningham replaces Johanna Maria Rose, returning to sing alongside Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, who replaced Cunningham when she left the group in 1998. Three favorite repertories collide in a new Christmas program, "The Cherry Tree": late medieval chant, 15th-century English polyphony and Anglo-American folk song. The juxtaposition is less jarring than it might seem, underscoring the melodic fluidity, open and modal harmonies, parallelisms and pre-tonal dissonance that these styles share. [Continue reading]

Anonymous 4
Friends of Music Series
Dumbarton Oaks

Apollo's Fire Has Fuel, Does Not Ignite

Violinist Veronika Skuplik-Hein

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Members of Apollo's Fire, the early music ensemble based in Cleveland, came to Dumbarton Oaks this past weekend for a concert on the Friends of Music series. Their program, Mediterranean Nights, recycled from 2005, surveys examples of Baroque music based on ground bass patterns. Unlike a similar program, American Opera Theater's Ground, this concert seemed to shoehorn much of its music into its supposed theme, "Sultry Songs and Passionate Dances from Italy and Spain." Guest guitarist Steve Player, who also specializes in the speculative recreation of Baroque dance, tried to provide the sultry and passionate part, but in a way that struck me as kind of silly, clogging and spinning on the little platform at one end of the Dumbarton Oaks Music Room.

The music itself was often lovely, if not all that daring in terms of pacing or virtuosity, with the exception of the two violinists, the group's own Johanna Novom and guest star Veronika Skuplik-Hein, who dueled in the program's best piece, Marco Uccellini's Duo Bergamasca. Skuplik-Hein, generally on the upper of the two violin parts, provided the most exciting playing of the evening, albeit with an oddly passion-less efficiency, a thrill that was more intellectual than visceral. The first half would have ended more aptly if yet another performance of Riu riu chiu had been omitted, mingling somewhat uneasily with this decidedly secular program. Director Jeannette Sorrell, who was responsible for most of the arrangements, made a desperate attempt to exaggerate this dance-like, popular sacred song's secular qualities in her spoken comments, which mistook the work's piety and ultimately diminished it.

Other Reviews: Donald Rosenberg, Apollo's Fire revels in sunlit Baroque repertoire (Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 1) Gary Budzak, Baroque group's improvisations a delight (Columbus Dispatch, November 7) Andrew Druckenbrod, Cohesive Apollo's Fire brims with passion and precision (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 9) Mark Kanny, Apollo's Fire 'jams' into 'Mediterranean Nights (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, November 9)

Guest soprano Nell Snaidas, as noted of her appearance in the area with another ensemble in 2007, does not have the strongest voice: an angular vibrato that mucks up some of the clarity, some constriction at the top, an excess of point. What she does have in spades is a charming stage presence and the ability to act, surely a help in her past dalliances with musical theater. Two of her better performances demonstrate this duality, a fine rendition of Luigi Rossi's Lamento di Euridice, which nonetheless left some musical and virtuosic possibilities unexplored, versus a semi-staged and charming performance of Luis de Briceno's Romance Biejo, about a woman confessing her breaking of the ten commandments to a shocked priest. While one could have imagined a more interesting musical result for this program, the group's delight in improvisation on these repeating bass patterns and especially in rhythmic shifts was pleasing, if not captivating.

The Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks makes a bid for the city's best holiday concert this year with its next offering, a program by the vocal quartet Anonymous 4 called The Cherry Tree. Get an early start on the Christmas season with these concerts for the First Sunday of Advent (November 29 and 30).

Prima Trio at Dumbarton Oaks

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Youthful earnestness and energy were in abundance for the latest concert in the Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks. The members of the Prima Trio, heard on Monday evening, are in different stages of graduate school and early professional careers. A win at the 2007 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, where they received the Grand Prize and Gold Medal, has launched them into a fairly intense schedule of performing. As a chamber ensemble they have chosen difficult terrain: the combination of violin (David Bogorad), clarinet (Boris Allakhverdyan), and piano (Anastasia Dedik) -- even with the violinist also playing viola as an alternative -- has at best a limited repertoire. The Verdehr Trio, who still teach at my alma mater, Michigan State University, have played it all so many times that they have commissioned a couple hundred new pieces just to keep things interesting.

The main appeal of a concert by this type of ensemble is the chance to hear music that does not get played all that often. Frankly, some of the composers who were announced for this concert were of greater interest than what ended up on the program. So there was no Lotti, Schumann, or Ives, and saddest of all, no Milhaud Suite (you can listen to some sound clips on the group's Web site), but what the group did play was performed with verve and a balanced sense of ensemble. The "Kegelstatt" trio (E-flat major, K. 498) had an amiable, playful sound that recalled the piece's origins, music intended for the composer to play with his friends at the regular parties held in the home of Gottfried von Jacquin. Khachaturian's Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano had a sultry first movement with echoes of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, but a tasteful performance was not enough to make this work anything more than the folksy and repetitive pablum it is.

More memorable were the selections from Max Bruch's Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano, op. 83, and Stravinsky's arrangement for clarinet, violin, and piano of his music for L'Histoire du Soldat. The Bruch is a major work, with equal roles for the viola and clarinet, as well as a demanding part for the pianist: this was a good performance, but with just enough problems of intonation and slight blemishes in the piano to keep it from being a great one. It had a much more interesting use of folk elements, in the gypsy-influenced fifth movement, and a joky, Mendelssohnian romp in the seventh. The Prima Trio gave the Stravinsky a plucky first movement, striking a solid tempo risoluto, with a style that was more bubbly than biting until the concluding Devil's Dance. The program would have been stronger without the Khachaturian (as well as largely unnecessary narration from Bogorad) and a full performance of either the Bruch or Stravinsky (or both) instead. Desserts included a final selection of Peter Schickele's Serenade for Three, an indulgence in Stravinsky-esque rhythmic drive, an obsession with melodic patterns reminiscent of Philip Glass, Copland-like misty harmony, and glib references to American popular music, as well as a substantial encore, the Autumn part of Astor Piazzola's Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.

The final concert on the Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks will feature violinist David Grimal and pianist Georges Pludermacher (April 15 and 16), in a program of composers from eastern Europe.

Jens Elvekjaer at Dumbarton Oaks

Jens Elvekjaer, pianist

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Jens Elvekjaer gave his American recital debut this weekend on the Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks. Washington audiences have heard this Danish pianist before, in his appearance with Trio con Brio Copenhagen this past February at the Clarice Smith Center (the group will be back again on February 18, at the Library of Congress, with violist James Dunham). For his first exposure as a soloist, Elvekjaer played a challenging and alluring program extremely well, if there were not quite enough superlative moments to add up to a complete rave.

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. Elvekjaer is something of a Nielsen specialist, as his only recording, to my knowledge [See correction below--Ed.], is the first volume of a complete Nielsen chamber music set from Dacapo (the second volume will be released later this month). He will hopefully record the variations, which he played from the score, turning his own pages (which required him to drop a few notes in the demanding fifteenth variation). 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). Elvekjaer 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.


Pianist Jens Elvekjaer playing Nielsen in the Music Room, January 12, 2009
(photo courtesy of Dumbarton Oaks)
The rest of the first half was devoted to one of the autumnal last three piano sonatas of Schubert (C minor, D. 958 -- see online score). Played from memory, the piece again showcased the range of Elvekjaer's touch, which impressed especially by its strength in the weighty passages. Some of the lighter moments, like the second theme of the first movement, could have been a little more feathery, although that may have been partly due to the Dumbarton Steinway, which is a little crunchy. The often bleak mood fit well with the numerous references to Schubert's own Winterreise song cycle. It was gutsy to conclude this recital with Musorgsky's daunting Pictures at an Exhibition, and Elvekjaer played it with considerable technical polish, a few clunky moments in Baba-Yaga aside (hey, even William Kapell didn't get all the notes). Here Elvekjaer's work at the forte end of the spectrum maxed out the instrument a bit, as in the Bydlo movement, but the lighter movements were fluffy and fun, like the gently teasing children of Tuileries and the pointy, scratching Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks.

Nielsen Chamber Music, Vol. 1, J. Elvekjaer et al.

An accidentally dropped cane marred the opening of the Schubert, something that promised to spoil the recording of this concert, made for broadcast on NPR and WETA's Front Row Washington, for the first time at Dumbarton Oaks. Happily, when Elvekjaer appeared for his second encore (the first, hitting exactly the right tone, was Schubert's G-flat major impromptu), he informed us that he was going to play the opening of the sonata again, to patch into the broadcast. That fixed the cane noise, but not the obtrusive snoring toward the end of the third movement. We'll have to see if that can be heard on the radio.

The next concerts on the Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks will feature Concertino Palatino with Dutch soprano Johannette Zomer, in 17th-century music by Heinrich Schütz, Samuel Scheidt, Johann Rosenmüller, and Daniel Speer (February 8 and 9).

CORRECTION:
Jens Elvekjaer's manager informs me of the following: "Mr. Elvekjaer does indeed have another recording out: his début CD of Ravel, Franck and Debussy, which was nominated for two Danish Music Awards." Thanks for the information!

Brotherhood of the Star

Joel Cohen

The Boston Camerata returned for the December concerts at Dumbarton Oaks this weekend. The group, founded by Joel Cohen, was actually named "America's foremost early music ensemble" by Le Monde, as opposed to one local group that apparently gave itself a similar title. The Camerata's specialty has been medieval music, although they also perform Renaissance and Baroque music. Since the early years of the historically informed performance (HIP) movement, professional groups have taken over from academic ensembles in Baroque music and, to a lesser degree, in Renaissance music. The Middle Ages, however, remains the orphan child, and with a few exceptions, the ensembles that specialize in medieval music preserve the feel of the old days, a standard of performance by devoted professors and their graduate students.

That being said, Joel Cohen has always assembled engaging programs, and his new Christmas concert, Brotherhood of the Star: A Hispanic Christmas is no different, bringing together Gregorian chant, other medieval monophony by Alfonso el Sabio, sacred polyphony from Spain and the New World, and Jewish folksong. Gospel readings from the Nativity narrative, in both Spanish and English, attempted to link together these disparate elements, but the connections among the more distant bodies of music were often tenuous at best. It worked just fine as a program appreciated only for its unusual choices, without much thinking about how it fit together (or did not) as a homogenous whole.

For a program ostensibly about the visit of the Magi, the group spent a lot of time on music dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which made a very pleasant end to my day on the feast of the Immaculate Conception as I heard the concert on Monday evening. At the opening of this part of the concert, three singers sang an anonymous polyphonic work, Reina muy esclarecida, while lined up in front of two art works in the renovated and lavishly decorated Music Room ("It sure beats high school auditoriums," as Cohen wryly noted): Tilman Riemenschneider's sculpted Virgin and Child (1521-22) and the painted Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels, an altarpiece by Bernardo Daddi (1337).

Other Reviews: Joan Reinthaler, Boston Camerata (Washington Post, December 9)

The best of the voices were the clear soprano of Anne Azéma, the newly appointed artistic director of the Boston Camerata (and also the wife of Joel Cohen), and the throatier Salomé Sandoval, who also accompanied herself on the guitar. Most of the vocal monophony was left unaccompanied, especially the Gregorian chants, which were usually sung by one voice alone. Cohen's editions of some of the other monophonic music favored a more metrical rendition, sometimes with instruments doubling the voices or adding drones or heterophonic accompaniment. Notable instrumental contributions include the shofar blasts added to the opening of the program, not even the least bizarre choice in a concert that also featured castanets, sleighbells, maracas, claves, and a hilarious mariachi-style solo on the cornetto. Even the sing-along, an adaptation in English of a Catalan folk song, was eclectic, helping to give the impression of a program that was long on fun, if somewhat short of the mark in terms of musical quality.

Boston Camerata will present Brotherhood of the Star at various sites in Massachusetts and Rhode Island this month (December 12 to 20). The next concerts on the Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks will feature the U.S. recital debut of Danish pianist Jens Elvekjaer (January 11 and 12).

Kristian Bezuidenhout @ Dumbarton Oaks

Sunday evening, fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout presented a charming program of Classical works in the elegant Music Room of Georgetown’s Dumbarton Oaks (you can listen to him play on NPR). The foremost fortepianist of his generation, the native South African (b. 1979) soared through his studies at the Eastman School of Music and secured an astonishing First Prize and Audience Prize at the 2001 Bruges Fortepiano Competition. His Mozart concerti performances with the Orchestra of the 18th century at Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw a few years back had people predicting greatness. For this concert on the Friends of Music subscription series, Bezuidenhout offered a balanced program of Mozart, Haydn, and Georg Benda (1722-1795).

Following an intimate rendition of Mozart’s Sonata in F Major, KV 533/494, Bezuidenhout informally made known to the audience that the composer’s sonatas were “only for amateur girls in the salons.” Mozart apparently reserved his concertos, fantasties, and variations for public performance, the latter two often improvised on the spot. Cleverly, Mozart’s deep Fantasie in C Minor, KV 475, was next on the program. Highly improvisatory in approach, Bezuidenhout added fermatas to the first note of the opening octave figures, throwing them drastically out of tempo, though adding an undeniably large dose of fantasy. Surely the performer has an argument for this approach, likely stemming from the footnote in the Bärenreiter edition stating: “Bar 1: the slurring follows the text of the first edition (Artaria, Vienna, 1785); in his handwritten thematic catalogue, Mozart begins the slur from the second note.” Bezuidenhout took the opportunity to ornament on repeats, while creating great contrasts between Adagio and Allegro sections – possibly too much.

The basic approach to this work is to play it proportionally, like a Renaissance building, i.e., with all sections in the same tempo with correlating relationships. For example, the Allegro section is double the tempo of the opening Adagio (4/4); the Andantino section (3/4) is a proportion of the base tempo, etc. It is difficult to argue with Bezuidenhout’s free approach in this work, as he framed its performance as an improvised fantasy, not as a balanced structure. However, the musical skeleton these tempo relationships can create adds strength to the work as a whole; Bezuidenhout’s performance seemed somewhat fragmented, and the tumult of the Più allegro section lacked bite.

Haydn’s Variations in F minor (“Un piccolo Divertimento,” Hob. XVII:6) was very conversational, relaxed, and clear, while variations with the moderator (mute) demanded the audience to listen closely. Georg Benda’s perky Sonata in A minor reminded one of the works of C.P.E. Bach, though much more fun. Mozart’s Variations in G Major on “Unser dummer Pöbel meint” (KV 455) featured phrases that melted away and natural playing by a performer who humbly presents music before himself.

Disappointingly, Bezuidenhout’s only other American performance in 2008 will be a single engagement in New York this December. By contrast, his full European and Asian docket includes a tour with violinist Viktoria Mullova, the complete Beethoven Concertos with Frans Brüggen and the Orchestra of the 18th Century at the Concertgebouw, and a tour of China with that orchestra. We hope to see him back in the Washington area soon.

The next concert on the Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks will feature the Fine Arts Quartet and Brazilian pianist Christina Ortiz (March 9 and 10, 8 pm).