Rolling into the weekends up in Greensboro, the Eastern Music Festival fires off their big guns. This Saturday night, the illustrious Gerard Schwarz conducts the EMF Orchestra in Mahler’s Titan Symphony — after André Watts handles the thunderbolts of the Grieg Piano Concerto. Violinist Elmar Oliveira joins Schwarz & Co. next Saturday, and cellist Xavier Phillips drops in on the final night of the festival on Aug. 2.
Distinguished guests also join the Youth Festival Orchestra on Thursdays and Fridays. This week, clarinetist Jon Menasse and violinist Ani Kavafian are fronting the concertos. Next week, pianists James Giles and Awadagin Pratt strut into the spotlight.
Heading for the mountains? EMF musical director Schwarz sends his company on road trips at least twice each summer. You missed the Midori caravan on July 6, but Andre Watts and the gang are up at Appalachian State University this Sunday night.
Mondays through Wednesdays, the festival is still buzzing at Guilford College, EMF’s home turf. By day, there are morning and afternoon rehearsals going on across the campus, where members of the EMF Orchestra are coaching their Youth counterparts as they put together a cornucopia of chamber, piano and percussion pieces that are unveiled in a series of free concerts during the final week of the festival.
On assignment with American Record Guide last summer, I peeped in behind closed doors on more than a dozen of these rehearsals — plus a public masterclass featuring violinist Julia Fischer late in the week. Believe me, these young musicians are both talented and dedicated. So are their professional mentors.
Last week, I sampled the evening fare that EMF presents early in the week. It was all chamber music, but there can be intriguing exceptions. This Wednesday, jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis gives a solo concert at Dana Auditorium. In 2007, I arrived on a Tuesday to find classical violinist Hilary Hahn trading licks at Dana with folk-rock singer/guitarist Josh Ritter. The following evening, it was a summit meeting between Anonymous 4 and Darol Anger.
In terms of the number of musicians you’ll see onstage, the early part of the week is consistently EMF Lite. A couple of other consistencies: Monday evenings are UNCG Chamber Series performances at the UNC Greensboro Recital Hall, and Tuesdays are Carnegie Chamber Series performances in Carnegie Reading Room of the Hege Library at Guilford College.
Both of these are delightful locations, though the UNCG venue has a decisive edge on acoustics, seating comfort, and sight lines. The UNCG concert I saw was nearly sold out on a Monday night — without any big names to entice ticket buyers. Could concept have been the magical ingredient? All of the pieces — by Beethoven, Schumann, and Dohnanyi — were Opus 1’s.
The program, longer than those here at St. Peter’s Episcopal and their lunchtime counterparts at Spoleto in Charleston, showcased nine members of the EMF Orchestra and faculty. I was a little surprised that the first and second rows, where I was seated, didn’t fill up with general admission ticket holders. But I soon saw the light when Yoshikazu Nagai leapt into the opening of Beethoven’s Piano Trio in E flat. The recital hall has very lively acoustics with only a touch of echo from its wooden paneling. So although he was seated behind violinist Diana Tsaliovich and cellist Anthony Amone, Nagai’s assaults on the keyboard were louder than I am accustomed to hearing outside the confines of a classroom or studio.
Amone and Tsaliovich were not at all overpowering, partly because this early Beethoven composition sat so firmly on Papa Haydn’s shoulders in this reading. The sound of Nagai’s bravura was admirably controlled even if it did leap off the stage, and the strings mostly huddled around it supportively, following the model that Papa established when he invented the piano trio form. There were times in the opening allegro where the development of musical materials already smacked of the innovations Beethoven would perfect in his maturity, but the idiomatic flavor of the themes remained very much in the Haydn-Mozart mold. Tsaliovich contributed more to the conversation in the lovely andante cantabile, echoed by Amone, freeing Nagai to wander into some ornamental ruminations.
Schumann’s first published work was his Variations on the Name “Abegg,” requiring the solo ministrations of Gideon Rubin. Not as delicate or dramatic as the Evgeny Kissin version recorded at his 1990 concert at Carnegie Hall, but satisfying nonetheless.
These are casual rather than snooty occasions. Our emcee, James Giles, who chairs EMF’s piano department, sat down at the keyboard after intermission to lead Dohnanyi’s Piano Quintet #1 in C minor — pedaling in moccasins! The laid-back attire did not domesticate the ardor of the adagio nor the majesty of the finale, an allegro animato that rides in on triple meter. Marc Moskovitz on cello and even Anton Jivaev on viola had their chances. The same could hardly be said for Jeremy Preston, playing second fiddle behind Randall Weiss.
Regrettably, I must report an outbreak of formalwear among the performers in the Carnegie Room on Tuesday, but I will refrain from naming the guilty instrumentalists. You could call this a mostly Mozart concert, but the excursions away from Amadeus took us far from the classical period.
EMF Orchestra concertmaster Jeffrey Multer, backed by Danielle Farina, opened with Wolfie’s Duo for Violin and Viola #1 in G. Both soloists were nicely imbued with the Mozart style, but after a rather pedestrian allegro, there was finer playing to be heard in the more affecting adagio with Farina providing delicate support. The violist finally had the chance to shuttle back and forth between leading and accompanying roles in the closing rondeau.
Multer and Farina were on equal footing striving against the Carnegie’s stifling acoustic, but Jenny Grégoire had to content herself with being upstaged by Lee Hipp’s tuba Jan Koetsier’s Unterkagner Ländler, a novel suite of six country dances. The Carnegie domesticated the preternatural force of the tuba quite nicely, to tell the truth.
There was also a salubrious effect on Shannon Scott’s virtuosity when she appeared in the title role of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A after intermission. Scott’s command was melt-in-the-mouth impeccable, but it was Nancy Chang on first violin who introduced the achingly lovely big tune of the opening allegro. Chang and cellist Beth Vanderborgh insinuated themselves memorably into the intro of the menuetto, and even violist Sarah Cote had a chance to shine in one of the variations of the finale. Perhaps serving penance for some past crime, Preston once again served time on second violin.
The big name who appeared last Wednesday in an intimate setting was cellist Matt Haimovitz, whose discography includes three listings in the 2008 Gramophone Classical Music Guide. Joining him onstage was pianist Geoff Burleson, who played far from a subsidiary role.
Now, for music lovers with an adventurous bent, the duo offered quite a feast, beginning with Beethoven’s Cello Sonata #2 in D. That wasn’t even the headliner in a concert titled “Happy 100th Birthday, Elliott Carter.” Naw, Ludwig was merely a warm-up act for Carter’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, which clocks in more than four minutes longer in the recorded versions I own.
The duo had more accessible music on their stands after intermission, although Haimovitz had to exhibit expertise in masonry to spread the full score of David Sanford’s 22 Part 1 for Cello and Piano in front of him. We floated back towards the mainstream in the final piece of the evening, Samuel Barber’s C minor Cello Sonata.
Both Burleson and Haimovitz proved to be as personable in introducing the music as they were virtuosic in playing it. With a Brahms encore tacked on, the concert was at least as long as those presented by Charlotte Symphony.
So is it worthwhile getting onto I-85 for a dose of chamber music? Freeloaders who joyfully mooch-and-munch at the monthly lunchtime St. Pete concerts may not see sufficient reason for the excursion. But there are rewards for paying the price and going the distance if you’re aware of the shortcomings of St. Pete’s acoustics or willing to explore repertoire that refuses to pander to your Aunt Matilda’s limited tastes.
Outside the Queen City, people do pay to hear professionals playing live chamber music. What a concept.
For full details about concerts and masterclasses at EMF, go to www.easternmusicfestival.org.
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2008.
