Review: Richmond Festival (1)
Richmond Festival of Music
March 8, Second Presbyterian Church
The first concert of James Wilson’s Richmond Festival of Music was a demonstration of how intimate, and how sweeping and virtuosic, chamber music can be.
On the intimate side: violinist Carmit Zori and pianist Carsten Schmidt in Dvořák’s “Four Romantic Pieces,” flutist Mary Boodell and pianist Wendy Chen in the Fantasie of Gabriel Fauré, and soprano Amanda Balestrieri with Schmidt in Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und -leben."
At higher amplitude and intensity level, Chen, Zori and cellist Wilson in Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in C minor – which, in the Chapel of Second Presbyterian Church came across with the sonority and punch of an orchestral score.
Balestrieri, returning from previous appearances in this festival, proved to be an ideal voice for "Frauenliebe." Written in the first year of Schumann’s marriage to Clara Wieck, this set of eight songs needs a voice that’s womanly, but still driven by youthful wonder and ardor. Balestrieri had those qualities, plus focused pitch and idiomatic German. She might have taken better advantage of the intimacy of the space to produce the quieter, darker voice that some verses invite. Schmidt was an able accompanist, and richly Schumannesque in the set’s piano cameos.
Boodell, principal flutist of the Richmond Symphony, and Chen, a Leon Fleisher pupil with a thriving solo and chamber career, were slow to mesh in the Fauré – the slow introduction was out of sync and precariously balanced; but they found their groove in the body of the piece and produced a gratifying blend of warmth and insouciance.
Zori, an Israeli-born violinist active in New York chamber-music circles, played the Dvořák with throaty brilliance and high expressiveness, effectively producing a quartet of parlor melodramas. Her treatment proved especially attuned to the almost mournful larghetto that closes the set.
Chen, Zori and Wilson tore into the big, dramatic first movement of the Mendelssohn and never let up through the balance of the work. Taut as need be, richly emotive, playful and earnest when called for, it was an electrifying and engrossing experience – and a classic example of the concentration and immediacy that makes chamber music like no other kind.
The festival’s pianists are playing a baby grand that produces enough sound for the room but turns woolly in heavy chords and glassy and twangy at high volume. Proceed with caution.
The Richmond Festival of Music continues with concerts at 4 p.m. March 11 and 8 p.m. March 15 in the chapel of Second Presbyterian Church, 5 N. Fifth St., and 5 p.m. March 18 at the Virginia Holocaust Museum, 2000 E. Cary St. Tickets: $22. Information: (804) 519-2098 or www.richmondfestivalofmusic.org
Free "Ear Project" informances will feature Mendelssohn’s Trio in C minor, 11 a.m. March 10 at The Hermitage at Cedarfield, 2300 Cedarfield Parkway, and Gideon Klein’s String Trio, 11 a.m. March 17 at the Richmond Public Library, First and Franklin streets.
