Review: Atlantic Chamber Ensemble

Sept. 26, Virginia Commonwealth University

The Atlantic Chamber Ensemble, a new chamber-music collective composed largely of Richmond Symphony and Virginia Commonwealth University musicians, made an impressive debut before a pretty large and very appreciative crowd at VCU’s Singleton Arts Center.

The full ensemble for this performance – violinists Susanna Klein and Ross Monroe Winter, violist Kimberly Sparr, cellist Jason McComb, double-bassist Fred Dole, oboist Shawn Welk, clarinetist Ralph Skiano, bassoonist Martin Gordon, French horn player Deborah Fialek and flutist Jenn Lawson – played the too rarely heard Nonet of Bohuslav Martinů as the program’s finale. The wind players were featured in another infrequently played piece, Samuel Barber’s “Summer Music.” Winter, Klein, Sparr and McComb took on the program’s greatest interpretive challenge in Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8.

The Shostakovich quartet, ostensibly dedicated to the victims of fascism in World War II, is in fact a wrenchingly soul-baring self-portrait of the composer, looking back on his struggle to maintain artistic integrity and sanity without falling prey to Josef Stalin and the minions of this most murderous and paranoid of Soviet dictators.

Shostakovich’s score is austere yet intensely expressive, and requires a high level of string technique with carefully timed descents into roughness. Some excellent ensembles have failed to strike those balances; many of the great quartets, wisely, have left this piece out of their repertories.

This foursome delivered a very credible and deeply moving reading, never slackening or losing emotional focus in the slow music, bringing out the profound dread of the “knocks on the door” in the second of the the three largos, and playing the allegro and allegretto movements with darkly hued animation if not the full measure of giddy desperation. A few intonational lapses could be forgiven in a performance of productive incaution.

The Barber and Martinů are much lighter and more cheerful works, each in their way fine examples of
mid-20th-century classicism, and were treated as such by these performers.

Some solo lines were over-projected in the Barber; overall, though, the composer’s assemblage of seven themes (several recurring) evoking summer atmospherics and moods received a well-balanced and finely detailed reading.

The Martinů Nonet, one of the Czech composer’s last works, conspicuously lacks the rarified, shimmering tonal devices and harmonic techniques of much of his mature music, sounding more like the French-accented neoclassical pieces he wrote in Paris in the 1920s. (In a blind listening test, the Nonet might easily be mistaken for something by Poulenc.)

The nine musicians gave the Martinů a suitably high-spirited run, with the substantial bonus of consistently refined playing.

ACE has made part of its mission a determination to talk to and otherwise interact with its audiences and involve listeners in the process of preparing and giving performances. That proved to be a work-in-progress in this debut.

A screen identifying Barber’s themes by letters A through G was unobtrusively useful, as was a printed “play-by-play” of the quintet’s movements. Spoken introductions to the concert and its selections see-sawed between the informative and gimmicky, conversational and stiff. The red stage lighting for the Shostakovich was a bit obvious, although the piece is better experienced in dimmer light. The claim that the gulags were shut down after Stalin’s death in 1953 was flat wrong: Prisoners would continue to languish and die in Soviet slave-labor camps for many more decades.

ACE is ensemble-in-residence of WCVE (88.9 FM), Richmond’s public-radio station. So, if you missed this program, you may catch some or all of it on the air.

Review: Richmond Symphony

Steven Smith conducting
Sept. 18, Richmond CenterStage

The Richmond Symphony opened its 2011-12 season – the second of Steven Smith as its music director, and the first whose programming he has overseen fully – by contrasting classical-romantic with modern-contemporary works, a practice that promises to be this conductor’s modus operandi.

The classical-romantic first half opened with a rather mellow account of Beethoven’s “Leonore” Overture No. 3, paced by the offstage trumpet calls of Rolla Durham, who has done this duty often enough to expertly balance distance with presence. The Beethoven was followed by a more ardent and propulsive performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto, with Elena Urioste as the soloist.

Urioste, who first appeared with the orchestra last year as a late substitute in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, proved a sonically focused and interpretively passionate advocate for the Brahms. Her tone may not the biggest and fattest around, but she can, and did, summon plenty of intensity when it’s called for, which it quite often is in the big first movement of this piece. The sweet but not excessively sentimental lyricism that prevailed in her reading of the concerto’s adagio was, in its way, just as impressive.

The young violinist also injected a bit of novelty into the Brahms, choosing the first-movement cadenza by Leopold Auer over the more familiar one by Joseph Joachim. (Actually, it was a judicious combination: the main body of Auer’s cadenza segued with Joachim’s smoother handover to the orchestra.)

For the second half of the program, conductor Smith chose “Dreamwaltzes” by the contemporary American composer Steven Stucky and “The Miraculous Mandarin” Suite of Bela Bartók.

Stucky’s tone poem, dating from 1986, is a tribute-cum-extension of the symphonic waltz tradition of the Strausses (Johann and Richard) by way of modernists, notably the Ravel of “La Valse,” liberally garnished with the shimmering, rarified colorations that have become increasingly prevalent in orchestral music over the past century.

The waltz elements of the score are pretty straightforward, even traditional (including a more or less straight quotation of the farewell waltz from Richard Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier”), generally centered in the strings but with low brass often playing unexpectedly prominent roles. The dreaminess of the piece emanates mostly from woodwinds and a large but rarely in-your-face percussion section.

Smith and the symphony delivered a nicely balanced and well-detailed performance, making a persuasive case for Stucky’s attractive score.

The conductor and musicians were audibly pumped-up for “The Miraculous Mandarin” Suite, riding its surges of sound and negotiating its subtler and more technically challenging elements with engagement and assurance. Clarinetist Ralph Skiano’s several important solos, and the shorter solo measures for violin, played by the symphony’s new concertmaster, Diana Cohen, enhanced an altogether winning reading of the piece.

The conductor introduced the Bartók suite with a
semi-apology for its “cacophonous” elements, a concession to traditionalist sensitivities that shouldn’t be necessary for a work that’s nearly a century old (it dates from 1919), and one whose techniques and effects have been mimicked for decades in the soundtracks of science-fiction and action movies and TV shows. By now, even the most conservative listeners ought to be able to tolerate, even to enjoy, music of this kind without also watching some sweaty guy running for his life.

Review: Vladimir Feltsman

Sept. 17, Virginia Commonwealth University

By Brian Plante
guest reviewer

This past weekend was something of a feast for local music lovers, with the season-openers of the Richmond Symphony, Virginia Commonwealth University’s Rennolds Chamber Concerts and “La Traviata” from the new Lyric Opera Virginia packed into three days.

It was also frustrating for many patrons, as Richmond continued its unwelcome tradition of staging major musical events at the same time. (The first of two symphony concerts was also on Sept. 17; the symphony and “Traviata” repeated on the afternoon of Sept. 18.) No doubt the scheduling conflict with the symphony accounted for so many empty seats at VCU’s Singleton Arts Center, where the appearance of an artist with the international stature of pianist Vladimir Feltsman should have assured a full house.

Feltsman is not a newcomer to Richmond; he last played here in 2001. On this visit, his formidable technique, large tonal palette and artistic sensitivity were amply displayed in a program that siphoned the cream of keyboard composers. Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B flat major preceded Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata, which was followed by the four Chopin ballades.

Such a program offers up several possibilities: the excitement of interpretive leaps that bring new depth or luster to familiar works; the simple pleasure of a reunion with old friends; or the temptation to separate from the crowd and put a personal stamp on the music, with the attendant risk of making it edgy, quirky or over-the-top. Feltsman left none of those stones unturned.

The partita, a creation of the so-called “happy Bach,” was very much in keeping with the standard pianistic approach to baroque keyboard music. Feltsman employed a limited dynamic range, steady tempos, and largely eschewed the pedal. What made his playing exceptional was its clarity and articulation, judicious use of a variety of touches and luminous tone. Each of the seven movements was given its own personality, and Feltsman was equally at home with the rhythmic pulse of the more folk-like dances and the almost operatic lines of the slower sections.

The “Pathétique” Sonata took a very different course. Feltsman exploited his technical prowess to unleash the nervous energy that drives the first movement, but the liberties of tempo and dynamics taken in the slow introduction foreshadowed things to come.

The melodious opening theme of the second movement seemed deliberately straightforward, almost a setup for the unexpected shift to the rubatos and rhythmic flux that permeated the middle section and carried over into the return of the original theme. As a result, the performance as a whole took on an improvisational quality and, to this listener, served almost as a metaphor of Beethoven’s growth and liberation from the constraints of classicism.

Feltsman’s temperament was completely in tune with the dramatic ebbs and flows of the Chopin ballades, which took up the last half of this program. His tonal command and romantic sensibility admirably captured both the fire and poetry that illuminate these works, and he tossed off their technical challenges with great aplomb.

Review: 'La Traviata'

Lyric Opera Virginia
Peter Mark conducting
Sept. 16, The Steward School, Richmond

Lyric Opera Virginia, organized by Peter Mark after his dismissal from Virginia Opera last year, is making its debut, in Richmond and three other locales, with Verdi’s “La Traviata,” the work that Mark conducted 36 years ago as the first production of his former company.

The veteran opera impresario and conductor thus comes full circle in inaugural repertory, but apparently not in presentation. Some who saw and heard the 1975 Norfolk “Traviata” (I didn’t) remember it as being more ambitious than polished. This show is beautifully staged, with finely made and nicely angled scenery and lavish costumes; characterfully but unaffectedly acted, thanks to stage director Michael Shell; and very well sung.

Manon Strauss Evrard, the soprano who starred in Mark-led Virginia Opera productions of “The Tales of Hoffmann” and “Lucia di Lammermoor,” leads this launching of Lyric Opera Virginia as Violetta, the tragic heroine of “Traviata.” The role is one of the prime tests of an Italianate soprano’s vocal and emotional spectrum, and Evrard shines on most every point of that spectrum. She also has the ideal look of a Violetta, from the elegantly seductive to the fatally fragile.

She is well-matched, physically and vocally, with the young tenor Cody Austin, who portrays Alfredo Germont, whose love inspires Violetta to abandon the life of a Parisian courtesan. Austin’s clear, robust and (usually) reliably pitched voice is as much an attraction of this show as Evrard’s – a pretty high standard to meet.

The third principal character of “Traviata,” Giorgio Germont, Alfredo’s father, intent on severing the liason of his son and Violetta, is one of the trickiest of Verdi’s major roles – a heavy with a heart. Many baritones make an awkward transition from fatherly disapproval to sympathy for Violetta’s plight. Zachary Nelson’s shift from wooden sternness to soulful empathy is not the smoothest that one might imagine; but, then, Verdi is not especially helpful on that score. As a voice and presence, though, Nelson is a most convincing Giorgio.

Among the supporting cast, standouts are Andrew Seigla, as Gaston, the life of the Act 1 party scene, and Emily Duncan-Brown, as Annina, Violetta’s maid.

Mark’s conducting of the production’s 34-member pit orchestra is consistently sensitive to Verdi’s dramatic and lyrical requirements, especially the orchestration’s potent undertone of pathos.

The theater of Richmond’s Steward School is the smallest of the four venues at which this company is staging “Traviata,” and on this opening night the volume level of voices, especially en masse, was high, crossing the line to overwhelming for those seated close to the stage. Downshifting of decibels will be needed in this space.

The production repeats at 2:30 p.m. Sept. 18 at the Cramer Arts Center of The Steward School, Gayton and Ryandale roads. Tickets: $20-$85. Additional performances will be staged at Charlottesville’s Paramount Theater on Sept. 20 and the Ferguson Arts Center of Christopher Newport University in Newport News on Sept. 23 and 25. Details: (757) 446-6666; http://www.lyricoperavirginia.org/

Staunton: a new string mecca

The Heifetz International Music Institute, Daniel Heifetz’s career-development program for teenage and young-adult string players, is moving its summer program to Mary Baldwin College in Staunton.

With the program’s arrival, Staunton gets the substantial bonus of thrice-weekly concerts by the institute’s students and faculty in July and August 2012, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Holly Prestidge reports:

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/flair/2011/sep/13/tdmet02-heifetz-international-music-institute-movi-ar-1304623/

Paley Festival set for October

The Richmond festival staged by pianist Alexander Paley is moving this year to later dates, Oct. 14-16, while continuing at its longtime venue, First English Lutheran Church on Stuart Circle (Monument Avenue at Lombardy Street) in the Fan District.

This 14th season of the Paley Music Festival, titled “Fourteen Hands,” will be highlighted by performances of all of Mozart’s works for piano four-hands, played by Paley and wife, Pei-Wen Chen, and the U.S. premieres of two pieces by Joao Guilherme Ripper, a noted Brazilian composer who also serves as director of the Cecília Meireles Concert Hall in Rio de Janeiro.

Performers, in addition to Paley and Chen, are clarinetist Charles West, violinists Akemi Takayama and Kathy Judd, violist Daphne Gerling and cellist Clyde Thomas Shaw.

Admission is free, with donations accepted.

For more information, call First English Lutheran Church at (804) 355-9185 or visit http://www.paleyfestival.info/

This year’s Paley Festival dates and programs:

Oct. 14 (8 p.m.) – Mozart: Sonata in C major, K. 521, for piano four-hands; Mozart: Theme and Variations in G major, K. 501, for piano four-hands; Beethoven: Violin Sonata in G major, Op. 30; Schubert: Piano Sonata in B flat major, D. 960.

Oct. 15 (8 p.m.) – Mozart: Sonata in D major, K. 381/123a, for piano four-hands; Mozart: Sonata in B flat major, K. 358/186c, for piano four-hands; Schumann: Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor, Op. 105; Prokofiev: “Overture on Hebrew Themes,” Op. 34, for clarinet, piano and string quartet; Fauré: Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15.

Oct. 16 (3:30 p.m.) – Mozart: Sonata in G major (unfinished), K. 357, for piano four-hands; Mozart: Sonata in F major, K. 497, for piano four-hands; Ripper: “Kinderszenen” for clarinet, cello and piano; Ripper: Trio for clarinet, viola and piano; Dvořák: Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 90 (“Dumky”).

New chiefs at Virginia Opera

Russell P. Allen, who served as the administrative chief of Virginia Opera from 1994 to 2000, will return to the company as its chief executive officer, succeeding Paul A. “Gus” Stuhlreyer III in the post as of Sept. 19.

Allen has managed a number of arts organizations, including Atlanta Opera, the Phoenix Symphony and the ballet companies of Orlando and Washington. He also has served as an independent arts consultant and with programs of the National Endowment for the Arts and OPERA America.

“When Russell last served as our chief executive, we reached unprecedented heights in subscription and ticket sales and contributed revenues,” Alan D. Albert, president of the Virginia Opera board, said in a prepared statement, adding that under Allen’s leadership the company “seek[s] to repeat those successes.”

Virginia Opera also announced that John Kennelly, the company’s producing director since 2000, will become its interim artistic director. Kennelly has held production management posts with Michigan Opera Theatre, Central City Opera in Colorado, Pennsylvania Opera Theatre of Philadelphia and other entities.

Robin Thompson, named artistic advisor of Virginia Opera last year after the dismissal of longtime artistic chief Peter Mark, will continue in that post as the company runs an international search for an artistic director and music director.

Albert said the search will be conducted over the next year, with appointments expected to be made in time for the 2013-14 season.

Stuhlreyer will maintain an affiliation with Virginia Opera as a consultant on its endowment-fund campaign, Teresa Annas reports in The Virginian-Pilot:

http://hamptonroads.com/2011/09/virginia-opera-hires-new-chief-executive