Tag: kurtág

Alexi Kenney and Renana Gutman celebrate the return of live chamber music

On By Sam JacobsonIn cleveland2 Comments

Alexi Kenney, violin
Renana Gutman, piano

St. Paschal Baylon
Highland Heights, OH
April 27, 2021

Bach: Sonata for Violin and Keyboard No. 3 in E major, BWV 1016
Strozzi: L’Eraclito amoroso – No. 14 from Cantate, ariette e duetti, Op. 2 (arr. Kenney)
Messiaen: Thème et variations
Kurtág: Hommage à J.S.B., from Signs, Games and Messages
Messiaen: Louange à l’Immortalité de Jésus, from Quatuor pour la fin du temps
Schumann: Fantasiestücke, Op. 73
Mozart: Violin Sonata No. 35 in A major, K526

Encore:
Paradis: Sicilienne

In a sure sign of light at the end of the tunnel, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society returned to live, in person performances Tuesday evening. Instead of the usual venue at Plymouth Church, an alternative was to be found in the bright and airy St. Paschal Baylon in Highland Heights, a space rather more conducive to the requisite social distancing (the remaining two performances on the calendar will take place here as well). Violinist Alexi Kenney and pianist Renana Gutman offered a thoughtfully-curated recital, generously filled with curiosities and discoveries.

Alexi Kenney, photo credit alexikenney.com
Renana Gutman, photo credit Carlos Andrés Dueñas

Bach is always a fine choice with which to begin a recital, and the Sonata for Violin and Keyboard No. 3 was indeed such a selection. The bright E major tonality made for a stately opening, and the lively Allegro that followed purveyed seamless blending of violin and piano: these duo sonatas were pivotal amongst the composer’s output insofar as they gave both instruments roughly equal prominence. A passacaglia movement served as the emotional core of the work, given a heartfelt reading, while the finale was as uplifting as anything Bach wrote. Barbara Strozzi’s brief song L’Eraclito amoroso was presented in a transcription by Kenney. Long-breathed playing drew out a beguiling melody, delicately ornamented.

Following Baroque beginnings, the balance of the first half was rounded out by works from the 20th century. Messiaen’s Thème et variations is an early work, dating from 1932. Even in this early incarnation, the rich chromaticism made its composer unmistakably recognizable, with splashes of color hinting at all that was to come. Despite its the work’s brevity in five variations, Messiaen nonetheless found the space and time for matters to crest to a searing passion. Kurtág’s Hommage à J.S.B. (J.S. Bach, that is) made for a thoughtful connection to the program’s opening. A monologue for violin, the textures obliquely hinted at Baroque dance rhythms. (Local audiences might recall Isabelle Faust memorably presenting a Kurtág piece from the same collection during a Cleveland Orchestra performance a few seasons ago). 

The duo revisited Messiaen once more in Louange à l’Immortalité de Jésus, the final movement from Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Though written for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (the instruments available to him composing while imprisoned in a German POW camp), most movements are scored for various subsets of the quartet, with the closing movement distilled to violin and piano. This performance had an otherworldly effect. The music proceeded at a wondrously glacial pace, ending high in the stratosphere.

The latter half retreated to rather more familiar territory, but hardly less insightful. The first of Schumann’s three Fantasiestücke was brooding and passionate in its flights of fancy, while the middle piece made for a playful, light-hearted foil before the blistering finale. Mozart’s Violin Sonata in A major, K526 was his last of a long series of violin sonatas (notwithstanding the very brief K547), and served as a substantive conclusion. Sparkling, pearly playing in the opening Molto allegro was further encouraged by Gutman’s stylish accompaniment. There was a nuanced beauty of tone in the lyrical slow movement, always tinged with an ineffable melancholy. The closing Presto was a high-octane affair, though its vigor was deftly interlaced with more lyrical material. As an encore, the duo offered the Sicilienne by Maria Theresia von Paradis (purported dedicatee of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18): a beautiful pendant to a wonderful program.

Interior of St. Paschal Baylon

An evening in the minor with Bernard Labadie

On By Sam JacobsonIn cleveland2 Comments

Cleveland Orchestra
Bernard Labadie, conductor
Isabelle Faust, violin
Severance Hall
Cleveland, OH
February 15, 2018

Rigel: Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 12 No. 4
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64
 Encore:
 Kurtág: Doloroso, from Signs, Games and Messages
Mozart: Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K550

Despite Thursday evening’s program containing two of the most popular works in the repertoire, matters began with a certified rarity, a little-known work by a little-known composer: the Symphony No. 4 in C minor of Henri-Joseph Rigel. German born but transplanted to Paris, he was a contemporary of Haydn and Mozart with no less than fourteen symphonies to his name. The C minor work in question, published in a set of six that comprise the composer’s Op. 12, is one which this weekend’s conductor Bernard Labadie has championed for some time; I recall him including it on a Chicago Symphony program a few years back (reviewed by a colleague here).

Labadie imbued the opening with a nervous energy, a textbook example of Sturm und Drang, and the thematic material was sharply defined, given with an appropriate punch. The Teutonic fire was tempered by Gallic sensibilities during the central slow movement, a graceful, untroubled affair in the relative major, while the minor key intensity returned for the sprightly finale.

Bernard Labadie, photo credit Dario Acosta
Isabelle Faust, photo credit Felix Bröde

More familiar terrain was to be had in the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto which brought forth soloist Isabelle Faust. Faust took flight over the orchestra with the haunting, almost mystical theme, a rich lyricism emanating from her 1704 Stradivarius. The rapid scalar passages demonstrated her sound and confident technique (it should be remembered that this concerto was written for the legendary virtuoso Ferdinand David), while she opted for a more burnished tone in the introspective moments. At the movement’s end came a dramatic coda, while an ordinary composer would have closed here, the endless innovation of Mendelssohn’s fertile mind called for a long-breathed note in the bassoon to serve as a seamless transition to the Andante, a sublime song without words.

Further transitional material connected the finale, passionately yearning before giving way to the movement proper, spirited and celebratory. Faust received an enthusiastic and certainly well-deserved ovation – she seemed genuinely moved by it – and treated the audience to a most imaginative encore choice in Kurtág’s Doloroso, atmospheric in its unnervingly barren texture.

One could reasonably trace the Rigel symphony as a distant forebear to Mozart’s incomparable Symphony No. 40 in G minor, it also being a work of searing intensity in the minor. Labadie elected to conduct the Mozart from memory, and the fact that he remained seated at a piano bench did little to detract from the energy he offered. The work began in a whisper, almost sotto voce, with germs of themes building to great pathos, occasionally alleviated by a more lyrical secondary theme. Labadie achieved deft balance of the instrumental voices, and one was grateful that Mozart later rescored the work to include the clarinet as the pair added a lovely and mellifluous contrast.

The Andante served as a respite with the downward cascades in the winds especially charming, while the irregular syncopations of the minuet were dynamically punctuated, countered by the gentler trio (a horn flub or two notwithstanding). The brisk finale was a whirlwind of orchestral effect, one moment in the minor, the next in a joyous major, and perhaps most impressive was the sophisticated fugato, executed with a crystal-clear precision.