“A Connoisseur’s Musical Indulgence”
By Michael Tierra
After the triumph of the first Friday evening’s program, there are hardly enough superlatives left to describe Saturday, May 30th’s fare. The first thing I noticed (which says a lot) is that most of the patrons who attended Fridays program where there again for the second evening many bringing their friends to share in the musical ride — this time through the landscape of French romanticism.
The program, performed at Peace Church in Santa Cruz, opened with the Elegie op 24 by Gabriel Faure featuring Jonah Kim, cello and Katrine Gislinge, piano. Faure bridged the span of music from the mid 19th century through the early 20th, dying in 1924. Living into the early part of the 20th century Faure shared some of the same fate of other romantic composers whose roots were more in the 19th century and being considered conventional and passé as jazz, while the dissonant atonalism of Bartok, Stravinsky and Schoenberg and company were shocking the music world with their startling innovations.
Faure, who passed away in 1925, was not a performer, instead occupying the post of director of the prestigious Paris conservatory and enduring the isolation of impending deafness in his later years.
Faure’s 7-1/2 minute Elegie for cello and piano (1880), is one of his most popular works performed as a solo recital piece for cello and piano accompaniment as well as an orchestral version.
No more perfect piece could be written to feature the all-embracing warm compassionate quality of the cello. As such, it was a vehicle welcomed by the audience to have an opportunity to revel in the artistry of one of the festival’s favorites, Jonah Kim accompanied by Mss. Gislinge. With his broad sweep of sustained melodic richness possible with such a grand cello piece, he gave the audience everything they were looking for and more.
The audience next had the opportunity to revel in the masterful virtuosity and interpretive depth of violinist, Martin Beaver with a benchmark performance of the difficult Debussy Violin sonata in G Minor, in fact his last major composition. A work of his post-impressionist last years, it was premiered in 1917 by violinist, Gaston Poulet with the composer making his last public appearance as a performer. Debussy died the following year, 1918.
The work partakes of all the elements of modernity, eclecticism, jagged rhythms, stark contrasts, reveling in interesting textures between the violin and piano rather than formal continuity, the work is practically a blueprint for all contemporary music up to the present.
This is no pleasant “Afternoon of a Fawn” of 1894, this was sound with all its diverse harmonies and textures first, form next. The sonata is barely more than 13 minutes in length but in that short breadth of time it exhausts all the technical capabilities of the violin and presents one of the most technical and interpretive challenges to perform.
I must confess I’ve never felt attracted or satisfied by any performance of this seminal piece in the past. Violinist, Martin Beaver changed all of that, at last here was a performer who had both the ‘chops’ and the interpretive skills to pull off with the necessary insight, dash and bravado the finest performance I have ever heard of this demanding work. And special kudos to Katrine Gislinge for a first class rendering of this highly challenging difficult piano part making it truly a sonata for violin and piano.
Looking into the heart of French romanticism, Saturday evening’s program concluded with the intensely romantic Piano Quintet for in F minor by the Belgian-French composer, Cesar Franck (1878). With this work, perhaps the mostly intensely romantic chamber work of all time, at last a Belgian-French chamber work that could proudly hold its own next to the works by Germanic composers from Beethoven, Schubert to Brahms.
Franck this evening made the grandest finale to a perfect 8th annual Music In May festival.
Danish pianist Katrine Gislinge was aptly ‘spelled’ by Julliard graduate Christine McLeavey Payne. Mss. Payne is an outstanding pianist and she maneuvered the piano part with its intricate ‘in and outs’ of the Franck Quintet masterfully.
I felt that all the string players came to life in this work. Violinist, Martin Beaver and cellist Jonah Kim were there in full form delighting in playing off each other at every opportunity throughout the performance, but violinist Rebecca Jackson, the festival’s founder and artistic director, and violist Alexandra Leem held their own.
After several call backs for the much-deserved lengthy applause for all the performers, the 8th annual Music in May festival came to a triumphant conclusion. We all eagerly await with great anticipation the return of Music in May, 2016.