Editor’s note: Here are late reviews from three concerts held earlier this month.
Adaskin String Trio (Jan. 10, Flagler Museum)
The Adaskin String Trio did something at its Flagler Museum concert that only the better chamber groups do: Play unusual, rarely heard material with the same kind of commitment they expend on the standards.
In its program Feb. 10 at the Flagler, which opened the five-concert series at the Whitehall mansion, the Canadian threesome presented a classic work of Beethoven with lesser-known pieces by Haydn, Ernst von Dohnanyi and Miklos Rozsa. The member seemed to greatly enjoy the resonant acoustic of the Flagler, which helped amplify and fill out their sound.
The Adaskin also played each of the works with bigness and power predominant, opening with the String Trio No. 4 (in C minor, Op. 9, No. 3) of Beethoven. This is a terrific early Beethoven piece, and in his favorite dramatic key; the Adaskins stressed its high emotional temperature right off the bat by playing its opening four-note gambit with enormity and sweep, then moving on with a brisk, almost breathless tempo (and taking the repeats as well).
After clearing up some intonation difficulties, the Adaskins – violinist Emlyn Ngai, violist Steve Larson and cellist Mark Fraser — followed the first movement with an equally intense slow movement, in which attention to detail was clear, with nice touches such as the super-soft three-note tag that closes the main theme; in addition to its remarkable quiet, it also had a bell-like tonal quality, almost like chimes.
The Scherzo was huge, forceful and exciting, and beautifully played, though the C major moments could have used a lighter touch and a greater sense of contrast. The trio closed with a muscular, exuberant finale, played with a good feel for Beethoven’s rough-and-ready wit. All three members worked together most admirably in what is after a more intimate unit than a quartet, and more exposed at that.
For the Hadyn Baryton Trio No. 65 in G (Hob. XI: 65), played here in string trio transcription (though it would be lovely to hear the baryton itself one day), is one of many delightful such pieces Haydn wrote for Prince Nicholas Esterhazy, and it’s a shame this music isn’t better-known. While clearly written for an ensemble of limited compass, it’s wonderfully companionable music, with a primary-colors kind of feel that the Adaskins did a good job of bringing across.
In the second-movement Minuet, for example, the trio played with a graceful kind of lilt that linked it strongly to rustic sources, and in the finale, made the most of the work’s intrinsic charm. Overall, though, this was a strong, forthright reading of the piece, with no sense of lace or fragile china.
The Op. 1 of Miklos Rozsa, a Czech composer who went on to write film scores such as Ben-Hur, is a Serenade for string trio, written when Rozsa was just out of his teens. It is a fine score, idiomatically written for the ensemble and rich with folk color, as well as a touch of the salon.
Cellist Fraser was particularly fine here, in the secondary theme of the first movement, and in the third movement, when he echoed the beautiful, elegiac tune introduced lovingly by Ngai. The second movement, with its big Viennese-style swoop at the end of the main theme, has a slight touch of schmaltz, and the Adaskins indulged it just enough to make it beguile.
The finale had little of the brittleness to be heard on one of the available recordings of the piece, with the trio aiming for something more Haydnesque, bumptious and jolly rather than prickly. This was a very fine performance of this excellent work, and it’s hard to see how it could have received more persuasive advocacy.
The concert closed with the Serenade in C, Op. 10, of Dohnanyi, written in 1902, decades before the Hungarian composer would come to the United States, where he taught for years at Florida State University. The march that opens this five-movement work was played with a bright, crisp, highly accented approach that embodied youthful energy.
Violist Larson played the primary theme of the second-movement Romanza with great tenderness above the pizzicati in violin and cello, followed by Ngai leading the passionate middle section with plenty of sweep. The Adaskins took the third movement fugue very rapidly, which paid nice dividends when all three instruments took the theme in unison; meanwhile, the D major contrasting section had a firmly Brahmsian touch.
The fourth movement Theme and Variations was one of the high points of the performance, with its moody minor-key theme laid out in its introduction and its subsequent guises with exquisite care. The second variation, reminiscent of Tchaikovsky, and the third, again recalling Brahms, led ultimately to the fifth variation, a gorgeous transformation of the theme with slow-moving chords and a poignant cello answer.
The high-spirited Rondo finale was, like much of this concert, played with bigness and drive, and made a most exciting ending, especially as the themes from the other movements were brought in at the end.
The trio played a short encore, an arrangement of Hobo’s Blues, which Paul Simon wrote in 1970 with the great jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli. It had the fizzy flavor of 1930s le jazz hot, and was an attractive way to end this fine and revelatory concert.
Hye-Jin Kim (Jan. 9, Rinker Playhouse)
The South Korean-born violinist Hye-Jin Kim made a strong case for the music of Sibelius in her appearance Jan. 9 in the Kravis Center’s Young Artists series, which marked her Florida debut.
Sibelius, himself an occasional violinist, wrote a good deal of occasional music during his life, some of it salonistic but most of it less so, and Kim performed good service by including three of the Op. 81 pieces on her program. The three works she played at the Rinker Playhouse with the able pianist Amy Yang – Mazurka, Rondino and Valse – are preferable to many of the encore pieces violinists will seek out, such as those by Kreisler or Piazzolla.
The Sibelius pieces have a close kinship with Kreisler, but they have some beautiful textural detail, such as the folk-style piano strumming in the Rondino and the sweet coolness of the minor-key variant of the main Valse theme. Kim played these pieces winningly, and she obviously enjoyed doing so.
Kim, who trained at the Curtis Institute and the New England Conservatory, now teaches at East Carolina University. She is a violinist of sure and broad technique, perhaps a shade on the cautious side amid her excellent musicianship; there were several moments in the recital where some liberty would have been quite welcome.
The late and only Sonata of Leos Janacek, for example, is a piece of unrelenting, if lovable, strangeness, redolent with ostinati and little shards of melody plus odd violin effects. Kim was most persuasive here in the second movement (Ballade), which she presented with a haunted tone that suited the music beautifully. But the sonata overall needed a bit more of its jagged drama, some more attention to the quirkiness that makes it so distinctive.
Kim’s reading of the opening work on the program, Schubert’s Sonatina No. 2 (in A minor, D. 385), demonstrated the expert, polished approach she brought to all the pieces. A modest piece in structure, Kim played it with precision and clarity, but also a reserved Classical-style tone that suited its Hausmusik aims. She played the gentle theme of the second-movement Andante with surpassing loveliness, and the third-movement Minuet with a strong sense of rhythm. Yang was a good partner throughout.
The violinist also tackled the rarely heard Aus der Heimat, a late work (1880) by Smetana, and a sonatina in all but name. As in much of Smetana, the piano part is big and virtuosic, and Yang did a commendable job of not overwhelming Kim at peak moments. Kim has a strong sense of the emotionalism of the slow movement, which she played quite well, and of the kind of pacing that has to be brought to the last movement, which builds to a bravura climax.
The early Sonata (in E-flat, Op. 18) of Richard Strauss closed the program proper. Full of presentiments of tone poems such as Don Juan, it’s a large and showy work, and Kim answered the challenge with a much greater feeling of intensity and power. Her technical prowess was impressive here, but the music could have benefited from a touch of rubato at places such as the peak of the recap in the first movement, where the briefest slowing of the tempo at the climax would have helped really bring the message home.
The same goes for the finale: a little more warmth in the climactic moments, and we get the full measure of Strauss’ particular brand of Romanticism. But in general this was a big-hearted version of this sonata, and the appreciative house at the Rinker welcomed it.
For an encore, Kim chose one of the most familiar of all violin virtuoso chestnuts, the Zigeunerweisen (Op. 20) of Sarasate. And here the audience heard a different side of Kim, even to the point of a very different sound quality. This was all fireworks, all the time, and Kim played it with marvelous accuracy, perfectly drilled runs and a sizable helping of all-out show biz.
Semele (Opera in One Hour, Palm Beach Opera, CityPlace, Jan. 6)
Normally, I wouldn’t write about the One Opera in One Hour series at the Palm Beach Opera in a critical review because it’s usually an experimental one-off for the Young Artists troupe, and you can’t hold these productions to the same standard as the mainstage shows.
But the series is growing, and the Jan. 6 abridged version of Handel’s Semele, which encored Jan. 8 at the Arts Garage in Delray Beach, prompted a few thoughts I don’t see any reason not to share.
The good news is that in Canadian soprano Emily Duncan-Brown, the company found a winning Semele. She sang her biggest set piece, Endless Pleasure, Endless Love, with a big, easeful voice; her Handelian melismas never sounded strained, but a natural outgrowth of her characterization. And she acted well: She was sexy, warm and believably impetuous.
There was good supporting work, too, from mezzo and fellow Canadian Shirin Eskandani, who sang Juno with clear diction and a pretty, mature voice. American soprano Alexandra Rafalo was a decent Iris as well, although she had a couple intonation problems at the end of There, From Mortal Cares Retiring. But hers is a voice with an unusual, dusky tone quality that’s very attractive.
Benjamin Clements sang admirably as Cadmus, as did Kenneth Stavert as Apollo, but while Jesse Enderle was funny and musically adept as Somnus, his gentle voice was underpowered, and pianist Bruce Stasyna dialed his playing way back to accommodate it.
The bad news is that this workshop production was so minimalist as to be basically unstaged. This is a series that has offered delightful, offbeat ideas like a Cosi fan Tutte set amid workers in a Starbucks, and an Orfeo ed Euridice whose opening scene was at an arthouse cinema showing Chaplin’s Modern Times. But Andrew Nienaber did almost nothing here except clothe his singers in contemporary evening wear, play around with some blocks on a stage — with dangerous, open holes in it — and try to let the story take shape from there.
The worst offense here is that the abridgement was bafflingly odd, so odd that the best-known piece in the opera, Jupiter’s Where’er You Walk, was cut, which is unforgivable. Also gone was Myself I Shall Adore, which is just as unforgivable, especially because Duncan-Brown would have done it well. In place was lots of recitative, apparently in the belief that the story needed a lot of exposition.
In a situation like this, though, the best way to handle all that Handel is to do it some other way, say, with the supertitles over transition music, or perhaps a supernumerary holding signs while wearing a costume befitting the director’s concept (except that there was no concept). The point is that with a little bit of creativity, a way could be found to leave the opera’s most well-known music in the production and still get the whole story across in a third of the normal playing time.
This Semele also had a problematic Jupiter. Mexican tenor Evanivaldo Correa made a stiff king of the Gods indeed, grabbing Duncan-Brown as if he were trying to seize the last box of chocolate fudge Pop-Tarts in a BOGO promotion rather than a luscious mortal who’s made him forget he’s married. More importantly, his voice sounded strained and uncomfortable, particularly in the vocal runs. He could use some guidance on loosening up his instrument, because at its best, it’s got a very pleasant quality, as he showed in last season’s workshop reading of the zarzuela Luisa Fernanda.
And finally, it’s past time for these productions to be done with piano only. A recital program, yes, but not a mini-opera, especially when technology offers so many helping hands. How about a second keyboard? Use an electronic wonder like a Roland to add color and depth to the music and give the illusion of orchestral warmth.
The One Opera in One Hour shows are a great idea, and they’ve been used not only to give the Young Artists some more valuable stage experience, but to give directors a chance to try some fresh concepts and Palm Beach Opera itself to perform much more repertory. Now that this series is expanding, it’s a good time for the company to look at what works and what doesn’t, and keep them the special theatrical treat they are.
The Palm Beach Opera will present Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land in its next One Opera in One Hour presentation, set for 8 p.m. Friday at the Harriet Himmel Theater in CityPlace. Admission is free, but reserved seating is available for $15. For more information, call 833-7888.