By Robert Croan
Featured guest soloist on Chamber Music at Lauderdale-by-the Sea’s April 11 concert was Sameer Agrawal, a 21-year-old violinist currently studying with Midori Goto at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music.
Performing at The Community Church with the series’ founder and artistic director Victor Santiago Asunción at the piano, the Chicago native lent a degree of gravitas to sonatas by Beethoven and Ravel that belied his age, along with overt relish for the virtuosity demanded by Manuel de Falla’s Suite Populaire Espagnole, which separated the two more serious compositions.
That’s not surprising, since — like his mentor — Agrawal was an early prodigy; he made his solo orchestral debut with the Northeastern Illinois University Symphony at the age of 12. More recently, he was a winner of this year’s Elmar Oliveira International Competition, a partial sponsor of his local appearance.
From the opening unaccompanied four-note motif of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 10 (in G major, Op. 96), echoed two measures later in the keyboard part, this was serious business. This was Beethoven’s last violin sonata, sometimes described as the end of his “middle period” and transition to his late, most profound and abstract works. Throughout, Op. 96 is more contemplative than dramatic, in contrast with the better-known “Kreutzer” Sonata which preceded it. The piano is of equal if not greater stature than the violin in this work, and thematic fragments are tossed conversationally between the two instruments.
Asunción, always a strong collaborator, frequently led the dialogue, determining the color and shape of a particular turn of phrase. The slow movement, a hymnic statement shared by both protagonists, maintained the solemnity, punctuated by brief cadenza-like interjections from the violin. The two-minute scherzo, which follows without a break, was like an afterthought, while the placid concluding variations allowed pianist Asunción to dominate — especially so in the slow variation that leads to a brief fugato.
Agrawal currently performs on a sumptuous-toned 1780 violin by Joseph Gagliano, which added to the smooth singing sounds he achieved in Falla’s Suite Populaire Espagnole. The six-movement suite for violin and piano was arranged by violinist Paul Kochanski from a set of seven folk songs for which Falla wrote imaginative accompaniments in which the piano is mostly the star. Asunción asserted himself from the start, conjuring a guitar in his introduction to “El paño moruno” – a very nasty (here implied) text in which the “stained cloth” represents a girl who has lost her virginity. The violinist effectively switched emotional gears for the lullaby, “Nana,” then made great sport out of the fireworks in “Canción” and “Polo,” which followed in this arrangement. (“Polo” is the final song in the vocal set.)
In those two numbers Asuncion’s fleet cross-handed pianism was as much fun to watch as to hear. In the concluding “Jota,” Agrawal was admirable for the way he differentiated the passages where he was emulating a vocal line, from those in which he augmented the piano for the ritornelli.
But it seemed that the violinist had saved his greatest enthusiasm for Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2 (in G major, Op. 77), a 16-minute piece that’s crammed with melodic invention, harmonic surprises and rhythmic ingenuity. Agrawal answered Asunción’s flowing statement of the initial melody with rich tone and sympathetic counterpoint, soaring to lovely, strong high lines near the movement’s end.
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But it was the middle “Blues” movement in which the young violinist came into his own, overtly relishing the syncopations along with the clashes with dissonant piano notes. No less did he delight in the whirlwind perpetual motion of the final Allegro, the two performers chewing up its technical challenges with vigor and showmanship.