'Bravo!' to Chamber Music Festival

DANIEL BUCKLEY
Citizen Music Critic
March 15, 2001

Performances not only activities at festival
Commissioned works ignite local music scene

CD reviews

Soprano Nadejda Shabanina, clad in a long, blue gown with white scarf, stood center stage, her face filled with sorrow and at times rage, hands gesturing subtly but powerfully, as she unleashed emotional torrents in Dmitri Shostakovich's powerful "Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok" for soprano and Piano Trio.
Her bell-clear voice, ornamented with a quick quiver of vibrato, pinned ears back with blow-torch strength belts, then pulled the audience close with soft phrasing, making us want to soothe her artistic pain. Behind her, pianist Kevin Fitz-Gerald and violinist Alla Aranovskaya and cellist Leonid Shukayev (Nadejda's husband) - the latter two of the St. Petersburg String Quartet - echoed and underscored the human undercurrents with a passion and pathos to match their vocal partner.
The electrifying performance March 11 was one of five days of memorable music making at the eighth annual Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival (March 4-11), which this year centered around a Russian theme. Every concert was sold out (or nearly so) as locals and fans from as far as England poured into the Tucson Convention Center's Leo Rich Theatre.
Though every night had its share of great music making, the best had clearly been saved for last. The March 11 concert also had included Tchaikovsky student Sergei Taneyev's animated "String Quintet for Two Cellos" and Sergei Prokofiev's prickly and witty "Quintet in g minor for Violin, Viola, Bass, Oboe and Clarinet," along with a short and hilarious Shostakovich polka as an encore. More than any others in the festival, this particular afternoon of music-making showed artistic director Peter Rejto's keen instincts for finding seldom-heard works of enduring power, as well as the commitment and virtuosity of the performers.
It became more plain as the week rolled on, particularly in the final concert, why these particular musicians had been gathered. Violinist Paul Rosenthal, the ringleader in the Taneyev, is a spontaneous character who brings joy and precision to the most intricate of scores. Second violinist Ilya Teplyakova of the St. Petersburg Quartet is the perfect complement for all occasions, matching into tone, phrasing imprint and expressive quality the sleek lines of whomever he was working with. His fellow SPQ member, Aleksey Koptev, brought concentration, focused sound and personality to his lead spots and a knack for blend and place to his support work. Rejto's rich, warm-toned instrument mainly took a support role to Shukayev's absorbing lead cello work. Together they romped through the Taneyev's triple fugue and myriad melodic currents with a mix of surgical precision and heart.
Likewise, in the Prokofiev, violinist Peter Zazofsky (first chair of the Muir String Quartet, which returns to Tucson April 4), dug his bow with exacting bites into Prokofiev's gnarly voiced ballet, setting the standard for precision matched by his fellow players. At his side, James Dunham proved one of the most distinctive violists around, lending not just personality and precision but a range of color that utterly transformed every work he played. Dunham's wife, Deborah Dunham, proved equally adept on double bass, lending both gruff tones in her depiction of the dancing bear and lithe versatility to her support. Oboist Allan Vogel is the Zen master of the double- reed world - a jubilant personality with an ability to deliver machine-gun riffs with delicious color, and the lyrical passion to grab the listener. And clarinetist Igor Begelman proved as masterful as well at tone and sonic hue as he was surefooted in the most demanding passages.
But it was the blend, matched phrasing, unity of approach and ensemble passion that these individuals brought to their collective performances that really impressed. And these details were hard won. While the public was invited to open rehearsals the mornings of the performances, what they probably did not realize was that these practice sessions continued afterward to at least 4 p.m., not just on performance days, but every day. Each musician was rehearsing six to eight hours a day, then performing at night. It is this intense, concentrated effort that yielded premium results performance after performance from the stage.
Some of the most memorable music-making came from players who had the least stage time. Nadejda Shabanina's Shostakovich song cycle was among those, as was the March 9 performance of pianist Irina Teplyakova and violist Aleksey Koptev in Glinka's "Unfinished Sonata for Viola and Piano." Teplyakova's phrasing had about it delicious yet judicious touches of rubato (rhythmic elasticity) that made the music breathe and sigh. Her partner likewise lent the piece Mozartian clarity and acrobatic grace.
Others, such as wind players Vogel and Begelman, had plenty of stage time with none of it wasted. In the abbreviated version of Stravinsky's "A Soldier's Tale," Begelman, Zazofsky and pianist Bernadene Blaha romped through the score's jaunty syncopations, witty martial references, folk dance rhythms and dark undercurrents with flair and pluck. Similarly, on March 7, Begelman made Carl Maria von Weber's intricate, virtuosic scampering in the "B-flat Major Clarinet Quintet" sound as effortless and clean as sticking baseball cards in the spokes of a bike, then pedaling away at a brisk clip. Vogel's warm, beautiful, impassioned playing of American Charles Loeffler's "Two Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola and Piano" could not fail to draw similarly idyllic beauty from partners Fitz-Gerald and James Dunham in the opening movement, and clipped, exciting playing from all in the last.
The festival's core group, the St. Petersburg String Quartet, proved invaluable throughout, both as an ensemble and as spare players of top-flight quality. As a group, one was impressed by its passion and subtlety, the way it caressed a phrase or made it shout to the heavens, as well as its unity of approach, taut precision and ensemble sensitivity. Lead violinist Alla Aranovskaya is a soulful artist whose instrument translates her deepest feelings of the score before her with unblushing clarity.
The quartet was the centerpiece of the March 7 show, lending authoritative, spirited animation to the folk tunes of Alexander Glazounov's "Novelettes for String Quartet" and a luminous, metaphysical air to contemporary Georgian composer Zurab Nadarejshvili's "String Quartet No. 1." The latter work was particularly moving, drawing upon Gregorian chant and Georgian choral singing to a work that seemed to quietly sway between Earthly and heavenly realms. In its third movement in particular, it was easy to envision the soul of a dying person hovering between loved ones surrounding the body and the beckoning of the beyond. It was a moving experience.
One of the festival's best overall evenings was a new addition to the usual fare - a full-length piano recital with the husband-and-wife team of Blaha and Fitz-Gerald. The pair played solo material and four-hands piano works by Rachmaninoff, Canadian composer Elizabeth Raum (see sidebar on festival commissions), Prokofiev, Dmitri Kabalevsky and John Corigliano. Piece after piece, the playing was exquisite, capturing all nuance of style and color in a program that spanned a century-plus. It was their near-telepathic connection in the four hands' works, however, that most impressed, the phrasing melded so completely as to sound like one player.
Most in the audience would never have guessed that Blaha had been ill all day and unable to sleep the night prior, so confident, powerful and moving was her playing. And the same was true of Rejto, whose serious head cold peaked March 7 as he played the Weber. But this is what great musicians do - put aside the frailties of the body to commune with the music that completes their souls.