Concert Review: Chamber Music Fest Opening Night, by Steve Parks

The Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival celebrated its 39th annual opening night on Friday with a diverse medley of classics performed by its longtime lineup of globally acclaimed musicians along with scene-stealing guest artistry by a young Grammy-nominated string quartet known for its dressed-for-fun virtuosity.

The only apparent hitch in the evening had nothing to do with the music. On a relatively last-minute decision, the concert – and possibly the entire festival – was relocated from its Ebenezer Theater home base to the auditorium in nearby Academy Art Museum. More on that later.

Opening night, billed as an “Extravaganza,” mostly lived up to that superlative, beginning with Richard Strauss’ Sextet in Strings, Opus 85, featuring two paired violins, violas and cellos with co–artistic directors Marcy Rosen (cellist) and Catherine Cho (violist) joined by the aforementioned string ensemble, the Aizuri Quartet: violinists Emma Frucht and Miho Saegusa, violist Brian Hong and cellist Caleb von der Swaagh. (No strangers to Easton, they were finalists in the Chesapeake Music International Concerto Competition a decade ago at the Avalon Theater.) The lush Strauss sextet that opened “Capriccio,” the final opera he wrote, introduces  a somber motif passed among the players. Picking up the pace dramatically and without pause, the six string players turned seamlessly to searing passages with violin calls and viola responses, concluding with dual cello solos revisiting the opening theme, this time in a major key.

Next up, and to me the highlight of the concert, was Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio in G minor, Opus 17. As pianist Leva Jokubaviciute observed in her opening remarks, Schumann was recognized as one the finest pianists of her 19th-century time but also – rare for that era – as an accomplished composer. She wrote remarkable piano pieces that she played as well or better than anyone of either gender of which this piano trio is regarded as her masterpiece.

After cellist Rosen took charge to rearrange the chairs and music stands to her liking, the wistfully melodic opening allegro gave way to high-drama string interchanges and tumbling piano keystrokes suggesting an intemperate demand for resolution that grows more and more impatient as if throwing serial fits. The mood turns distinctly lighter in the second movement with strings taking the lead early in an almost cheerful demeanor. The piano introduces the third movement Andante tenderly as the melody is taken up by Todd Phillips’ violin, suggesting a let-it-be acceptance. The final movement advances with renewed confidence and determination through perky strings amplified by expressive piano overlay before racing toward an assertively optimistic conclusion.

After intermission, the guest Aizuri Quartet proved their mettle in Schubert’s famously melodramatic “Death and the Maiden” String Quartet No. 14 in D minor. Severely ill at the time he wrote it, Franz Shubert was fully aware he was dying, which accounts for the ferocity of his composition as well as the attacking of strings by the Aizuri foursome. Taken from a song Schubert had written years earlier, a young girl asks Death to pass her by. Moods shift inexorably between dark and light throughout the piece, expressed alternately by angry fortissimo and placid (or resigned) pianissimo. The spirited first movement brings to mind parrying and thrusts as if fencing for notes – or for one’s life.

Throughout, moods shift from lyricism to agitation and back again, rendered by each player, with brief solo violin turns of almost screaming vocalizations of despair to the percussive heartbeat of cello pizzicato. The final movement mimics a chattering exchange among the four in musically disparate states of their duel with Death before returning to agitation at a galloping pace to the end.

So who was the winner of the evening? Everyone who attended. And the best news is there is much more to come.

Festival concerts that follow the opening-night triple play include Saturday night’s “Personal Perspectives,” with festival co-artistic director Cho performing Mozart’s Duo for Violin and Viola with her husband, violinist Phillips. Also on the program is Schubert’s counterintuitively lighthearted Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat major composed just a year before his death. In between is a short work commissioned for the Aizuri Quartet, Reena Esmail’s Zeher (Poison) for String Quartet, combining South Asian and Western themes. The guest ensemble returns Sunday with Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s String Quartet in E-flat major, recognizing the unsung sibling of Felix, who – due to conventions of the time – is credited with writing six of his big sister’s songs. Next is Schubert’s Fantasia for Piano

Four-Hands in F minor, considered one of his greatest hits. Wrapping up the late matinee program is Erno Dohnanyi’s Piano Quintet No. 1 in C minor, Opus 1, written when the composer was 17. It so impressed Johannes Brahms that he performed its premiere himself.

The festival resumes on Thursday next week with Haydn’s “London” Symphony for Flute, String Quartet and Piano. It’s followed by Pietro Bottisini’s Andante and Variations for Flute, Clarinet and String Quartet, featuring perennial festival contributors Tara Helen O’Connor and J. Lawrie Bloom on the woodwind instruments. Brahms puts the final notes on the evening with his Piano Trio No. 1 in B  major, Opus 8, with Sahun Sam Hong on the ivory. Next Friday’s concert puts the spotlight on winners of Chesapeake Music’s most recent biennial International Concerto Competition, the Amara Trio – Christina  Nam (violin), Nagyeom Jang (cello) and Kevin Jansson (piano) – likely reprising their prize-winning number, Shostakovich’s challenging Piano Concerto No. 2 in E minor, Opus 67, preceded by 20th-century composer Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio. The opener for the evening, Luigi Bocchereni’s String Quintet in A major, composed by the virtuoso cellist, brings two other cellists to the fore – Rosen and young Sterling Elliott, who wowed Chesapeake Music audiences twice before, followed by young Oregon-born  composer Kenji Bunch’s “Vesper Flight for Flute and Piano,” a 2021 work commissioned by flutist O’Connor in memory of her parents.

The Festival Finale next Saturday night begins with “A Night Piece and Scherzo for Flute and String Quartet” by American composer Arthur Foote who favored late European Romanticism, Claude Debussy’s “Reverie” arranged for cello and piano, performed by Elliott and his “Rising Stars” partner Eliot Wuu, “Serenade for Clarinet, Cello and Piano” by Danish composer Emil Hartmann inspired by Scandinavian folk tunes and, finally, Elgar’s Piano Quintet that approaches or achieves orchestral proportions.

Something old, something new, something unexpected. That’s the mark of the latest iteration of this distinguished chamber festival.

On a practical note: Ticket holders should pay attention to their emails or text messages. It’s possible that week 2 of festival concerts may switch back to the Ebenezer. According to Bluepoint Hospitality, which owns and operates this and other downtown Easton arts-related businesses and restaurants, the Ebenezer “needed repairs on the former church built in 1856.” Stay tuned.