Showing posts with label Julie Nishimura. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Julie Nishimura. Show all posts

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Delaware Chamber Music Festival Closes 32nd Season with More Brahms & Jazz

By Christine Facciolo

The Delaware Chamber Music Festival continued its celebration of the music of Johannes Brahms June 23 through 25 with complementary works by Beethoven, Stravinsky, Mozart and Turina.

The Festival Quartet includes: Barbara Govatos, violin & DCMF Artistic Director; Hirono Oka, violin; Che-Hung Chen, viola and Clancy Newman, cello.  Guest artists this season were: Kristen Johnson, viola; Marcantonio Barone, Julie Nishimura & Natalie Zhu, pianistsDouglas Mapp, bass; Tina Betz, voice and Jonathan Whitney, arranger and director of Boysie Lowery Living Jazz Residency. 

Friday, June 23’s concert opened with a performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F major, Op.18, no. 1. The instrumental Brahms owes much to Beethoven, who brought many innovations to his musical genres, not the least of which was the systematic use of interlocking thematic devices to achieve intra- and inter-movement unity in long compositions.

The six quartets that make up the Op. 18 set were Beethoven’s way of announcing to the world that he was to be taken seriously as a composer. It was evident that the musicians viewed the work not as the apogee of 18th Century Viennese Classicism, but rather as a transitional work that looked forward to the composer’s middle period.

That approach was made plain in the slow movement, which was presented as a deeply felt lament. Here Beethoven goes far beyond Haydn, writing in an emotional intensity — the movement is his musical depiction of the tomb scene of “Romeo and Juliet” — that must have shocked his contemporaries. The finale was energetic and incisive, elegant and charming.

Guest artists Hirono Oka (violin) and Marcantonio Barone (piano) collaborated in a tour de force rendering of Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne, a 1930s work arranged from the ballet Pulcinella. Stravinsky based Pulcinella on music that had been attributed (probably erroneously) to the 18th Century Italian composer Giovanni Pergolesi. The result is not an antiquarian piece but a seamless fusion of the old and the new. Stravinsky maintained the courtly character of the Baroque melodies but spiced up the music with pungent harmonies and updated rhythms.

Oka and Barone respected the 18th Century influences in a refined performance full of spongy Baroque rhythms. But they also played with ample color and expression, making the music sound decidedly contemporary. Oka’s tone was both sweet and luminous and decisive.

The lighthearted character of the Suite Italienne gave way to the symphonic grandeur of Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34. Brahms published the work when he was 32 years old, but by then it had gone through several transformations: it began as a string quintet in 1862 and was rescored as a work for two pianos until Brahms gave it its final form.

This is a work of surging passion, tempered only momentarily by the softer-edged Andante. Govatos, Oka, Chen, Newman and Barone conveyed the full-bodied Romanticism of the two outer movements and the driven Scherzo and a plaintive, soulful rendering of the slow movement. Yet as heated as the music got, the ensemble kept the texture remarkably transparent. Viola and cello lines were never buried yet the group produced a solid, powerful sound.

On Saturday, June 24, concertgoers headed to the Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew in downtown Wilmington for a free concert, marking the first collaboration between the DCMF and the residents of the Boysie Lowery Living Jazz Residency. Six residents were given a week to compose a work that incorporated a classical string quartet 
 a first for these talented young artists.

Each composition was noteworthy but Sasquatch by vibraphonist Grady Tesch brought down the house. Tesch also excelled as a featured player in Mike Talento’s Half and Half and as lyricist and vocalist in Ike Spivak’s Plot Twist, which recounted the musical journeys of jazz luminaries.

Jazz vocalist Isabel Crespo gave a plaintive rendering of her composition Hide and Seek, while trombonist Kristin Monroe ably combined elements of jazz and classical in Coasting Equilibrium, her contribution in the tradition of Astor Piazzolla’s nuevo tango. Libby Larsen kept the musicians moving — especially pianist Julie Nishimura — with the kinetic energy of Four on the Floor.

Tina Betz, also executive director of the Light Up the Queen Foundation, applied her dramatic contralto to a powerful rendering of Strange Fruit, a song about lynching made famous by the late Billie Holiday. Douglas Mapp, associate principal bass with the Delaware Symphony Orchestra, joined the string quartet to accompany. The song was arranged for this performance by Boysie Lowery director, Jonathan Whitney.

Sunday, June 25’s program opened with Mozart’s Divertimento in D major, K. 136, the first of a group of works known collectively as the “Salzburg” symphonies. The work was performed at the request of DCMF Board President Carolyn Luttrell. Govatos, Oka, Chen and Newman played with a nimbleness and precision that underscored the decorous elegance of a work that can only be described as a masterpiece on the smallest possible scale.

Pianist Natalie Zhu joined Govatos, Chen and Newman in a seductive and sensitive performance of Joaquin Turina’s Piano Quarter in A minor, Op. 67. Composed in 1931, this gently melancholic work resonates with the vivid harmonies and impetuous rhythms of Spanish folk music yet at the same time bears the imprint of impressionists’ influence in its spacious, colorful textures.

The program — and season — concluded with a performance of Brahms’ breathtaking Quintet in G major, Op. 111. Orchestra in conception, this piece creates the effect of far more than five players. This was a passionate performance. Cellist Newman was more than equal to the full opening of the first movement. The Adagio was rapt intensity; the Allegretto wistful and the finale, robust.

See www.dcmf.org

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

A Mini-Celebration of Brahms Opens the 32nd Delaware Chamber Music Festival

By Christine Facciolo


The Delaware Chamber Music Festival (DCMF) opened its 2017 season on Friday, June 16 with a celebration of the music of a composer many find difficult to love: Johannes Brahms.

Indeed, the “Brahms problem” never seems to go away. Over and over, we hear complaints that his music is “too romantic,” albeit not excitingly romantic like Chopin or his mentor Schumann. At the same time, he’s charged with being too intellectual and not sensuous enough.

One thing, however, is certain: Brahms’ oeuvre occupies a unique position in the history of Western music. Looking Janus-like both to the music of the past and towards the innovations of future generations, Brahms’ music has shaped our understanding of composers from the Renaissance and Baroque periods to the present-day.

Violinist and DCMF Artistic Director Barbara Govatos has curated a series that acknowledges the tensions between modernism and tradition. Each of the four concerts offers a master work by Brahms as well as works by Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky and others.

The level of playing was extremely high. The Festival Quartet — Govatos, Che-Hung Chen, viola, Hirono Oka, violin — includes musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Guest artists for the first weekend of concerts included pianists Marcantonio Barone, Julie Nishimura and Natalie Zhu.

Friday evening’s program opened with a performance of Jennifer Higdon’s Piano Trio, a nod to the Festival’s theme “Strings and Keys.” Like Scriabin, color and visual imagery figure prominently in her compositional process. This two-movement work attempts an aural depiction of the colors “Pale Yellow” and “Fiery Red.”

Govatos, pianist Natalie Zhu and cellist Clancy Newman delivered a performance that truly highlighted character of the movement titles: subtle and relaxed for the first, energetic and rhythmically decisive for the second. Perception is personal but if audience response was any indication, both musicians and composer succeeded in achieving the two vastly contrasting moods.

Violist Che-Hung Chen then joined Govatos and Newman in a performance of the Serenade in C major for String Trio by Hungarian composer Erno Dohnanyi. Dohnanyi became a devotee of Brahms while studying at the National Hungarian Academy of Music. Brahms would later promote the fledgling composer’s first published composition, the Piano Quintet in C minor.

Govatos and company offered an impressive performance of the Serenade characterized by a warm tone, a relaxed demeanor and the ability to search out the subtler aspects of the score.

Zhu rejoined the ensemble following intermission for a performance of Brahms’ Piano Quartet in G minor. The work premiered in Hamburg in 1861 with Clara Schumann at the piano. It was orchestrated in 1937 by Arnold Schoenberg who would call Brahms “the reluctant revolutionary” for the way he developed his thematic material, techniques for which Schoenberg himself would become famous.

The ensemble gave a reading that conveyed both the sweetness and simmer of the first movement; the introspective character of the second and the dreamy grandness of the third. The Hungarian, Rondo finale was pure fire, the rhythmic and metric complexities so meticulously executed that the audience rose to its feet with gasps of delight and thunderous applause.

Sunday’s program opened with the Fantasie in F minor for piano, four hands by Franz Schubert. Not a bad choice, since Schubert was one of Brahms’ favorite composers, so much so that he cast the aforementioned piano quartet in the Schubertean mold.

Schubert was after the Mozart the major composer of original four-hand piano music. The Fantasie comes from the last year of the composer’s life. It consists of four movements of unequal proportions. Guest pianists Julie Nishimura and Marcantonio Barone played as one entity, making very clear the architecture of the piece yet never obscuring the wonderful niceties like Schubert’s amazing sense of harmony and canonic writing.

Govatos and Barone did justice to the passion and pathos of Francis Poulenc’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, a work dedicated to the memory of Spanish poet, playwright and theatre director Frederico Garcia Lorca, who was murdered by Nationalist forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Although Poulenc railed against a “prima donna” violin above an arpeggio piano accompaniment, he followed Brahms’ example in this work by giving each instrument a challenging yet balanced part.

Govatos, Barone and cellist Clancy Newman concluded the concert with a rendering of Brahms’ Piano Trio, No. 2 in C major. The three musicians gave the work the disciplined and coordinated interaction its complex lines demand and judging by audience reaction, achieved the desired result.

The Delaware Chamber Music Festival continues Friday, June 23, 7:30pm and Sunday, June 25, 3:00pm at Wilmington Friends Lower School. A Saturday, June 24, 4:00pm FREE Jazz Concert will also be performed at the Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew, in collaboration with the Boysie Lowery Living Jazz Residency Program (Jonathan Whitney, Director. For full details, visit www.dcmf.org.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Irreverence in a classical setting

Making beautiful music requires two contradictory talents: the ability to play by the rules and the ability to break them. Only through years of practice can a classical musician acquire the technical skills that allows him or her to read the lines and also between them.

Friday’s Delaware Chamber Music Festival concert opened with a refreshing view of how to create a line of best fit between the tightly woven classical writing of composers Felix Mendelssohn and Maurice Ravel to see the jazz, folk and rock influences that permeate good music. After all, what is good music but a display of willful disregard for the rules while communicating within the limits of the composers design?

Barbara Govatos invited three fellow musicians who can deviate and conform: Julie Nishimura, John B. Hedges, and Douglas Mapp. Julie Nishimura, a tiny powerhouse in classical music, had no problem letting her quirky side rule while playing the piano for Four on the floor for violin, cello, bass and piano by Libby Larsen. She leaned left and right, feet swinging on the pedals and she put her whole body into the “slam-‘em-home” walking bass which provided the platform for the other musicians: Barbara on violin, Douglas Mapp on bass and Clancy Newman on the cello.

Clancy Newman played his own composition called Song without words for solo cello in which he played wild rock themes, jazz and blues while using his refined cello technique to touch the gentlest harmonics and also to jab the bow so hard it made an almost drum-like clicking.

A respite was given with David Bromberg’s acoustic guitar accompaniments of Barbara Govatos’ surprisingly good Irish fiddle performances of two ballads: Ashokan Farewell and Amazing Grace. Every now and then she betrayed her training by pulling off a perfect classical trill just after a country shindig slide up to a melody note.

Although I loved John B Hedges piano improvisation when he played his own version of “22-20”, playing soft enough to let us hear David Bromberg’s vocals and guitar, I did not enjoy the Devilwhere for violin, electric guitar and contrabass which he wrote to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Delaware Chamber Music Festival. It was so complex that it took Jim Tisdall to handle the electrified acoustic guitar part. Doug Mapp put his all into the wild bass string-snapping, but the overall effect was more bumpy than fun.

The crew of Nishimura, Govatos, and Newman finished the evening with the fastest rendition of Felix Mendelssohn’s Trio in c minor, opus 66 I have ever heard. Their point seemed to be that even within the strictures of the romantic era style, there is verve and jazz. The message worked much more successfully in the second movement of the Sonata for piano and violin by Maurice Ravel. For this piece, Nishimura was able to zing the syncopated notes just on the edge of the margins left by Ravel and Govatos had no problem moving with that. I feel sure Ravel would have given this piece a standing ovation – two irreverent American musicians using their skilled sophistication to bring a message of wonder about how all styles of music have coinciding arcs.

See www.dcmf.org.