Four
members of The Music School of Delaware’s esteemed piano faculty displayed
their performing and compositional talents in a program entitled “Piano Majesty”
Wednesday, November 14, 2018 at the school's Wilmington Branch.
No
piano concert would be complete without at least one work by Frederic Chopin, and this program featured two, both brilliantly rendered by David Brown. Brown
is a pianist of unwavering mastery and musicianship with a towering but sublime
strength and nuance that is both personal and telling. He was especially glittering
in Chopin’s melodic Fantasy Impromptu, Op. 66 and the happy, cantabile
character of the Barcarolle, Op.60, one of the composer’s finest works.
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| Pianist and composer Jennifer Nicole Campbell performs in the Music Masters program, Piano Majesty. |
The
program also featured a generous helping of original compositions. Jennifer
Nicole Campbell applied her usual charm and impeccable technique to a rendering
of Brown’s ethereal In the High Meadow. She also offered two of her own
compositions, Prayer for the Right Hand, a left-hand piece she wrote to
compensate for an injury she suffered to her right hand, and the lively
Variations on Loch Lomond, which featured musical motifs from the pop and
classical repertoire. The audience had great fun identifying the themes. She
rounded out her set with a performance of Leschetizky’s Ballade Venitienne, Op.
39, No. 1 (Barcarolle).
Brown
offered a more solemn set of variations on the Baroque aria Bist du bei mir. Brown
wrote the variations in 1993 and revised the work this year. In some
pre-performance remarks, he noted that he was responding to the loss of loved
ones by several of his friends over the past year.
Liliya
Maslov and Oleg Maslov delivered an edge-of-your seat rendering of
Lutoslawski’s piano-slam Paganini Variations. The audience was transported to a
cliff-edge zany and dissonance-allowed zone with superb playing from the duo in
an intrepid choice of repertoire.
The
duo of Brown and Campbell opened the program with a performance of two
selections by Schubert: the Allegro moderato and Andante (D. 968) and the March
in D major, D. 733.