Pyxis Brings Beethoven & Faure to Life on Market

Pyxis Piano Quartet performs at Market Street Music.
Photo by Joe Gawinski.

By Christine Facciolo
Market Street Music welcomed spring and Pyxis Piano Quartet to its Festival Concert series on Sunday, March 19, 2017, which paired Beethoven’s String Trio in G major with Faure’s Piano Quartet in C minor.

The Opus 9 string trios offer a fascinating portrait of the young composer bursting with ideas as he took a musical form born as the baroque trio sonata and gave it new life as only he could. But as striking as they are, they represent the last gasp for a form that would soon be eclipsed by the string quartet.

Pyxis wisely chose the first Trio of Op. 9, a gem from its opening note to its last. This performance of the longest and most difficult of the trios earned the ensemble a well-deserved ovation. The opening and closing movements were technically perfect in every dimension. The wonderful slow movement with its pastoral theme in the distant key of E major received a most moving, heart-longing treatment. The breadth of expressiveness was especially remarkable considering the movement’s simplicity of form.

A proper contrast to the Adagio came with the buoyancy of the Scherzo and then with even more vitality a throw-caution-to-the-wind finale. All in all, a fitting performance of one of Beethoven’s “best works so far.”

Violist Amy Leonard introduced the Faure Piano Quartet by telling the audience that while she and her colleagues couldn’t offer Paris in springtime, they could bring a bit of the city into First & Central Presbyterian Church.

Leonard also noted that while the work is cast in a minor key, it’s a “happy minor,” with a positive tone albeit with some hints in the slow movement of the turmoil in Faure’s personal life at the time of composition.

Leonard contextualized the work by noting that just as Beethoven was a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic periods, Faure stood at the crossroads of the Romantic and modern eras. Indeed, Romanticism and its doleful heroics are left behind in this work. The first movement is a fluid blending of energy and lyricism. The high-spirited and virtuosic Scherzo delights with pizzicato-pricked perpetuum mobile fantasy. The grand Adagio imbues profound passion with classical restraint and balance. A soaring Allegro caps all with a shimmering major/minor gaiety.

Balance, ensemble, superb intonation and sensitive interpretation characterized this performance. None of the loud passages were overplayed. When one player had a solo passage, they came out just enough then returned to their dynamic place.

Special honors go to pianist Hiroko Yamazaki. Pianists have a special balance problem when playing in quartets because the sound of their instrument is so much fuller than a single string instrument. Not so here. Yamazaki was always at the correct level. Quite remarkable!

See www.marketstreetmusicde.org

Once Takes Playhouse Theatergoers on Heartfelt Musical Journey

By Jenna Montgomery
Jenna is a property manager and ardent patron/volunteer in the local music, art & theater community.
For one weekend only, a Dublin pub is nestled in the heart of downtown Wilmington with Once, the Tony award-winning Broadway musical, taking audiences on a captivating journey with touching songs and heartfelt performances.

The show's tagline – "His music needed one thing. Her." – perfectly encapsulates the storyline of a brokenhearted street musician and Czech-immigrant muse. Sam Cieri and Mackenzie Lesser-Roy brilliantly play the lead characters simply named Guy and Girl, who demonstrate such incredible emotional vulnerability as they struggle to move through life and their own complex, unlikely connection. The tender moments and songs they share bring to life the universal themes of moving past fear and embracing one's destiny.

Unlike typical Broadway musicals, there is no pit orchestra. Instead, every instrument is performed on stage by the talented musician actors. It's literally music in motion as the guitars, mandolins, accordions and more all get swept into the choreographed dances.

As a novel bonus, theatregoers are invited to come onstage as pub patrons during both pre-show and intermission. Many of the cast's musician actors treat them to a rollicking live jam as they enjoy their drinks.

Several notable cast members include John Hays – who brings welcome comic relief as Billy, a raucous but endearing piano store owner – as well as 9-year-old Lily Caputo, a Brandywine Valley resident making her Broadway debut, who brings sweet, youthful energy to her role as Girl's daughter.

While 13 cast members dazzle onstage, the character without program recognition is Dublin itself. The Irish capital comes to life through the storyline and its characters, highlighting Dublin's incredible diversity and energy. A particularly poignant line, "You can't have a city without music," underscores this point.

Falling Slowly is the show's signature song with soaring melodies and vocals. It's the Oscar winner for Best Song from the 2007 indie film, upon which this musical is based. Ranging from a cappella songs, solo numbers and rousing group performances, the music in this show delivers an emotional wallop with earnest lyrics and beautiful melodies, written by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, stars of the original film.

Once incorporates many clever elements in its minimalist staging and storytelling, which includes inventive scene changes, dramatic lighting and original use of subtitles to illustrate the private exchanges and lively debates between Czech-speaking characters.

While the national tour sadly ends soon, fortunately new licensing rights will allow regional theaters to begin staging their own productions of Once. But in the meantime, this is a top-notch unconventional and romantic musical worth experiencing immediately.

Once runs through April 2 at The Playhouse on Rodney Square. Tickets range from $65-$85 and discounts are available for seniors, groups of 10 or more and children ages 12 and under.

See www.ThePlayhouseDE.org.

Music on Your Lunch Break in Downtown Wilmington

By Margaret Darby

Copeland String Quartet & Grant Youngblood
at Market Street Music. Photo by Joe Gawinski.

If you have never been to one of Market Street Music’s Thursday Noontime Concerts, it is worth organizing a trip to First & Central Presbyterian Church.  The concerts are only 30-minutes long, so they would serve as a gentle introduction for a person who is new to classical music. The selections are varied and intriguing – a taste of music by local performers. 

On March 30, the Copeland String Quartet and baritone Grant Youngblood performed Samuel Barber’s Dover Beach, which Barber composed at age 21. The piece starts with a quiet repeated pattern by the first and second violins, evoking the rocking tide of a quiet ocean. Youngblood began with a soft yet penetrating “The sea is calm” over that pattern. The sound became louder as the poem evokes Sophocles’ comparing the rhythm of the ebb and flow of the ocean to the sound of misery. The music builds to its climax, “Let us be true to one another!”  

The performance was beautifully controlled and the quiet attack and gradual build to the climax and fading away to nothing was also like an ocean wave, but this was slightly different from what Mr. Barber had originally put in his score. When I listened to a 1983 Nonesuch recording of the work with Leslie Guinn and the New York Art Quartet, the cover notes by Phillip Ramey quoted his 1977 interview with Mr. Barber. Barber said of Dover Beach, “Originally, I cut the middle part about Sophocles. Soon after Dover Beach was finished, I played it at the Owen Wister house in Philadelphia and Marina Wister exclaimed, ‘Be where’s that wonderful part about Sophocles?’ (Conversation was at a high level at those grand Philadelphia houses – if you said Sophocles when you meant Aeschylus, you simply didn’t get another drink.) I realized that Philadelphians, who are infinitely more educated than New Yorkers, would know their Matthew Arnold, and that she was quite right, so I wrote a contrasting middle section. The piece was better for it.”  And I agree.

The second piece in this mini-concert was String Quartet No. 1, which Charles Ives composed when he was 21. He used some well-known tunes, in particular hymns.  Ives’ harmonizations in this early work were exploratory and sometimes use clashing dissonances. The Copeland Quartet, with Ross Beauchamp as their guest cellist in this concert, unfurled the canonic harmonies of the fugal first movement and took their time ro permit clarity in the very acoustically live sanctuary. Ives became more daring with his harmonies with each successive movement. The fourth and final movement was a glorious experiment in harmonic changes and 3/4 over 4/4 meter – reprising the Shining Shore theme from the second movement, the Coronation from the first, and a smattering of the hymn tune Stand up for Jesus. The effect was described by my companion as ‘a sandbox of harmony”. The quartet played the difficult piece with panache, showing us how, as another member of the audience noted, that without Charles Ives there would have been no Aaron Copland. 

Upcoming Market Street Music concerts are Minas on Thursday, April 6 and OperaDelaware Sneak Preview on Thursday, April 20, both at 12:30. 

See www.marketstreetmusicde.org.