For this rewarding program, lasting just over an hour, Mr. Wosner began with Schubert’s Sonata in D (D. 850), sometimes called the “Gasteiner” because it was composed during three weeks in 1825 when Schubert was staying in Bad Gastein, an Austrian spa town. Then Mr. Wosner was joined by Hyunah Yu, a gifted young South Korean-born soprano, in six Mahler songs from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.”
NEW YORK CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
September 13-20, 2009
REVIEWS
Music Review | New York Chamber Music Festival
NewYork Chamber Music Festival
By ALLAN KOZINN
Published: September 13, 2011
The New York Chamber Music Festival, now in its third year, takes up residence at Symphony Space just before the start of the formal concert season, when its core players -- members of the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and a handful of soloists -- still have time on their hands. This year's festival opened on Sunday evening with a free three-hour program that commemorated the Sept. 11 attacks.
There was more than music: between the performances poems were read (several about Sept. 11, but classics by Dickinson, Wordsworth and Emma Lazarus, too), and dignitaries (the Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the Rev. Al Sharpton Jr., among them) offered brief remembrances. The actor B. D. Wong was the host.
The program began with the composer David Amram giving a penny-whistle reading of his own inventive ''Variations on 'Amazing Grace.' '' Mr. Amram also contributed a ruminative piano accompaniment to the poet Frank Messina's reading of his affecting ''Bicycle (for Juan Gutierrez, Delivery Boy).'' Elmira Darvarova, the violinist who directs the festival, and Tomoko Kanamaru, the pianist, gave a focused, energetic account of Lera Auerbach's alternately brash and introspective ''September 11'' Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano.
Ms. Darvarova also presided over a couple of string quartets -- Laura Kaminsky's dark, Bartokian ''Transformations II: Music for a Changing World'' and the Barber Adagio. And she collaborated with the composer and bassist Jon Deak on his amusing children's piece, ''Mose, the Fireman, 1840,'' and with Mr. Deak, the hornist Howard Wall and the flutist Patricia Zuber on Justin Tokke's ''Remembrance,'' one of the more emotionally pointed premieres.
Also among the evening's most striking performances, the trumpeter Jon Faddis read Skip Shea's poem ''Songs of Mourning'' and performed his own ''War and Peace,'' and Simon Mulligan, a composer and pianist, gave poetic accounts of a Chopin Nocturne (Op. 27, No. 2) and his own jazz-tinged ''St. Croix in the Rain.''
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Music Review | New York Chamber Music Festival
Debussy’s Gallic Urbanity and an Alluring Saint-Saëns Oddity
By ALLAN KOZINN
Published: September 14, 2010
Now in its second season, the New York Chamber Music Festival at Symphony Space has expanded impressively. In a seven-day run that began last Friday, the festival is offering 13 concerts, up from 6 last year. Among the performers are musicians from the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, as well as several soloists and ensembles. The repertory includes a bit of everything: standard fare, rarities (piano quartets by Korngold and Joseph Marx), contemporary works and jazz transcriptions.
Erin Baiano for The New York Times
New York Chamber Music Festival: The violinist Elmira Darvarova, the pianist Pascal Rogé and the cellist Samuel Magill in a concert of French music at Symphony Space.
The pianist Pascal Rogé, one of the strongest draws on the roster, opened his Monday evening program of French music with an alluring oddity, Saint-Saëns’s Scherzo for Two Pianos (Op. 87), performed with his wife, Ami Rogé. Saint-Saëns gave both players plenty to do in this playful work: a long, shapely melody will sometimes leap between keyboards and sometimes sing on one while the other decorates it with sparkling filigree. An evocative chromaticism keeps the work’s harmonic core lively and slightly off kilter.
Mr. Rogé was joined by Samuel Magill, the associate principal cellist at the Met, for a rendering of Poulenc’s Cello Sonata (Op. 143) that was admirable for its detailed and finely polished interplay and for the power and richness that both musicians brought to the plangent finale. But that opulence was long in coming. In the work’s first three movements, Mr. Magill clothed his otherwise unimpeachable reading in a dry sound that seemed all the more colorless when set against Mr. Rogé’s more vivid playing.
No such complaints could be lodged against Elmira Darvarova, who played Debussy’s Violin Sonata. Ms. Darvarova, a former concertmaster at the Met and the director of the festival, couched this colorful score in a sweet, flexible tone and reacted deftly to Debussy’s idiosyncratic character shifts, like the leap from Gallic urbanity to a lively flamenco figure at the end of the first movement. She also gave an admirably speedy but clearly articulated account of the finale.
Though Mr. Rogé proved an adept and considerate chamber player, he was most fully in his element in the Ravel Sonatine, the only solo work on the program. Using a touch that combined gracefulness and power, Mr. Rogé gave the score a supple reading in which Ravel’s right-hand melodies floated freely and with an almost songlike quality over the accompanying figuration, and in which even the densest rolling figuration had an inviting transparency. In the finale, particularly, he gave the music an organic ebb and flow.
To close the program, Mr. Rogé, Ms. Darvarova and Mr. Magill gave a fluid, finely balanced and sharply accented performance of Ravel’s Piano Trio.
The New York Chamber Music Festival runs through Thursday at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street; (212) 864-5400, symphonyspace.org.
A version of this review appeared in print on September 15, 2010, on page C5 of the New York edition
Photo: Erin Baiano for The New York Times
MUSIC REVIEW | NEW YORK CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
Connecting the Dots Between 2 Composers
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Published: September 16, 2010
The accomplished young Israeli pianist Shai Wosner, who performs regularly with chamber music ensembles in the United States and Europe, has a new recording that fascinatingly juxtaposes works by Brahms and Schoenberg. On Wednesday at Symphony Space, as part of the weeklong New York Chamber Music Festival, Mr. Wosner again showed a knack for drawing connections between composers.
Before the Mahler group, having just played the sonata, Mr. Wosner spoke about the links he saw between these seemingly disparate composers. The song genre was central to them, he said, and they shared powerful attachments to both the idyllic and the tragic realms of life.
Mr. Wosner went further, playing themes and phrases from the sonata just heard and pointing out similar bits in the Mahler songs. He did not claim that Mahler was actually quoting Schubert, but the correspondences were striking.
Mr. Wosner gave a lively and sensitive account of the demanding Schubert sonata. The buoyant first movement shifts between bursts of fanfarelike themes and rippling passagework. Though Mr. Wosner took a brisk tempo, his playing was lithe and articulate. The breathless energy of his conception was captivating, though he could occasionally have taken just a moment extra to set up the next episode or phrase.
The second movement is marked Con Moto (With Motion), and Mr. Wosner played it that way: though he was always sensitive to passages of harmonic and expressive intensity, his ambling pace never allowed the poignancy to take over. He deftly dispatched the feisty scherzo and ended with a supple account of the dancing rondo, played with impressive lightness and clarity.
Ms. Yu’s lyric soprano voice is light and youthful, yet its warmth and creamy richness make it well suited to Mahler.
The resonances of Schubert in the Mahler songs came through vividly in these original versions for voice and piano. Most of the Mahler songs, including these six from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” are best known from their orchestrated versions. Ms. Yu and Mr. Wosner ended with “Das himmlische Leben,” widely familiar as the final movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. Increasingly, I find the versions for voice and piano more direct, subtle and intimate, especially in performances as beautiful as this one.
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Synaphaï
Gene Gaudette's Blog
Pascal Rogé et al @ New York Chamber Music Festival
The "official" music season usually does not start in New York until a couple of weeks after Labor Day, but there is still plenty to see and hear -- and one of the best places to jump the gun is at Symphony Space, where the New York Chamber Music Festival has already launched their second season. Artistic and Executive Director Elmira Darvarova and her circle of artistic collaborators have again assembled a wide-ranging series of programs spanning a broad range of chamber repertoire.
Slower-than-expected recuperation from nose surgery forceded me to beg off the first few events in the festival, including performances by cellist Christine Walevska and New York Philharmonic principal trumpet Philip Smith, but I loaded up on analgesics late Monday afternoon in preparation for a program of French chamber and piano music featuring Pascal Rogé. He is best known on this side of the Atlantic for his deservedly acclaimed recordings of French piano music for Decca, but I also like his more recent recordings for Onyx and Oehms, particularly the Gershwin and Ravel concerto SACDs on the latter label with the RSO Wien conducted by Bertrand de Billy providing idiomatic, spirited accompaniment.
Symphony Space is, to be polite, not exactly the most richly reverberant venue in Manhattan; the front rows provide an intimate atmosphere with good sightlines, though the acoustics favor players further back on stage.
The program opened with Saint-Saëns's charming Scherzo for Two Pianos, Op.87, with Rogé's wife Ami on second piano. This is music with one foot unashamedly in the salon and the the other in the conservatory. Saint-Saëns's detractors often carp about his music's superficiality, but with the Rogés at the keyboard it is impossible not to succumb to this music's charming melodies and balance of craftsmanship and wit.
Poulenc's Cello Sonata, written in the late 1940s, is slightly craggier than his earlier solo sonatas and chamber music, but retains the composer's charming style that is infused with just a touch of the Parisian music hall and jazz. Cellist Samuel Magill's lean sound and Rogé's rich palette sometimes seemed at odds, but did serve to shine a spotlight on the hairpin-turn changes in timbre and articulation. In the second movement Cavatine and the Finale, sets of themes sounded strikingly as if they could have been lifted from the chamber music of Prokofiev -- then instantly morphed back into something unmistakably French.
Darvarova and Rogé took an equally daring approach to Debussy's Violin Sonata. Stripped of romantic trappings and sentiment, Darvarova conjured an amazing array of timbres and sounds, consistently punctuated and supported by Rogé's transparent and dynamic pianism. The work seemed more a gateway to Messiaen and an avant-garde generation to come than a culmination of Debussy's oeuvre.
Don't let the title "Sonatine" fool you -- Maurice Ravel's short three-movement work opened the second half of the recital with an abundance of energy and color, distilling the composer's piano oeuvre into a pointed and compelling work. Rogé delivered the final Animé with a particularly impressive balance of color and pianistic control, unfolding with irresistable momentum in almost a single phrase.
The program concluded with a strongly expressive and, as with the Debussy, forward-looking vision of Ravel's enormously demanding Trio. The unanimity of Rogé, Darvarova and Magill was impressive, as was the clear but unexaggerated use of string instrument timbre. I can't recall hearing the Passacaille played with this much potency, and the daunting Finale generated not only goosebumps but an enormous -- and gratifyingly warm -- volume of sound.
The festival has scored a real coup with the participation of Pascal Rogé. He will be one of the performers in tonight's program, including woirks by Schumann, Brahms, David Amram and Paul Chihara. Miss it at your own peril!
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MUSIC
REVIEW | PRINCIPAL BRASS
Mission
Possible: Entertaining Chamber Music
By ALLAN KOZINN
Published: September 14, 2009
Symphony Space is presenting its first New York
Chamber Music Festival, a six-concert series that began on Sunday afternoon
with Principal Brass, a quintet (four principals and one associate principal)
from the New York Philharmonic.
The program was fairly light: at the end of the
concert, Philip Smith, the orchestra’s principal trumpeter and the chatty
master of ceremonies here, saluted the Canadian Brass for transforming quintet
performances into entertainment, and added his hope that this Philharmonic
ensemble had done so as well. There was no visible sign of dissent from Mr.
Smith’s colleagues, Matthew Muckey, the associate principal trumpeter; Philip
Myers, the hornist; Joseph Alessi, the trombonist; and Alan Baer, the tuba
player. 
To that end, the group devoted its program mostly
to transcriptions — Baroque favorites, jazz tunes and movements from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” — with a couple of pieces composed for
brass tucked into the first half like stowaways.
Not surprisingly, those scores worked best. The
Intermezzo from Ingolf Dahl’s “Music for Brass Instruments” (1944) was given a
bright-hued, energetic performance, and the fast movements of Malcolm Arnold’s first Quintet (1961) sizzled.
The Chaconne at the heart of the Arnold was striking in a different way: in
this slow movement the players were alert to the dynamic nuances and produced a
finely balanced sound.
They did so in some of the transcriptions too.
“America,” from the “West Side Story” set, in a Jack Gale arrangement, was
dazzling enough that you didn’t think much about the original orchestration. An
Albinoni sonata, arranged by David Hickman, and the Sarabande from Bach’s
Partita No. 1 for Unaccompanied Violin, in a transcription by Donald Rauschen,
had a quirky appeal in brass timbres too.
Others went less smoothly. The Bourée from the same
Bach Partita and a movement from Handel’s “Royal Fireworks Music” (arranged by
Chuck Seipp) had rhythmically flat-footed moments. And neither superb trumpet
dialogues nor character-ful trombone playing was enough to save some of the
jazz arrangements (most by Robert Elkjer) from seeming to plod rather than swing.
Even so, Mr. Smith was in his element playing the
solos originally made famous by Cootie Williams in Duke Ellington’s “Do Nothin’ Till You Hear
From Me.”
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Synaphaï
Gene Gaudette's Blog
Long
overdue, well worth the wait
Tuesday, 15 September 2009 By Gene Gaudette
VIOLINIST RACHEL BARTON PINE MAKES HER NEW YORK
RECITAL DEBUT
Rachel Barton Pine made her long overdue New York recital debut this
evening at Symphony Space, in a program featuring works by Pisendel,
Mendelssohn, Corigliano and Liszt with pianist Matthew Hagle. It was one of the finest recital
programs I've seen in a very long time.
Barton Pine is a scholarly and perceptive musician who
has restored a number of neglected works to the repertoire, but rest assured:
boring she is clearly not. She puts rigorous consideration into her approach to
a broad spectrum of music (not limited to classical music, by the way – she
also plays with phenomenal metal band Earthen Grave). Her interpretive approach
to violin repertoire is at times reminiscent of the urbane approach one
associates with Kreisler and Gingold — but she also delivers virtuoso
pyrotechnics that are unusually nuanced.
She's found a sympathetic and formidable partner in
Hagle. I was impressed by their remarkable musical unanimity, and their
remarkable unity and control during striking tempo changes – particularly the
fleet accelerandos in the sixteenth-note figurations that grace the opening
Allegro vivace of Mendelssohn's F Major Sonata and the adrenalized tempo shifts in
the finale of the Corigliano Sonata. Barton Pine brought out the baroque grandeur of Pisendel's
solo Sonata in a minor, which not only has much in common with his contemporary Bach
but a central Allegro that evokes the sound of Northern Italian baroque string
works. Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 concluded the program, with Barton Pine and Hagle
finding an ideal balance between the concert hall and gypsy camp.
Barton Pine introduced each piece from the stage,
combining musical background with her own observations — and providing a few
shout-outs to her home town of Chicago, where local classical radio station
WFMT was broadcasting and streaming the event live.
Barton Pine and Hagle received sustained and
enthusiastic ovations – including uncustomary applause after the first
movements of the Mendelssohn and Corigliano, from an audience filled with more
than a few well-known New York musicians.
The recital was the third in the newly established New
York Chamber Music Festival, which runs through September 20th at
Symphony Space. The festival's executive and artistic director, Elmira
Darvarova, and her outstanding team deserve congratulations and gratitude not
only for this debut recital coup but a superb lineup of programs. Darvarova is
herself an excellent violinist, and she will be performing tomorrow night and
Thursday with a number of other superb musicians; the festival concludes Sunday
with a recital by cellist Antonio Lysy and pianist Pascal Rogé.
While the rest of the music press in town is obsessing
over the opening of the New York Philharmonic season under new music director
Alan Gilbert, it's a sure bet that the attendees at this evening's recital will
tell you the new season is already off to a rousing start.
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 16 September 2009 10:14 )
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A
Sampling of Strings From Baroque to Gypsy
By ALLAN KOZINN
Published: September 17, 2009
The violinist Rachel Barton Pine has recorded
plentifully and has performed in New York several times as a chamber player,
most notably at the Frick Collection with Trio Settecento, her
period-instrument group, in 2006. The program on that occasion was a set of
Baroque trio sonatas in which the violin held the spotlight most of the time.
But it turns out that Ms. Pine had never played a traditional recital here, the
kind with just piano accompaniment (or none) and with a program that ranges
across a few centuries and style.
She rectified that omission on Tuesday evening with
a recital at Symphony Space as part of the hall’s New York
Chamber Music Festival. Because Ms. Pine is a star in Chicago, her hometown,
the concert was broadcast live on WFMT, Chicago’s principal classical music
station, with the radio personality William McGlaughlin as the host and,
unaccountably, a permanent stage fixture. Though he did not conduct an
interview with Ms. Pine or introduce the works (Ms. Pine did that herself), Mr.
McGlaughlin sat at a table on the stage through both halves of the program,
sometimes writing or drinking water. Was that absolutely necessary?
Ms. Pine began where her Frick performance had left
off, in the heart of the Baroque, with a Sonata in A minor for Unaccompanied
Violin (1717) by Johann Georg Pisendel, a contemporary of Bach and a kindred
spirit. Like Bach, Pisendel provided a single line of music, phrased in ways
that invite a player to create the illusion of counterpoint. Ms. Pine
accomplished that with deftly shifting articulation and color. You may have
wished, all the same, that she had played Bach instead, but Ms. Pine made a
valiant case for Pisendel as a reasonable alternative.
She was joined for the rest of the program by
Matthew Hagle, a sensitive pianist who knew when to defer, and when deference
would be counterproductive. They proved a well-matched duo in Mendelssohn’s Sonata in F (1838), which gives
both players singing lines as well as sparkling, brisk figuration.
But it took them a few moments to find common
ground. Ms. Pine’s phrasing was oddly breathless at first and seemed to push
against Mr. Hagle’s more settled pace. She found her bearings by the end of the
first movement. In the central Adagio she played with a warm tone that stopped
just short of lugubriousness, an approach that set up the sizzling finale
perfectly.
Ms. Pine recalibrated only slightly for John Corigliano’s Sonata (1963), a
neo-Romantic work that thrives on melody, but uses chromaticism freely to give
its tunes both a modern cast and a touch of unpredictability. It has stood up
remarkably well: having weathered a period when consonance was suspect, it
seems prescient now that a generation of composers have adopted Mr.
Corigliano’s eclecticism.
Ms. Pine and Mr. Hagle closed their recital with
fiery accounts of two showpieces rooted in Gypsy fiddling: Liszt’s Hungarian
Rhapsody No. 2, and, in an encore, Cesar Espejo’s “Airs Tziganes.”
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The New York Chamber Music Festival continues at Symphony Space
September 16, 2009 By Mona Molarsky
After rousing performances last night by violinist Rachel Barton Pine and pianist Matthew Hagle, the New York Chamber Music Festival continues at Symphony Space.
Tonight, a Beethoven string trio shares the bill with a more
modern string trio by Eugene Ysaye (1858-1931), a piano quartet by
Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937) and “Metamorphosis for Violin, Viola, Cello and
Piano” by Gernot Wolfgang (born 1957). Violinist Elmira Darvarova, violist
Ronald Carbone, cellist Samuel Magill and pianist Linda Hall will perform. 
Thursday’s program offers work by two 20th century composers,
Franco Alfano (1875-1954) and Vernon Duke (1903-1969)—performed by violinist
Elmira Darvarova, cellist Samuel Magill, and pianist Scott Dunn.
Sunday, the final night of the festival, features chamber works
by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Osvaldo Golijov
(born 1960), Lalo Schifrin (born 1932) and Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992). Cellist
Antonio Lysy will be making his New York debut, in a joint concert with pianist Pascal Rogé.
This is the inaugural season for the festival, directed by violinist Elmira Darvarova, formerly the concert master of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Judging by last night’s wonderful concert, the New York Chamber Music Festival is a valuable addition to the cultural life of the Upper West Side. If music be the food of love, life—or even a great Wednesday night on Upper Broadway--play on!
Elmira Darvarova (Photo by David Finlayson)
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New York Chamber Music Festival - Alfano and Duke: Elmira Darvarova (violin), Samuel Magill (cello), Scott Dunn (piano), Symphony Space, New York City, 17.9.2009 (BH)
Franco
Alfano: Sonata for
Cello and Piano (1925)
Vernon Duke: Sonata for Violin and Piano in D Major (1949, New York premiere)
Franco Alfano: Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano (1932)
In his excellent notes, cellist Samuel Magill describes Toscanini conducting the world premiere of Turandot, and the conductor's curt dismissal of Franco Alfano's completion of the opera's final act: "On opening night at La Scala in 1926, Toscanini stopped conducting where Puccini's music ended and Alfano's began, and abruptly left the orchestra pit.
This incident had a lot to do with damaging Alfano's career and ensuring his falling into obscurity after his death."??So fast-forward to the 21st century, when there appears to be a bit of an Alfano revival afoot. In 2005 the Metropolitan Opera staged his Cyrano de Bergerac, which I thought was an underrated gem, at least on one viewing. And now, in conjunction with their new recording of two of Alfano's chamber works, Magill and his superb colleagues, violinist Elmira Darvarova and pianist Scott Dunn, performed them at Symphony Space.
Alfano's Cello Sonata is an intense outpouring of emotion—florid and romantic—and Magill's larger-than-life sound immediately captured attention, coupled with Dunn's astute work at the keyboard. The harmonic language is not too far removed from Debussy, with moments of intense chromaticism that could almost be from Scriabin. The emotional range is huge, from the touching middle lullaby, to the anxiety of the final agitated movement, and Magill and Dunn captured every nuance. During the final pages, with an impassioned climax dissolving into an ending of haunting repose, I kept thinking this might be a major find for cello sonata aficionados.
As a well-conceived break, Ms. Darvarova and Mr. Dunn tackled Vernon Duke's surprisingly virtuosic Sonata for Violin and Piano. Perhaps best known for popular songs like "Autumn in New York," "April in Paris," and a favorite, "I Can't Get Started," Duke studied with Gliere and admired Prokofiev, and some of those influences can be heard here. The sonata's flavor is very much Latin-influenced, especially in the off-kilter rhythmic patterns of the final movement, titled Brilliante and tumultoso. The violin part is extremely difficult, which is perhaps why it hasn't been performed often, but Ms. Darvarova pulled through winningly, with Dunn in close footsteps behind her.
The title of Alfano's Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano is a bit misleading, since it is basically a piano trio, most likely dubbed a "concerto" because of its difficulty. It also gave Mr. Dunn a considerably larger role, which he filled effortlessly, while his companions played tag, the cello using its upper register to mimic the violin timbre. Moments of violence are matched by dusky muted string hues, and the first movement ends on a note of solitude. In the middle section, pizzicatos sprinkle down like a spring shower with hints of Eastern European folk music. Time after time, the tension rises then cools off and steps back, as if a scene were being glimpsed behind a curtain. The finale evokes Bartók—vigorous, feverish, dance-like—and oceans away from the previous movements. Bristling with energy and occasional fugal treatments for all three players, skittering figures alternate with long-breathed interludes leading to a bravura final page. All three gave some of their best playing of the entire night.
The concert was part of the inaugural season of the New York Chamber Music Festival, created and administered by Ms. Darvarova, which presents off-the-radar music by musicians from the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. A light audience turnout notwithstanding, some seriously good music was on display this evening: I suspect all three works will delight those who encounter them.
Bruce Hodges
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Photo Credits on this page:
Erin Baiano for THE NEW YORK TIMES (Rogé, Darvarova, Magill);
Ari Mintz for THE NEW YORK TIMES (Shai Wosner);
David Finlayson (Principal Brass Quintet, Elmira Darvarova);
Andrew Eccles (Rachel Barton Pine);
