Concert Review By Travis
Rivers The string quartet was one kind of chamber music not heard at Sunday's opening of the Spokane String Quartet's 2005-06 season. But the seven performers led the Met audience through a series of rewarding adventures in changing sonorities from a single instrument to full ensemble. The two principal guests – violinist Michael Jinsoo Lim and violist Melia Watras, both of the Corigliano String Quartet – began with Robert Mann's "Invocation for Violin and Viola." It was an unusual encounter with Mann, the composer. Mann is best known for the nearly 50 years he spent as the founding first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet, but he has several chamber and orchestral works to his credit as well. Mann's "Invocation" is a short, meditative work written
for his daughter's wedding. She masterfully explored Reger's love for the viola's wide range of sound qualities, from the organ-like richness of its lower register in the improvisatory Adagio to its violinistic brilliance and fleetness in the Vivace and Finale. Reger's love of Bach's long melodies and his fondness for the warmth of Brahms' harmonies were obvious throughout this Suite's four short movements. Lim was the soloist in Georg Philipp Telemann's Violin Concerto in G major with Watras and Spokane Quartet players Jeannette Wee-Yang, Kelly Farris, and Tana Bland all playing viola along with the quartet's cellist, Helen Byrne, playing harpsichord and guest string bassist Chang-Min Lee, who has just been appointed principal string bass of the Spokane Symphony. Strange as it might have seemed to those unacquainted with the versatility of Spokane String Quartet's players, this was a game of musical chairs that worked very well. Telemann wrote somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 concertos, but this one is among the strangest. The dark, four-part viola accompaniment contrasted with the brightness of Lim's violin solo part in much the same way as one of those dark velvet pillows highlights the brilliance of diamonds in a jeweler's display. The concert
sounded less like a typical concerto than a cleverly orchestrated
version of a violin
sonata
by Vivaldi
or Handel.
But with Lim's thoughtful
musicality and excellent technical command,
the concerto proved a rare and somewhat exotic treat. He went
on to write several more important works, but none of them, in my
opinion, matches
the
combination of boyish
energy and mature
sophistication
as this Quintet. |
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