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Summerfest heats up in week 2
Thomas Albert's "Thirteen Ways" was the highlight of Summerfest's second week. The contemporary work was complemented with those by Vivaldi and Alessandro Scarlatti and Jean Françaix' arrangement of Domenico Scarlatti.
The talented chamber musicians of Summerfest displayed an impressive range of skills, including a rare stint at playing percussion, in the second Summerfest concert of the season at White Recital Hall on Saturday, July 16.
The highlight of the concert was the multi-movement work, Thirteen Ways, by Thomas Albert, which took the entire second half of the program. This eclectic number embraces a number of compositional and performance styles while making significant demands of the instrumentalists. The Summerfest musicians were more than up to the challenge.
Commissioned by eighth blackbird, the piece has become one of the composer’s most frequently performed works, and the audience could certainly understand why. The opening movements were peaceful, relaxing and seductive, with flowing harmonies and a minimalist compositional style emphasizing undulating repetition, constant rhythmic changes, and a basically tonal harmonic language. Deeper into the piece, however, the music became more and more atonal and challenging, culminating in an interesting movement where all of the performers except the flutist placed their instruments aside and took up an series of triangles, clanging them and then lowering them into, and raising them from, an array of plastic buckets to produce changes in tone.
The work also required the performers to recite lines of a poem before each of the movements, about blackbirds (not surprising, giving the source of the original commission). Xylophonist Michael Zell and pianist Melissa Rose, along with bass clarinetist Jane Carl, provided much of the underlying support for the piece. Also performing were violinist Kristin Velicer, violist Jessica Nance, flutist Sharon Finney and cellist Alexander East. After the musical variety and excitement present throughout the score, the ending of Thirteen Ways rather puzzling, when in the final “evening” sequence the piece more or less just faded away, with no culminating musical climax.
The first half of the program was dedicated to more traditional fare. Alessandro Scarlatti’s Sonata No. 2 in A minor received a vigorous, lilting performance marked by the continuo playing of cellist East, along with Mary Grant and Kristin Velicer on the violin and Marie Rubis Bauer as the harpsichordist. The ensemble played with precision and feeling, especially in the third and fifth movement fugues, finishing with a lilting, almost swinging, final Allegro.
Bassoonist Joshua Hood was the star in the Bassoon Concerto in E minor by Antonio Vivaldi, displaying his accustomed virtuosity and astonishing breath resources in the long phrases required of the soloist. The number required both rapid staccato playing and languid legato phrasing. The final Allegro is a virtuoso showpiece for an instrument which most consider to be mostly a part of the orchestral background. Not so here. Hood was ably accompanied by Grant, Velicer, Nance and East on the strings, and Rubis Bauer supplying harpsichord expertise.
The ensemble also played Jean Françaix’s twentieth-century take on the music of Domenico Scarlatti (the son of Alessandro), billed as Scarlatti 5 Sonatas. Rather than being a modern piece inspired by Scarlatti, the series of numbers is more of a contemporary orchestration of traditional Scarlatti sonatas. The instrumental choices seemed always appropriate, especially when flutist Finney carried the melody with string players Grant, Nance and East providing the accompaniment. Harpist Yumiko Endo Schaeffler added color to the ensemble, and her shimmering harp glissandos were among the highlights of the instrumental support.
As always, the Summerfest musicians showed both virtuosity and a keen sense of coordinated playing, delighting the audience both in passing moments of individual excellence and in finely tuned, precise and sensitive ensemble performance. Halfway through its season, Summerfest looks like it has put together another outstanding series of concerts.
REVIEW:
Summerfest
Week 2 Transformations
Saturday, July 16, 2011 at 7 p.m. (REVIEWED)
White Recital Hall, UMKC
4949 Cherry, Kansas City, MO
Sunday July 17, 2011 at 5 p.m.
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
1307 Holmes. Kansas City, MO
For more information visit www.summerfestkc.org
Top Photo: Summerfest musicians
City Classics Music and Dance Columnist; Classical Contributor
A lifelong classical music fan, Don Dagenais is a frequent preview speaker for the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and has taught classical music and opera courses at several Kansas City venues. He has served on the boards of directors of a number of performing arts organizations including the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, the Lyric Opera Guild, UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance, Opera Volunteers International, the Civic Opera Theater of Kansas City, Inspiration Point Fine Arts Colony, Octarium, and the Friends of the Symphony. He has been the past president of most of these organizations and is current the president of the Friends of the Symphony.
Dagenais co-authored a history of the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, published on the occasion of its 50th anniversary (2007) and has written books on the histories of both the Lyric Opera Guild and Opera Volunteers International, as well as an introductory book for opera novices (Your Passport to the Opera). He has received several local and national awards for outstanding volunteer work for the arts, including a lifetime achievement award from The Coterie Theatre in 2000, the Kansas City Musical Club's annual award in 2001, a Partners in Excellence Award from Opera Volunteers International in 2002, a Bravo Award from Opera Volunteers International in 2004 and a community service award from the Daughter of the American Revolution in 2008 honoring him for his community service to the arts.
In addition to his music interests, Don is president of the board of directors for the Metropolitan Ensemble Theater and has served on the boards of The Coterie Theatre and the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, serving as president of each organization. He publishes newsletters for seven arts organizations. When not involved in the performing arts, Don is a senior real estate attorney with Lathrop & Gage LLP in Kansas City, Missouri, where he has practiced law since 1976 after graduating from the Cornell Law School.
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