FORT Value — The Mimir Chamber Songs Festival, held each and every summer season at Texas Christian College, has reliably offered imaginative programs and generally fantastic performances.
Again just after a two-yr COVID-19 hiatus, Mimir is a concentrated two-week training course for budding chamber tunes ensembles, which execute public concert events. The festival’s school associates, drawn from main orchestras and conservatories — this yr also which include an proven string quartet and piano trio — current live shows, far too.
4 of this year’s six faculty applications included is effective by woman composers of the 20th and 21st hundreds of years. A Piano Trio by Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979), a British indigenous who settled in the U.S., opened the Wednesday night program at PepsiCo Recital Corridor.
Males have been represented by the darkly extreme Piano Quintet of Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) and, in the concert’s next 50 percent, the initially of Brahms’ Op. 51 String Quartets, in C minor.
The Clarke piece, relationship from 1921, is a do the job of considerably a lot more creativeness than you may hope from a conservatively skilled composer born in Victorian England. An explosive opening is countered by a a lot more sensuous second section whose forebears include things like Fauré, Debussy and Ravel. (French audio was extremely influential in England in the second 10 years of the 20th century.)
Muted strings give the central movement a wispy, dreamy character. The finale is a feisty dance that adds passion to mischief.
The Horszowski Trio (violinist Jesse Mills, cellist Ole Akahoshi and pianist Rieko Aizawa) gave an intensely dedicated general performance, marred only by Aizawa’s overly intense and steely fortissimos.
Mimir regulars Stephen Rose and Jun Iwasaki (violins), Joan DerHovsepian (viola), Brant Taylor (cello) and John Novacek (piano) made the Schnittke a gripping experience, emotionally as well as sonically. Penned in between 1972 and 1976, in reaction to the significantly tragic loss of life of the composer’s mom, the five actions appear to shuffle and layer levels of grief.
Ferocious protests mix with keening and buzzing string trills. Dissonant crunches and washes are intensified by string microtones, pitches in between typical notes. The piano usually appears to grope in the sonic darkness for some sense of buy, sometimes contrasting dings at the top rated of the keyboard and tollings at the bottom. The beginnings of a waltz and the piano’s passing suggestion of one particular of Rachmaninoff’s Études-Tableaux trace of happier periods.
This is not uncomplicated listening by any signifies, but to listen to this overall performance was to know the work’s wrenching honesty. The encounter was improved by Novacek’s handy introductory reviews.
For my cash, Brahms’ string quartets are his the very least convincing chamber music performs. They appear to pressure at the richer textures of the wonderful quintets and sextets, but with out similar thematic appeal.
Rose, Mimir director Curt Thompson (enjoying 2nd violin), DerHovsepian and Taylor, specialist musicians all, gave a committed, completed efficiency. Violin intonation wasn’t constantly specific, while, and DerHovsepian’s large-toned viola sometime caught out more than it should really have. Taylor again proved the most elegant of chamber tunes cellists, his tone often refined, his contributions always woven just so into Brahms’ rich textures textures and harmonies.
