September 4 Skaneateles Festival: Final chamber program of SkanFest season validates mantra

Memorable performance of Lalo Trio brings festival back to basics — and its roots

By David Abrams
http://cnycafemomus.com

It seems only fitting that the final work on the final chamber music program of Skaneateles Festival’s 30-year Anniversary season proved a persuasive affirmation, and perhaps even a culmination, of the Festival’s mantra, "World class music by the lake."

Friday evening’s extraordinary rendition of Lalo’s Piano Trio No. 3, Op. 26 was more than just a memorable performance that drew the listener into the musical experience; it was a powerful reminder that great performances of the world’s finest works from the chamber repertory is what this festival is all about. This is the formula that has defined the mission of this festival and guided it over the course of three decades, steadily forging an identity that ultimately earned a place within the top rung of the country’s most respected summer music festivals.

Friday’s four-work program opened with Paganini’s Quartet No. 15 for Violin, Viola, Cello and Guitar. Paganini, the archetypical virtuoso violinist-composer, also played viola and guitar, and while his 14 prior quartets for this arrangement of instruments featured violin, this last one clearly showcases the viola.

Andrés Cárdenes, one of several celebrated artists of past SkanFest seasons, traded his violin for a viola for this occasion. Paganini’s Quartet is, in effect, a viola concerto with the violin, cello and guitar accompaniment: The viola part reigns supreme throughout the work.

I’ve always been impressed with Cárdenes’ violin playing during his appearances here in the 1990s, but I had never before heard him play viola. Paganini’s Quartet, while certainly no musical masterpiece, gives the violist a chance to show his/her wares more than most concertos for the instrument, and Cárdenes proved that he is, without question, equally adept on both.

The lengthy opening movement is almost as long as all the other movements combined. Here, Cárdenes executed the crisply dotted-rhythmic figures and tossed off the seemingly endless sixteenth-note passagework with grace and élan, as the three other instrumentalists (violinist Mauricio Aguiar, cellist David Ying and guitarist Eliot Fisk) provided a secure and well-balanced accompaniment texture.

Those among the audience who had hoped to hear more of Fisk this evening got their wish during the second movement Minuet, whose Trio section gives the guitarist lots of notes and a chance to shine. Fisk’s nicely phrased passages during this charming section were delivered with tenderness, affection and just the right touch of wit.

Alberto Ginastera’s Impresiones de la Puna, for flute and string quartet, dates from his student days in Buenos Aires and is widely viewed as the Argentine composer’s most important early work. The three-movement composition, set in the manner of a tone-poem, conveyed the 18-year old composer’s impressions of the high mountain valleys (puna) of the northern Andes Mountains.

Flutist Linda Chesis, founder and artistic director of the Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival, joined Aguiar and Michi Wianco (violin), Phillip Ying (viola) and Keiko Ying (cello) in this contemplative work whose opening two movements unfold as elegiac mood-pieces that recall the gentle, neo-Romantic style of Samuel Barber.

Chesis is a first-rate musician whose velvety tone, clean fingerwork, smooth legato and consistently well-shaped phrasings helped capture Ginastera’s charming imagery. Intonation among the strings was, however, somewhat of a problem early on, particularly during the static opening chords of the First movement (Quena). The strings fared better in the final movement (Danza), which opens with a brisk flurry of pizzicatos (a homage, perhaps, to Ravel’s String Quartet) over which the flute gently weaves an Andean song of love (yarawí).

The genesis of Javier Alvarez’s Metro Chabacano is rather interesting. The composer re-worked an earlier string ensemble piece into the present quartet, which he then used to provide a musical accompaniment for large sculpture intended as installation art to be placed within Mexico City’s largest subway station (Metro Chabacano). Alvarez’s music was then recorded and placed in a continuous tape-loop that played at the train station non-stop, 24/7, for three months.

After hearing this work Friday played just once, I suspect that a large number of Mexico City commuters opted to take the bus to work during this period. It’s not that the piece is bad, it’s just that it’s written in a minimalist language – and minimalism has a tendency to grow tiresome.

Alvarez’s backdrop is a continuous eighth-note pattern that continues, in perpetual motion, as instruments proceed to stack syncopated rhythmic patterns that phase in and phase out over crescendos that predictably wax and then wane. After the initial novelty of Metro Chabacano wore off I realized that this train was going nowhere, fast. In this performance, Wiancko, Aguiar and PhillipYing were joined by cellist David Ying in a good performance of a not-so-good piece.

The evening’s tour-de-force was a stunning performance of Lalo’s Piano Trio No. 3 in A Minor, a weighty four-movement masterpiece of chamber repertory whose unrelenting dramatic intensity and crafty thematic development places the work on-par with some of the great trios of Johannes Brahms.

The trio of Cárdenes (now back to violin), David Ying and pianist Barry Snyder proved a worthy, synergistic match to the substantial artistic and endurance demands of the work, at times producing a mammoth sound that belied the number of players onstage.

The passionate third movement was especially pleasant, with its seemingly endless melodic line – sounding in octaves between Cárdenes and Ying – that culminated in a breathtaking climax. The three players were full of fire and spirit in the fast and furious second movement scherzo, maintaining the angst at a fevered pitch, while Snyder in the final movement managed the formidable technical demands with polish and pizzazz.

Although there was a noticeable different of timbre between the Cárdenes instrument and that of Ying, the appassionata spirit forged by the two throughout the work more than compensated for the difference in tone. The immediate standing ovation at the conclusion of the performance was well-deserved.

What: Skaneateles Festival, Week 4 (‘Viva Latina!’)
Where: First Presbyterian Church, Skaneateles
When: September 4, 2009
Who: Eliot Fisk, guitar; Linda Chesis, flute; David Ying and Keiko Ying, cellos; Philip Ying and Andres Cardenes, violas; Mauricio Aguiar and Michi Wiancko, violins; Barry Snyder, piano
Time: 1 hour and 50 minutes (not including encore)
Call: (315) 685-7418
Ticket prices: $16 to $30
Website: www.skanfest.org (order tickets online or by phone)

 Next: Festival Grand Finale, Brook Farm 7:30 P.M. Saturday, September 5