| 02 July 2009
Valentina Lisitsa
"He was crazy," a woman in the audience said in reply, and in truth the 29th piano sonata of Beethoven (in B-flat, Op. 106) is music of the mind that disdains performing niceties, much as do the composer's final string quartets. But Lisitsa, a Kiev-born pianist who lived in South Florida for years, made the most of its quirks and dramatic shocks, and if some of her recital was somewhat more haphazard than it could have been, she demonstrated in full measure the strengths -- large technique, huge sound, ferocity of attack -- for which she has become a local keyboard celebrity.
Also on Lisitsa's program Wednesday night at the Steinway Piano Gallery in Boca Raton was another gigantic work, the Sonata No. 1 (in D minor, Op. 28) of Sergei Rachmaninov, which is much less demanding intellectually than the Beethoven but perhaps even more monstrously difficult to play, and very exciting to hear if managed successfully. Lisitsa brought to both of the big sonatas the same basic approach of tempest and turmoil, in which the loudest climaxes were truly immense, and the colors drawn with a feverish intensity.
Lisitsa has an exceptional technical facility and an ability to raise great torrents of sound that must come quite naturally to her. While she moves her tall torso around very expressively as she plays, she never seems to be working hard; you could look in vain for any sign of the hunched-shoulder position typical of pianists trying to be forceful or expressive. Everything she does at the keyboard comes out of the considerable power she is able to summon from her shoulders down to her fingers, so much so that even these two enormous pieces seemed to give her very little trouble or much cause for sweat.
That said, the two sonatas were missing some variety, more so in the Beethoven than the Rachmaninov. This was a powerful, impressive Hammerklavier, but it didn't have enough contrast to fully present the range of textures in the work, in which orchestral bigness shares space with introspective fugue, and sudden wrong-note outbursts stand in stark relief against operatic-style aria. That aria, the moody third movement, came off best in Lisitsa's hands, as she skillfully, beautifully, let Beethoven's long line spin out unruffled, and made no attempt to rush it along before it had spoken its grief-filled piece.
The second movement, on the other hand, had the same driven, hammered reading as the first, and what that scherzo needs is impishness and wit, not more force. There was a rushed quality to the opening bars of the work, in which Lisitsa seemed determined to seize the attention of the audience by slamming through the first couple minutes with the same general volume and speed, which does violence to Beethoven's dramatic intent and obscures the multiplicity of contrasting styles already apparent in those opening pages.
Her fingerwork was admirably clear throughout the bizarre fugue of the finale, but again there was a hardness to her playing that tended to wipe away the shading built into the writing so that the effect was one of monumental noise rather than titanic counterpoint.
The Rachmaninov sonata, which dates from the period of his Third Concerto (in the same key), doesn't have the melodic distinction of that work, and instead its two outer movements have a great deal of moody, pregnant noodling waiting for a big tune that never comes. It's harder, in other words, to make this less-than-stellar piece work, but Lisitsa made as good a case for it as she could. She had no trouble with Rachmaninov's fearsome technical demands, and her fiery, passionate reading of the music suited it excellently.
Yet there were moments when more contrast, especially with a greater dynamic range, would have helped give the music more shape. She ended the first movement, which after acres of angry D minor unfolds quietly into a peaceful D major, with mastery and poetry. It would have been wonderful to have the same sensitivity brought to the softer Moderato chord passages that stand like lonely towers against the clangorous battlefield that is the rest of the third movement, but these critical reflective bars sounded pushed.
The Rachmaninov isn't very good music overall; its themes are too weak and much of its content is oddly static, but in sheer heft and bravado it can make a strong impression, and it did with Lisitsa. The Beethoven is a much more substantial piece, and while there Lisitsa stressed its flash and volume (except for the third movement), she at least has the equipment to bring that part of the sonata to life.
Lisitsa also played two shorter works: the final prelude and fugue (in D minor) from Dmitri Shostakovich's Op. 87 set, and the much-loved Impromptu in B-flat, (D. 935, or Op. 142, No. 3), of Franz Schubert.
The Shostakovich, the opening work on the recital, has a somber prelude and a fugue with an insistent second subject that builds to a pounding conclusion. Lisitsa gave an effective reading of the piece, making much of the darkness and light of the prelude, but playing the fugue too fast, which made it sound more random and less structured than it in fact is.
Perhaps the best playing of the night aside from the Adagio of the Hammerklavier came with the Schubert, in which Lisitsa played with taste and exceptional restraint, keeping her left hand well in the background and spinning off the later variations of the theme with perfect crispness in the right hand. Each of the variations was distinct and expertly judged, charming individually and surpassingly elegant in sum.
For an encore before her small but very enthusiastic audience, Lisitsa did what any self-respecting bravura pianist would do and offered not a petit morceau -- a Chopin waltz, say, or a Rachmaninov etude -- but instead another showoff piece: the Second Hungarian Rhapsody of Liszt.
This most famous piece of Gypsy kitsch fits Lisitsa's great gifts well, with its high flash content and digital dazzle, and its bold, forthright melodies. She tossed off the whole thing with style, and offered a nice humorous touch by playing the upbeat to the well-known friska section with large pauses between the notes, a sure sign of her confidence that her hearers are with her every step of the way.
The next concert at the Steinway Gallery features cellist Claudio Jaffe and pianist Yang Shen in music by Schubert (the Arpeggione sonata), Schumann, Popper and Dvorak. The recital is set for 5 p.m. Sunday, July 19, at the gallery on Federal Highway in Boca Raton. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door. For more information, call 561-929-6633 or visit www.pianolovers.org.
| 29 June 2009
Lynyrd Skynyrd on stage Friday night at the Cruzan. (Photo by Thom Smith)
Yessir, a little bit of everything could be found among the more than 18,000 fans who converged on Cruzan Amphitheatre on a muggy Friday night to worship at the musical altars of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Kid Rock.
“Let's turn it into a Saturday!” Skynyrd lead singer Johnny Van Zant urged after an underenthusiastic audience response to That Smell. Aided in part by the overload of watts pushing through the amps, the audience found new energy as the band blasted through I Know a Little.
Spawned 45 years ago in Jacksonville as The Noble Five, Skynyrd, if anything, has been durable despite having Tragedy as a middle name. Only guitarist Gary Rossington remains from that original collaboration. Original lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister and backup singer Cassie died in a 1977 plane crash that also injured Rossington and the other band members. Skynyrd disbanded, but their music continued to score and survivors continued
to perform.
A decade after the crash, the band reformed, with Ronnie's little brother Johnny taking over the singing duties. New members came and went; others died; but while lesser souls might have capitulated, Skynyrd played on.
In 2006 the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame took them in, but the band isn't content to collect pensions. It continues to tour and Sept. 29 will release its first album in six years, Gods and Guns. The audience got a taste of it on a rocking Still Unbroken, followed by a rousing Breeze. As the flag motif alternated between stars and stripes and stars and bars, the hits poured forth.
“It's a great honor to start out in our home state,” Van Zant declared after Sweet Home Alabama and then granted the audience its final wish with the perennial rock concert war cry, Free Bird.
The beer crowd needed the break. Indeed the lines into the men's rooms were uncharacteristically longer than those for the women's.
Kid Rock, flanked by giant video shots of himself, sings Friday night at the Cruzan. (Photo by Thom Smith)
Actually, he's hardly a kid. Robert James Ritchie is 38 and struggled in anonymity for 10 years before attracting any real attention. He started as a rapper, but as his career has progressed, he's gone from scratching platters and sampling others' music to singing, playing guitar, piano and drums and, perhaps most significantly, writing original music.
Will The Kid's dark genius become a legitimate voice? Perhaps some day the Hall of Fame will answer. Whatever he does, it'll be on his terms. You didn't hear him (or Skynyrd) noting the death of Michael Jackson from the stage.
Kid Rock arrived like the man in the moon, backlit by a spotlight on a full curtain that dropped to reveal a huge U.S. flag between two video screens. After Rock 'n' Roll Jesus, he asked if the crowd liked rap, country, R&B, rock, or “Do you like music?”
In Son of Detroit, he declared (in the printable lyrics),
I like 2 cuss, yell, scream, fight And raise all kinds of hell. And if you ride to live like I live to ride, Then let me hear that rebel yell. I'm a redneck rock-n-roll son of Detroit.
then sampled a little of the Stones' Tumbling Dice, then his own Cocky, saluting Skynyrd in All Summer Long with its classic Sweet Home Alabama intro and a new flag backdrop.
An air guitarist in the audience plays along with Lynyrd Skynyrd. (Photo by Thom Smith)
Winding down, at 10:40, he finally found a turntable, poured himself a drink and lit up a blunt. Then he ran off some ZZ Top chords on guitar followed by some Peter Frampton talk box action and some drumming on Cat Scratch Fever (an homage to Detroit soulmate Ted Nugent); a Satisfaction riff from the Stones; So Hott -- “I want to get you alone, I want you so stoned.” Not until 10:53 did the shirt come off. Bawitdaba: “I said it's all good and it's all in fun,” he proclaimed.
Eleven o'clock. Time to go. Like clockwork. No encore. No complaints.
Thom Smith is a freelance writer based in South Florida.
| 28 June 2009
Rock trio Viva le Vox. (Illustration by Pat Crowley)
The band moves its congregants to the sort of ecstasy you’d find if you crossed a charismatic church with a smoky blues club. At Vox shows, everyone is visibly possessed by the spirit, and it manifests with a healthy dose of debauch.
That’s because Vox creates a sensory orgy. And the sartorial panache and plentiful tattoos are just the beginning. The singer/guitar player rasps and growls (sometimes evoking Tom Waits, other times Howlin’ Wolf) as he sings bluesy songs about desperation, drugs, death and the supernatural into a 1950s-style microphone. The bass player, often shirtless in the heat of musical passion, straddles his upright acoustic and spanks its strings as he undulates so that his body becomes the snake in the garden, his spine slithering from his coccyx to skull.
And the drummer thrashes his minimal equipment – a snare, a tom, a cymbal, and two cowbells – like a percussive Tasmanian devil with the preternatural ability to pepper in rhythmic flourishes at high speed. Together, the band doesn’t just have talent and stage presence: they’ve got a seductive allure that is entirely addictive.
Inspired by the campy theatrics of the glam punk band The Cramps and by the skillful songwriting of Creedence Clearwater Revival, the band defies pigeonholing, though they list themselves on MySpace as “punk/rockabilly/blues.” It is an accurate, though generalized, description; it doesn’t really express the originality or nuances of the music.
When it comes to their influences, the band’s site says “You figure it out.”
But I’ll help you – they play covers by Nick Cave, Johnny Cash, Warren Zevon, Billy Bragg, and The Animals when they need to supplement their 16 originals during longer gigs. Additionally, the songwriter, Bones, told me that Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer, Sex Pistols and Dwayne Peters inspired him.
Like The Cramps and their frontman Lux Interior – an old-school hero for Vox – the band has taken on stage names. Singer and guitarist Tony Arnao III, 24, is “Bones,” apt since, like a skeleton, he provides the structure as the band’s songwriter. Bassist James Pellegrini, 29, goes by “Scarecrow,” obviously a reference to the straw cowboy hat he frequently wears. And drummer Anthony X (he wouldn’t provide a last name), 20, has taken on the moniker “Manimal” for his ferocious percussive attacks. [Editor's note: A 12-song set by Viva le Vox filmed at Brogue's in Lake Worth can be seen in a series of videos on YouTube. Here's one of them.]
The band name, however, is a tribute.
“Long live the voice of all the dirty rockers that came before us!” Bones exclaimed, by way of explanation.
After an outdoor show at The Little Owl in Lake Worth, I was so inspired by Viva Le Vox that I whipped out a pen and declared my journalistic hiatus officially over (which is when I sought out ArtsPaper). “Hillbilly leisure porn,” I wrote in my little notebook as I tried to summarize what I was experiencing, focused, I must admit, more on the spectacle of the shirtless bass player – his straw hat, white loafers and libidinous performance – than on the music.
Mea culpa. Scarecrow is the focal point for most of the female audience.
But my phrase didn’t quite capture why the band resonated long after the show was over. Dark by virtue of minor chords and impassioned by driving, upbeat rhythms, the trio’s music evokes spit, sweat, swamp and sex – those things we’re made of and come from. When you listen, you’re likely to believe in creationism and evolution simultaneously.
So when my editor suggested I might want to talk to Chris Martin for a story about Coldplay's May 15 appearance at the Cruzan, I had to decline.
“They’ve got no balls,” was how I put it.
Opportunity schmopportunity. I needed my Vox fix, and the Delray band would be playing that same Friday night. The Viva La Vida tour had nothing on Viva Le Vox. The smaller show would be more powerful, I knew, than the massive, impersonal performance. The scale of the Vox shows engages the audience so that they are more than spectators – they become part of the Vox experience – the part that makes the band the vox populi, the voice of the people.
In late April at Propaganda nightclub, for instance, Vox played the after-party for Showtel, the annual art installation at Hotel Biba. As usual, the band whipped the crowd into a joyous frenzy. The chaos of bodies undulated, shimmied, shook, and swung. The pheromones were thicker than the cigarette smoke as the dancers borrowed moves from the twist, the jitterbug, the Charleston and faith healings for their own wild improvisations. And there was definitely the laying-on of hands.
Though I’m usually too self-conscious to dance, I couldn’t help myself. I kicked up my heels and joined the fray, using fistfuls of my skirt’s crinolines to punctuate my wagging hips. Just a few songs later, I’d joined a dirty dancing collective with my friend Kristina as the lot of us slid up and down each other’s bodies, and Bones demanded in an impassioned rasp, “Baby, I want some more!” – the refrain to Down at the Laundromat.
Viva Le Vox, Kristina said, “made me want to grope everyone – old-school, sweaty, pulsating musical orgy style.”
Scarecrow, who tattooed “Vida Boca” on the back of his fingers and a bass clef on his right hand to attest to his roots (he grew up in Boca), attributes the audience’s wanton response to the band’s own uninhibited expression: “When I play, I black out, and it’s not because of any substances. I’m not aware of anything but the music.”
Anthony X, Tony Arnao and James Pellegrini, the members of Viva le Vox. (Photo by Katie Deits)
“Nothing phony about ‘em,” Rullman said, some of his highest praise.
The band’s approach may be imaginative and theatric (the corncob pipe the drummer “smokes” is all affectation), but their songs are not disingenuous. The songs are based on real-life struggles, most of which songwriter Bones prefers to keep off the record.
Other songs like Down at the Laundromat document the band’s life, rather than just evoking down-and-out living. This song was inspired by weekly informal gigs at the Tropical Wash in Delray while Bones multi-tasked domestic chores and artistic endeavors. For the other patrons, Vox was a welcome relief from the boredom of watching the clothes spin, and even on-duty cops would stop by on those Friday nights to watch the trio play, the band said.
“The best part about the Laundromat is you get to know people,” Bones, who moved down from Philadelphia three years ago, said. “No one has to pay money. I like being accessible.”
This same accessibility was offered when the band played another impromptu, acoustic gig under the Atlantic Avenue Intracoastal Waterway bridge. Several dozen people showed up and danced in the salty breeze on the dusty shards of white shell rock as the band played an acoustic set against the back drop of Delray’s biggest art project, an illuminated installation.
The rhythmic light display and accompanying landscaping were made to deter the homeless from sleeping there, but it enticed the musical troupe of tattooed twentysomethings to use the high-tech backdrop for a no-tech show while their fans danced.
While they “sure don’t do it for the dough” (a lyric from Laundromat), the band figures they can market themselves without selling out, which is why they’ve accepted gigs at places like Hot Topic in Fort Lauderdale’s Galleria Mall in addition to artsy after-parties, co-opted public spaces, tattoo and record shops, and the old mainstay music venues.
Their first album Desperation Alley, recorded at Elegbaland Studios, is slated for release this summer. It has already earning the respect of industry folks such as Black Finger’s singer-songwriter Greg Lovell, who was the sound engineer on the album.
“Their songs are just really well crafted,” Lovell said, noting that they also had “the best drummer around.”
In April 2008, the band began as a quintet that included a banjo, a washboard, and ukulele, but when the guys discovered that Scarecrow – who also plays electric bass with the punk band Dooms de Pop – had a 3-string upright bass, they took him off the ukulele.
“The songs always had that rockabilly twist to them so the [upright] bass made sense,” Bones explained.
“I never thought to play that bass because it was just so strange,” Scarecrow said, explaining that he’d acquired the Mexican instrument when a neighbor moved and didn’t have room for it. “They forced me to learn it. I really didn’t want to do it. It made my fingers hurt, and it was really heavy.”
Scarecrow has since switched to a standard upright bass.
The band has been in its current format as a trio since July 2008. The other members lacked the commitment that the remaining three members demand.
“They always thought it was a hobby and not a career choice,” Manimal, who relocated from New Jersey and now works at Backbone Records in Delray Beach, explained. “I don’t have much else going for me.”
“Me, either,” admitted Bones, for whom sign installation is his current bread and butter.
“Me, either,” the otherwise unemployed Scarecrow chimed in. “It’s the only thing I can do.”
Marya Summers is a freelance writer based in South Florida.
Viva le Vox appears tonight in St. Petersburg at The Garage as part of Swamp Stomp IV, on Friday, July 3, at DaDa in Delray Beach, and on Saturday, July 11, at Propaganda in Lake Worth.
| 21 June 2009
Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008
For the average listener, there are many neglected rooms in the mansion of music, and one of those rooms holds music for the organ.
This is unfortunate primarily because there is a rich and fascinating literature for the instrument, and on Sunday afternoon one of its rising young practitioners showed an audience at the First Presbyterian Church in Delray Beach how diverse the repertoire really is.
Michael Unger, a Canadian musician now living in upstate New York, appeared as a featured recitalist under the auspices of the Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami chapters of the American Guild of Organists. He proved to be a marvelous player, with fleet fingers and feet, a willingness to apply wide dynamic range in the sanctuary, and a strong, puckish sense of programming.
A good case in point was the piece that opened the second half, the Prelude et Danse Fuguee of the blind French organist Gaston Lataize, written in 1964. This is a wonderfully weird work, with an opening that lurches and stumbles across a harmonic field full of prickly plants and a disjunct melodic line that gets entrusted to the pedals.
In that half Unger also programmed the Toccata alla Rumba, a clever piece by the Austrian composer Peter Planyavsky in which the rumba rhythm was topped by a slipping, sliding tune that sounded somewhat cartoonish, but none the less enjoyable for that.
Unger brought off both pieces in high style, as he did his entire program, which also included music of the German Baroque: The E minor Prelude and Fugue (BWV 548) of J.S. Bach, and the first theme-and-variations from Johann Pachelbel's Hexachordum Appollinis. He proved to be a strong Bach player, giving a forceful, majestic reading of this canonical masterwork, though it could have used a bit more shading and contrast in the fugue section.
In the Pachelbel, a much more delicate work than the Bach, Unger made full use of the varied registrations for each variation, though the whole thing did have a very appealing antique flavor. It served as a salutary reminder of how much of this composer's work has been overlooked in favor of the deathless D major canon.
But compelling variety was the order of the day for this recital, which also included a powerful passacaglia from one of the many organ sonatas of Josef Rheinberger (No. 8, Op. 132), played here with all-out Romantic tilt, and a sparkling, utterly French scherzo movement from the Second Symphony of Andre Fleury. That piece, a kind of perpetual-motion exercise, demonstrated Unger's ability to play an almost continual line of rising and falling scales throughout the piece and keep them smooth and unbroken.
The Canadian composer Hugh Bancroft's Pastorale of 1945 introduced a composer with a sense of modality and melody that recalled his early years in England, and Unger made a persuasive case for it. He closed his recital with three works by the Belgian composer and organist Joseph Jongen, and in this subset of the recital could be seen all of Unger's strengths again: sterling technique, a well thought-out concept of what the pieces were trying to say, and an ear for fresh repertoire.
Authoritative sources say only Jongen's organ music has any current hold in the repertory, and this is a shame. Here is a composer whose pieces have an engaging melodic profile and a good sense of narrative surprise; one isn't quite sure where the music is going, but is happy to go along for the ride. The Priere (op. 37, No. 4) has a lovely tune and a deeply meditative quality, and the Scherzetto (Op. 108, No. 1) had a light, bubbly theme that was closer in spirit to the meaning of the word scherzo — joke — than many other such pieces.
The recital closed with Jongen's Toccata, Op. 104, a big piece that summoned the spirit of Widor but also a had a sharp quality to its harmonies that was more forward-looking. Unger played the work with admirable strength and high spirits, and with untiring hands at the service of the toccata's always-on compositional motor.
Michael Unger is finishing his doctorate at the Eastman School, and it's clear he is already a very fine organist who undoubtedly has an impressive career ahead of him. And with adventurous, interesting programming like this, there should be no reason musically inquisitive audiences won't come out to hear him.
| 04 February 2009
PicturBoris Allakhverdyan, Anastasia Dedik and David Bogorad.e$2B1.png
PALM BEACH --- Chamber music has its origins in pieces written for intimate spaces, and that can mean a sedate concertgoing experience even when the art form leaves home to mingle with a larger crowd.
But take that same kind of music and give it to three young, supremely talented, enthusiastic people, and you have a recital that's anything but a sonic substitute for Ambien. Such was the case Tuesday night as the Prima Trio presented a concert of four older and newer works in the Flagler Museum series on Palm Beach.
The trio -- Russian-born pianist Anastasia Dedik, Azeri-Armenian clarinetist Boris Allakhverdyan and Danish-American violinist/violist David Bogorad -- is the second iteration (Bogorad replaced the original violinist) of a threesome formed in 2004 at Oberlin Conservatory that won the prestigious Fischoff chamber music prize in 2007. Even with a different membership, it's not hard to hear why: This is a group that marries tremendous technique to seamless ensemble, and often puts it at the service of little-known but worthy repertoire, making a concert by the trio not just entertaining but enlightening.
The depth and polish of the trio could be heard from the very first liquid phrase of the opening work, the Clarinet Trio (in E-flat, K. 498, known as the Kegelstatt) of Mozart. The sound of piano and viola was rich, full and confident, and was soon matched by an exquisitely played answer from the clarinet. This was first-rate Mozart all the way through, one that respected his period but didn't prevent him from sounding fiery and powerful, and in addition one in which tiny details such as a little four-note phrase leading into a theme could slow down perfectly in unison before the initial pace was resumed.
Each player demonstrated a thorough command of his or her instrument, such as in Bogorad's bustling triplets in the trio of the minuet, Dedik's sparkling concerto-like scales in the finale, and the ability of Allakhverdyan to bring the same smoothness and centeredness of tone to any register in which he played.
A continuation of the same kind of energy and propulsive forward movement was evident in the second piece, Schumann's four-movement Marchenerzahlungen (Fairy Tales), Op. 132, one of his last works but also one that's imbued with much of the composer's distinctive poetry. In the second movement and also in the fourth, the Prima musicians made the most of each contrasting section, bringing a completely different character to the music: soft and serene against the second movement's initial tempestuous grinding chords, lightfooted and playful in the fourth as a respite following the jagged edges of its opening theme.
The contemplative calm of the third Fairy Tale could have been even more relaxed; it sounded a little pushed, and the tuning of the final G minor chord of the second movement left something to be desired. But overall the trio showed what Bogorad told the audience -- "We really enjoy playing this piece" -- and one was left wondering why it is more chamber groups don't take up this fine work.
Prima Trio Concert 2-3-09 RGB96dpi
It was on the second half -- in which Bogorad switched to violin from viola -- that the Prima threesome showed their mettle as interpreters of contemporary (or nearly so) music, with revelatory performances of a trio by the Soviet Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian, and a serenade by Peter Schickele, the American composer and humorist of P.D.Q.Bach fame.
The Khachaturian Trio, written in 1932, has to be regarded as one of the composer's more successful pieces. Here are the overt folk influences of the Caucasus and Central Asia without the overblown trappings that mar such scores as Gayne and Spartacus; instead, the exotic sounds are integrated into the music rather than hammered home, and the result is tasteful and elegant.
This is native music for two of the trio's members, but especially Allakhverdyan, whose performance breathed commitment from the mournful opening melody to the ornamented song imitations of the third, which evokes an Uzbek wedding dance. The trio as a whole seemed to luxuriate in the special colors of this piece, and also unleashed plenty of volume when it counted in the second movement, plus driving energy in the finale.
The Schickele work, Serenade for Three, which dates from 1993, offers ample portions of the composer's gift for jests, in the frenzied country fiddling and bluesy piano of the finale, but it also has real distinction as a straight-faced piece of music. It also is a tremendously demanding work, with a first movement full of rapid rushes of notes for all the instruments, played here with exemplary precision.
The second movement, marked Songs, is quite French in style, with ostinato patterns in the piano underneath a slow-moving melody in violin and clarinet following a repeated church-bell announcement by the pianist. The Variations that closes the work is unbridled joy from beginning to end, and received a terrific performance, though the clowning moments -- the fiddling, the piano solo ostensibly inspired by Jerry Lee Lewis -- make the piece somewhat uneven.
For an encore, the trio performed an arrangement of Otono Porteno, the Autumn movement from the Four Seasons of Buenos Aires of Astor Piazzolla. This reading had the same kind of dedication and finish the Prima brought to the concert overall, which in sum was a most enjoyable way to hear a group of which big things may be expected.
The Canadian violinist Yi-Jia Susanne Hou will next appear in the Flagler Museum series in a concert set for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 19. On the program are works by Beethoven (Romance in F), Richard Strauss (his early Sonata), de Falla (Suite of Spanish Folks Songs and Dances), Pablo de Sarasate (the Faust Fantasy), and Fritz Kreisler (Schon Rosmarin). Tickets are $60. For more information, call 655-2833.
