On Friday night, the Amelia Piano Trio provided a rich closing performance for the 2011-2012 season of the San Jose Chamber Music Society. At Le Petit Trianon, pianist Andrew Armstrong, violinist Anthea Kreston, and cellist Jason Duckles shared a beautiful concert consisting of early and late Beethoven, as well as dramatic work by Rachmaninoff.

Beethoven’s Op. 1 Trio in E-flat Major, despite its low opus number, is already a work of considerable maturity. By the time Beethoven composed this piano trio in 1791, he had already created approximately 20 other chamber music works. Bright, colorful, and in four movements, this trio is a jewel-like example of Beethoven’s good-natured youth and his innovations in virtuosity, harmony, and rhythm. Even this early piece, rather typical in structure and emotional expression for the late 18th century, is not free of unmistakable, rebellious Beethovenesque features. The Amelia Piano Trio was completely aware of the piece’s complexity and uniqueness, not in any way underestimating its executional trickiness or emotional power.

The players captured the audience’s attention immediately with a carefree, almost Mozartian lightness in the opening section. It was a carefully crafted performance that highlighted interesting relationships between phrases and featured some daring, surprising harmony that gave the piece a satisfying feeling of logic and organization.

The slow third movement of the trio was unmistakably the highlight of the performance. The idea behind the movement and its structure were completely expected of a classical trio, yet its A-flat minor middle section (in the midst of the warmth of A-flat major, the main key of the movement), felt unbearably magical, and an early example of the reflective Beethoven. The group played here with beautiful tone that colored the section with tasteful darkness before returning again to the innocent theme from the beginning.

The last movement started with lighthearted leaps in the piano part and returned again to the contagious amiability of the first two movements. Pianist Armstrong’s technique was impressive in his deft execution of the surprisingly complex and improvisational passages. The musicians seemed to enjoy themselves the most in this movement, playing with a youthful, almost hyper spirit that worked so well for early Beethoven. Despite their occasional rushing here (which did, however, add a touch of further genuineness to the performance’s spontaneity), the musicians concluded the piece delightfully, with almost breathless excitement.

The entire program seemed like a great challenge for the pianist, since each of the three pieces included a massive, almost concerto-like piano part. Despite the pianist backing away successfully whenever the strings had significant solo sections, the parts where the piano had the melody could have been a little more subtly shaped, perhaps with less brilliance and more range of complementary voicing.

What we heard next was Rachmaninoff’s Trio Élégiaque No. 1 in G minor. This one-movement work was written by the 19-year old composer and is one of his two elegiac trios; the second one mourns the death of Tchaikovsky, while the first one does not relate to him, despite the rumors of this piece being another elegy for him. What cannot be denied, however, is the trio’s rather strong resemblance to Tchaikovsky’s music, particularly his A minor trio. The generous, sweeping lines and the undeniably Russian rhythms (particularly in the funeral march section) made it difficult not to think of Rachmaninoff’s fellow Russian composer; yet ultimately, the solemn Dumka quality of the piece is what makes this music not necessarily characteristic of Rachmaninoff or similar to Tchaikovsky, but purely Russian.

After the very classical, brilliantly optimistic Beethoven trio, the soulful, dark richness of the Rachmaninoff was very welcome Probably the highlight of the entire program; this trio was authentically yet uniquely interpreted by the musicians. Here, the piano again enjoyed the thickest part of the piece, yet the textures of the different voices, and the arrangement of the instruments’ melodic lines allowed more freedom for the individual musicians to play as grandly and generously as they pleased. The cascading arpeggios and the very Rachmaninoff-characteristic dotted 8-note chords in the piano part, executed brilliantly by the pianist, provided most of the intensity of the performance, and kept the restless yet solemn flow of the piece uninterrupted the entire time. What added to the magic of the softer sections – such as the picturesque beginning consisting of quiet triplets and then tremolos in the strings’ parts –was the pianist’s velvety touch and range of expressive voicing. He expressed long, melodious lines satisfyingly, for they were lush, mournful and gently sad, yet undeniably powerful and indestructible. The piano part provided the perfect foundation for the emotional intensity of the piece, and tied in seamlessly with the urgency of the strings’ melodies. The conclusive, pitch-black severity of the ending funeral march section seemed to suck all the air out of the room, leaving behind an array of unsettling yet inevitable emotions on the listeners’ part.

After intermission, Beethoven’s Archduke Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, concluded the evening’s program, leaving no questions unanswered. This composition is worlds apart from the Op. 1 trio, not only stylistically, but also in the context of Beethoven’s life. Most importantly, Beethoven was almost completely deaf when he wrote this work; it was the last piece he performed in public before being completely unable to play due to his loss of hearing and inability to communicate successfully with other musicians in an ensemble. Additionally, when wrote the trio in 1811, he was allegedly in love with his “Immortal Beloved” – and was probably experiencing the height of his love life. The optimistic youthfulness and exciting virtuosity of the earlier E-flat Major trio are replaced by a different type of brightness here: spacey, lofty lyricism and romanticism make up the heart of the Op. 97 trio. Charged with special emotion rarely expressed earlier his works, this is a challenging piece to grasp artistically, and extremely draining to perform.

The Trio’s title refers to Archduke Rudolph of Austria, Beethoven’s patron and lifelong friend, to whom he dedicated numerous other pieces, as well. Before the performance, violinist Kreston gave an inspiring, heartfelt speech about the trio in which she emphasized the important role that Archduke Rudolph played in Beethoven’s life. Nonjudgmental and completely accepting of Beethoven, Archduke Rudolph was probably his truest friend – perhaps the only person who understood him completely throughout his life.

The first movement opened with sunlight-filled chords voiced gorgeously by the pianist. Almost inspiring us to sing along with the lovely melodic phrases so filled with countless feature of early romanticism, the musicians performed this movement colorfully and musically. However, it sometimes seemed to lack the necessary range of character that each new section could have expressed. Here and in some parts of the fourth movement, the focus of the group seemed to be so much on clarity and technical perfection that the intricacy of the music’s expressivity was slightly lost. Something else that could have been improved was the dynamic range of the entire piece, particularly the first and third movements. The unique sparkle that this piece has through its many trills and far-apart spaced melodic lines would have been even more accentuated if the quiet parts would have been even quieter — and broader. For example, the breathless magic of the first variation in the third movement could have had a more featherlike touch, especially on the pianist’s part. The cello’s elastic melody needs no competition from the piano’s accompanying triplets – they are only intended as a shimmering frame to the music.

Yet the positive aspects of the performance far outweighed the negative. Especially notable was a section in the development of the first movement consisting of pizzicatos in the strings and quiet, high trills in the piano part – a section completely unique, unmatched in any other piano trio. The pianist mastered the intricate rhythms here with confidence, while the cellist and violinist gave us a magical crescendo to the end of the section and brought out the pizzicato’s bell-like power and depth – something very difficult to do, since the piano is always indefinitely more powerful than pizzicato strings. The second movement, although a little fast at times, had a rustic, almost peasant-like quality to it — something rarely heard in performances of this movement, since many musicians consider it lighthearted above anything else. The dark, creepy chromatic section of the movement was played with a breathless, sneaky quality — completely appropriate before the heroic, explosive piano solo that is repeated four times throughout the movement. After a final restatement of the chromatic section, the group concluded the movement with a humorous, rustic-sounding section that left an echo of sparkling B-flat Major sonorities behind for a few seconds.

Most importantly, the third movement was the highlight of the entire piece. The pianist played the hymn-like opening section with great poise and a beautiful, glowing tone. Each new variation had a distinct character of its own – the instruments joined perfectly throughout the movement, experiencing new feelings and ideas together, as if they were the same entity. The last variation is known to represent the only sound that Beethoven could hear clearly at the time when he composed this piece – his own heartbeat. The quiet urgency of the syncopated rhythm in this variation had such uninterrupted magic to it that one would have wished to hear the entire movement again just for this section.

As we might expect of Beethoven, the purely emotional and rather spiritual quality of the third movement was interrupted, almost rudely, by the first loud chord of the fourth movement. Taking slightly more time than necessary to adjust to the new tempo, the pianist played the opening of the movement with such playfulness that it was difficult not to chuckle. What followed was a delightful array of improvisational-sounding, ecstatic and witty ideas, played with electric excitement by the musicians. The movement concluded with an optimistically Beethovenesque presto, complete with never-ending triplets for all three instruments and an endearingly flashy “Piu Presto”. Needless to say, this was the perfect way to end a chamber music program – and even though the audience wanted to hear more, there was no true need for an encore – everything was already stated.

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Theodora Martin, 19, has been studying piano since the age of seven, and is an aspiring concert pianist. She has won several national and international competitions, such as the MTAC Concerto Competition, Young Artists’ Beethoven Competition, and the Marilyn Mindell and Palo Alto Concerto Competitions. She has performed with orchestra three times: playing Grieg’s A minor Concerto, Chopin E minor Concerto, and Prokofiev’s Second Concerto. Theodora will be double-majoring in music and English at UC Berkeley this coming fall.

The performance on Saturday evening at Holy Cross Church by the San Jose Choral Project can only be described in superlatives – transporting, sublime, transcendental.The program, entitled SOARING SPIRITS lasted little more than an hour. It was appropriately presented to create a profound meditative mood, which only deeply felt spiritual choral music from 6^th century Gregorian chant to the present can do. As such it was performed with no intermission and with applause permitted only after specific groups of pieces. While engaging in every way, the effect on this listener, who purchased two tickets in advance and was exhausted after a day’s hard work in the garden (attending by myself because my wife was in Denver for the weekend), was spiritually rejuvenating. From the first piece, “I by Arvo Part, I” my spirit felt awakened and I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat throughout the entire program and afterwards, writing this review.

This was the power of great choral music impeccably performed. Many, even trained musicians, don’t realize that we are living in one of the golden ages of choral music in which a number of first-rate choral composers around the world are enriching the huge reservoir of choral masterpieces with works that greatly utilize challenging and expanded compositional techniques.

Historically choral music expanded it’s expressive potential in proportion to the existence of performers capable of executing increasingly difficult works. This certainly was true during the Renaissance where the madrigal, first intended to be sung by amateurs, became increasingly more complex and difficult as found in the works of the late Italian madrigal composers, Gesualdo and Monteverdi. In order to raise the art musical art, wealthy Italian noblemen began to hire professional singers.

Today there are few choirs whose members are paid, but there are some in which singers who are inspired by the opportunity to perform great music will congregate around an outstanding director such as Daniel Hughes and the San Jose Choral Project. This is one of the most privileged chamber choral ensembles in the Bay area, and even after being accepted in the ensemble, the level of devotion and responsibility to weekly rehearsals and other matters involved with managing a choir requires a strong commitment from its members. Yet since, the founding of the San Jose Choral Project in 1996, it seems that ongoing at least a third of the forty-four-voice ensemble have been permanent members. The caliber of individual singers in Choral Project is on a very high vocal and musical level

The greatest musical instrument and one to which every instrument except percussion, aspires, is the human voice, so therefore to the extent that there might be a greater instrument, it would be a chorus of many voices singing and creating together.

Every program by Daniel Hughes and Choral Project is special, but after having heard them many times, Saturday evening’s program at Holy Cross church literally soared to a new high, carrying mind and spirit upwards with music by three of the greatest living choral composers, Arvo Part (b. 1935), John Taverner (b. 1944) and Eric Whitacre (b. 1970).

Three works by Arvo Part were performed including his sublime Magnificat, which first brought his music to the attention of choruses and audiences around the world. Historically there is a rich tradition of Magnificat’s composed by some of the world’s greatest composers.

Arvo Part’s Magnificat is a deeply felt religious work and part of the standard church liturgy. However, it’s depiction of Mary accepting her role as mother of Jesus is evocative of personal human feelings of ecstatic surrender. His setting of the Magnificat may well be one of the greatest. To fully appreciate great music, one should allow oneself undistracted time. Purchase a recording by the Estonian Philharmonic Choir 9 (Part, himself is Estonian) and use it as a seven-minute prelude to meditation.

The second featured composer, Eric Whitacre was represented by four compositions. Unlike the other two composers on the program, Eric Whitacre’s spirituality is most clearly universal. This being said the first piece performed, “When David Heard” is based on the biblical text in which David is described as weeping over the death of his son Absolom. With a sparse text repeating over and over “my son” one feels the profound pathos and lament of a tragic loss.

‘Clustered singing,’ called ‘crunch’ by choral singers, is a hallmark of many of Whitacre’s choral works. It requires the choir to divide itself into many sub units to sing clustered sound chords where the notes are a half tone apart. Executing this is not easy as each singer must tenaciously hold its own and not bend to the tone being held by a neighbor. I don’t know whether Eric Whitacre discovered this compositional technique but he has certainly made it his own. Chorally, the effect is like a wafting iridescent cloud of sound. This is a technique that only a choir singing pure vibrato-less tones performed with perfect intonation can successfully execute.

I have yet to hear an Whitacre choral work that I don’t like, and his three other works were equally transporting. They were “Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine,” “With a Lily In Your Hand” and the madrigal-like “Her Sacred Spirit Soars , the last being the signature piece for the program.

The third composer was John Taverner, not to be confused with the 16^th century composer and organist by the same name who wrote a mass based on a popular song of his time, which is still occasionally performed, called “The Western Wynde.”  The contemporary John Taverner is also of British descent but in 1977 converted to Orthodoxy, and joined the Russian Church in Britain. Since 1991 the English Orthodox nun, Mother Thekla has been his spiritual mentor and has contributed texts for many of his choral works.

Most of John Taverner’s works are written in a minimalist style and are deeply devotional and spiritual in nature. Even though one might not be a Christian, it is still possible to be spiritually moved by “As One Who Has Slept,” which is an elaborate setting of a simple text:

“As one who has slept

the Lord has risen,

and rising He has saved us.

Alleluia”

The ‘Alleluia’ is repeated seemingly endless numbers of time but it is most a quiet inner joy that is evoked.

One of my favorites on the program was one of its few secular pieces composed by John Taverner called “Butterfly Dreams.” According to the program notes, this piece represents his more harmonically saturated style and pan-religious interests.” A Bay Area Premiere, “Butterfly Dreams” consists of a series of Butterfly poems and Haiku’s.  It begins and ends with the 4^th century Taoist poet-priest Chuang Tse’s famous poem, “I do not know whether I m a man dreaming myself a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming myself a man” – my own shortened version of the poem.

There’s no better place in the surrounding area better to hear a choral concert than Santa Cruz Holy Cross Church. If you happened to miss this one you have another chance to hear Choral Project under the direction of Daniel Hughes in a very different program entitled EARTHSONGS on Saturday, June 9.

Choral Project’s website is http://www.sjcp.org/. Consider treating yourself to one of their beautiful CD’s. If you have trouble deciding which one, “Water & Light” featuring the music by Eric Whitacre along with other composers including “Hymn to the Mother of God” by John Taverner might make a good choice. You can also check out recordings on their website and on you tube.

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Michael Tierra is a bio-herbalist, acupuncturist, author, teacher, musician, classical pianist, singer and father of concert pianist Chetan Tierra, a recent concerto soloist with the Santa Cruz Symphony.

Te Amo, Argentina was described by its presenter, Chamber Music Monterey Bay, “as an exotic multi-media performance featuring classical music from the Latin Grammy Award-winning album Antonio Lysy at the Broad – Music from Argentina. From the Amerindian rhythms of the Andes Mountains, the city-street cafés of Buenos Aires, the rich music of Te Amo, Argentina—accented by Tango dance and photographic images of the diverse Argentine landscape—creates a pulsating and inspiring homage to Argentina.” Incidentally, this performance was a preview concert for the world premier at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica this coming weekend.

As an event presented in CMMB’s 2011-2012 concert season it presented something of a departure from the standard fare we have come to expect from CMMB chamber music. Not that CMMB hasn’t been experimenting with programming that crosses over from classical to popular music, but Te Amo, Argentina turned out to be a packaged show resembling what you might encounter in a nightclub, casino or as entertainment in the first class lounge on an Argentinean cruise ship. Although we were given a printed program listing the works performed (plus program notes), the moment the concert began, the hall was plunged into inky darkness and remained that way for almost ninety minutes without intermission. One of the reasons for the totally darkened hall was to enhance the visual images evoking various aspects and moods of Argentina that were projected on an screen at the back of the stage and also to provide a dramatic backdrop for the dancers as they emerged on stage at various times during the evening to perform some spectacular tangos.

The bottom line here is that we witnessed a multi-media event featuring some fascinating music, some beautiful dancing, and some problematic visual images (not all of them were effective). As a show, the musical portion featuring an outstanding group of highly professional musicians called the Capitol Ensemble, and cellist Antonio Lysy, pianist Bryan Pezzone and double bassist Pablo Motta, was absolutely top drawer. Cellist Lysy is an amazing cellist who is obviously comfortable in any style of music that can possibly be played on the cello. He played with remarkable abandon and projected an exciting aura in everything he played.

The fabulous dancers, Miriam Larici and Leonardo Barrionuevo, appeared on stage dressed to evoke various tango styles — from the flashy clothes of sleazy brothel dancers to the splendidly brilliant white ice cream suit and pseudo white tutu of their final dance. It was magical the way these two dancers responded to the music and combined jazz and tango dancing with classical ballet movements. It was spectacular!

The music we heard during the evening leaned heavily on Piazzolla with five of his tangos beautifully choreographed. The opening work by Ginastera was performed by Lysy for unaccompanied cello and played on an electric cello that produced wild and disturbing sounds you don’t normally hear from an acoustic cello. One of the most interesting and satisfying works on the program was “Pampas” for cello and piano by Lalo Schifrin and beautifully played by Lysy and pianist Pezzone. Another welcome novelty was the clever “Fuga del Abasto” for strings by Pablo Hopenhayn.

After the concert, the audience was invited to two post-concert events – a reception in the lobby and a demonstration of tango dancing in the dance rehearsal room on the south side of Sunset Center. Among the crowd (and a very happy crowd) in the lobby, we observed some well-dressed young people (some of the women wearing hats and speaking Spanish), which evidenced that CMMB had tapped into a new audience.

One aspect of the concert could be improved. Why not omit the printed programs, which nobody could read in the dark anyway, and instead have one of the musicians act as master of ceremonies to speak about the pieces and the performers? This, of course, would extend the duration of the concert and might require an intermission. Apropos of an intermission, I overheard a man in an adjacent row say; “There must be some other older men like me in the audience with prostate problems. We need an intermission!” Well, at close to ninety minutes without a break, there were probably many women who also would have agreed.

CMMB may have invented a new euphemism for crossover multimedia programs: “Stepping out with Chamber Music Monterey Bay performances” and the next one in its series will be “Portals: Tim Fain – A Multimedia Exploration of Longing in the Digital Age.” That this new concept of programming for the rapidly aging classical music audience appears to be successful is evidenced by the capacity audience “Te Amo Argentina” attracted — a near capacity audience full of fresh, younger faces we have not observed at CMMB concerts before.

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On a very warm Sunday afternoon, April 22, 2012, at Le Petit Trianon, San Jose, pianist Di Wu raised the temperature still further with playing that was often dazzling but also deafening. Displaying phenomenal technical ability with rapid and perfectly controlled fingerwork and shimmering octaves, she also relaxed at times and showed a delicacy and elegance of legato line and a musicianship that could have been more generously used.

Brahms’ 3^rd Piano Sonata Op.5 is a great work, a precursor of his mighty piano concertos, and yet the last piano sonata he wrote. A recent and welcome addition to Di Wu’s repertoire, it was played with the excitement of discovery and romantic flair, while coming up a little short on classical structure and proportion. Right from the start, the thirty-second notes could have been more distinct, and the pp triplets in the bass were almost inaudible – yet they have to be heard in the exposition to make sense of their role in the development. Repeating the exposition might have helped establish the maestoso character of the movement, but the dashing sixteenths into the development were certainly well executed, as were the quieter reflective passages. The slow movement had a beautifully lyrical opening, leading to the delicious una corda section of answering pairs of sixteenth notes, and eventually to ppp markings. But the huge late climax to the movement was overplayed – in writing fff and molto pesante, Brahms surely did not intend the harsh sounds we heard. The Scherzo began with a divine pick-up arpeggio, but thereafter tended to be a shade splashy, until the delightful descending arpeggio decorations, and the bold ending. The Trio was a little angular – a smoother legato would have made more of the contrast. In the short Intermezzo, the fifths in contrary motion created a magical effect. The rollicking Finale went well, although with the dotted rhythms sounding disturbingly almost double-dotted at times. Ms. Wu’s nimble fingers reveled in the final presto that led to an impressive conclusion.

The five pieces in Ravel’s Miroirs were well suited to Wu’s fluent style. She captured the capricious nature of Noctuelles, although the effect could have been lighter. The sadness of Oiseaux tristes was well conveyed, but with a rather too violent central section. Probably the best playing in the set was in Di Wu’s avowed favorite, Une barque sur l’océan, where the ostinato ripples sounded effortless, and there was fine bass sonority in the climax. The best known number, Alborada del gracioso, was vividly Spanish and noisy, leading to the stillness of La vallée des cloches, with the different kinds of bell sounds being beautifully spaced at different dynamic levels.

Liszt’s Paraphrase on a Waltz from Gounod’s “Faust” provided first some charming takes on the lilt of the waltz, followed by all manner of barnstorming virtuosity, at ever-increasing speeds and volume levels. Breathtaking as it was, it left one reflecting that if only Di Wu can decide when less Is more, she will take her playing to the next level and give undiluted pleasure.

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David Beech, an amateur clarinetist, pianist and clavichordist, is a frequent contributor as a guest reviewer in this column.

Max Bragado-Darman

What a way to end a season! The Monterey Symphony rang down the 2011-2012 season’s curtain with a rousing performance of Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No. 1. That this work is popular with audiences is easy to understand – it is a supremely effective piece, and it shows off an orchestra at its best. During the ecstatic applause and standing ovation at its conclusion, there were lots of orchestra members singled out by Director Max Bragado-Darman for special acclaim. Among them were Dawn Walker (flute), Erin Finkelstein (clarinet), Bennie Cottone (oboe), Christina Mock (Concertmaster) and a few others I couldn’t identify from my seat on the far right against the wall down front.

Preceding the Enescu, most of these same principals (plus horn player Monika Warchol) were featured in Kodály’s “Dances of Marosszék.” There were some complicated rhythms in the six native songs and dances that Kodály wove together to create this piece, so sorting them out and understanding them was a challenge for many members of the audience (including me) who were hearing this piece for the first time. But, by any standard, it was exciting and effective.

In the beginning half of the concert we heard some well-known and popular works, two selections from Smetana’s Má Vlast (the Moldau and Šárka) and Fauré’s “Dolly Suite” from the original piano four-hand version in Fauré’s transcription for orchestra. No matter how many times you have heard “The Moldau,” on this occasion it sounded especially vibrant and fresh as it received a thrilling performance.

The “Dolly Suite” in its orchestral version opens up new and imaginative dimensions in a work severely restricted in its piano duet form. We heard a colorful rendition in which conductor and orchestra worked together with precision and finesse to achieve oodles of charm.

Guest Conductor David Zaches

Our Music Director and Conductor, Max Bragado-Darman had a little help at the beginning of the concert as Symphony board member David Zaches stepped up to the podium as “guest conductor” and led the orchestra through two selections from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” I am not qualified to comment on his “stick technique,” but it sure looked and sounded pretty good to me.

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Steinway Society the Bay Area presented pianist Di Wu in a benefit recital last night for an intimate audience of approximately 40 people in a large gracious home in the Menlo Park area. The event was a fundraiser for the Steinway Society’s weekend-long summer program for outstanding young performers. This program, the Midsummer Music Youth Camp, will be taking place this year at the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View from August 10-12. It is open to string and piano students by audition and provides opportunities for participation in master classes, ensemble playing, and even a chance to play with a youth orchestra composed of the participating students.

David Dumont, founder of the Steinway Society 18 years ago, played for us a video showing highlights of last year’s Midsummer Youth Camp. It was heartening to see dedicated young students participating in something other than sports, doing it so very well and really enjoying it.

Pianist Di Wu, who will be playing a full-length recital the following afternoon at Petit Trianon in San Jose, came forward and talked to the audience about the selections she was just about to play. She opened her brief program with four Debussy Preludes from Book 2 (General Lavine – Eccentric, Ondine, Tièrces alternées and Feux d’artifice), continued with two selections by Ravel (Une barque sur l’ocean and Alborado del gracioso) and ended the program with the Liszt-Gounod “Faust Waltz.”

There is no question that Di Wu is the “complete” pianist, equal to any challenge and able to create great beauty and charm, since there were many moments where she created lovely sounds and lovely musical shaping of phrases. Unfortunately, there were also many moments of ugly forced sound where the strings of the piano jangled in protest over the overplaying of fortissimos, and passages in the treble sounded overly loud, harsh and strident. The Philadelphia Inquirer mentioned in a review her “steely” technique, of which we saw ample evidence last night. Di Wu has the potential to be one of the greatest pianists of her generation if only she can convince us in the first ten seconds that she really loves the works she plays and wants to share them with us, rather than trying to impress us with the all consuming power of her brilliant virtuosity.

Do we want to hear her again? Yes, absolutely, for she is an artist who genuinely has something to say and she is growing and evolving all the time.

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For those in the audience who expected a snooze – or a fluffy, cliché, early classical piano trio, they were in for a wake up call. The Haydn Piano Trio in E-flat Major, H. KV: 29, composed in 1796/7, is not the typical piece that pops up in one’s head when envisioning the late 18th century, especially in the particular genre of chamber music. This trio features the new possibilities of the developing piano pertaining to the time, and is special because of its surprisingly daring harmonies and technical difficulties (most of which, of course, are included in the piano part). Yet what the trio should not be underestimated for is the example it sets for the growing importance of the violin and cello, parts of the early classical piano trio that were only initially labeled as “accompaniment”. The weaving of the instruments’ individual parts is so skillfully done in this piece that the spotlight could hardly remain on the pianist at all times, unlike what would be expected of such a piece.

Nevertheless, this is Haydn’s most difficult piano trio, purposefully composed for and dedicated to Therese Bartolozzi, a talented pianist and teacher who studied with Clementi and who was among the most praised performers of the time. Ms. Polonsky played with poise and ease, her nimble fingers weaving through crystalline scales and arpeggios with thunderbolt precision and authority. Although all three musicians appeared totally involved in the music, it was the pianist who most clearly enjoyed herself, as was apparent from her playful, genuine gestures and body language. Yet all the musicians performed with conviction, showing the audience just how much thought they put into every phrase and nuance to communicate the piece’s engaging story.

The first movement is typical in its good-natured classicalness, yet unique in its combined structure consisting of a twice-returning initial theme (as in a rondo) and an expectedly elaborate development (as in a sonata). The bulk of the piece, and most of its harmonic excitement, is found in this movement – all ingeniously done with one of the simplest of thematic melodies. The second movement’s key of B major, completely unrelated to the E-flat major key of the piece, successfully fit its title, “Andantino ed innocentemente”. In the midst of the almost-hyper excitement of the first and third movements, the sweet quiet simplicity of the second helped it float higher up through its purity in the same way that the key of B Major stood out in the piece. The performers blended the last two movements’ beautiful edges seamlessly, concluding with a jumpy, almost peasant-like Allemande, which officially established the audience’s unanimous mood of joy.

The rather short Haydn was followed by a work completely on the other side of the spectrum, Mendelssohn’s intensely dramatic string quartet No. 2, Op. 13, “Ist Es Wahr? ”Written in 1827, when the composer was 18, this was, in fact, his first quartet. As we might expect of Mendelssohn, one of the most advanced and sophisticated European musicians of the early 19th century, this piece is one of the earliest examples of his maturity as a composer, and of his ability to easily capture the audience’s attention with hot-blooded, romantic excitement. Chamber music was not a new genre for the young composer at the time, and this was hardly an example of an immature piece of music, despite its early composition date. With Beethoven’s publication of his last string quartets two years earlier, and finally, with his death the same year Mendelssohn wrote the Op. 13, it was almost impossible for the young composer not to have taken a great deal of inspiration from the master, whether he did it consciously or not.

Despite the obvious differences between Beethoven’s unmatched late quartet style and Mendelssohn’s specific romantic thickness, the endearing similarities could be felt through the Op. 13‘s tendency to be expressive in philosophical and reflective ways — qualities usually associated with late Beethoven. For example, the last movement of Beethoven’s Op. 135 quartet entitled “Must it be?” probably served as the inspiration for Mendelssohn’s reuse of the beautiful melody line, “Is it true?” (Ist es wahr?), from his Op. 9 song. Additionally, the most important feature of the Mendelssohn quartet is the fugue (just like in many of Beethoven’s late works) – for which, in this case, Mendelssohn used the “Ist es wahr” motif as the theme. The Adagio is clearly the heart of the piece, standing out through its expansive fugue and consequently complex counterpoint. The questioning theme is introduced quietly at the beginning, rising and twisting between the instruments with varied personalities and degrees of intensity. The musicians clearly knew that the tension of the enveloping lines should not be broken, and thus played with such clear direction and acuteness that it kept our hearts beating wildly.

With the quartet being in a minor key, the major beginnings and ends of the piece are daring choices on the part of the composer – and above all, very satisfying for the audience. This and the light-filled chorale sections of the quartet gave the music a deeply reflective, rising feeling — one that could be very tricky to execute well from an energy perspective. Yet again, as in the fugues, the performers had no problem continuing the long expressive lines of the chorales. The almost inaudible dynamics that the violinists reached were notable moments in the performance because of their transfixing charm. The tumultuous, almost overly dramatic hyperness of some of the parts in the first and last movements were complemented and polished by these sections of intense magic. This is precisely what makes this Mendelssohn quartet one of the most unique and tasteful of his early pieces. Of course, the combination of so many different ideas and atmospheres could potentially be like a seven-layer chocolate cake, yet the effectiveness with which the performers spread out their energy made the music seem neither too repetitive nor too scattered in emotion. The audience did not dare move an inch as the hushed last notes of the piece – held for an uncommonly long time by the performers – melted into thin air.

The entire second half of the program was dedicated to Shostakovich’s magnificent Piano Quintet, one of the few absolutely unrivaled pieces in the piano chamber music repertoire. The piece is so clearly characteristic of Shostakovich that a single note of it could not be mistaken for any other composers’. His ability (and obvious pleasure) in creating a pianistic foil over the massiveness of the other instruments is what gives this piece its uniqueness and darkly magical quality. The very high and low voices of the composer’s almost classical melodies, when played simultaneously, create a feeling of glowing yet clear darkness of expression, something that few composers have achieved so religiously and effectively.

Often during this piece, the composer strategically has only two, three, or four instruments playing at the same time, with the piano sitting out for extended periods of time – although there were occasionally unexpectedly long solos. This is perhaps done to keep the textures of the piece as clear as possible. The harmonies throughout the piece are intricate, so that instruments not playing together at all times made up for this and the other complexities of the piece. Deeply philosophical, searching of the soul, and extremely special in emotion – typically Russian, in other words – the piece raises more and more questions as it answers others. The only real break in this rich yet restless atmosphere came with the famously difficult Scherzo, a movement of acute, daring eccentricity, almost rude on purpose with its sarcastic humor – which is, again, another typical Shostakovich quality. The sweetly good-natured, anti-climactic end of the piece came as a catharsis to the searching doubts and darkness expressed earlier in the piece, and even made the audience chuckle with relief.

As the concert ended, the program seemed to have covered every nook and cranny of human expression, perhaps because each piece pertained to a completely different time period, or perhaps because the performers were so expressive  – or both. Just the right length, and with just the right progression of a story line, this is (perhaps surprisingly) one of the most well-organized collections of chamber music that could possibly exist – and a more satisfying and effective performance of this collection of pieces could hardly be imagined.

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Theodora Martin, 19, has been studying piano since the age of seven, and is an aspiring concert pianist. She has won several national and international competitions, such as the MTAC Concerto Competition, Young Artists’ Beethoven Competition, and the Marilyn Mindell and Palo Alto Concerto Competitions. She has performed with orchestra three times: playing Grieg’s A minor Concerto, Chopin’s E minor Concerto, and Prokofiev’s Second Concerto. Theodora will be double-majoring in music and English at UC Berkeley this coming fall.

The ensemble and intonation of the quartet were faultless, whether in the most intricate and rapid passages or in a couple of totally convincing unison endings, and the four players shared a warm and full-bodied tonal concept, sometimes with a touch of physicality – an earthiness in forte or a tremulous pianissimo – that gave their sound an organic unity. They also produced a uniformly attractive quality in pizzicato. First violinist Veronika Jaroskovau provided strong leadership, with sweetness in the highest register, and an astonishingly rich and powerful G string, while second violinist Eva Karova was an ideally matched partner. Peter Jarusek, the cellist, succeeded in combining refinement and gusto, while violist Pavel Nikl played his beautiful solos without making them sound detached from the rest of the music.

Tchaikovsky’s D major First Quartet, Op.11, got off to a fine start with the Russian keening timbre of the violins introducing a vigorous movement in sonata form. The slow movement that follows takes a simple but not quite predictable folk tune as its theme, and weaves a set of delightfully inventive variations.The Scherzo and the Finale are more concise movements that still have plenty to say, and the Pavel Haas players made the most of them to round out a fine performance.

A very different Russian personality was presented next in Shostakovich’s Quartet No.7 in F-sharp minor, Op.108. The shortest of this composer’s 15 string quartets, and coming right before his towering Quartet No.8, Op.110, it had previously seemed to me rather lightweight, but a combination of the commitment of the Pavel Haas Quartet, and the background provided by Scott MacClelland’s program note, called for a revised judgment. When the music is heard in the context of its dedication to Shostakovich’s first wife, Nina, who had died of cancer some 5 years before the work was written, its possible autobiographical influences become intriguing, and can account for the ambivalence of jaunty motifs in the first movement that turn into a savage canon in the third, and for the dreamscape of the middle movement. The short compass of the work then becomes a measure of its compression and intensity, and we heard a performance that made a persuasive case for raising the stature of this neglected quartet.

After the intermission, we deserted Russia for Vienna, and heard all the virtues of the Pavel Haas Quartet placed at the service of Schubert, in his “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, No.14 in D minor. This was magnificent playing of a masterpiece, whose slow movement (as in the Tchaikovsky quartet earlier in the program) takes the form of a Theme and Variations. Although the theme comes from a Schubert song that features parts for both Death and the Maiden, the quartet uses only Death’s music. Perhaps by way of compensation, the first variation adds a feminine touch with its affecting violin filigree decorations, here played quite magically. After the fully worked out sonata form of the first movement, and the heavenly length of the theme and variations, the Scherzo flies by, and we were caught up in the dashing six-eight of the Finale, accelerating to a thrilling conclusion, and a standing ovation for this world-class playing.

The traditional excellent refreshments were then served in the hall below, where audience members also had an opportunity to meet the musicians.

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David Beech, an amateur clarinetist, pianist and clavichordist, is a frequent contributor as a guest reviewer in this column.

Violinist Min-Young Kim, composer Joan Tower and violinist Matilda Kaul

At Carmel’s Sunset Center last night, Chamber Music Monterey Bay and the Daedalus Quartet unleashed a world premiere performance of Joan Tower’s string quartet, “White Water.” I use the word “unleashed,” because what we heard was a bold dramatic work full of suppressed violence straining to burst its bounds. This work alternates between many emotions, some of which are enigmatic, dazzling, disturbing, serene, and virtuosic to the extreme, but also totally absorbing. “White Water” grabs you by the throat and commands your attention for approximately twenty minutes, and seemingly only a brief twenty minutes at that.

The first impression given by this work is how beautifully effective it sounds. To what degree this was determined by Tower’s skill in writing for string instruments or the fabulous playing of the members of the Daedalus Quartet, was difficult to say. The work itself and the performers seemed to be totally together as one.

The work began with a lovely viola solo by Jessica Thompson consisting of a scale-like melody, echoed by the other instruments that always seemed to be thrusting upwards, sometimes diatonically, sometimes chromatically and sometimes as eerie glissandos. Also quite memorable was a lovely cello solo by Thomas Kraines and the rich pure sound of violinist Min-Young Kim. The cumulative effect of the white-hot energy generated by this work drew a warm response from the audience both for the performance and for the appearance on stage of composer Joan Tower.

CMMB President Amy Anderson addressed the audience at the beginning of the evening to speak about CMMB’s four-year commissioning project called “Arc of Life” of which Joan Tower’s “White Water” is the first installment. She also mentioned that this series of commissions was inspired by artist Bill Viola’s video montage, “Going Forth by Day.”

As a prelude to “White Water” some of the visual montage images from “Going Forth by Day” were projected on a screen over the stage. They were, however, very brief and probably less effective than the original projections of five continuous 35-minute scenes screened in a darkened room at the top of the Guggenheim, all being projected simultaneously by continuous loop tapes and accompanied by an audio track.

The scenes we saw were: “Fire Birth” (a human form swimming in an amniotic-type fluid in a struggle between death and rebirth), “The Path” (an endless parade of various groups of people walking though a forest from left to right), “The Deluge” (a slowly developing flash flood demolishing a building and washing way people unfortunate enough not to escape its destruction), “The Voyage” (the death of a man observed by close relatives after which his body and personal possessions were taken away by boat), and the final scene “First Light” (a spiritual rebirth and ascension).

An important question here is: how relevant and vital were these scenes to an understanding of Joan Tower’s “White Water? My opinion is that it would have been enough to read in the printed program how Viola’s work made a strong impression on her and how it shaped some of her compositional ideas. The bottom line is that “White Water” is a powerful and idiomatic work for string quartet that can absolutely stand on its own.

The evening’s concert began with a spirited performance of Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 33, No. 2, “The Joke” that contained lovely bits of whimsy in the trio section in the Scherzo, a lovely slow movement and a delicious romp to the end in the finale.

Ending the concert we heard Dvorak’s String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat Major, which was a smorgasbord of musical delights. What better way to end a string quartet concert!

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On Saturday, April 7, I had the unpleasant experience of hearing pianist/composer Philip Glass perform a solo recital of his own music at the Montalvo Center for the Performing Arts Carriage House in Saratoga. After a glowing, raving introduction by the proud presenters of Philip Glass at Montalvo, he strolled out onto the stage before a sold-out audience and quipped, “I just looked at the printed program, and I think it is remarkably similar to the one I might actually play.”

How was the performance? It was an 80-minute recital with no intermission, where every piece essentially sounded the same as the one that preceded it. He played with a nonchalant mediocre technique that featured uneven tone, blurred pedaling, occasional memory slips, and lots of missed or botched notes — a lesson indeed for anyone who ever had, or ever thought they had, a problem with performance anxiety. I slipped back and forth, from deep delta and theta states of sleep, to “alpha dreamlike wakefulness,” while doing all I could to avoid “beta alertness,” because it was in “beta alertness” where feelings of rage, annoyance and downright irritation lurked. And so it went on and on — the monotonous ennui of his thumbs and fingers rotating with slurred unevenness, occasional mistakes, and memory lapses. It was all part of the “show” for which at its 80-minute conclusion he got a prolonged standing ovation!

It was like listening to fragments of music, or sounds left over from music after the end of the world. Some emotion was reflected with the faintest mostly diatonic suggestions of melodic fragments alluding to an emotion, which in the context of Philip Glass’s aesthetic would be “much ado about nothing.”

At the risk of sounding repetitious, commenting about repetition in the music of Philip Glass is never inappropriate, and one of the best things one can do when listening to his music is to sleep. It just doesn’t make any difference and nothing is ever missed — now isn’t that some kind of relief?

I would summarize my comments about Philip Glass as a composer based on a selection of his own piano works (including six etudes devoid of any challenge other than avoiding falling asleep while playing or listening to them) and say that he is a composer who has nothing to say but continues to say it over and over again.

Walking to the parking lot I casually asked someone strolling next to me what was her favorite piece. She said it was his Second Etude, I half facetiously quipped how could she tell the difference between it and the others since they all sounded the same? She said she especially liked when he reached with his right hand over the top of his left hand as he somewhat ceremoniously and slowly ‘thumped’ a bass note” – which, by the way he occasionally missed.

Philip Glass seems to write the same piece over and over again and has been doing so ever since he concluded that mid 20th century music had reached such a state of dissonant complexity that there was no way to go further in that direction.

The recital was performed on a beautiful Steinway concert grand provided by Sherman Clay of San Jose. Such a lovely a piano was really quite unnecessary for Glass’s performance, since the effect of his music might have even been pretty much the same on a somewhat out-of-tune, broken-down old upright.

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Michael Tierra is a bio-herbalist, acupuncturist, author, teacher, musician, classical pianist, singer and father of concert pianist Chetan Tierra, a recent concerto soloist with the Santa Cruz Symphony.