There were several brief breaks, and some sections that were more emphatic than others, but the entire performance was of a piece. The music whooshed, cooed, rumbled and hovered, suggesting everything from the Byrds' jet-age sound to a church organ. If the results seemed emotionally limited, that wasn't because of the lack of human voice. Even with Fraser's singing, the Cocteau Twins always were a gorgeous blank.
-- Mark Jenkins
Michael Stipe and the rest of R.E.M. played a crowd-pleasing set at Constitution Hall on Monday night.
(Tracy A. Woodward -- The Washington Post)
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Chamber Music at the Terrace Theater
In an ingeniously planned program, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio and the Miami String Quartet each played a delightful short piece before joining forces for dramatic performances of two more substantial works on Monday night at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater.
The trio gave a sparkling performance of Beethoven's youthful Variations on an Original Theme in E-flat, Op. 44, giving full voice to both its irreverent jokes and its gentle pathos. In Hugo Wolf's jovial Italian Serenade, the Miami players tossed mercurial themes back and forth and kept its bouncy rhythms from feeling too relentless.
When Jaime Laredo (taking up the viola) and cellist Sharon Robinson joined the quartet to play Dvorak's Sextet in A, Op. 48, the fast tempos and minimal rubato favored by the combined group meant that some of the idiomatic flavor in the Czech dumka slow movement went missing. However, the added excitement this approach produced in the striding first movement, the scintillating Czech furiant and the finale's satisfying progression from wistfulness to ebullience more than compensated for that loss.
When Miami violinist Ivan Chan and violist Chauncey Patterson joined the trio for Brahms's fiery, tragic Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34, the same aggressive approach fueled a devastating performance. Quieter moments here felt breathlessly intense, with the chromatic chords introducing the finale particularly wrenching, while Brahms's passionate outbursts made a thunderous impact. Some loud passages in the riveting finale drew rough playing from pianist Joseph Kalichstein, but it was tough to complain too much from the edge of one's seat.
-- Andrew Lindemann Malone
Women Master Drummers of Guinea
The Women Master Drummers of Guinea must live on PowerBars. Their display of music and dance from the west coast of Africa at Cheverly's Publick Playhouse on Monday night was pure energy.
The performers played djembes, a drum resembling a conga, suspended from their necks, as well as other percussion instruments struck with palms and sticks. The instruments were fairly simple affairs, carved out of wood with some fabric for decoration. The drumming experience was accentuated by frenetic dancing, the women beating the floor with their bare feet. It was a powerful experience to watch the synchronized choreography.
The most melodic portion of the program was when the balafon, a wooden xylophone, took center stage. Twenty-four-year-old virtuoso Fatoumata Kouyate was the first woman in her country to be allowed to learn to play this instrument. In fact, until this generation, women in Guinea were not permitted to play any of these drums.
It was an enjoyable and energizing evening -- that is, if you could get past the first five minutes of cheesy pantomime, acting out in dance how the women came to be master drummers. And those who stayed after the end of the exuberant finale found their euphoric mood killed by manager Mamoudou Conde, who came onstage with a long speech before introducing the members of the troupe.
The drummers perform again tonight at 7.
-- Gail Wein
