Guarneri String Quartet
The Guarneri String Quartet greeted a sold-out house at its annual Kennedy Center concert Wednesday with three intense performances, filling the Terrace Theater with ample, brilliant string sonorities, pushing tempos hard and playing every note with as much passion as it could hold. In Mozart's Quartet in B-flat, K. 589, the Guarneri decisively rejected the vague notions of Viennese grace that addle some Mozart performances, providing remarkable thrills along with his characteristic lyricism. They emphasized the sweeping feel of the first movement's themes and the drama of the development section's minor-mode outbursts, while a flowing tempo and impassioned phrasing in the larghetto second movement turned the dialogue between instruments into a heated conversation. The quartet navigated the weird, slippery harmonies in the minuet's middle section to usher in an exhilarating finale.
Frank Bridge's Quartet No. 1 in E Minor sounds a lot like a despondent Brahms letting off the leash of formal rectitude for a while, with unnerving trills and stutters and ringing dissonances forcing their way into conventional forms and undermining very romantic melodies. It won't be to everyone's taste, but the Guarneri made a terrific case for it, locating the pathos of its agonized moments within a coherent structure.
The quartet's intensity worked against it in Ravel's Quartet in F, as it brushed briskly past some of the work's delicious moments of impressionist languor. However, the ensemble's unusually charged reading produced hair-raising, shifting pizzicati in the second movement and a bold treatment of the rugged, recurring motif in the finale that provided satisfaction in their own right.
-- Andrew Lindemann Malone
Eugeniy Chevkenov
Apulled muscle almost prompted Bulgarian violinist Eugeniy Chevkenov to cancel his Wednesday evening performance at the Brewmaster's Castle. But he kept his engagement at the historical Victorian home near Dupont Circle partly because there were four organizations involved in the concert's arrangements and partly because he wanted to perform in such a setting.
The recital, presented by Heurich House Foundation, Georgetown University libraries and the embassies of Austria and Bulgaria, took place in the mansion's solarium. Though at times Chevkenov had to compete with traffic noise, the venue proved acoustically sound for solo violin.
In the fast sections of J.S. Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor, Chevkenov spun off his notes with ease.
Despite the injury affecting his right arm, the violinist worked impressively through a lengthy, virtuosic passage of bow work. But his slower movements had a ruminative quality that sometimes lacked propulsion and a driving melodic line.
Chevkenov's bowing was more fluid, his tone more resonant in the composer's Sonata No. 1 in G Minor. Its slow movements flowed as a soprano might sing her arias -- sweetly, with sophistication. Indeed, this work had a musical cohesiveness and confidence that the Partita often lacked. With full concentration on the sonata's dynamic scope, Chevkenov produced an exciting performance.
Instead of concluding with Peter Christoskoff's Rhapsody for Solo Violin, Chevkenov, who apologized for truncating the program because of his injury, gave a heartfelt and moving rendition of the theme from the film "Schindler's List."
-- Grace Jean
