MUSIC

Monday, March 17, 2008

Amelia Piano Trio

The musical boundaries between East and West have been bashed away at for so long it's hard to tell where they are anymore. From the orientalisme of early-20th-century France to the postmodern work of composers like Tan Dun and Zhou Long, the border has long been a breeding ground for new ideas, and on Saturday evening the gifted young Amelia Piano Trio (as part of the Dumbarton Concerts series in Georgetown) presented a program called "East Meets West" that explored this music with passion and a playful sense of adventure.

Long thought to be lost, Debussy's early Piano Trio in G was recently reconstructed from fragments, and has emerged as an engaging if frustrating work. Beautifully played by the Amelia, it showed traces of Asia here and there, but never really approached the near-perfect orientalism of later works like "Pagodes."

The next work was more of a stretch. Mozart was all of 8 years old when he wrote his Sonata in F, K. 7, and it won't ever rank as one of mankind's most glorious achievements -- even when arranged for violin, cello and the two-stringed Chinese violin called the erhu. Wang Guowei turned in a flavorful account of this odd little curiosity. A more organic blending took place in the world premiere of "Scenes Through a Window" by the Chinese American composer Lu Pei. Written for piano trio, erhu and the traditional lute called the pipa, it's an extremely smart, colorful and kinetic piece that builds on traditional Chinese music without ever descending into sentimentality. Utterly graceful playing on the pipa by Yihan Chen made it even more delectable.

The evening closed with a sweeping reading of Maurice Ravel's Piano Trio in A Minor, an early transcultural masterpiece which draws on a popular Basque folk dance, Malaysian verse forms and styles from the baroque. The Amelia brought it off with exceptional clarity and elegance.

-- Stephen Brookes

Bob Mould

Bob Mould recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of his quitting Husker Du by posting, on his Web site, the breakup letter his lawyer had sent to his band mates' representatives all those years ago. Some fans still wish that document had never been written. But on Saturday, as the D.C. transplant rocked what for him is now a neighborhood nightspot, the 9:30 club, it sure seemed like the breakup has worked out well for the guy.

Mould, backed by a practiced trio and looking fabulous, threw material from every portion of his long career into the loud and powerful 90-minute set, though with some tinkering. He slowed down "Hanging Tree," a depressing rocker from 1990, to the point where the song's guitar riff became so heavy that even a bulky gym rat like Mould would have trouble bench-pressing it. And for Sugar's fabulous pop tune "Hoover Dam," Mould turned some of the guitar parts over to keyboard player Richard Morel, whose baroque licks recalled "Tarkus"-era Keith Emerson.

Mould even reworked stuff from his newest record, "District Line." "Again and Again," now carried by Mould's electric guitar, sounded less like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" than on the disc, and it has to be the bleakest breakup song ever written for the upper middle class: "I left the title to the house inside the piano bench/and my lawyer's got the will," Mould groaned.

He'd gotten all the dark stuff out of his system in time for the power-pop bliss of "Paralyzed," then closed with a gaggle of Husker Du songs -- "I Apologize" and "Divide and Conquer" among them. Neither he nor the fans, including those still tilting at windmills for a reunion, or even just a box set from the long-dead band, could stop smiling.

-- Dave McKenna

National Philharmonic

Thanks to Felix Mendelssohn, who resurrected Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" with a non-church performance in 1829, the piece has become a concert hall staple. Saturday at Strathmore, Stan Engebretson conducted a performance by the National Philharmonic, its chorale and a cast of solo singers.

Bach's "Passion" is both monumental and intimate. One needn't subscribe to its religion to be swept into the drama. Bach's music achieves that with an intoxicating mix of subtlety and power, and on those terms this performance mostly succeeded.

Yet it was the intimate side of this "Passion" that ultimately suffered. Engebretson's rigid (sometimes rushed) conducting wasn't kind to singers. Add to that several aloof soloists and you have a passion-deprived "Passion."

A detached mood was set from the start. Bach's opening chorus is a complex, rising wave of sound -- a chorale tune soars above a double chorus of intertwining parts -- but the grandeur was lost as the choruses rushed inarticulately under Engebretson's speed.

Aside from an early misstep, tenor Robert Petillo, as the Evangelist (Bach's narrator), provided a much-needed emotional center. The way he stretched and colored the word "bitterlich," describing Peter's denial, was just one example of his thoughtful performance.

That poignant moment leads to "Erbarme Dich," one of Bach's most moving creations. The plucked bass notes fall like tears, yet mezzo-soprano Valerie Komar's performance was disappointingly dry. The beautiful, raw silk sheen of her voice could have made much more of Bach's cantabile lines. After all, this is a desperate plea for mercy.

Tenor Philippe Castagner provided some of the most exciting and engaged singing of the evening, along with bass Christopheren Nomura, whose "Mache Dich" added the right touch of comfort.

Bach's music is strong enough to overcome inconsistencies in almost any performance. This one had its strengths; it just needed more passion.

-- Tom Huizenga

Cantate Chamber Singers

One of the astonishing things about the concert presented Saturday at St. John's Episcopal Church by the Cantate Chamber Singers was how powerfully the spare forces and controlled idiom of Heinrich Schuetz's telling of the Resurrection story held their ground against the vivid color and passion of James MacMillan's "Seven Last Words From the Cross."

MacMillan's cantata, scored for chorus and strings, is fluidly tonal (sometimes polytonal), intensely dramatic and poetic in the best possible sense. There is never a hint that he is milking these final words for anything but their message. The singers and the instruments are frequently set at odds with each other, seeming to play the roles of Christ on the cross and of the forces that made all this happen. But the roles are sometimes reversed. At the end is just the spirit in the quieter and quieter high string seconds.

Schuetz, on the other hand, true to German baroque forthrightness, set the story (taken from pieces of the various Gospels) as a narration. Titled "Account of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ," it features the Evangelist telling the story in recitative and the various players in the events -- Jesus, Mary Magdalene, angels and priests (these set as duos or trios) -- acting out the drama in melodic bits of harmony. The power, here, is in the very simplicity of its telling.

Conductor Gisele Becker and her chorus handled the two very different idioms well. The chorus, which sounded secure and well-balanced in the MacMillan, never oversang or let pitches sag. Tenor Philip Cave sang the role of the Evangelist with splendid attention to the inflections of the text, if not always to its consonants. Countertenor John Boll and Tenor Stephen White were an effectively matched duo as Jesus, and the orchestra and the continuo were terrific.

-- Joan Reinthaler

Matthias Soucek

The elegant Viennese pianist Matthias Soucek returned to the Austrian Embassy Saturday night for his first Washington recital in two seasons. He played sonatas by Beethoven and Schubert, two Schubert impromptus, and three medleys: Liszt's ninth Hungarian Rhapsody, "Carnival at Pest"; a piece by the late pianist Friedrich Gulda called "Homage to Vienna"; and the program opener, Soucek's own "Homage to Mozart."

The latter began and ended with quotations from Mozart's variations on the theme known in English as "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and moved through a succession of excerpts from several piano sonatas, seamlessly connected with characteristically Mozartean passage work. Soucek's obvious affinity for this music, not to mention his masterful grasp of late-18th-century keyboard style, raises the question: Why program a potpourri pieced together from favorite "Mozart moments" in lieu of a straight-forward presentation of one of the sonatas or great variation sets?

Soucek's viscerally exciting performance of Beethoven's "Waldstein" emphasized the score's vivid contrasts and rhythmic urgency. The Liszt rhapsody, perhaps garnished with more Viennese whipped cream than sharp Hungarian paprika, nevertheless showcased Soucek's ability to draw a spectrum of colors from the piano. In Schubert's Sonata in A, D. 664, the highlight of the evening, Soucek's beautiful singing style and unmannered delivery were captivating.

-- Patrick Rucker