Conservatory Groups Deliver Nuances Beyond Their Years

The LK String Quartet delivered some gorgeous Beethoven at the Terrace Theater on May 16. What made the level of playing more of a happy surprise is the fact that the LK members are students at the Juilliard School of Music (two in the bachelor's program, one in the master's program and one who graduated last year).

Juilliard chose them to represent the school at the opening recital in the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage's Conservatory Project, a semiannual week-long showcase of the best and brightest from the nation's finest music schools (with the focus and fine acoustics of the Terrace providing a welcome change from the three-ring circus of Millennium Stage's accustomed lobby venue).

Juxtaposing the first and last of Beethoven's magisterial cycle of quartets, the LK players found ample points of connection between these two very different works. If Quartet No. 16 possesses a playfulness and mischievous wit that hearken back to the lighter Quartet No. 1, there's no disguising its experimental form or sudden plunges of mood, and the LK made sure to illuminate all aspects of Beethoven's writing. In both works, they played with warm tone, elegant finish, a vivid engagement with the scores' drama and ensemble that was tight as a drum.

The University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music also placed their expectations on the shoulders of a single ensemble -- a woodwind quintet called Arabesque Winds -- which performed a challenging 20th-century program for Eastman's slot in the project on Friday. Once again, the musicians were a mix of undergraduates and a recent graduate. And, once again, they played with skill and depth beyond their years. Solos in Hindemith's "Kleine Kammermusik" showcased the musicians' individual talents, which were formidable (as their bios -- already full of touring, recordings and gigs as principal players in Upstate New York orchestras -- would lead you to expect). But it was the unanimity of their ensemble phrasing that took the breath away, particularly in the manic scales chasing up and down the staff and ping-ponging from instrument to instrument in Eugene Bozza's "Scherzo."

Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music took a more traditional approach to programming its performance slot on Wednesday, by presenting a mixed recital featuring instrumentalists and singers at various stages in their conservatory training. The evening's most impressive performer was doctoral student baritone Kevin Keys. With his handsome mahogany tone, nuanced way with word-pointing, and a voice and face both alive to quicksilver changes of emotion (especially in Schubert's "Der Wanderer"), this is a singer who could have taken the entire evening himself, and done his school proud.

Another doctoral student, the sweet-toned lyric-tenor Grant Knox (already a veteran of leading roles at a host of regional American opera companies), was perhaps too reined-in and circumspect in his phrasing for the red-blooded Italian songs he chose. But sparks were certainly generated by freshman guitarist Molly Manarchy's virtuosic gifts and interpretive abandon, and by senior-year cellist Charlaine Prescott's ability to transform her instrument effectively into a blues guitar for Mark Summer's "Julie-O." (Considering Prescott's impressive command elsewhere, the brief train wreck she hit in the crazily difficult sequences of harmonics in Paganini's "Variations on a Theme of Rossini" seemed a fixable aberration.)

One thing was clear from all three recitals I attended: If this group is an accurate barometer, classical music is in safe hands with the next generation of its practitioners.