2010-11 Series
Reviews:
The evening, a presentation of the Chagrin Valley Chamber Music Concert Series, introduced Daniel and the players in a deftly crafted program. The first half was a celebration of music from the Classical era (Saint-Georges and Mozart), while the second saluted Bohemian composers Mahlerand Dvorak. For the Classical pieces, Daniel seated the strings in the array best suited to music of the era, with violins divided on either side of the conductor. The arrangement enhanced contrapuntal clarity, allowing inner voices to be heard at all times. Saint-Georges’ symphony is a charming three movement creation in the style of other composers of the period, including Mozart and Haydn. The writing is concise and shapely, with a lovely slow movement and chipper activity elsewhere. Ensemble du Monde, whose personnel on this occasion included musicians from Northeast Ohio, gave the score a bright, articulate reading. Daniel’s leadership had the virtue of grace, despite a tendency to dawdle in the slow movement. A similar sense of leisure pervaded the Adagio in Mozart’s Violin Concerto in A major, K. 219, but the performance benefited from the elegant purity soloist Hristo Popov invested in every phrase. Popov, concertmaster of the Opera Circle Orchestra, traced the lyrical and vibrant lines with unruffled assurance. He enabled the music to float where necessary and made easy work of the acrobatic demands. Daniel and the orchestra were alert partners.
Donald Rosenberg - PLAIN DEALER, Cleveland
The New Amici Trio, violinist Hristo Popov, cellist Michael Gellfand and pianist Per Enflo, who form the trio in residence at Youngstown State University’s Dana School of Music, brought the eighth season of concerts on the Chagrin Valley Chamber Music Series to a conclusion on Sunday afternoon, April 3 with a program of Haydn and Tchaikovsky at Valley Lutheran Church in Chagrin Falls. Advertised as “a chamber music extravaganza”, the program lasted just over an hour and was enjoyed by an enthusiastic crowd of about a hundred listeners.
The trio, who had tuned off-stage, appeared in matching black shirts and neckties to play the short first half of the program. Haydn’s Trio No. 39 in G was written on one of the composer’s London sojourns after his release from near-servitude at Esterházy, and subtitled “Gypsy Rondo” by his publisher after the character of its last movement — and probably also to sell more copies to a musical public fascinated by the music of the Romani. The Trio produced a warm and nicely-balanced sound in the church’s agreeable acoustics and found elegance, charm and humor in the first two movements. The Rondo was taken at a furious speed, mitigated by some skillful pullbacks in tempo for the episodes.
After intermission, the New Amici brought out Tchaikovsky’s single attempt at a piano trio, opus 50 in a minor, composed as a memorial tribute to Nicholas Rubenstein. The work is cast in an unusual format: a Pezzo Elegiaco in four movements is followed by a Theme with eleven variations, than a two part Varizationi Finale e coda. And it’s a wonder it ever got written. As the composer wrote to his benefactress in 1880, a year or so before he composed op. 50,
“I simply cannot endure the combination of piano with violin or cello. To my mind the timbre of these instruments will not blend ... it is torture for me to have to listen to a string trio or a sonata of any kind for piano and strings”.
Indeed there are long moments during the piece when he seems totally at a loss about how to combine the three instruments all at once. At the beginning, a cello solo with piano is answered by a violin solo with piano. In the Variations, if the piano has the theme, violin and cello contribute only prosaic little figures, or swoops, or pizzicati or long held notes (or in one case, a strange episode of cross-stringing in the cello), as though the composer can’t figure out how to have the strings enter meaningfully into the musical conversation. Similarly, stock gestures in the piano (arpeggios or merely decorative tinkles) accompany the strings when they have the thematic material. Along the way, there’s an extended Waltz, a Fugue and a Mazurka — enough variety to hold the listener’s interest, but not enough cohesion to link the whole work together. But if the work lacks structure, Tchaikovsky’s signature gifts for melody and lyricism eventually carry the day.
The New Amici Trio brought both intensity and elegiac tenderness to the demanding, forty-minute piece. Only on a few occasions did mental fatigue produce spotty intonation. Per Enflo did his best to bring Tchaikovskian sonorities out of the church’s baby grand piano, but it was a bit underpowered for the task at hand. In all, a lovely way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon in the early Spring.
Daniel Hathaway - ClevelandClassical.com
When your featured artist calls in sick, it’s a good thing to have a reliable backup performer on your speed dial. Last Sunday afternoon at Valley Lutheran Church in Chagrin Falls, the day (or at least the concert) was saved by the Swedish-born pianist Per Enflo, a frequent collaborator with Chagrin Valley Chamber Music’s artistic director and violinist Hristo Popov. He stepped in on what must have been a moment’s notice for the ailing Bulgarian-born pianist, Sarkis Baltaian, and played an almost note-perfect ninety-minute recital from memory.
Though he continues to tour and recitalize as a concert pianist, Mr. Enflo’s day job is University Professor at Kent State University, where he works on solving thorny mathematical problems most of us have never heard of. His biography in the program suggests that he has some thirty, full-length recitals in his memory. The one we heard on Sunday began with a Haydn Sonata, advanced to several Swedish salon pieces, Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata and a couple of preludes and fugues from J.S. Bach’s first Well Tempered Clavier book, and a second Beethoven sonata, opus 111.
The large audience, who heard about the change of performers only in Mr. Popov’s opening welcome, might initially have been disappointed, but quickly settled in for what turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon of music-making.
Mr. Enflo enjoys playing with rather dry articulation and very little pedal, which suited Haydn’s e minor sonata nicely. The Haydn also worked well on Valley Lutheran’s Petrof baby grand piano, which got a real workout at the end of the program. The pianist’s passage work was clean and even, and he pointed up the formal structure of the work with intelligence and clarity.
We then heard a series of small works by two composers who, he noted, held the same stature in Sweden that Nielsen did in Denmark and Sibelius in Finland in that same generation. Three pleasant little pieces by Wilhelm Peterson-Berger were entitled “Summer Song”, “Lawn Tennis” and “Gratulation”. Emil Sjögren was represented by his “Morgonvandring” (Morning Walk), an energetic ramble through the countryside.
Mr. Enflo ended the first half with Beethoven’s Sonata “Quasi una fantasia”, op. 27, no. 2. A more mystical, hushed approach to the first movement would have better matched Beethoven’s apparent concept, but the second movement was crisp and sprightly and the finale was appropriately frenetic.
After intermission, the recitalist played the c-minor and D-major preludes and fugues from WTC — two of the pieces from this collection that seem least suited for translation to the piano. The c-minor prelude cries out for the jangly quality of the harpsichord, and the perpetual motion right hand line in the D-major seems to need the lightness of plucked strings. Here, on the piano, fingers seemed to get a bit fatigued as the pieces went on and articulation became less clear, but the fugue subjects were nicely set forth and clearly revealed as the counterpoint became more complex.
Beethoven’s last statement in the category of the piano sonata received a fluent and efficient reading from Mr. Enflo, who shaped its second movement — which seems not to know how to end — with conviction and grace. A very happy audience gave the recitalist a strong ovation.
Daniel Hathaway - ClevelandClassical.com
2009-10 Series
2008-09 Series
- Caroline Oltmanns, Piano, Cleveland Classical
- Fulbright Scholar Featured in Chamber Concert (Caroline Oltmanns), Chagrin Valley Times
- Caroline Oltmanns Piano Recital, Ohio Magazine
- Browsing the Arts (Andrew Sords), Cleveland Plain Dealer
- Violinist Sords to Perform in Chamber Music Series, Chagrin Valley Times
- Andrew Sords, Violin Recital, Cleveland Magazine
- Entertainment on the Tens (New York EMPIRE Trio), Cleveland Plain Dealer
- December Happenings (New York EMPIRE Trio), Hudson Hub Times
- Renowned Trio Tops Chamber Concert (New York EMPIRE Trio), Chagrin Valley Times
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