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SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL
CONCERT REVIEW
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (1781)
Samuel Barber: Selections from Souvenirs (1951)
Bela Bartók: Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
(1937)
The final offering in this season's Thursday afternoon Aultman
PrimeTime chamber series by the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO) was a
marvelously colorful and textured program that featured the
accomplished, Canton-based Appassionata Piano Duo of Maira Liliestedt
and Janelle Phinney. As their collaborative name suggests, their
playing throughout the three works on the program was certainly
passionate-a warm and deft joining of palpable grace with flawless,
often fiery technique.
Their performance of Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major was a
bubbly start to the program. With a seamless flow of back-and-forth,
call-and-response phrases and themes, the pianists effectively
conveyed the spirit of brilliant gallantry that underlies the work's
many quick-paced, intricate, ornate, and technically demanding
passages.
Shifting to the 20th century, the duo's performance of
three excerpts from Samuel Barber's Souvenirs (1951) was no
less effective. Barber originally wrote of the work that he wanted to
conjure lounge music, circa 1914 New York City, in the "…epoch of the
first tangos…with affectionate, amused tenderness." In that,
Liliestedt and Phinney were thoroughly captivating in their grasp of
the work's melding of poignancy and intimate humor, right down to the
gently awkward (and intentional) wrong notes in the "Waltz" segment.
And you could almost see the sultry haze of smoke billowing in the air
of Palm Court in the Plaza Hotel as they played the haunting, exotic
"Hesitation Tango," with its occasionally jarring moments of quirky
dissonance.
In a way, the work was a fitting mood-setter for the similarly quirky
and exotic Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (1937) by Bela Bartók.
Here, Appassionata was joined by CSO members John Curtis (timpani and
percussion), and principal percussionist Matthew Beck. CSO President
and CEO Stephen Wogaman enthusiastically introduced the work with a
beaming smile, as if presenting a long-lost foreign friend, noting
that he hadn't heard the work performed in 30 years, and its
appearance on concert programs was a "rare, rare, thing."
This might not be due to its bizarre harmonies, strange melodies, and
asymmetrical structures (after all, this is Bartók), as much
as it is a notoriously difficult piece to perform. Many musicologists
have pointed, some with dismay, to its relentlessly "convoluted
counterpoint," interspersed as it is with explosive, even frightening
bursts of seemingly warring instruments (including timpani, bass drum,
snare, gong, cymbals, and numerous piercing punctuations by
xylophone). Indeed, the piano writing alone was designed to treat the
instrument not as a vehicle for melodic lyricism, but as a fully
percussive element. But here, the intrepid ensemble successfully met
the occasion of precise delivery with a riveting, lucid finesse that
was alternately muscular and delicate. Sometimes murky and dark,
sometimes shimmering, with moments that bring to mind mysterious
Balinese gamelan or other foreign music, the three-movement work ends
on a distinctly more "accessible" note, growing from a joyfully
frenzied folk dance. And judging from the numerous murmurs and looks
of surprised approval from the audience, I think the concert went far
in making Bartók more friendly.
Tom Wachunas