Roots, the title of the Saturday evening, August 8 Summerfest concert at the Conrad, overflowed with Slavic flavor. First, Seven Balkan Dances for piano by the Croatian composer, Marko Tajcevic, based on folk material. The dances were performed with genuine authenticity by Bosnian pianist, Pedja Muzijevic.
This was followed by Dvorak’s “Dumky” Trio, played by Kentucky-born violinist, Tessa Lark, Turkish-born cellist, Efe Baltacigil, and Hungarian-born pianist, Zoltan Fejervari.
It is quite remarkable how the three artists meshed so beautifully in Dvorak’s highly emotional work, each one playing their melodic lines with deep feeling and quickly switching from sad melancholy to vibrant joy. Every one of the six movements had two contrasting tempo markings. In the rapid climaxes, such as in the last movement, Fejervari seemed to cause sparks to fly off the keyboard, so intense was the excitement, while Lark drew glistening sounds from the upper registers of her violin and Baltacigil plumbed the depths of his cello. The six-movement work drew to a surprising, soft ending.
After intermission, Tessa Lark and the Croatian accordionist, Radu Ratoi, performed the Russian-Jewish composer, Mieczyslaw Weinberg‘s Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes.
Although the music of Weinberg is not generally known in the West, the American-Jewish musicologist, Steven Schwarz has called him the third great Soviet composer, along with Prokofiev and Shostakovitch. Originally written for orchestra, then transcribed for violin and piano, the Rhapsody was here performed with accordion, giving it more of a folk-like atmosphere. Kentucky-born Lark pulled it off with fiery elan and the audience seemed to love it.
Among her many teachers were Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory and Sylvia Rosenberg at the Juilliard School. Perhaps that is where Lark learned to sound so idiomatic in this klezmer-infused composition. Or perhaps it is a testament to the universality of music.
The concluding work on the program was Bela Bartok’s Divertimento for String Orchestra. Concertmaster of the ensemble was Massachusetts-born Erin Keefe, concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra, with principal second violinist, Cherry Yeung, assistant principal of the San Diego Symphony; principal viola, Matthew Lipman, music faculty, Stony Brook University; principal cello, Efe Batacigil, principal, Seattle Symphony; and principal bass, Anthony Manzo, music faculty, University of Maryland.
Although Bartok composed this work under pleasant conditions, he was the guest of conductor Paul Sacher at a chalet in the Swiss Alps, and the two outer movements reflect that, the middle movement is dark and foreboding, perhaps mirroring the gathering storm clouds during the summer of 1939 leading to World War II.
In a letter to his son on the completion of the work, Bartok wrote: “The newspapers are full of military articles, they have taken defense measures on the more important passes etc. – military preparedness. I am also worried about whether I shall be able to get home from here if this or that happens.” The Divertimento was the last work he penned before he and his wife fled Hungary.
The principal players had many solo stints throughout the movements in the style of the Concerto Grosso, and all were executed with fine expertise. The last movement included a double fugue and brilliantly played cadenzas by the cello and violin, finishing with a frenzied Vivacissimo coda.
Once again, this concert was an example of Director Barnatan’s creative programming, this time, illustrating the extensive use of folk songs in classical music.
*
Eileen Wingard, a retired violinist with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, is a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts.