MUSIC FOR THE PEOPLE (12/11/2010)

For over a century, the People's Symphony Concerts has provided the opportunity for folks with limited incomes to experience some of the world's greatest musical artists. Its motto is:  "To bring the best music to students and workers at minimum prices."   The PSC has three series (this season) featuring such artists as the Juilliard String Quartet and Garrick Ohlsson.

On Saturday, December 11 at Washington Irving High School, violinist Daniel Hope and pianist Roman Rabinovich gave a program that balanced two standards with two less-frequently performed works.  In all honesty, I had come to the program expecting to hear two rarely performed works, a sonata for violin and piano by holocaust composer Erwin Schulhoff and a Theme and Variations by Olivier Messiaen.  It was explained that the pianist Wu Man, who was to have appeared with Hope had been in an accident and that Roman Rabinovich was filling in. While I was disappointed not to hear the Schulhoff and the Messiaen, the program was still extremely satisfying.


The first piece on the program Leos Janacek's Sonata for Violin and Piano occupied the composer for over seven years as his native region of Moravia suffered through the first world war.  The sonata reflects both a nostalgia for more peaceful times along with the discomfort of foreign invasion, in this case by Russia.  The work is permeated with folk or folk-like melodies contrasted with insistent, sometimes violent, interjections.  One is sometimes reminded of Bartok.  The very quick changes in character and movement from piano to violin require the utmost attention from the performers.  Although the piano often overbalanced the violin, the ensemble was usually brilliant and the two performers performed as a true duo.


The Brahms Sonata in A Major was performed modestly and beautifully.  It was treated as intimate chamber music with neither performer going to extremes.  The steady, comfortable Brahms nicely balanced the more volatile and impassioned Janacek.


After an intermission the pianist returned to the stage to perform Stravinsky's  Three Movements from Petrouchka, three extracts from the ballet arranged for piano solo by the composer.  Pianists too often treat this work in a brashy, splashy exhibitionistic way.  Rabinovich played it as if he were actually accompanying the ballet.  He constantly revealed the setting and characters conveyed in the music.  In the second movement, "Chez Petrouchka" he did an exceptional job of individualizing the lines of music, each having its distinct character.


For their closing work, the ensemble performed Cesar Franck's demanding and beloved Sonata in A Major. In the third movement, an amazingly intimate sound was created by both performers and achieved the epitome of gallic melancholy, relieved by the glorious canonic final movement.


A grateful audience offered thunderous applause and the duo returned to perform a violin transcription of Mendelssohn's "On Wings of Song."  Hope is very comfortable speaking to audiences and he related an anecdote concerning the young Mendelssohn.  Like Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn often had entire compositions worked out in his head and needed merely to write out the notes.  Apparently, for the first performance of his Trio in D minor he had not been able to write out the complete piano part.  However, in order not to give the impression that he was performing from memory he placed blank sheets of staff paper on the piano and indicated to the page turner when to turn the "blank" pages.  The audience enjoyed this little story and also the duos enchanting performance of Mendelssohn's much loved song.