CHICAGO CLASSICAL REVIEW Memorable Tchaikovsky opens North Shore Chamber Music Festival Thu Jun 04, 2015 at 1:50 pm By Lawrence A. Johnson The Ariel Quartet performed music of Beethoven Wednesday night at the North Shore Chamber Music Festival in NorthbrooK. It’s hard to believe, but there was a time not all that long ago when TchaiKovsKy’s Piano Trio in A minor was more talKed about than performed. The celebrated recording by ItzhaK Perlman, Lynn Harrell and Vladimir Ashkenazy (EMI/Angel) did much to restore the worK to its current popularity though it still tooK decades to nudge its way into the regular repertory. TchaiKovsKy’s epic Trio was the principal worK Wednesday night in the opening concert of the North Shore Chamber Music Festival at the Village Presbyterian Church in NorthbrooK. And, as performed by violinist and festival artistic director Vadim Gluzman, cellist MarK Kosower and pianist William Wolfram, this was as compelling and richly idiomatic a performance of this fascinating work as one is ever liKely to hear. Subtitled “In memory of a great artist,” TchaiKovsKy’s homage to his colleague NiKolai Rubinstein was said to be inspired by a picnic excursion in which the two men encountered a band of Russian folK musicians. Yet the epic scale and expressive scope of the Piano Trio is, as Wolfram said in his introduction, “almost operatic.” The final movement’s variations are among TchaiKovsKy’s most inspired achievements. Not only do they appear to reflect the mercurial personality of the prickly yet charismatic Rubinstein, but the remarKable range and variety seem to encompass something broader and deeper of the Russian soul itself, in tandem with the elegiac gloom of the opening movement. Even a “popcorn” cell phone interruption (twice) didn’t disturb the momentum and communicative thrust of Wednesday’s remarKable performance. With Wolfram’s powerful keyboard work anchoring the music, Gluzman and Kosower proved wonderfully simpatico colleagues, playing with focused, gleaming tone that strongly conveyed the melancholy of the opening movement. The variations were fully characterized with the burnished tone of Kosower–principal of the Cleveland Orchestra—consistently beautiful. The fugal variation went with fizzing energy and the ensuing section had a gentle wistful quality that was most affecting. Launched with immense vitality and swagger, the finale was exhilarating with the coda’s reprise of the somber opening theme feeling resonant and inevitable. In the first half, the Ariel Quartet made an impressive festival debut in Beethoven’s “Razumovsky” Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, no.2. The young Israeli ensemble has a lean, slightly astringent sonority well suited to this middle-period work. The musicians firmly conveyed the minor-key drama of the opening movement, bringing a physical quality to their playing, and often swaying with the music. Yet the musicianship was always close-knit, the Ariel members watching and listening to each other attentively. If the otherworldly heights of the sublime Adagio weren’t quite scaled, the playing had a glowing radiance and went with a natural ease and conversational ebb and flow. The players’ off-the-beat accents in the ensuing Allegretto put across the music’s restless agitation. The playing was especially engaging in the Russian folksong passage–a theme also famously borrowed by MussorgsKy for Boris Godunov–with the musicians batting it bacK and forth with light agility. The performance was rounded off with a spirited account of the galumphing finale, dynamic details closely observed without ever sounding pedantic. The Ariel Quartet is clearly a greatly gifted ensemble whose star is on the rise. The evening led off with Alfred SchnittKe’s Suite in the Old Style, heard in an arrangement for string quintet. In this artful homage the Russian composer mines 17th- and 18th-century models. UnliKe his Moz-Art à la Haydn, SchnittKe mostly plays it straight until the finale where his acerbic style breaKs through the surface gallanteries. Ilya Kaler’s elegant, sweet-toned violin nicely brought out the Rococo charm, bacKed by refined tone and nimble articulation from his colleagues in the neo-Baroque fugues. Yet the players also conveyed Schnittke’s subversive element, as with the duel of hard pizzicatos between Kaler and Gluzman. The North Shore Chamber Music Festival continues 7:30 p.m. Friday at The Village Presbyterian Church in Northbrook. The program offers Golijov’s The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind and Schumann’s Piano Quintet and duo arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne. nscmf.org 847-370-3984. CHICAGO CLASSICAL REVIEW Bach and Schumann works shine at North Shore Chamber Music Festival Sat Jun 06, 2015 at 12:34 pm By Tim Sawyier Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe performed Schumann’s duo version of the Bach Chaconne Friday night at the North Shore Chamber Music Festival in Northbrook. The North Shore Chamber Music Festival continued Friday night at the Village Presbyterian Church in Northbrook, where the august roster of artists offered penetrating readings in a compelling program. The evening opened with artistic director and violinist Vadim Gluzman and executive director and pianist Angela Yoffe performing Schumann’s version of Bach’s Chaconne for violin. Schumann created violin and piano arrangements of all of Bach’s solo violin works (as did Mendelssohn), leaving the violin part virtually unchanged while adding a minimal accompaniment that is largely imitative and fills out the harmonies implied in the violin writing. It is hard to imagine a better performance of this Bach cornerstone. Gluzman and Yoffe were completely locked in from beginning to end, Yoffe sensitively responding to Gluzman’s intelligently calculated rubato. In Yoffe’s hands the robust bass Schumann adds to the work’s central major section made the music all the more moving (if possible), and her poised, austere statements of the original theme under the violin’s swirling figuration helped clarify the musical roadmap. Gluzman’s playing was of the highest order throughout. Osvaldo Golijov’s The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind featured clarinetist Ilya Shterenberg and the Ariel Quartet. Spanning five movements and inspired by the three historical languages of the Jewish people (Aramaic, Yiddish, and sacred Hebrew), the 35- minute work is largely constituted of two textures: a slow, plaintive, gestural writing, contrasted with violent klezmer-infused episodes. While each is persuasive in its own right, the thematic material is insufficient to sustain a work of such duration. Nonetheless, the playing was dynamic and committed. Shterenberg and the Ariel members’ readings of the work’s pyrotechnical passages created a sense of ancient urgency, and the contrasting slow material was amply imbued with idiomatic nuance. The second half featured Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44, with Gluzman joined by pianist William Wolfram, violinist Lisa Shihoten, violist Atar Arad, and cellist Mark Kosower in a pristine rendition. Wolfram’s playing managed to smolder without ever being overbearing, and Kosower’s tender rendition of the first movement’s second theme elicited equally sensitive responses from his colleagues. The ensemble achieved a remarkably unified sound in the desiccated funeral march, Arad’s solo viola contributions standing out as especially polished. The third movement was fleet and breathless, and the finale burbled with energy, culminating in a trenchant rendition of its closing double fugue. The evening concluded with a nachspiel (literally “after play”) of three short dances. Gluzman shone with Yoffe in Alfred Schnittke’s Polka from his incidental music to Gogol’s The Overcoat, playing with reckless abandon and aggression. Shterenberg then joined the pair for a Shostakovich Waltz, which had similar flair. The Ariel Quartet closed the evening with a sultry performance of Astor Piazzolla’s “Tango Primavera Porteña” from Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. The North Shore Chamber Music Festival concludes 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Village Presbyterian Church in Northbrook with a program of Busoni, Mozart, and Vivaldi. nscmf.org CHICAGO TRIBUNE Chicago area classical music recommendations Harpsichordist Jory Vinikour in his Lincoln Park apartment, in Chicago, on March 1, 2015. John von Rhein • Contact Reporter MAY 29, 2015, 8:41 AM North Shore Chamber Music Festival: Directors Vadim Gluzman, violin, and Angela Yoffe, piano, conclude the fifth-anniversary celebration with concerts by the Ariel String Quartet, pianist William Wolfram, clarinetist Ilya Shterenberg and others. Schumann's Piano Quintet and Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" are among the highlights. 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Village Presbyterian Church, 1300 Shermer Road, Northbrook; $10-$45; 847-370-3984, nscmf.org [email protected] Twitter @Jvonrhein Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune CHICAGO TRIBUNE Chicago area classical music recommendations Chicago Philharmonic closes its 25th anniversary season June 7 at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall. John von Rhein • Contact Reporter JUNE 5, 2015, 11:54 AM Northbrook Symphony Orchestra: The ensemble steps up its collaboration with the Music Institute of Chicago by featuring eight young soloists from the MIC Academy. The program, conducted by music director Lawrence Rapchak and Academy director James Setapen, includes music by Spohr, Mozart, Haydn and others. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston; $30-$40; 847-272-0755, 800-838- 3006; northbrooksymphony.org Chicago