Portland Press Herald
August 16, 2007
Concert Review of Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Cuckson trio premiere chamberfest highlight

Well, it's happened. A composer has written a work that looks
back with affection and nostalgia to the Second Viennese School,
with special reference to Arnold Schoenberg. Robert Cuckson's
Piano Trio (1992), which was given its Maine premiere at the
opening concert of the Salt Bay Chamberfest, Tuesday at Round
Top Center for the Arts, has the jagged atmosphere of 12-tone
music without its technical restrictions and limitations.

The piece was well played by the festival's founder and artistic
director, Wilhelmina Smith, cello, Hiroko Yajima, violin, and
Thomas Sauer, piano, who together make up the Mannes Trio.
Cuckson, who teaches at the Mannes College of Music and Curtis
Institute, was in the audience.

It is easy to tell that the work was written by a pianist. Its most
brilliant passages are for the keyboard, which sometimes
overpowers the strings. It also employs traditional forms such as
variations and unifying use of motifs, in the service of a
thoroughly modern sensibility. The trio was preceded by an early
Beethoven String Trio in D Major (Opus 9, No. 2), which called
attention to Cuckson's tributes to the earlier Viennese School,
especially in a multiple surprise ending that would have made
Ludwig laugh.

While it is hard to judge a work on first hearing, the trio's major
defect is its length, which detracts from the effectiveness of its
most telling sections. It may be hard to relinquish a well-written
development, but Webern would have done it without blinking
an eye and condensed everything into a musical black hole
occupying 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The most moving part of
the work was its Lento, which one audience member remarked
could only have been written after Hiroshima.

After the Cuckson, and intermission, the Dvorak Quintet for
Strings in E-flat Major (Opus 97), sounded even more lushly
Romantic. Every time I hear this work, it becomes more evident
that the Czech composer invented Native American music, or at
least its stereotype, with its drumbeats and pentatonic scale.
What is more surprising is how he contrasts his invented native
themes with those representing the European settlers, especially
in the joyous harvest home of the last movement, which could
only have been written by a farmer at heart. Dvorak also seems
to have sympathized with the first inhabitants, who believed it
was better to starve in April than to work too hard in September.

The whole work was gracefully performed, with a sonority that
took full advantage of the acoustics at Round Top's Darrows
Barn. Violist Samuel Rhodes, who played the additional viola in
the quintet, deserves special mention, as does Wilhelmina Smith,
who appeared in all three works of the evening.

The Chamberfest continues on Friday with two contemporary
compositions and the Saint Saens "Carnival of the Animals." Two
other concerts are scheduled for Aug. 21 and 24.

Christopher Hyde’s Classical Beat Column appears in the Maine Sunday Telegram.