Portland Press Herald
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Concert Review of Tuesday, August 26, 2003

Salt Bay doesn't shy from challenge
The Salt Bay Chamberfest, at the Round Top Center for the Arts in Damariscotta, keeps becoming more popular, in spite of - or is it because of? - its performance of challenging contemporary works, as well as favorites of the chamber music repertoire.

This year, each program concentrates on composers from a single country. Tuesday's program featured Czechoslovakia, and the final concert of the season, on Friday, will be devoted to the French, with works by Ravel, Poulenc, and the contemporary Nicholas Maw.

The program Tuesday let a capacity audience dip its toes in the water gradually, starting with a pleasant performance of the Sonata for Flute and Piano by Bohuslav Martinu, written in 1945. While "modern" in feeling, the work, written while the composer was staying on Cape Cod, is atmospheric, almost impressionistic. The final movement, which includes many virtuoso passages on the flute, is said to have been inspired, at least in part, by an injured bird that had been nursed and set free by the composer and his wife. Whatever it was, the bird calls on the flute don't sound like the whippoorwill it was supposed to have been. Any one who has heard that loud and insistent bird under his bedroom window will never forget it.

The piece was beautifully played by Joshua Smith and pianist, Pedja Muzijevic, but we'll have to go to the bird song archives at Cornell to find out what Martinu was imitating.

Muzijevic really got down to business with Mark Steinberg on violin and Burt Hara on clarinet in a Sonata a tre by Karel Husa, written in 1982. This is a work of extremes, ranging from the near-violent to the merest whispers of a piano string touched by fingers, or fingernails. Each movement not only explores the possibilities of one of the instruments, but also its interactions and similarities, in terms of timbre and overtones, with the others. In some ways, however, it was as much an atmospheric pastorale as the Martinu, with references to folk instruments and bird calls, and with some very clever rhythms of the type exploited by Bartok. In terms of sound alone, the sonata is fascinating. To experience its musical values would require a few more hearings.

The Dvorak Piano Quintet in A (Opus 81), on the other hand, is almost too much of an open book. Its problem is the glorious opening theme stated by the cello, after which everything, no matter how well-written or deeply felt, seems an anti-climax. Strangely enough, as the fine program notes by Mark Mandarano point out, the first movement is also the most classically formal, with its development of that theme, while in the rest Dvorak indulges his love for folk music.

All four movements, however, are spellbinding, and were played with great effect, earning the quintet a well-deserved standing ovation.

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