The Catskill Chronicle

By Barry Plaxen

After two solo concerts for guitar and then piano, the 2010 Shandelee Music Festival offered its second Chamber Music concert on August 12 in the beautiful Sunset Concert Pavilion.

On the first somewhat cool evening of the summer season, the audience was treated to a warm and comfortable journey through Eastern Europe. Cellist David Requiro and pianist Cullan Bryant offered up four technically difficult selections with a clever variety of moods and modes, showing off their highly honed skills and their joyous and expressive musicality. These two meticulous gentlemen performers lovingly enthralled the audience with four works by as many composers, as follows.

One can see why Prokofiev’s “Sonata for Cello and Piano in C,” Op. 119 (1949), has been called spineless by some misguided people. This staple in the cello/piano repertoire is very “un-Prokofiev-like” as it is extremely consonant, lyrical and melodious, a departure from much of the composers previous compositions. It makes one wonder if Prokofiev, in his “older” age, was becoming more like his former Peter-and-the-Wolf-Classical-Symphony self of yore, than his often deeply introspective self. But just because it is “entertaining,” lyrical and jaunty, and waxes melodic in its three movements, that does not preclude one being aware of its serious conclusion.

Perhaps the most celebrated classical composer from the Caucasian Republics is the Georgian, Sulkan Fyodorovich Tsintsadze (1925-1991). (I notice that his middle name is often dropped, as it was on this occasion, possibly indicative of the latter 20^th Century feelings of some former Soviet citizens disassociating themselves from unasked-for Russian connections.) A composer and cellist, Tsintsadze, like Bartok & Kodaly, used folk melodies, rhythms and intonations (Georgian, in his case) and immersed them with Eastern-European classical music.

Tsintsadze wrote operas, ballets, musical comedies, songs, film scores, choral, orchestral, and chamber pieces. It is his many string quartets that are his most well known and appreciated works. His “Five Pieces on Folk Themes” (1950) for Cello and Piano, is a colorful journey in Georgian music with an exciting pizzicato (on the cello, of course) second movement titled “Tchonghuri” (Choghuri). The Choghuri is a nylon-stringed Georgian instrument that dates back to the middle ages.

As explained by Requiro, unlike Bartok & Kodaly, composer Leos Janacek also used the rhythms of his (Czech) language in his music, besides the folk melodies that they all studied and interpolated into classical music. His “Pohadka” (Fairytale) tells a story, but the music stands on its own. It is an interesting work in that it is not as dramatic as the Janacek pieces often heard, but is more “poetic and illustrative.”

Following the unsuccessful premiere and critical lambasting of Rachmaninoff ‘s first symphony he went into a deep depression and could not compose. Coming out of it, about four years later after therapy, with his second piano concerto and his cello sonata, critics claimed he found his “own” voice. (I have to disagree somewhat because I find his first symphony a most exciting and thrilling piece with Rachmaninovian signatures all through it.)

His “Sonata for Cello and Piano in G,” Op. 19, goes slightly further into his pianistic style than the second piano concerto, leading towards more of his solo piano style. It is sometimes more romantic, than percussive. And in this piece he seems to combine the romantic melodies and percussiveness as opposed to later when he clearly separated the romantic melodies from the percussive sections of his piano works. A most interesting aspect; I found.

Requiro and Bryant are joyful to watch. They are separated somewhat in age, Requiro being the younger. Truly world class performers, the program seemed too short to me, even though time-wise it wasn’t. And after their wonderful and most-entertaining performance, the rapt audience was treated to wonderfully moist cheesecake.

The Shandelee Festival continues through August 19 and 21 when its raison d’etre, The International Artists of Shandelee, future world-class concert piano soloists, perform. www.shandelee.org. Phone: 845-439-3277.

*Musicians pictured in above provided photos – left – Cullan Bryant and right – David Requiro.