In all of these the violins took on a leading quality that recalled Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. Variations 1, 8, and 16 were variously buoyant, soaring and resplendent. It’s very relaxing, soft and slow.” Dinnerstein’s simplicity-a difficult tone to strike when technical demands weigh heavily in the balance-thus spoke to a child’s unfettered worldview as much as to his father’s verbose classical allegiances. My six-year-old son, taking notes beside me, wrote down: “I like the music. Like a photograph developing in the ears, it revealed its totality one gradation at a time. Dinnerstein’s touch, as delicate as it was forthright, was a precise sequence of suspensions and emulsions. Bathed in the Aria’s wordless songcraft, it was impossible to be unmoved. After being invited by the string orchestra A Far Cry to lead a new ensemble arrangement of the Goldberg, she became part of an experience which, though insurmountable in concept, unraveled so organically as to feel inevitable. Pianist Simone Dinnerstein keeps her own fire for Bach close to heart yet guides its warmth in a manner anyone can understand.
Fogel’s words speak to the inherency of Bach’s art, and of the spark by which centuries of listeners have kindled its psychosomatic flames. Or in shaping time was Bach lost to all but the count, not consonance? One in the other, carriage and contained, body and spirit, hitched, indivisible.” Apt images to consider in relation to this masterwork for keyboard, wherein mathematical and unquantifiable principles intermingle until one cannot separate the two. Fogel describes the opening Aria: “All phases have beauty.
In her cycle of poems inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Alice B. Carla Bley Trio review for All About Jazz And while the difference of guitars was certainly noticeable and appropriately chosen, adding especial vibrancy to the Ravel, it was more so the way in which they were handled that proved them worthy of expression. In addition to her willingness to meet art with art, it seemed to serve as a metaphor for what all of us were hearing: a spool of filament unraveled and refashioned through a combination of instrument and human touch. During the latter, a woman in the audience sat on the floor to work on her crocheting. Other evocative journeys included Enrique Granados’s Danzas Españolas, in which architectural splendor shared oxygen with quieter pictures of history and Ferdinando Carulli’s Andante varié de Beethoven. Two mazurkas by Frédéric Chopin were also highlights, walking a tightrope between sul ponticello and sul tasto phrasings while holding firm to a melodic core. Five pieces from Reynaldo Hahn’s La Rossignol Éperdu were even more wonderous, weaving strands of recollection through sonic photographs in color schemes that, while faded, retained their complex interrelationships. The second of these was an emblematic example of the duo’s proprietary blend of freedom and restraint. Of these, two selections from Isaac Albéniz’s Suite Española, struck that same balance between past and future, articulated with a fine touch within a circle of intimate regard. For just as a famous chorale by Robert Schumann, from his Album für die Jugend, opened the concert with a tune that was clearly a product of its era, so did Ricker and Balmer close with Maurice Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, which by virtue of its watery textures and resplendent final chord comfortably transcended boundaries of time drawn by subsequent listeners.īetween those two poles of evocation, each an answer to its own question of motivic faith, we encountered a range of geographic and cultural materials. The program’s title, Peculiar Arabesques, is shared also by the duo’s latest album, which deepens a diurnal approach to repertoire. Duo Orfeo-graced Stonington, Connecticut’s La Grua Center for the fourth time, presenting European art music of the 19th century arranged for classical and electric guitars. On 27 July 2019, Joseph Ricker and Jamie Balmer-a.k.a.