Continuing this season's Festival
Miami, Sept. 24 marked the return performance of the University
of Miami's resident string quartet, the Bergonzi Quartet.
Made up of outstanding members of the Phillip and Patricia
Frost School of Music's string faculty, the quartet has become
one of the bright lights of Miami's musical scene.
After the massive artistic success of last year's program,
would they be able to equal the quality of last season's offering,
which still rates in my memory as one of the greatest musical
concerts ever witness live.
Happily, the Bergonzi did not disappoint, even under these
highest of expectations. The program showcased these players'
virtuosity and versatility. Beginning with the most standard
piece on the program, they opened with Mendelssohn's Quartet
in E minor. The ensemble approached with typical skill and
accuracy. First Violin Glenn Basham played Mendelssohn's complex
and hurried melismatic passages with great skill and beauty.
The scherzo was thrilling and the andante beautiful. Oddly,
Mendelssohn's first movement was the last convincing of the
work and was slightly outshone by the following three movements.
Closing the first half of the program was the famous String
Quartet., op. 11 by Samuel Barber. Written very early in his
career, this quartet is nonetheless on of the most famous
works of its genre written in its century. Most noted is the
middle movement, the famous "Adagio" for Strings.
Heard here in its original arrangement for string quartet
(Barber later arranged it both for string orchestra and for
chorus) the Quartet approached this piece with a flair for
drama. While pacing the final movements tightly, the transition
into the second movement was labored as if preparing for the
performance of a masterwork, and their promise was delivered.
This reading seemed almost effortless, as if the players
simply stepped aside and let Barber's beautiful music do all
the work. however, the music is far too difficult for such
a narrow perspective. It is the great artistry of these fine
players that allowed this performance to be so successful.
Clsing the concert was Ravel's only string quartet. It is
here that the ensemble's versatility came shining forth. Creating
seemingly endless varieties of color and timbre, the quartet
discovered beautiful moments of vibratoless chords accompanying
a warm, tender melody in Basham's vioin. Their reading reflected
an intimate knowledge and understanding of the work.
Violist Pamela McConnell deserves special mention. Rarely
has this listener been treated to such warm, tender, and beautiful
viola playing.
Her sound is always discernable in the chords and counterpoint,
but only in the most positive sense.
Too many vilists are lost in the was of the string quartet
sound, whereas her cutting and beautiful tone rings through,
a full contributor to the pieces' beauty.
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