Taking place at the Dan Hotel Eilat from February 3rd
to 6th 2016, the 11th Eilat Chamber Music Festival offered a number
of events that were different from conventional concert fare, highlighting the
fact that this was…a festival, and certainly one of Israel’s best.
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| Roe and Anderson (photo:Maxim Reider) |
The Anderson & Roe Piano Duo’s first performance, “The
Rite of Spring”, promised to be a concert played by two young and outstanding
pianists, but Elizabeth Joy Roe and Greg Anderson are a duo with a difference!
They formed their partnership in 2002 at the Juilliard School of Music and
nowadays tour extensively as recitalists and orchestra soloists, they compose
and engage in much arranging of works and they present their audiences with
action-packed, polished and mind-boggling concerts that keep the listener
perched on the edge of his seat. Relaxed and chatty, they talk about the works
to be performed. But they bring to the concert hall much more than hype:
whether you like their quirky explanations or not, their playing creates a
kaleidoscope of vibrant musical canvases. Opening the February 3rd program
with Johannes Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn opus 56B (two pianos),
they colored the work with magically sensitive and contrasted playing, fine
shaping, majestic gestures and with the mystery of what lies behind sotto voce
playing. Their reading of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” (one piano) conjured up
the power, cruelty and paganism of the ballet’s storyline, gripping the
audience with the work’s asymmetry and jarring accents, their musical
description of the sword lethal and uncompromising. But their playing was not
just muscular: it was strategically timed, conveying the ballet’s message of
estrangement and aloneness. Whisking away the intensity of the “Rite of
Spring”, Anderson and Roe played their own arrangement of much-loved melodies
from Mozart operas, with playful, opera-buffa-joy and wonderfully cantabile melodies,
rounding the number off with their virtuosic, full-on “Ragtime alla Turca”.
Their “Carmen thriller” arrangement for two pianos set before the listener so
many aspects of Bizet’s “Carmen” – the story’s complexity, its love content,
the darker side of gypsy life and much fiery energy. And how delicate and
filigree-fine their rendition of the Ballet from Gluck’s “Orphée et Eurodice”
was, describing love of a totally different nature, the program ending with a
touching rendition of Bob Thiele and George David Weiss’s “What a Wonderful
World” (1967), Roe and Anderson’s playing sparkling with optimism and tenderness.
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| Marianna Vasileva (photo:Maxim Reider) |
A large audience filled the Tarshish Hall at the Dan Hotel
on February 6th to hear violinist Marianna Vasileva (Russia-Israel) perform
all 24 of Niccolò Paganini’s Caprices. Apart from only one other piece, Paganini’s
only violin publication was this set of solo Caprices, published in 1820, probably
written between 1801 and 1817. Considered the last word in violin technique, they
were dedicated to “all artists” and comprise nearly all his prized violin
techniques (they do not include artificial harmonics) in exceptionally
demanding settings. Paganini never performed them in public. Not merely etudes,
Vasileva has referred to some as “folk music”, with Paganini infusing the
miniatures with music he was hearing around him. Vasileva has been working on
the pieces for two years and claims that this will be an ongoing project for
years to come. Dazzling and, indeed, winning the audience with their
intricacies, the artist gave expression to the pieces’ charm and intensity and to
the many contrasts between- and within them, to the violin’s many techniques
but, above all, to the work’s musical interest. Presenting
of the individual character of each piece, she held the listeners’ attention for
the duration of the work. For many people attending the recital, it would have
been their first encounter with the mystery and inner-voiced tremolo of “The
Trill” (no.6), the imitation of wind instruments in “The Hunt” (no.9) and the sheer
virtuosity of “The Devil’s Laughter” (no.13).
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| Francois Salque, Victor Peirani (photo:Maxim Reider) |
“Just About Midnight” on February 4th was an
opportune time for night owls to indulge in a rich and unique program of
classical music, tango, jazz, gypsy- and new music, performed and improvised by
two French artists – ‘cellist François Salque and accordionist/composer Vincent
Peirani. In fact, Salque, one of the most outstanding and interesting ‘cellists
of his generation and no new face to the Eilat Chamber Music Festival, had
performed Chopin’s Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano in g-minor opus 65 (piano: Ivan
Rudin) the previous day. A personal project of Salque and Peirani’s has been
collecting and recording traditional music of Central- and Eastern Europe. The
concert opened with a fervent and moving reading of Ernest Bloch’s “Prayer” (1924),
followed by the Peirani/Mienniel setting of Astor Piazzolla’s “Alone, All Alone”,
commencing as a meditative, nostalgic mood piece, then breaking into exuberant
bravura. There was Milena Dolinova/Krystof
Maratka’s Czardas IV, beginning with a sweetly sentimental section, to be followed
by the wild, brilliant czardas itself and Bohemian composer/’cellist David
Popper’s “Hungarian Rhapsody” (1894) also starting in a quasi-improvisational style,
sending the ‘cello into its highest register before moving on to its inevitable
excited agenda. Salque and Peirani paid vibrant homage to French gypsy culture with
their sensitive and imaginative playing of works by Django Reinhardt and Stéphane
Grappelli. And what could constitute more poignant night music than Vincent
Peirani’s “Choral” – a modal piece, evocative of the pipe organ - so
introspective, calm and suave. Vincent Peirani’s profound musicianship and
aesthetic sense are what put him in a class on his own. Peirani and François
Salque’s performance lent the nocturnal concert a classy, sophisticated aura.
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| Trilogy (photo:Maxim Reider) |
If concert-goers attending “Breaking Bad” at 23:00 on
February 5th were expecting to end the day with a soothing musical
“night-cap’, they we presented with a wake-up call to a new concert experience,
in which classical music can exist alongside popular-, jazz- and film music. The
Belgian-based ensemble “Trilogy” was formed in 2011 by classical violinists
Hrachya Avanesyan, Lorenzo Gatto and Yossif Ivanov. The three brilliant artists
achieved overnight recognition with their first video “Pulp Fiction”.
Addressing the audience, Avanesyan referred to the program as a “summary of the
ensemble’s work”. At the Eilat event, the violinists were joined by Alexander
Gurning (piano, electronic keyboard) and Eddie Francisque (percussion) in a performance
of verve and high amplification! The program opened with Trilogy’s
transcription of Vivaldi’s Concerto in a-minor RV522 for three violins and
piano Their setting of the Bizet-Giraud “Carmen” Suite was given a sympathetic
reading, with John Williams’ dejected and melancholic “Schindler’s List” theme empathic
and highly sensitive. The artists’ sense of music as a game to be played was reflected
in the ensemble’s arrangement of “Man with a Harmonica” from Ennio Morricone’s
1968 soundtrack to “Once upon a Time in the West”. If in Brahms’ Hungarian
Dance no.1 (1869) they offered a mix of mellow playing with Roma-gypsy
temperament, the artists’ pulsating, energetic, revved up performance of
Soviet-Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance” (1942) prepared
listeners for the energy level of these young players would accelrate as the
night wore on. Later items on the program featured such pieces as a medley from
“Daft Punk” and music from “Pulp Fiction” in performances of devil-may-care, unleashed
energy and undaunted pluck, as the players let their hair down to show
festival-goers what classical musicians are made of!
Exciting, enriching and of a high standard, the 2016 Eilat
Chamber Music Festival drew large crowds to its events. Leonid Rozenberg has
been the festival’s general and artistic director since its inception 11 years
ago. Concerts were introduced by Yossi Schiffmann. As in former years, the staff
of the Dan Hotel (manager: Mr. Lior Mucznik) went out of their way to make concert-goers
welcome, adding festival sparkle to the four days.
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