Juilliard ChamberFest: Brahms, Piazzolla and Dvorak

Today was the final day of the 2014 ChamberFest, an annual event held each January at Juilliard and performed by students who gave up their last week of winter break to practice and be coached in an interpretation of a significant chamber work.  The festival is a treat for anyone with an interest in such music.  The inclusion of twenty ensembles allows the listener to hear not only favorite masterworks but new and challenging pieces as well.  Though the musicians are technically still students - and this is how I've referred to them in my posts - that designation is somewhat misleading.  Though a few are still at the pre-college level, they are all prodigiously talented professional musicians, many of whom have already given solo recitals and appeared with major orchestras.  Their coaches are not only highly trained educators but are themselves some of the most accomplished and best known chamber musicians in the world.

The program at yesterday's matinee began with the String Sextet No. 2 in G, Op. 36 (1865) by Johannes Brahms.  The work is scored for two violins, two violas and two cellos.  It was written for a singer named Agathe von Siebold with whom the composer was infatuated and for whom he had previously written lieder.  In the first movement, Brahms had the two violins secretly spell out her name.  When von Siebold subsequently broker off her relationship with Brahms, the composer wrote: "Here I have freed myself from my last love."  That was quite a statement from a man still in his early thirties.

The next work was the highlight of the concert, at least as far as I was concerned.  Bearing the deceptively simple title Improvisations, this work by Astor Piazzolla marked the first time a series of improvisations had been performed at a ChamberFest.  The violinist, Johnna Wu, announced to the audience that this was also the first time this group of musicians had played such a work.  The piece was scored for violin, viola, bass, piano and vibraphone and was coached by Noam Sivan to whom the players expressed a great deal of gratitude for having opened their eyes to the possibilities to be found in an improvisational approach to music.  The work actually consisted of three short pieces which together had a wonderful jazzy feel to them.

After intermission, the program concluded with the Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90 (1891) by Antonin Dvorak.  Among the composer's most famous works, it was nicknamed the Dumky because it made use of the Ukrainian duma - a form that might best be described as a melancholy ballad interspersed with upbeat Slavic dances - in all six movements.  This performance featured magnificent playing on the piano part by Adria Ye.  Her performance was so impressive that it's difficult to believe she's still only age 16 and a pre-college student.  The trio itself was coached by Adria Ye's teacher, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Chair of Juilliard's Piano Department.