Mannes Recital: Laurie Smukler and Joel Krosnick with Robert McDonald

On Sunday afternoon, violinist Laurie Smukler and cellist Joel Krosnick joined together to give a chamber music recital at Mannes.  The first part of the program consisted of duos for violin and cello by twentieth and twenty-first century composers Richard Wernick, Roger Sessions and Ralph Shapey.  In the second half, the pair were joined by pianist Robert McDonald for a performance of Smetana's piano music.

But the most notable feature of this recital had nothing to do with music.  Mannes, which is leaving its uptown location at the end of the current semester, is apparently doing no further maintenance at its 85th Street address, no matter how minor the work involved.  While one would not expect the school to undertake any major renovations at this juncture, one would think it might at least change the concert hall's lightbulbs when they blow out.  But it seems this is asking too much.  All through the first half of the program, the two performers were forced to constantly change their positions onstage as they sought sufficient light to read their scores by.  That musicians of this quality should be placed in such a situation is genuinely distressing.  It shows a lack of respect not only to them but to the music as well.  At one point, the musicians were forced to start a piece over again.  Even in the second half, Robert McDonald had to ask Joel Krosnick to move so that he could have the cellist in his line of sight.

As for the music itself, it was clearly in the first half that the musicians' hearts lay.  If there were any doubt of this, Joel Krosnick made a short speech before beginning to play in which he emphasized the importance this music held for performers of his generation.   There were three pieces featured - Wernick's three-movement Sonatina in the Shape of a Pearl (2014), Sessions's Duo (an incomplete work, published 1995) and Shapey's eight Duo Variations (premiered in 2002) - none of which I had ever before heard.  All three works were in a modernist vein and went well with one another.

It was the opening piece by Wernick, who was present in the audience for this performance, that I personally found most interesting.  Though often associated with the Boston School, Wernick's music, at least here, was in its dissonance more reminiscent of Schoenberg's work than that of Irving Fine.  I particularly enjoyed the complex second movement marked Passacaglietta, delicately.   

After intermission, the program concluded with Smetana's Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 15 (1854-1855).  Normally, this would have been for me the highlight of the recital.  I had just heard last month at Juilliard's Chamberfest a wonderful performance of this piece that left me deeply moved.  The trio is one of the cornerstones of the Romantic period not only for its heartfelt tribute to the composer's late daughter but also for its incorporation of Czech folk themes decades before Dvořák attempted to work them into his own music.  And certainly Smetana, who after having suffered the horrific loss of most of his family fell victim himself to tinnitus (a condition that eventually progressed to deafness) and finally died mad, can be seen as the epitome of the tragic Romantic artist.  On Sunday afternoon, however, the work just didn't come together for me.  Perhaps the modern pieces played with such passion in the first half rendered it somewhat anticlimactic.

In spite of the lighting problems, this was an excellent recital.  Laurie Smukler and Joel Krosnick are both superb instrumentalists and I thought myself lucky to have had this rare opportunity to hear them perform together.  And Robert McDonald proved himself a fine pianist in the second half.