On Sunday afternoon at Christ and St. Stephen's Church on West 69th Street the Omega Ensemble performed works by Shostakovich, Brahms and Mendelssohn as well as a medley of virtuoso violin pieces. This was the first chance I'd had to hear the ensemble perform since last May; I noted, however, that the musicians playing at this recital were all listed on the program as "guest artists."
The program opened with the fourth movement allegretto from Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67 (1944). As an introduction to the full program, it was an odd choice. Written while World War II was still raging and details of the Holocaust were only first coming to the world's attention, the movement (aptly termed a "Dance of Death" in the Wikipedia article) is utterly bleak and filled with despair. Shostakovich was not Jewish himself, but it would have been difficult for him not to have recognized an analogy in the plight of the Jews under Hitler to the oppression the Russian people were at the same time experiencing under Stalin. Reinforcing this interpretation was Shostakovich's use of the same Jewish melody in his String Quartet No. 8, perhaps the most personal of all his chamber works.
As was customary at all the Omega Ensemble's recitals, this opening work was performed by a young musician referred to as a "Next Generation Artist." Here that performer was the violinist Ari Boutris. He was accompanied by cellist Brook Speltz and pianist Dominic Cheli.
The full program then opened with Fritz Kreisler's Praeludium and Allegro, Brahms's Contemplation as arranged by Jascha Hefeitz, Witold Lutoslawski's Subito, and Manuel Ponce's Estrellita, again arranged by Heifetz. These were all showpieces designed to display the talents of the violinist, here Brendan Speltz, to best advantage.
This was followed by Brahms's Sonata No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 38 (1862-1865). As can be seen by the dates of composition, the entire work was not completed in a single attempt. Brahms had originally composed the first two movements, along with an adagio he later deleted, in 1862 and only returned to the work three years later at which time he composed the final movement, an allegro whose opening theme is taken from Bach's Contrapunctus 13 from Die Kunst der Fuge. The entire sonata is actually "a homage to J.S. Bach" as the principal theme of the first movement is also taken from that same masterpiece. Perhaps because Brahms himself played the piano at the work's Mannheim premiere, the composer was very careful to note that in this work, dedicated to cellist Josef Gänsbacher, the piano part should be given as much importance as that of the cello. He wrote:
"[the piano] should be a partner - often a leading, often a watchful and considerate partner - but it should under no circumstances assume a purely accompanying role."
After intermission, the program concluded with Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor, Op. 66 (1845). This was a fairly late work, written only two years before the composer's untimely death in 1847, and displays the full range of Mendelssohn's genius. By the time he came to write the piece, the piano trio already had a fairly distinguished history. Originally a genre that even in Haydn's time had emphasized the piano part and made use of the strings only in a supportive role (Haydn had in fact titled his earliest trios "Sonatas for pianoforte with accompaniment of violin and violoncello"), it had been given a much more balanced arrangement by Beethoven, most notably in his masterpiece the Archduke Trio, in which the strings were raised to the level of full partners. And, of course, Mendelssohn himself had already had the experience of writing his own D minor trio, the Op. 49, six years before. The most remarkable feature of the Op. 66, which is not nearly so famous or often performed as the earlier trio, was Mendelssohn's implementation in the final movement of a well known 1524 Lutheran chorale Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ.
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