Spy Concert Review: National Music Festival Opening Night by Steve Parks

The National Music Festival opened its 13th annual season with a rousing full-house concert that may prove 13 is a fortunate number for the festival and for music connoisseurs in attendance Sunday evening at Washington College.

The concert began auspiciously with a pair of piano-and-string ensemble pieces – a quartet and a trio – followed after intermission by an amusing allegro from a serenade played live to accompany the cartoonish 1907 French film (“The Dancing Pig” in English). But the best – a revelation when it debuted in Paris in 1923 – was saved for last. Darius Milhaud’s “La Creation du monde” translating grandly as “The Creation of the World,” was a revelation to me as well. Seventeen exuberant musicians, some playing unusual instruments for an orchestra – saxophone and a drum kit – bring Milhaud’s Book of Genesis re-interpretion to life as a jazz-inflected symphony culminating with the first humans, Adam and Eve.

Initially, the piece was panned by critics who considered it musical “violence” and “noise.” But to me, even before I read the program notes, “Creation” brought to mind George Gershwin’s jazzy masterpiece, “An American in Paris,” debuting five years later in 1928. Gershwin animated automobile traffic in his symphony rather than newly created flora and fauna.

In “Creation,” the saxophone takes the solo lead in what would be the first viola in a standard symphony orchestra, joined in the opening overture by a clarion-call of woodwinds. Moving on to the “chaos before creation” movement, drumbeat rumbles with a jungle-like undertone were dismissed by early critics as the wild dissonance of “backward peoples.” More traditional symphonic passages in a pastoral patch suggest the creation of trees and greenery, followed by jazz-infused flute, oboe and horn solos that welcome animals to planet Earth.

It’s quite a racket, but not inappropriately as the Creation itself caused a ruckus. By the final movement, as man and woman appear to a mixed orchestral hello featuring an alternately soothing and searing sax intro flawlessly performed by “apprentice” Laura Ramsay, it becomes apparent that Milhaud created a whole new genre in classical music beyond reimagining the mere creation of the world as we know it. The piece ends blissfully with a gentle strings-led kiss of a final note.

Many of the opening-night musicians are instructors, referred to in festival-speak as “mentors” to the apprentices, such as aforementioned Ramsay, who come from all over the United States and abroad. (Apprentices had only one rehearsal as of Sunday’s opener.) Later, more apprentices will perform in concert, learning or brushing up on their skills to play, for instance, with a scattering of mentors on closing night Stravinsky’s challenging “Consecration of Spring” and Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 adagio, reorchestrated by festival artistic director Richard Rosenberg, who will conduct as he did for “Creation” on opening night.

Sunday evening led off with Ernest Chausson’s Piano Quartet in A, opus 30, performed by pianist Minji Nam, cellist Joseph Gotoff, violinist Elizabeth Adams and violist Renate Falkner, all of whom are festival mentors. The piece begins with a sonorous cello phrase soon joined by searing violin and viola notes as the piano carries the opening Anime movement to a complex emotional plane. Written not long before Chausson’s death at 44 due to a bicycle accident, the piece reflects what had promised to be a prolific final stage of his career. The lyrical second movement morphs into melodic dance configurations in the third, concluding with a vigorous blending of preceding elements into a dramatically torrid finish.

Next up, Joaquin Turina’s Piano Trio No. 2 in b, opus 76 was briskly played by three University of Maryland College Park musicians led by mentor James Stern on violin, whose doctorate in music could hardly eclipse his virtuosity or his passion for teaching. He is joined by two fellow “Terps” as he calls them – referring to Maryland’s terrapin mascot – David Agia on cello and Leili Asanbekova on piano, both doctorate-worthy apprentices. The string players dive in with a three-bar Lento introducing an allegro molto moderato that embraces an evocative tendency to switch among alternating themes and tempos dotted with brief cello solos. The middle vivace movement has the violin and cello competing for space against emphatic piano statements in classical and romantic forms that reflect both Spanish and French influences. The moods change repeatedly in the final Lento andante and allegro with ominous piano chords and a serene strings interval before returning to passionate intensity to the finish.

Post-intermission offers refreshing levity with Stern leading another threesome. Together they provide music so that a colorized silent-film pig in a tuxedo can dance with his petticoat-swishing human partner. The embarrassed pig strips before changing into various costumes, none of which hide his corkscrew tail. The four-minute piece is taken from Leone Sinigaglia’s Serenata for String Trio. Despite its brevity, the allegro moderato encompasses two themes, both disarming as played by the Stern trio.

This is the first classical concert I can recall reviewing lately in which every piece played was new to me. Quite the ear-opener.

NATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL

Opening night, Sunday, June 1: Chausson’s Piano Quartet in A, Torino’s Piano Trio No. 2, Sinigaglia’s allegro from “Le Cochon Danseur” and Milhaud’s “La Creation du Monde,” Hotchkiss Recital Hall, Gibson Center for the Arts, Washington College, Chestertown. Upcoming events daily through July 14 with Festival Symphony Orchestra concerts Friday and Saturday nights July 6-7 and 13-14. nationalmusic.us