Spy Music Review: An Ascendent Interlude Concert by Steve Parks

“The Lark” not only ascended but soared to the top of the program of Chesapeake Music’s Interlude matinee concert at the Ebenezer Theater Sunday, starring violinist Stella Chen and pianist Janice Carissa whose youthful exuberance was surpassed only by their extraordinary talent and technical virtuosity.

Until just the night before, the concert was to be led off with Eugene Ysaye’s Sonata for Solo Violin. But for whatever reason – perhaps that the opening number should better reflect the skills of each musician or that there should be one more familiar piece on a program of boldly challenging works rarely performed in concert (not a bad thing at all) – the players settled on English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams’ romantic “The Lark Ascending,” inspired by a late 19th century poem by George Meredith. The piece opens with a quivering violin trill of a bird taking flight, accompanied by a weepingly tender piano suggestion of the lark’s song before settling into a confidently soaring melodic flyover.

A world premiere performance of American composer Robert Paterson’s Adagio for Solo Violin, written in 2021 as a birthday gift for his violinist friend Adam Abeshouse, opens with a quite modern – call it post-post modern – approach with dissonance and sudden shifts in tempo and attitude from folky to furious. Chen handles it all deftly. Then, almost admittedly in her remarks, Chen shows off her technical acuity and dexterity on Rachmaninoff’s notoriously difficult Prelude in G Minor, Op. 23, No. 5, attacking the strings throughout with astonishing speed. Fortunately, it’s a relatively short piece or her right arm may have gone numb.

Robert Schumann’s Bunte Blatter (English translation from German to English is Colorful Clouds), including all 10 short pieces written or rewritten late in his life and career when he resided in a sanatorium where he died at age 46 after periodic bouts with mental illness. The frenetic switches from short to short in Colorful Clouds, most of them artfully introduced by pianist Carissa, reflect a man of myriad moods and personalities. The pieces go from placidly melodic to rambunctious and a bit of a rumble to a lullaby for the sleepless and onto a galloping finale.

With barely a pause, Chen and Carissa switch the musical script to something completely different in Bach’s tender Prelude and Fugue in B Flat Minor with its somber opening which morphs into a declarative statement of resolve for an emotional soft landing.

Following intermission, Cesar Franck’s Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano, from its reflective opening allegretto to its stormy allegro and beyond, offers the finest melding on the program of piano and violin parts complementing each other. Musically, the players don’t seem to be arguing with each other over whatever it is that torments them so much as agreeing on a source of their consternation. Never quite resolved, the fourth movement allegretto comes to a torridly satisfying finish nevertheless.

Again without pause, after the second of two standing ovations during the Franck sonata, Chen and Carissa launched into the finale to the concert with Ravel’s equally torrid Tzigane, which translates in English as “gypsy.” Described by the French composer as a “Hungarian rhapsody,” his single-movement piece builds from concern to impatience reflected in a feverish succession of exchanges by Carissa and Chen in tonalities, staccato notes and trills. It’s never clear to me within the context of the piece whether the implied agitation is on the part of gypsies or about their presence that historically reflects much of the current antipathy toward immigrants. Whatever. Within this musical statement the issue is never resolved. No fault of the composer nor certainly these stellar musicians who earned still another standing ovation. Bravo.