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Many years ago the BBC aired music programs titled "The Innocent Ear," in which the composers were only revealed after the works were played. The names were usually unfamiliar. The point was to force us to listen, not just take comfort in the familiar.
It took only one look at the program for Sunday's Twin Cities Concert Association concert to realize I was on unfamiliar ground, with performers I did not know and a program of the unexpected. Sonatas by Eccles, Ligeti and Shostakovich? An Hassidic suite by Stutchewsky? Only Schumann promised the familiar.
I need not have worried. Israeli cellist Amit Peled (hailed as "having the flair of the young Rostropovich," the great Russian cellist) and pianist Eli Kalman thrilled with their musicality and sensitivity to each other. The 1689 cello sang with more than a cello's usual sonorities, and the program proved intriguing and moving.
Eccles, an English contemporary of Handel, set the scene with a tuneful Baroque-style sonata, played with beauty, precision and taut rhythm.
Ligeti, a Hungarian Jew by birth, wrote the first movement of his Sonata for Solo Cello - a tender and elegiac dialog between two lovers - for his girlfriend. By the time he wrote the second movement, she had left him. In music angry and wild, yet at times wistful, Peled showed some of the more unexpected capabilities of the cello.
By contrast, Schumann's Five Pieces in Folk-style proved to be a vehicle for rich melody and almost orchestral accompaniment, demanding sensitive collaboration between the players.
Jewish composer Stutschewsky left no doubt as to his inspiration, the tuneful and toe-tapping musical tradition of different European Jewish communities.
The second half was devoted to Shostakovich's challenging 1934 Sonata for Cello and Piano. The music combines soaring melody and robust and sometimes savage interchanges between cello and piano. As often in Shostakovich, the heart of the matter is in the slow movement - pensive, introspective, and brooding. Peled and Kalman perfectly captured its lyrical beauty as well as its undercurrents of menace.
A charming arrangement of the Israeli folk-song "Eli, Eli" rounded out a wholly satisfying musical afternoon before a full and attentive audience.
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Charles Atthill lives in Alta Sierra. His ambition to be a cellist faltered at an early age. He took up the violin instead.
It took only one look at the program for Sunday's Twin Cities Concert Association concert to realize I was on unfamiliar ground, with performers I did not know and a program of the unexpected. Sonatas by Eccles, Ligeti and Shostakovich? An Hassidic suite by Stutchewsky? Only Schumann promised the familiar.
I need not have worried. Israeli cellist Amit Peled (hailed as "having the flair of the young Rostropovich," the great Russian cellist) and pianist Eli Kalman thrilled with their musicality and sensitivity to each other. The 1689 cello sang with more than a cello's usual sonorities, and the program proved intriguing and moving.
Eccles, an English contemporary of Handel, set the scene with a tuneful Baroque-style sonata, played with beauty, precision and taut rhythm.
Ligeti, a Hungarian Jew by birth, wrote the first movement of his Sonata for Solo Cello - a tender and elegiac dialog between two lovers - for his girlfriend. By the time he wrote the second movement, she had left him. In music angry and wild, yet at times wistful, Peled showed some of the more unexpected capabilities of the cello.
By contrast, Schumann's Five Pieces in Folk-style proved to be a vehicle for rich melody and almost orchestral accompaniment, demanding sensitive collaboration between the players.
Jewish composer Stutschewsky left no doubt as to his inspiration, the tuneful and toe-tapping musical tradition of different European Jewish communities.
The second half was devoted to Shostakovich's challenging 1934 Sonata for Cello and Piano. The music combines soaring melody and robust and sometimes savage interchanges between cello and piano. As often in Shostakovich, the heart of the matter is in the slow movement - pensive, introspective, and brooding. Peled and Kalman perfectly captured its lyrical beauty as well as its undercurrents of menace.
A charming arrangement of the Israeli folk-song "Eli, Eli" rounded out a wholly satisfying musical afternoon before a full and attentive audience.
ooo
Charles Atthill lives in Alta Sierra. His ambition to be a cellist faltered at an early age. He took up the violin instead.
