In the tent at Newport’s Castle Hill Inn with stunning ocean views, duo-pianists Drew Petersen and Llewellyn Sánchez-Werner opened last Tuesday with Mozart Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 358 for one piano, four hands. Mozart wrote four complete duo-sonatas between 1772 and 1787, this one coming in the spring of 1774 in Salzburg, alongside Symphonies 29 in A Major and 30 in D Major, one of the Litanies and a work for two violins and orchestra. Not yet 20, Mozart was already showing signs of maturity. K 358 shows subtle use of canonic counterpoint, chromaticism in line and harmonic function, a flair for the dramatic (Mozart was already experimenting with his early Italian serial and comic operas; 1774 saw the beginnings of La finta giardiniera), and of course Mozart’s ever-present sense of humor. The centerpiece of this fine work is the middle Adagio; simple in form, it contains an artfully crafted and serenely beautiful melodic line. The duo delivered it with subtlety and nuance, while giving crisp and clean takes on the outer movements.
The artists shifted their primo and secondo places for Amy Beach’s 1901 Summer Dreams Op. 47. During her marriage, Mr. H. H. A. Beach forbade her to teach and limited her to two recitals per year, with the proceeds going to charity. This in no way diminished her creative output, and she continued to achieve international recognition and fame as both a performer and composer. The six light-hearted and delightful movements of Summer Dreams each follow a line of poetry, quoted from masters such as Shakespeare and Whitman, all expressing wispy moods: Awakening birds sing in mirth and merriment, on a quiet summer’s eve they retire in restful tranquility, only to resume their singing in the morning. From outside of the tent corporeal birds joined in the music making.
The stunning soundscape of Max Reger’s transcription for two pianos of Wagner’s Overture to Tannhäuser found the pianists at their own respective pianos where they had more freedom to move and use the pedal more freely, which they did to great sonic advantage. With beautiful voicing they evoked the Pilgrims’ Chorale, as the surrounding figurations incrementally gained in volume and intensity as the overall texture built to a thrilling climax; the underlying chords thickened but never overpowered the chorale and the surrounding figurations. Reger’s skillful provision of orchestral affects, timbres, and color recalls the great two-piano transcriptions of Liszt and his students and friends during his final years at Weimar. The audience leap up for the first of three standing ovations at this extraordinary concert.
Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 1 Op. 5, alternately titled Fantasie-Tableaux and originally conceived as a set of musical pictures paired with lines of poetry, dominated the second half. An early work from a somewhat stormy period in the life of the composer, the music is filled with longing, weeping, foreboding and joy. The poet Lermontov’s Barcarolle inspired the first movement which seems to alternate between pathetic sadness with yearning, while the delicate swirling figurations that surround it seem to float upward to the heavens. In the Night of Love we hear the call of the nightingale, inspired by lines from Byron. Lovers meet inflamed with passion, but there are also undercurrents of darkness here. Deeply expressive, Sánchez-Werner and Petersen let the notes ebbing and flood like the tides. Rachmaninoff was certainly adept at creating counter-melodic lines that would emerge out of the shimmering accompaniment figures. The team brought this about brought amazingly in this movement and the subsequent Tears, based on a poem by Tyutchev. Easter (Alexei Khomyakov) inspired the ringing of the great bells of Moscow in a brilliant and virtuosic finale. Here too, however, elements of foreboding sound in the harmonic sequence that recalls the death scene of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, itself replete with the tolling of church bells and the chant of the choir. A second standing ovation ensued.
Cécile Chaminade’s brief but brilliant two-piano arrangement of the Pas des cymbales movement from her orchestral ballet suite Callirhoë (originally a piano suite) perfectly fit the en plein air aspect of the Castle Hill tent. The very humid night no doubt took its toll on both pianos and pianists, but no flagging was in evidence as these two gifted young performers brought the concert to an exciting finish with bravura and panache, and a third standing ovation.
Sánchez-Werner will be delivering a solo piano recital this upcoming Saturday, an eagerly anticipated event. For a complete schedule of the summer festival and all its creative programming and outreach efforts, click HERE.