Cover image: Paul Wiancko, cello (Photo courtesy ECM)
Emerald City Music’s third season began with a memorable Friday night performance at Kakao, the coffee house at 415 Westlake with a back room complete with curved wood ceiling and excellent acoustics. The next concert in this adventurous high-quality series is October 26.
The program ranged from a 1713 work of fireworks and challenging complexity for solo violin, to an equally tricky 2014 work for cello and viola performed by its composer and a colleague, plus a work each from the 19th and 20th centuries in between.
Chad Hoopes, violin (Photo courtesy ECM)
Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill” Sonata goes to show what brilliant violinists there were already in 1713. It‘s full of trills, use of two strings simultaneously, plucks, fast runs and all sorts of bow and finger techniques. The eminent late-19th-century violinist, Fritz Kreisler, arranged it for modern violin and added a bravura cadenza towards the end of the last movement, and it’s this version that violinist Chad Hoopes performed with aplomb Friday, bringing out its excitement and energy and accompanied sensitively by pianist Li-Tan Hsu.
Ayane Kozasa, viola (Photo courtesy ECM)
This was followed by the latest work on the program, Paul Wiancko’s American Haiku, three short movements composed for his musical partner, violist Ayane Kozasa, in which the two played together. As full of fireworks as the Tartini though in a contemporary idiom, it had harsh dissonances which would resolve to consonant melody, plus lengthy tremolos, even knocks on the wooden body of the instruments. Wiancko used plucked strings frequently and in both second and third movement the rhythms had a reminiscent feel of an American hoedown. The whole had tremendous vitality and the two played it with intimate understanding and communication between the two of them.
DaXun Zhang, bass (Photo courtesy ECM)
Bottesini was a notable bass player towards the end of the 19th century, composing many works for his instrument of which perhaps the best known is his Gran Duo Concertante for two double basses. Perhaps recognizing that to find two double bass players of the necessary quality, one of Paganini’s students, Camillo Savori, transcribed one of the parts for violin soon after it was originally composed and this more familiar version was the one performed Friday. The bass player, Daxun Zhang, comes from a family of bass players from Harbin, China, and has garnered many prizes (including being one of several Avery Fisher grantees performing at this concert). He has performed regularly with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project.
Backed by a string quartet of the previously mentioned string players plus violinist Angelo Xiang Yu, Zhang and violinist Bella Hristova gave a truly amazing performance, compelling not just for their technique but also for the resonance of Zhang’s bass and their quite extraordinary playing of harmonics so high on their instruments that their fingers were beyond the fingerboard, yet the notes sang true and sweet and quite unearthly.
There was still more to this concert, an embarrassment of riches throughout. All the string performers came together to play Piazzolla’s Four Seasons in Buenos Aires, with Xiang Yu as the prominent player in the first and third movements and bandoneon player JP Jofre for the second and fourth. This exuberant work with its tango and syncopated rhythms, its unmistakable feel of Argentina brought the concert to a rousing end. For an encore, co-founder of Emerald City Music, violinist Kristin Lee, joined in for a reprise of one movement, taking turns sharing the honors with the other violinists.
This was an immensely satisfying concert. Many of the large audience were new to Emerald City Music and after this, it seems likely that many will come back for more.
