Washington Musica Viva at the Czech Embassy, February 27, 2007

Czech music is full of surprises, but none of them daunt the relentless exuberance of Washington’s keenest promoter of Czech music, Washington Musica Viva, the extended apparatus of organizer Carl Banner.

Tuesday evening Washington Musica Viva performed at the Embassy of the Czech Republic, in a wide range of styles, voices and instruments. The concert opened with five eagerly punctuated songs about love in the country: farmers with new hats, maidens shyly exposing themselves to the threats of love, and the longings that accompany losses of various sorts in such circumstances. Banner played a very percussive piano part behind the yearning soprano voice of Elizabeth Kluegel and the ardent mezzo-soprano voice of Karyn Friedman.

The high point of the evening was the performance of Smetana’s Piano Trio in G Minor (Opus 15). National Symphony cellist David Teie played magnificently during a piece which at times might have reminded a listener of intertwined DNA strands as the piano, cello and violin took turns dominating the music. But what the performance most reminded this reviewer of was an expert pilot at the controls of a stunt plane. Smetana’s music is glorious, but somewhat episodic in nature, as it does not always flow easily or naturally from one musical thought into the next. Overall, the piece is richly vibrant, lushly resonant. At times it will be triumphantly melancholy, but at other times it is filled with cascading coruscations and the dignified choral magnificence of excited piano chords.

After an intermission, clarinetist Ben Redwine demonstrated his skills on three quite different clarinets. Although Redwine professed an admiration of Nelhybel’s Concert Etude for clarinet and piano, Nelhybel may be better known for his brass compositions. The Nelhybel Etude was in the nature of Czech snake-charming music, enigmatic and taunting. The second movement of Janacek’s Concertino is complicated and may need the fuller background that would be furnished by the entire composition.

The evening ended with the Brahms Trio in A minor (Opus 114), and the assertion that Brahms was entirely appropriate in a Czech concert because of his assistance to Dvorak. Here Teie could show his skills in playing the cello in various manners, particularly when he plucked the strings in a harplike manner or strummed them with his fingers. The second movement was unsuccessful, and needed to be restarted when the musicians discovered themselves moving at different speeds through the score. This seemed a piece where less vigor and more emotional resonance might have produced better results, drawing the audience memorably into the inner recesses of the music.

Stephen Neal Dennis