ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 30, 1996 TAG: 9601310002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: CONCERT REVIEW
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
It was a beautiful and satisfying combination of the old and the new Saturday night when the Kandinsky Trio finally brought their new hit commission back home. A sold-out house at Roanoke College's Olin Hall heard the school's trio-in-residence perform their new "Tales of Appalachia" as well as the Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50, of Tchaikovsky.
"Tales of Appalachia" has "winner" written all over it. This melding of folk art and the fine arts by composer Mike Reid holds your interest from start to finish and has the potential to introduce thousands of newcomers to the world of chamber music. After hearing the fresh and lively performance by the Kandinsky and storyteller Connie Regan-Blake of Asheville, N.C., it's easy to understand why there's been talk of a major-label recording contract. "Tales of Appalachia" deserves a big audience, and not just here in the Southern mountains.
The work began with a miniature overture in three parts. The shape of this initial section, from quietly meditative to agitated and back again to quiet, foreshadowed the dramatic tension of the work to follow. It started with an immediately likable melody in the violin that might have come straight from Grayson County. Lyrical and direct, it recalled the folk music of the Appalachians with its pentatonic scales and modal harmonies. This "mountain melody" returned in the closing bars of the work and elsewhere.
Connie Regan-Blake began the story of "Wicked John" immediately after the Kandinsky had set the stage. She's a practiced storyteller who put her whole body into the yarn about the cantankerous blacksmith who was so wicked that even the devil wanted no part of him. Her microphone headset was a visually jarring accessory for the kind of tale that's always been told on front porches out in the country, but after a while you forgot it was there.
Wicked John's character was introduced by jazzy lines on the cello and sarcastic pizzicati from the violin. He was a good choice for this piece, an oddball character in a strange tale that shows, among other things, that Appalachian mountaineers have a weirder sense of humor than city slickers realize. Throughout the yarn, the instruments commented on the action and added to it - sometimes under Regan-Blake's storyline, sometimes by themselves. The story was funny and the music equally funny, from mountain hoe-downs that took a sardonic turn to quotations of "Shall We Gather at the River" (that occurred not in heaven but in hell!).
After Wicked John is turned away by both St. Peter and the devil and condemned to an eternity of wandering the earth with his coal from hell, the music returned to the ruminative mood of the beginning, gradually dying away into the hazy half-light of a Blue Ridge summer evening.
The performance earned good applause with whistles and yells and a few who stood to clap. Composer Mike Reid was saluted from the stage by the Kandinsky, though he did not join the performers onstage.
After a beginning like this, the last half of the concert might have felt anticlimactic, but the Kandinsky instead went from strength to strength. The musicians' reading of the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio in A minor showed them at their
height. Their musicianship and technical mastery were nearly everywhere obvious, and even more impressive were the variously beautiful sonorities all three achieved, along with impeccable intonation from violinist Benedict Goodfriend and cellist Alan Weinstein.
It was a lucid and yet passionate appreciation of a work that was written in homage to the pianist Nicholas Rubinstein. Elizabeth Bachelder made the very difficult piano part of the first movement sound easy.
The Tchaikovsky got even more applause than "Tales of Appalachia," including many shouts of bravo and a unanimous standing ovation from an audience that felt it had gotten its money's worth.
The Kandinsky rewarded the Olin Hall crowd with one of its favorite encores, the Russian folk song "Dark Eyes," which got a generous slathering of gypsy soul from violinist Goodfriend.
Seth Williamson produces feature news stories and a weekday classical music program on public radio station WVTF (89.1 FM) in Roanoke.
LENGTH: Medium: 76 linesby CNB