Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 6, 1995 TAG: 9509060059
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
On the program - which was repeated Sunday afternoon - was a set of French country dances by Claude Gervaise and Pierre d'Attaignant for large brass ensemble, Paul Hindemith's "Little Chamber Music for Five Wind Instruments," a contemporary piece for solo trumpet, and Antonin Dvorak's well-known "Serenade in D minor for Winds," Op. 44.
It was a tremendously satisfying concert, and the reason comes down to the quality of wind players director Mark Camphouse is able to attract for this concert year after year. Present and accounted for were trumpeter Allen Bachelder, the dean of Western Virginia brass players, trombone whiz Dayl Burnett, flute virtuoso David Jacobsen, hornist Wally Easter, clarinetist David Widder, low brass maven Rob Chernault on tuba, and most of the rest of western Virginia's best wind players.
The suite of "Old French Dances" frankly blew me away. It's rare that audiences in these parts get to hear the sonorous massed power of brass at this level of musicianship. The arrangement, familiar to brass players, was crafted by English trumpeter Peter Reeve and is the same one made famous by the Phillip Jones Brass Ensemble. Camphouse had his 10 players spread out antiphonally, with two trumpets and two trombones on either wing, horn and tuba in the middle, and percussion provided by whichever players happened not to have a brass part in a given movement.
It was a thrilling performance, starting with Bachelder's pyrotechnics on the piccolo trumpet in the opening "Allemande." Bachelder was "on" Saturday night, nailing the high notes one after another and playing with his customary beautiful, warm tone (the trumpeter switched back to picc for the final movement as well). Everything that is good about brass playing was on display in this set: precise articulation, intuitive ensemble, beautiful dynamic control and gorgeous tone.
The Chamber Winds also inaugurated the 100th anniversary year of Paul Hindemith with that composer's "Little Chamber Music," Op. 24, No. 2, for wind quintet. This tart little neo-classical outing veers uneasily between broad comedy and bitter irony and got an amusing reading from a quintet that included double reed players Margo Easter on oboe and John Husser on bassoon.
Bachelder introduced Otto Ketting's "Intrada for Solo Trumpet" by reading Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias," which he said the work had always suggested to him. The Ketting was short and haunting, allowing Bachelder to alternate between lyrical low phrases and strangely evocative trumpet calls in the high register.
The concert's final work was Dvorak's "Serenade in D Minor for Winds," Op. 44. A Dvorak purist might have preferred to hear the contrabassoon part which was missing Saturday night, but it was a bracing finale nonetheless. The country dance theme from the concert's opening returned during the lovely second movement minuet, which Dvorak modeled on a Czech sousedsha. But the finest moments occurred in the lyrical third movement, which is one of the best slow movements Dvorak wrote. Margo and Wally Easter played especially beautifully. The opening march melody returned near the end of the final movement and signaled the end of the work, which got a good round of applause.
The nearly full house in the Recital Salon gave the impression that the audience would gladly turn out for an additional concert by the New River Chamber Winds later in the year. But director Camphouse said that budget cuts will hold the group to a single appearance per year for the foreseeable future.
by CNB