ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 6, 1996 TAG: 9603060037
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
It'll be back to the future when Robert and Pamela Swenson Trent take the stage Thursday night at Radford University.
The husband-and-wife team of classical musicians, who perform as the Duo Firenze, will re-create an evening of light chamber music precisely as it might have been heard in Paris in the 1820s.
That includes not just the instruments - a 160-year old guitar and a painstakingly constructed copy of an old fortepiano - but it also means the audience will sit onstage right next to the performers to recapture the intimacy of an evening of early 19th-century chamber music.
The early music movement in classical music has confirmed the old adage that what goes around, comes around. Early instrument performances of Beethoven and Bach and Mozart have been the hottest ticket in fine-arts music for the last 15 years. But except for a few touring groups, the early music scene has made little impression on audiences in Southwest Virginia. Duo Firenze, both of whose members teach at Radford University, may change that.
"It was because of the instruments, mostly," says Pamela Swenson Trent when asked why she got interested in early keyboard music. "When I began to play the early fortepianos, the music came alive. There are new possibilities with sound, with articulation, and with the different voicings. The music all became so much clearer."
The fortepiano is the earliest version of the modern piano, first built by Bartolomeo Christofori in Florence, Italy, in 1709. (``Firenze'' is the Italian spelling of Florence, and gave the Trents their performing name.)
The older instruments were seemingly relegated to history's dustbin by the bigger, louder and more tonally consistent modern piano. But musicologists have realized over the past few decades that much writing for the early instrument took into account peculiarities that vanished with the more technologically advanced instruments, such as different tonal characters in the high and low registers.
Pamela Swenson Trent has waited three years for this moment. That's how much time passed between the day she ordered her Rodney Regier fortepiano reproduction and when it finally arrived last fall. The instrument is based on originals from 1785 and 1795 by Anton Walter, who built Mozart's pianos. It gets its inaugural concert Thursday night.
Regier, who is based in Freeport, Maine, builds each instrument by hand with only a single assistant, and charges in the five figures for each one. He is among the two or three premiere builders of reproduction fortepianos in the world. Many major-label recordings by the world's best-known early keyboard specialists over the past 15 years have been performed on Regier instruments.
"Oh, yeah, it's wonderful," said the pianist, who say she's delighted with how easy it is to play.
It definitely looks different. Onstage concertgoers will notice that the colors of the keys are reversed, with the sharp and flat keys white and the rest black. And it's noticeably smaller than a modern concert grand. "The action is very light. You hardly touch a key and it plays," said the musician.
Robert Trent, who heads the guitar program at Radford University, will be playing a guitar that would have ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan had he not purchased it from the museum's curator of musical instruments. Trent dates the guitar at approximately 1828. The French builder's label is still inside the instrument. Except for the bridge and some of the brass frets, the instrument is all original.
Like his wife's piano, it's noticeably smaller than a modern instrument.
"The body depth is shorter and shallower and the scale length is shorter so the pitch is a little bit lower," Trent said. "In the bass register it has a more vocal quality, and in the treble it's very bright and silvery.
"It's a joy to play because the action is much lighter. It feels more nimble to me. By the same token it's a little more dangerous to play. Because it's lightweight and speaks so quickly, you barely touch a string and the sound comes out."
The combination of one early 19th-century original and one painstaking copy means that Preston Hall listeners will be getting an aural experience very like what Beethoven himself might have heard.
"It'll be a very focused kind of performance," said Robert Trent. "Bringing people onto the stage won't exactly re-create a salon, but it'll bring people close enough to feel it intimately. The entire audience will be onstage. I like that - I prefer people being close."
One other thing about Duo Firenze's pair of instruments: "We're on more of an equal footing," says Pamela Swenson Trent, who, thanks to the Regier instrument's capacity for quiet dynamics, no longer has to worry as much about drowning out her husband's guitar. "In fact, if you don't look, sometimes you can't tell which instrument is playing."
The program will include a set of variations by Ferdinando Carulli, two rondos and a set of variations by Mauro Giuliani, and three nocturnes by Francesco Molino. Curtain time for Duo Firenze's evening of 19th-century salon music is 8 p.m.
DUO FIRENZE:
8 p.m. Thursday in Radford University's Preston Auditorium. $3 adults, $1 children. 831-5265.
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff Robert and Pamela Swenson Trent areby CNBthe Duo Firenze. color
2. Robert Trent displays his 19th-century guitar alongside a much
larger modern instrument. color
3. Pamela Swenson Trent must push levers with her knees on her
fortepiano reproduction; foot pedals came later in the piano's
development. color