THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 6, 1994 TAG: 9412060398
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: MUSIC REVIEW
SOURCE: BY MARK MOBLEY MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
One of the area's most impressive musicians is in his mid-20s and goes to Old Dominion University - to teach.
By hiring violist Amadi Hummings, ODU has added a player of rare distinction to its faculty. A recital Monday at the Chandler Recital Hall with pianist Benjamin Loeb showed Hummings' formidable skill. The violist sailed undaunted through three serious chamber works and one entertainingly hard concerto.
Hummings is a New York native and a graduate of the New England Conservatory and Indiana University. He has performed extensively throughout the United States and abroad. His local recital debut opened with a viola da gamba sonata by J.S. Bach (BWV 1029) and Paul Hindemith's Sonata Op. 11, No. 4.
The first movement of the Bach sonata was marked by light, fleet bowing. Hummings and Loeb maintained a flexible, expressive ensemble in the slow movement despite audience noise. Hummings' concentration seemed to flag a bit in the finale, but yours might have, too, if you'd heard as many candy wrappers and doors opening and closing as he just had.
Every phrase in the sprawling Hindemith work, no matter how soft, had energy; Hummings' attacks were lively and his tone colors seductive. His sound brought to mind an impossibly high cello and a deeply throaty violin.
``Sanctus'' (1993) by David Sanford, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, was a 12-minute work in three connected sections. The quietly lyrical middle part ended in tolling, bell-like notes. The outer sections were motoric and dissonant, with angular lines. Hummings and Loeb seemed to have the dramatic sense of the piece.
In the century and a half since it was written, nobody seems to have told Paganini's ``Sonata per la gran' viola e orchestra'' that it's not a violin concerto. It is loaded - overloaded - with virtuoso fiddle tricks, from runs and leaps and doublestops down to a left-hand pizzicato trill. Hummings, who performed the work with orchestra at an Ecuadoran festival last summer, sailed through it with only passing indication of its difficulty.
Loeb, a Harvard graduate and Juilliard student, was unobtrusively expert and unfailingly musical. He played even the most challenging music with ease and a reserve that allowed Hummings to be heard clearly. ILLUSTRATION: Hummings
MUSIC REVIEW
Violist Amadi Hummings Monday at Old Dominion University
by CNB