MUSIC REVIEW

Performers hit pinnacle in quartets and quintet

Guest pianist Andrius Zlabys, who soloed with the Arkansas Symphony on Saturday and Sunday at Little Rock’s Robinson Center Performance Hall, stuck around for a couple of extra days to wow the crowd at the orchestra’s River Rhapsodies chamber music concert Tuesday night in the Great Hall of the Clinton Presidential Center.

Zlabys and symphony musicians Geoffrey Robson and Katherine Williamson, violins; Ryan Mooney, viola; and David Gerstein, cello, took Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet at blazing tempos — quite possibly the fastest performance of this piece in my experience — and practically took the audience’s breath away. I suspect I am not the only listener who thought the piece was over way too soon.

Moreover, the balance between Zlabys and the string players was nearly perfect, as were the dynamics, and the whole performance of one of the greatest works in the chamber canon was completely without bombast — quite an accomplishment. Also quite an accomplishment: the players did not, for the most part, sacrifice nuance on the altar of speed.

The entire concert hit the absolute pinnacle of chamber music performance.

In a chamber music series that has specialized the past few years in eclectic, varied programs, this one consisted entirely of German music of the Romantic period, and on the string quartet literature rather than spreading the focus around to ensembles of various components.

On the top half of the program, the “least” piece on the bill, Fanny Mendelssohn’s E-flat major String Quartet, pleased the audience the most. The Quapaw String Quartet — Meredith Maddox Hicks and Charlotte Crosmer, violins; Timothy MacDuff, viola; and Gerstein on cello — gave the rarely heard piece a lovely reading, getting a real workout, just counting the sheer number of bow strokes, as they romped their way through the final movement.

And to top things off, the Rockefeller String Quartet — Trisha McGovern Freeney and Linnaea Brophy, violins; Katherine Reynolds, viola; and Jacob Wunsch, cello — excelled in the lyric passages, but had plenty of vigor in the “busier” portions of String Quartet No. 1 in c minor by Johannes Brahms. The cantabile second movement was particularly lovely.