Philomusica raises the roof
Guest pianist joins string quartet for dynamic concert
Milwaukee’s Philomusica String Quartet offered up a roof-raising program Monday evening at Wisconsin Lutheran College for its last concert of the season.
Guest pianist Eli Kalman joined violinists Jeanyi Kim and Alexander Mandl, violist Nathan Hackett and cellist Adrien Zitoun in a richly varied program.
The quartet began the concert with a colorful performance of Ernest Bloch’s “Landscapes,” inspired by three radically different visual images from around the globe. They used textures, dynamics and subtle details to turn “Landscapes” into lovely, varied soundscapes.
The quartet finished the program’s first half with a performance of Brahms’ Quartet in A Minor that was full of musical momentum and detail, along with a few wobbles in pitch and ensemble cohesion.
Kalman opened the second half with nine of Lera Auerbach’s 24 Preludes for Piano.
The preludes are not long pieces, but each one is a big musical excursion in its own right. By playing several backto-back, without pause, Kalman created a powerful, arresting journey into Auerbach’s musical language.
The preludes sweep from one end of the keyboard to the other, whispering faintly and shouting boldly along the way. Kalman combined technical command and musical depth in his fascinating performance.
Kalman and the quartet closed with a vivid performance of Erno von Dohnányi’s Piano Quintet No. 1 in C minor, full of gorgeous, poignant melodic and harmonic writing.
From the opening of the first movement, the musicians delivered big sounds and boldly expressive musical statements.
A spirited, urgent second movement filled the room with musical statements that were often splashy, but always engaging, and within the bounds of expressive musical character.
The players reveled in the seriously romantic writing of the third movement, including a particularly lovely viola-andpiano opening segment.
The final movement, a com- bination of the big sounds and freewheeling music making, included sounds that slipped out of the players’ control a few times in particularly energized moments.
The ensemble experienced a things-happen-in-live-performances moment when a slipped peg on Kim’s violin brought the first movement to a sudden stop. She fixed the problem, tuned, and the ensemble picked up the musical momentum of their interpretation as though they had never paused.