I went to my good friend, Alana Bennett’s, Senior Recital yesterday. She ended her program with the entire Dvorák Dumky Trio. For one, the players who included Patti Kilroy (her blog link is on the upper left hand side of the page), played great. Here and there they had some ensemble issues, but over all I thought the music was played with technical facility and thoughtfulness. The thoughtfulness probably comes from the direction and coaching of Marion Feldman. The connection between Patti and Alana was clear which made the pianist Eun Jung Bae seem the odd-man lady out. This should be expected as the string players had been performing together for three years at this point.
Aside from the performance aspect, I would like to comment on Dvorák’s compositions. Dvorák writes really cool sections of music, at least in the Dumky, but when placed in the whole of the work, each section comes across as cheesey (I’m going to be slaughtered by an angry mob of Czechs tomorrow).
Listen to the first movement to about 2:30. This is rediculous. I am not saying it’s an affront, and the humor in it is clear. But it sounds like a cheap gag:
This kind of sillyness is repeated in nearly every movement. In the last movement, where the music isn’t particularly conducive to contrasting humor like the first, I laughed for most of it. This because the difference in mood is so great, from the sublime to an intense anger of some sort. Below the fold are the rest of the videos of Beaux Arts Trio playing all the other movements.