USC Chamber Virtuosi Shine at April’s “Second Sunday”

The strings of the USC Chamber Virtuosi play Olli Mustonen’s Nonetto II:
l-r: Lina Bahn, Anna Renton, Veronika Manchur, Abigail Park (violins), Nicolas Valencia,
Cecile McNeill (violas), Logan Nelson (double bass), Joseph Kim and Seth Parker Woods (cellos).

REVIEW

USC Thornton Chamber Virtuosi, Second Sundays at Two, Rolling Hills United Methodist Church

BARBARA GLAZER, Guest Reviewer

The “Second Sundays at Two” concert series has since its inception in January 2009 been a treasured feature of Southern California’s chamber music scene, not least because of the near-perfect acoustics and excellent sightlines of Rolling Hills United Methodist Church. Due to Covid-19, the concerts have been streamed over the internet since March 2020 and—now presented by the nonprofit Classical Crossroads, Inc.—they continue to be livestreamed and subsequently made available on Vimeo for a limited period.

As well as drawing on the exceptionally rich resources of local world-class professional musicians (and sometimes from further afield), the series also highlights the cream of local student musicians, and in this concert some from USC Thornton performed alongside distinguished faculty members Lina Bahn (violin) and Seth Parker Woods (cello) as the USC Thornton Chamber Virtuosi.

Barbara Glazer, local Rancho Palos Verdes resident but global concert attendee and lifelong classical music student, writes: “This group of USC School of Music Rising Stars is aptly named 'Virtuosi,' their concert being filled with stunning performances of a well-integrated program—music influenced by, or which referenced, a range of ethnic folk themes and dance rhythms.

“The opening piece was the spiritual Deep River, included by the British Black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor ( 1875-1912) as the 10th of his 24 Negro Melodies, Op. 59 (1905) for piano. Further (and gorgeously) reworked for double bass and piano by USC student Logan Nelson and played by himself and William Chiang, piano (right),  this brilliant arrangement afforded a deeper emotional response to the music. Never before have I heard a double bass sing with such emotional depth—resonating with the gorgeous deep tones of Paul Robeson that many of us remember hearing.

“William Chiang was joined by Seth Parker Woods (left) for the Andante (E-flat major) third movement from Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 19, in a performance that expertly fulfilled the composer's wish that the piano be not merely be an accompaniment, but an equal partner, to the cello: the piano introduces the Romantic themes which are embellished by the cello. I very much liked their tempo. Andante usually means slowly (but at a waking pace), but they added some ‘con moto’ for energy—that important element achieved when the composer overcame his depression and several years of writer's block.

Rachmaninoff, c.1906.

“Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) had achieved early compositional success in the 1890s, but after the severe critical panning of his First Symphony (1895, premiered 1897), he succumbed to a deep depression and underwent therapy. When he finally overcame his lassitude and began composing again, this sonata (1901), one of his few chamber pieces, was one of his recovery successes. Written in the same time-frame as the Second Piano Concerto, both have references to Tchaikovsky's music and require astute attention to phrasing and tempi—exceedingly well done in this performance.

“I thought the Piano Quintet in A Minor by Florence Price (1887-1943)—played by Lina Bahn and Agatha Blevin (violins), Nicolas Valencia (viola), Seth Parker Wood, and William Chiang (below)—was exquisite and masterful. Price, a mixed-race pianist child prodigy, was born in Little Rock, Alabama, to a black father, a dentist, and a white mother, a teacher. She gave her first piano recital at four, and wrote her first, and well-received, composition at 11. She graduated from high school at 14, and was admitted to the prestigious and selective New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she ‘passed’ as a Mexican in an attempt to avoid the racial animus that prompted her family's move to Chicago in 1927 during the years of heavy southern migration to northern cities.

“She received her teacher's diploma from the Conservatory, and went onto composing and playing the organ for silent films. She composed over 300 works in every genre, and played a prominent role in the Chicago Black Renaissance movement; she won the prestigious Wanamaker Prize in 1932. Her Symphony No. 1 (1932) became, in 1933, the first by a Black American woman to be performed by a major orchestra—the Chicago Symphony; other major ensembles here and abroad followed suit. In 1940 she was the first Black person to be included in the American Society for Composers, Authors, and Publishers.

“As a teenager I first encountered Price’s work when my cousin, a trained opera singer, took me to a performance of her art songs and spirituals; I was enchanted and have studied her work ever since. Happily she is now undergoing a rediscovery, and I'm grateful for the inclusion of the Piano Quintet and its brilliant performance by the Virtuosi players in this concert.

Florence Price.

“The Allegro first movement is the most 'classical' of the four; African-American spirituals infuse the slow second movement, while the third, the rousing Juba African-American dance, was electrifying. There is still some disagreement as to the quintet’s date of composition: one music historian offers an early date of 1928, and if so then the quintet’s third movement Juba precedes the third movement Juba in the First Symphony.

“Both are gorgeously written, substituting a Black plantation dance for those (think minuet and others) used in classical compositions. The 19th century Juba Dance (or Hambone) originated with the enslaved Blacks on Southern plantations. It used clapping, foot stomping, and slapping parts of the body (chest, thighs, etc), with the hard hand bone (hence, hambone) to produce a percussive sound—the body becoming an instrument substituting for the drums forbidden to slaves for fear of inter-plantation communication. 

“The quintet’s concluding fourth movement was a fast-paced exuberant ride. I was totally thrilled with the entire performance, inspired by Dvořák's music and his counseling for Americans to incorporate their folk heritages in their music: here by using African-American thematic material.

“The British composer and violist Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) wrote the next selection, the Dumka: Duo concertante (1940-41) for violin, viola and piano, which was exquisitely performed by Agatha Blevin, Nicolas Valencia, and William Chiang (right). Clarke was born in England of an abusive American father and a German mother, and in 1913 made British music history by becoming one of six women hired by the professional Queen's Hall Orchestra.

"After 1916, she lived for long periods in America, finally permanently moving here in 1941, where she found success performing and composing, although her output was not as copious, nor her acceptance as renowned, as Price's. The Rebecca Clarke Society, founded in 2000, is dedicated to encouraging the study and performance of her work, and is part of the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, which supports women composers who embrace their various ethnic heritages, as in the American Indianist movement.

Rebecca Clarke, c.1919.

"The etymological root of Dumka is Ukrainian, meaning a thought, or an idea (from duma; plural, dumy); in music it is characterized by abrupt contrasts of slower, pensive, dreamy, more melancholy sections with faster, more joyful, exuberant ones, and was popularized by Dvořák and Tchaikovsky. It is said to be derived from Slavic ballads sung by wandering Cossack bards accompanied by a lute (kobza).

I have paternal, non-Slavic, Ukrainian roots and am familiar with Dumka music, and truly admire both Clarke's composition and the performance given at this concert. Several old Magyar folk motifs, based on the pentatonic scale and similar to central Asian folk traditions, are found throughout the piece, as in Bartók and Martinů who Clarke references; Gypsy stylistic material is borrowed from Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 in the opening and closing passages. Both technically and musically this was an enchanting performance.

“The concluding piece, the Nonetto II, for nine strings composed in 2000 by the Finn Olli Mustonen (b. 1967, below right), was a wonderful choice as the music is post-modern incorporating thematic material from the baroque to minimalism—a summation and nod to the musical themes and ideas of the preceding pieces: fugal materials from the baroque period as well as from Shostakovich and Hindemith are referenced beautifully.

“The above-listed Virtuosi string players, augmented by Anna Renton, Veronika Manchur, and Abigal Park on violins, Cecile McNeill on viola, and Joseph Kim on cello, gave the work all the sensitivity, attack, and virtuosity that it required and were implied by the headings to its four brief sections: I. Inquieto, II. Allegro impetuoso, III. Adagio, and IV. Vivacissimo. 

“Altogether this was a marvelous showcase for the talents of these young musicians and a tribute to the exalted standards of their teachers and of USC Thornton (and sadly also a reminder of how arts funding in this country is now under threat from the policies of the current administration). 

"Fortunately you don’t have to take my word for how good this recital was, as you can enjoy the whole thing on Vimeo (click here or on the top image), masterfully recorded by Classical Crossroads’ tech wizard, Jim Eninger. Watching and rewatching, I felt as totally engaged as if I were in the audience, each time finding new and deeper appreciation of a wonderful concert.”

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Rolling Hills United Methodist Reform Church, Sunday, April 13, 2025, 2:00 p.m.

Images: The performance: Classical Crossroads, Inc.; Rachmaninoff, Florence Price: Wikimedia Commons; Rebecca Clarke: composer homepage; Olli Mustonen: KarstenWittMusikManagement.