The “Kreutzer” and Dvořák’s Romance on Second Sunday

Roger Wilkie and Robert Thies welcomed by the audience at Rolling Hills United Methodist Church.

REVIEW

Roger Wilkie and Robert Thies, Second Sundays at Two, Rolling Hills United Methodist Church

BARBARA GLAZER, Guest Reviewer

Roger Wilkie and Robert Thies.

After his performance with pianist Robert Thies of the Romance in F Minor, Op. 11, by Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904), violinist Roger Wilkie delivered some excellent comments on the program, noting that this first selection had been based on the slow movement of Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 5 in F minor (1873).

It was first performed in 1877 as a violin/orchestral piece by Prague’s Provisional Theater Orchestra in their annual concert. Dvořák’s version for piano and violin, played here, was revised from the orchestral piece and dedicated to violinist František Ondříček (1857-1922) but was never played in public during the composer's lifetime.

Dvořák in 1879.

It is infused with gorgeous melodies, yet most unusually for a Romance is written in Classical sonata form, merging with a Slavic folk style. It is in compound duple meter (two beats per measure, each beat divided into three smaller parts) which produces a sort of swaying sound, with a dreamy quality of reverie or melancholy—perhaps reflective of the deaths of three of Dvořák’s children during these years: one in infancy, another from accidental poisoning, and the third from smallpox.

I loved the Thies/Wilkie performance: the beautiful melodies played with impeccable lyrical taste and phrasing and superb technical prowess: one would never discern from Wilkie's fluid account how difficult the key of F minor is for a violinist.

George Bridgetower.

And then came the Beethoven (1770-1827) Kreutzer Sonata (Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 47, 1803). The piece was originally written for and played by his African-European violinist friend George Bridgetower (1778-1860), but after they had a falling out (over Bridgetower's remark about the morals of a woman Beethoven admired), Beethoven rededicated the work to the virtuoso violinist Rodolphe Keutzer (1766-1831), who as noted in Wilkie’s remarks never played the composition, calling it "unintelligible."

The Kreutzer presents an array of difficulties: its length (about 40 minutes), its technical demands on both instrumentalists, and its transitional style between late Classicism and Romanticism. In structure and forms it is Classical with a sonata-form first movement, a kind of rondo in the last, and the middle movement a set of five variations—a forte of Beethoven. But, adumbrating the Romantic movement, it should be played with drama, high energy, and in the designated “concertante style”—the instruments being co-equals, the piano never an accompanist, but two virtuoso instrumentalists playing as if in a mini- concerto.

Title-page of the first edition of the Kreutzer Sonata, noting that it was
written "in uno stile molto concertante come d’un concerto.”

The speed of the last movement also poses difficulties: like the later Hammerklavier piano sonata (No. 29, 1817), the speed must not obscure the music—the compositional brilliance which is often difficult to hear for the speed and technical fireworks. In many respects this performance by Thies and Wilkie, technically sound, was very “classical,” and I think it just needed to be punched up dramatically—with the earthy, raw, almost sexual romantic element that so incensed Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), and inspired him to write his novella The Kreutzer Sonata (1889).

Sonya and Leo Tolstoy.

Tolstoy must have felt a taboo breached, as audiences did much later hearing Stravinsky's savagery in The Rite of Spring (1913). Tolstoy's novella is the first-person narrative of a husband who hires a violinist to accompany his wife, a pianist and, upon hearing their impassioned performance, is aroused with suspicion regarding their relationship and inflamed with sexual jealousy. The two musicians (never really lovers, never caught en flagrante) are seated at a table talking when the enraged husband, senseless from jealousy, stabs his wife to death.

Tolstoy’s novella is an argument for sexual abstinence to avoid our “swinish,” “animalistic” proclivities which hinder the attainment of humanity and cause us such agony, and strife. His wife Sonya (Sophia) penned two rebuttal novellas (Whose Fault, 1891-94; Song Without Words, 1898, both unpublished during her lifetime), citing her husband as insensitive, unfeeling, and growing more and more ascetic and combative in a stormy marriage once marked by mutual love (and 13 children): Tolstoy did leave home in 1910, ending their marriage.

The Kreutzer Sonata by Rene Xavier Prinet.

The cultural links continue: upon reading Tolstoy's novella, Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) composed his String Quartet No. 1 (1923), a work depicting psychological drama and passion, ending in a dramatic rejection and release.

In 1901 the artist Rene Xavier Prinet (1861-1946), had painted The Kreutzer Sonata: a beautifully dressed pianist, her fingers still touching the keyboard as she stands to receive an impassioned kiss from her violinist lover—an image that in 1932 (and for years) was used in the perfume advertisement for "Tabu, the Forbidden Fragrance."

It's no wonder that impassioned music, in fact all types of music, have sometimes been censored by governments or banned outright by religious sects. Beethoven is said to have opined that "to play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable." His Kreutzer Sonata may be a transitional composition as noted, but it needs to feel less Classical and more Romantic, more earthy, more impassioned, more fiery, if we are to understand its cultural effects and as we hear in the most superb performances: Augustine Hadelich/Orion Wiess and Patricia Kopatchinskaja/Fazil Say, and close behind: Gidon Kremer/Martha Argerich.

In the Classical Crossroads recital we heard, Robert Thies on piano was outstanding, but I felt Roger Wilkie needed to punch it up—even his body stance was so collected and straight, so classical—so that overall, this good performance left me hungry for a more impassioned account. I have viewed this concert on the usual excellent Vimeo video several times, and have listened to many other performances. As a non-professional I have felt hesitant to write my impression, which also accounts for my delay in contributing this review.

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Images: The performers: Classical Crossroads, inc.; Dvořák, Bridgetower, Kreutzer title-page, the Tolstoys, The Kreutzer Sonata: Wikimedia Commons.

A Gorgeous Season Opener for Classical Interludes

Trio Sol: l-r Veronika Manchur (violin), Colin McDearman (piano), Joseph Kim (cello).

REVIEW

Trio Sol, Classical Interludes, First Lutheran Church, Torrance

BARBARA GLAZER, Guest Reviewer

Classical Crossroads Inc., one of Southern California South Bay’s leading promoters of free-admission chamber music concerts, each season presents two series: “Classical Interludes” on the first Saturday afternoon of each month at First Lutheran Church & School in Torrance, and “Second Sundays at Two”—on the second Sunday afternoon of the month, as the name implies—at Rolling Hills United Methodist Church in Rolling Hills Estates.

Barbara Glazer, local Rancho Palos Verdes resident but global concert attendee and lifelong classical music student, writes: “The Trio Sol's concert—with Colin McDearman on piano, Veronika Manchur on violin, and Joseph Kim on cello—opened Classical Crossroads’ 2025-26 Classical Interludes series on a gorgeous high note which I have enjoyed twice so far (as if in the best house seat) by viewing the excellent Vimeo video. In a masterful performance of a program of well-paired and demanding compositions, the members of the Trio displayed their superb individual technical and lyrical skills, and their ability to meld as one voice.

"The opening piece, Lost Tango (2002) by the Ukrainian pianist/composer Volodymyr Vynnytsky was, according to his wife and cellist Natalia Khoma, so named as an “in joke” because he contended that he had "found it"—being a reinvention of the dance by fusing the historically-suppressed, traditional, elegant Spanish tango with an eastern, coarse, rough-edged dance rhythm with some interesting dissonant harmonies. One could hear dumky-like echoes of Dvořák's dances, with the sharp abrupt changes in tempo and accents, and references to eastern folk tunes. As a folk dancer, and someone with Ukrainian roots, this piece, and the Trio's expert performance, brought a smile to my face, a delight to my ears, and the desire to dance again (if only possible now!).

Colin McDearman.

Next was the Prelude No. 1 in G-Sharp Minor, composed and brilliantly performed by the Trio's pianist, Colin McDearman, based on his love poem to his fiancé. This was a firework display of technical prowess while retaining deep emotionalism, speaking of passion, inspiration, admiration, and joy.

Originally preludes were short pieces that introduced a larger work, but in the hands of Chopin in particular, and others, became stand-alone works that explored a specific mood or activity. McDearman's Prelude No. 1 has aspects of both: while it is a passionate, explosive, ecstatic expression of love, the ending lacks the expected resolution so that it feels like an introduction to the next stage—culminating perhaps in Prelude No. 2, the marriage?

Prelude No. 1 has some very difficult fingering, especially for the fourth finger, and allows McDearman to display his keyboard artistry, but the music, the harmonies are not lost: in particular, the resolution of one brief harmonic wedge was exquisite. Like a shy suitor, McDearman was so very modest, so reserved in acknowledging the audience's enthusiastic appreciation—leaving the music to speak for him. A total success.

Antonin Dvořák's Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90, B. 166 “Dumky” (1891) exquisitely concluded this outstanding concert. Dumky is the plural form of dumka, a Ukrainian word for a thought or an idea; in music it is expressed as a lament in an epic melancholic ballad of a people held in bondage, struggling for nationhood—and for me, with non-Slavic paternal Ukrainian roots, the inclusion of the Dumky Trio in the program felt like a tribute to the current Ukrainian nation bravely fighting yet another attempt to wipe it off the map.

Dvořák in New York, 1893.

The dumky ballads are said to have roots in the songs of wandering Cossack bards, accompanied by a lute (kobza), telling of their comrades’ resistance to foreign overlords. The music is characterized by slow, pensive, melancholic sections with abrupt changes to faster sections of joy and exuberance. This reflects the mood shifts in the Slavic sensibility, and therefore greatly appealed to the Bohemian Dvořák (1841-1904), and other Slavic composers.

The Dumky Trio was premiered in Prague (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) to great success in 1891 with Dvořák on the piano, and I learned at a concert in Brno (his birthplace) that it was repeated over 40 times in a tour of Moravia and Bohemia before the composer left for America in 1892. To the great delight of my Czech guide, I mentioned that I knew why Dvořák had gone there: to assume directorship of the National Conservatory of Music of America in NYC (1892) where he changed American classical music. Influenced by Black composers to whom he awarded music scholarships, Dvořák instructed American classical composers to use American folk music, especially Black folk music in their work, as he had used Bohemian and eastern folk tunes in his.

Veronika Manchur.

The Dumky has six movements, but to understand the mood and tempo changes within each of them, all their different tempi must be listed, not just that of the opening:
I. Lento maestoso, Allegro quasi doppio movimento, Lento maestoso, Allegro; II. Poco adagio, Vivace non troppo, Poco adagio, Vivace; III. Andante, Vivace non troppo, Andante, Allegretto; IV. Andante moderato, Allegretto scherzando, quasi tempo di marcia; V. Allegro, Meno mosso, quasi tempo primo, Meno mosso; VI. Lento maestoso, Vivace, Lento, Vivace.

The first three movements are linked harmonically, and usually played continuously; the last three—not harmonically linked—are normally played with slight pauses between them. Many musicologists contend that this gives it the character of a four-movement piece. The Trio Sol did not make this distinction, giving equal weight to each of the six movements, but following the tempi within each.

Joseph Kim.

Joseph Kim’s cello soared gloriously in several of them, often introducing thematic material taken up by the piano and then the violin; in particular I was transported by his playing in III, and Veronika Manchur on violin in V. Colin McDearman's pianistic anchoring of the whole piece, and his taking center-stage where the piano is highlighted, were superb.

Gratefully, I still have the video for still another encore of the entire concert which deserved the fulsome appreciative applause that it received from the audience.

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Classical Interludes, First Lutheran Church and School, Torrance, Saturday, October 4, 2025, 3:00 p.m. Images: The performers: Classical Crossroads Inc; Khoma and Vynnytsky: You Tube; Dvořák: Wikimedia Commons. 

“Musical Friends” Unveil the Unfamiliar at Mount Wilson

l-r: Kyle Gilner (violin), Jonah Sirota (viola), Geoff Osika (double bass), Micah Wright (clarinet),
Gigi Brady (oboe).

REVIEW

“A Celebration of Strings and Winds” by Hans Gál, Britten, and Prokofiev, 100-inch Telescope Dome, Mount Wilson Observatory

DAVID J BROWN

In his usual welcome at the penultimate event in this year’s season of Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome, Mount Wilson Institute Trustee and COO Dan Kohne asked for shows of hands from those who were making their initial visit and those who had been before. The rough split was about 60/40 in favor of the first-timers—doubly encouraging both because it showed that the word about these unique seasons and venue is well and truly out and, given that the seating area encircling the 100-inch Hooker telescope was healthily filled if not a sell-out, that today's relatively unfamiliar program was not an audience turn-off, either for newcomers or seasoned attendees.

Jonah Sirota.

The violist Jonah Sirota had curated it as an exploration by a group of “musical friends” of chamber works scored for both stringed and woodwind instruments; as he noted in his introduction, there’s plenty of repertoire for each family separately, but together? Not so much. Influenced by the venue, his choice had homed in on pieces written within two decades of the telescope’s opening, of which the first to be played was at once the last completed (in 1935) and by the oldest and longest-lived of the three composers, as well as the figure least known today.

This was Hans Gál (1890-1987), an Austrian/Jewish composer, performer, teacher and scholar who, when he wrote his Serenade for clarinet, violin and cello, Op. 93, had already had his academic career in Germany summarily terminated by the Nazis, and within three years would flee to the safety of Britain. This Serenade, though, bears no signs of personal turmoil, being one of many elegant and poised exemplars of the musical values enshrined in the great Austro-German classical tradition, composed by Gál throughout his very long career.

Hans Gál.

The first of its four movements, a sonata structure headed Cantabile, opens with a long, gently aspiring clarinet melody, played here with expansive easefulness by Micah Wright. Very soon, though, this initial serenity is subverted, first by a faster, rather spiky extension of that main theme, and then throughout the remainder of the quite lengthy and elaborate movement by quicksilver changes of rhythm and texture, masterfully distributed by Gál between the three instruments, and equally masterfully navigated by Mr. Wright and Kyle Gilner (violin) and Jonathan Flaksman (cello).

Their affectionate treatment was marked in the latter part of the movement by subtle drawings-out of apparently concluding cadences only for the music to quietly turn aside and continue, as if saying “No, we’re not quite done yet…”

Micah Wright.

The Cantabile, at well over one-third of the Serenade’s total length, is by far its longest movement and is succeeded by a Burletta—effectively a concise scherzo-and-trio whose vigorous and scurrying outer sections enclose a gentle, slow-moving contemplation led by the violin. The third movement Intermezzo, with its long-breathed clarinet melody over plucked strings, similarly showed Gál’s skill at conveying spaciousness within a brief span (just three minutes), its concluding clarinet cadenza running straight into the jaunty strains of the Giocoso finale—which nonetheless accommodates a reprise of the Intermezzo’s exquisite musings before the cheerful music returns.

Kyle Gilner.

This rare but memorable and gorgeously played opener was followed by the 18-year-old Benjamin Britten’s Phantasy Quartet for Oboe and String Trio, Op. 2 from 1932. This wasn’t the first occasion on which this work had been heard in the 100-inch Hooker telescope dome; series Artistic Director and cellist Cécilia Tsan played it with three of her own musical friends in the second concert of the third season on 2 June, 2019, and it was instructive to compare impressions of that performance (reviewed here) with this account from four different and equally skilled collaborators.

Gigi Brady,

More than in that earlier performance, I felt, the piece was dominated here by Gigi Brady’s oboe, which presented as a confident, even at times imperious, protagonist throughout the work’s several varied and linked episodes, beginning with its quasi-pastoral melody that blooms after the opening march from the three strings (Mr. Sirota here joining Messrs. Gilner and Flaksman).

Over 24 measures Britten builds this up from the most fragmentary, uncertain beginnings, muted, ppp, and played pizzicato sul tasto (on the fingerboard). The players’ assured handling of its assembly gave it just the right sense of growing aim from initial hesitancy.

Benjamin Britten in 1930.

Whither was the youthful genius Britten marching with such strutting purpose, and where from? As ever, his late-flowering contribution to this peculiarly English sub-genre of chamber music (always distinguished by that “ph” for “phantasy” to label the single, multi-section movement) impressed by his acute ear for striking sonorities, skillful creation of an original, complex, and unpredictable design, and remarkable maturity of expression overall.

It could be argued that Gál’s designating his Op. 93 as a “serenade” might mislead some listeners to expect something more lighthearted and simple than the intricately wrought structure that it actually is, and conversely the simple formal title of Prokofiev’s Quintet in G minor, Op. 39 equally and thoroughly belies the zany, sometimes disquieting, circus romp with which these consummately skilled musical friends concluded their fascinating program.

Jonathan Flaksman.

The precise scenario envisaged under the title Trapèze by the ballet master Boris Romanov when he commissioned its score from Prokofiev in 1924 now seems lost to time, but as Prokofiev also conceived his work for concert performance, the music itself lived on, and presumably with the ballet in mind, the instrumental line-up he chose—oboe, clarinet, violin, viola and double bass—certainly enables extreme timbral contrast.

For this performance Micah Wright returned to join Gigi Brady for the work’s woodwind pairing, while in the strings Kyle Gilner and Jonah Sirota remained on stage, Jonathan Flaksman departed, and Geoff Osika came to the platform for the first time as double bassist to complete the ensemble.

Prokofiev and Stravinsky in Paris, 1920.

The first of its six brief movements (their overall cohesion here marred, sadly, by intermittent applause) is as with the Gál the longest, though not to such a marked degree. The implications of its heading Tema con variazioni are only fulfilled to a limited extent. There are just two variations, with the movement falling into two halves comprising (1) the long theme itself—given a notably tongue-in-cheek lachrymose quality in this performance—plus the equally extensive and medium-paced first variation, and (2) the second variation, Vivace, with gadfly leaps and glissando squeals all over the ensemble, followed by a full reprise of the lugubrious theme.

Next up is an Andante energico. Was Prokofiev teasing expectations and players’ abilities with this seemingly contradictory marking? If so, Mr. Osika responded as well as anyone could imagine with the elephantine thudding and chugging of his opening double bass solo, after which what is effectively continuous variation on that solo’s elements from all the players well lived up to what Mr. Sirota called the work’s “rag-tag circus band quality.” The movement’s unexpectedly long-drawn quiet ending gives way to more chugging and raucousness in the ensuing Allegro sostenuto, ma con brio, but for me the highlight was the fourth, Adagio pesante, movement.

Geoff Osika.

Played with measured intensity, this grim, lowering drama surely marked in the original ballet the entry of some sinister malefactor (a distant pre-echo of Pennywise, perhaps?), as well as in its latter stages recalling somewhat the great glistening, downward-sliding chords with which Prokofiev’s on-and-off friend and rival Stravinsky opens the second part of The Rite of Spring. Frenetic scurrying was back in the fifth movement, Allegro precipitato, the players here tending to zoom on through the qualifying ma non troppo presto.

Always unexpected, Prokofiev concludes his Quintet with an Andantino that begins with what sounds like a stately, slightly ghostly dance that then veers off into more discursive, dissonant scampering. The activity eventually dies down to a pizzicato double bass solo before the slow dance returns, Tempo primo. This builds up a considerable head of steam before violent sextuplets in the clarinet, viola, and double bass chase down, tumultuoso e precipitato, to a single, cut off, final chord.

Cécilia Tsan: Artistic Director, Sunday
 Afternoon Concerts in the Dome.

Perhaps the Mount Wilson audience was too discomposed by the sheer weirdness of the piece to give the five players the standing ovation they most richly deserved for their virtuosic and impactful performance. For this listener the whole concert was one of the richest and most rewarding yet in eight years of attending Cécilia Tsan’s and Dan Kohne’s truly unique series.

This season has been both the biggest (nine concerts compared with previous years’ six) and the most musically wide-ranging. In the greatest possible contrast, the final concert on Sunday, October 19, will be given by Los Angeles’ all- female Mariachi band, Mariachi Lindas Mexicanas.

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100-Inch Telescope Dome, Mount Wilson Observatory, Sunday 5 October 2025,
3 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Images: The performance: Taavi Sirota; Jonah Sirota, Jonathan Flaksman: artists' websites; Hans Gál: composer website; Micah Wright: Pasadena Conservatory of Music; Kyle Gilner: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Gigi Brady: Pasadena Symphony and Pops; Prokofiev and Stravinsky: Legendary Musicians/Facebook; Geoff Osika, Cécilia Tsan: Long Beach Symphony.

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A Tour of Piano Trios to Open the SBCMS Season

The Elixir Piano Trio: l-r Fang Fang Xu, cello; Samvel Chilingarian, violin; Lucy Nargizyan, piano.

REVIEW

Elixir Piano Trio, South Bay Chamber Music Society, Pacific Unitarian Church, Rancho Palos Verdes

DAVID J BROWN

Amongst the LA area’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of highly-skilled, professional chamber music ensembles, the Elixir Piano Trio (Samvel Chilingarian, violin; Fang Fang Xu, cello; Lucy Nargizyan, piano) seems to have passed me by—and to my loss, judging by their program for the first concert of the South Bay Chamber Music Society’s 63rd season, as ever under the Artistic Directorship of Robert Thies.

Drawing of Mozart in silverpoint, April 1989.

This amounted to a chronological mini-conspectus of the piano trio genre from the late 18th to the mid-20th century, but one that neatly side-stepped its most celebrated 19th century (male) names. The Elixirs began with Mozart, and the fifth of his six numbered trios. Composed in summer 1788 at around the same time as his last three symphonies, this Trio in C major, K. 548, despite the key signature’s cheerful implications and its opening measures resemblng a familiar jaunty phrase from an aria in The Marriage of Figaro, is emotionally unsettled and ambiguous.

The first movement exposition is bright-eyed and perky enough, but the development plunges into the minor, and in this performance the tendency to darkness was emphasized both by the Elixir Trio’s trenchant dynamic accentuation and their omission of the repeat. Indeed, the lack of repeats throughout made the work, at a tight, 16-minute whole, seem a very different animal compared with, say, one British period instrument recording where the inclusion of every repeat stretches it to nearly half-an-hour.

Clara Schumann in 1850.

The Elixirs’ dramatic drive was maintained in the next item, written more than half a century after the Mozart. Clara Schumann’s Trio in C minor, Op. 17, from 1846 bids fair to be regarded as the magnum opus in her slender output. Though it follows the familiar four-movement pattern of sonata-design opener, scherzo-and-trio, slow movement, and fast finale, there’s no sense of this being by rote. Rather, it seems the natural home for Schumann’s inspiration.

A long-breathed first subject shared between all three instruments, punctuated by a peremptory fortissimo figure, leads to the exposition's well-contrasted and rhythmically unpredictable second theme. Again the Elixirs did not observe the exposition repeat—and though this was in some ways regrettable, it did serve to emphasize the dramatic thrust of their interpretation, as they dug straight on into the development’s tensile pile-up of overlapping figures, before the lead-back to a full recapitulation.

By contrast, they took a relaxed view of the tempo di menuetto Scherzo—delightfully tripping in ländler-ish contrast to the serious first movement—and gave equal measure to the wistfully lingering Trio, before the Scherzo’s return. All three players relished the beauties of the Andante, beginning with the songful main theme, introduced on the piano and then passed successively to the violin and the cello. The Allegretto finale revisits the first movement’s vigor, and the Elixir Trio skillfully elucidated Clara Schumann’s teeming invention through to the dramatic end.

Rachmaninoff in 1892.

After the interval, they moved on another half-century or thereabouts to the one-movement Trio élégiaque No. 1 in G minor, composed in 1892 by Sergei Rachmaninoff when he was still under 19 years of age. Here they responded as expansively to his late-Romantic Slavic melancholy as they had tightly delineated Mozart’s and Schumann’s Classical structures in the first half, but with the caveat as usual with this piece that it sounds like the first movement of a larger whole—in other words, leaving one wanting more!

Gayane Chebotaryan.

A further leap of half a century brought us to another single-movement piano trio, this time from Western Asia, and written by a composer who few present, surely, would have heard of. Gayane Chebotaryan (1918-1998) was born and died in Russia, but spent most of her working life in her native Armenia, where she achieved considerable recognition. In the Elixirs’ idiomatic and committed account of her Trio for Piano, Violin, and Cello (1945), strains of folk melodies and rhythms certainly brought to mind her more famous countrymen Khatchaturian and Babajanian, and left one wondering if her other works are as immediately engaging.

Astor Piazzolla.

The final temporal jump, this time just a quarter-century, also swung us half-way around the world to Argentina and Astor Piazzolla. His Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (Four Seasons of Buenos Aires), written between 1965 and 1969, seem to be getting almost as ubiquitous, both collectively and individually, as Vivaldi’s Venetian original, and comparably in as many arrangements.

The otherwise excellent (but sadly online-only) program notes by Saagar Asnani of UC Berkeley did not reveal whether the piano trio line-up for Otoño Porteño (Buenos Aires autumn) (1969) was Piazzolla’s own or by another hand. Either way, it can rarely have sounded as haunting and rhapsodic as this performance, led by Fang Fang Xu’s eloquent cello. 

 … and there was an encore: more Piazzolla, and one of his greatest hits—Oblivion, to really sound out the depths of Latinate melancholy, and to the huge appreciation of the South Bay audience. 

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South Bay Chamber Music Society, LA Harbor College 8:00p.m./Pacific Unitarian Church 3:00p.m., Friday/Sunday, 19/21 September, 2025.

Images: Elixir Trio: artists' website; Mozart, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Piazzolla: Wikimedia Commons; Chebotaryan: Armenian National Music; the performance: author.

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