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.