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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > July > 16 > Entry
Review: Austin Chamber Music Festival
Partway through the first week of this summer’s Austin Chamber Music Festival, it is clear that artistic director Michelle Schumann is building boldly on her impressive first season. The exciting new ingredient this summer is the new venues at the Long Center for the Performing Arts.
Tuesday evening offered the Gryphon Trio in Dell Hall. Though both performers and audience were a bit swallowed up in the lovely but large space, the players were fairly successful scaling everything up to fill the room. Pianist Jamie Parker has a bright, brilliant touch. With the piano lid fully open, his sound was much more present than that of cellist Roman Borys, though Borys consistently made himself heard. Violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon, however, was swamped more than once by the pianistic tidal wave.
One thing that this ensemble does well is balance and clarify a texture so that the music takes on a tactile quality. And though these musicians think and move as one — no small achievement — the music was always brilliant and facile, never moving. With the opening Mozart Trio this lack wasn’t so marked. But Dvorák’s “Dumky” trio was never warm and glowing, and the tango by Astor Piazzolla played as an encore lacked color and allure.
Last Saturday’s concert was interesting in an unusual way. The Cecilia String Quartet, a young, multiprize-winning ensemble, presented a satisfying though not always polished program in the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theatre. The group is still building the techniques required of chamber music professionals.
Though the music making always had the right idea, the focus wasn’t always there.
But Rollins Theatre has a suspended wood floor that makes the entire room a sounding board for the music. I don’t remember the last time I heard a cello sound so naturally resonant in a concert, and the violins and the viola benefited in the same way. The only catch is that any audience noise is just as audible as the music; but we can learn to be quiet, can’t we, friends?
David Mead is an American-Statesman freelance classical music critic.
The Austin Chamber Music Festival continues through July 26 at various venues. Schedules and details at www.austinchambermusic.org.
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