Arts
Armed with piano power, UT takes aim at New York
By Randy HarrimanDec. 1, 2005
"Why, this here sauce is made in New York City!"
"New York City? Git a rope!"
These piquant lines from an old Pace Picante Sauce commercial, in which hungry cowboys threaten to string up the cook for serving a "foreign" salsa, i.e., not Texas-made Pace, may be a bit over the top, but not much. Many things having to do with the Big Apple are still viewed with some suspicion, if not a touch of disdain, by true-blue residents of the Lone Star State.
Unfortunately, however worthy a particular artistic endeavor might be, a lot of what happens in the arts west of the Hudson doesn't show up on the radars of the northeast cognoscenti until it happens in New York City. Many of these connoisseurs seem to be pretty much convinced they still have a monopoly on art and culture in this country.
Robert Freeman, the outgoing dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, is determined to help change that situation by launching what amounts to an artistic SWAT team to Babylon-on-the-Hudson: an art exhibit, a symposium on art museums and education, an organ recital and some jazz in December.
|
|
|
Lesley Nowlin Bion Tsang on cello, Brian Lewis on violin, Roger Myers on viola and Anton Nel on piano are the Texas Piano Quartet. Texas Piano Quartet When: 8 p.m. Friday Where: Bates Recital Hall, Trinity Street at Robert Dedman Drive Tickets: $10 - $17 Information: 471-5401. For information on the UT events in New York City, call 475-7035. |
"We brought the Miró Quartet (the university's resident string quartet) on board to emphasize string chamber music," says Freeman. "But we also brought on board (pianist) Anton Nel, (violinist) Brian Lewis and (cellist) Bion Tsang. They linked up a couple of years ago with (faculty member) Roger Myers, an outstanding violist, and they called themselves the Faculty Piano Quartet.
"Once I heard them and saw that they were as outstanding as the members of the Miró," Freeman continues, "I thought to myself, 'Hey, this is the way to put the word "Texas" out there.' So the Texas Piano Quartet was born."
Freeman pointed out the differences between the school's relationship with the Miró and the one established with the piano quartet: "The Miró is a full time string quartet," he noted, "so they are committed to 10 performances a year; but three of the members of the Texas Piano Quartet already have separate, established careers as soloists in addition to their teaching load at the school of music, so the new quartet will be performing just six events per year: two public concerts in Austin, two concerts in Austin private homes, and two others at places around the United States."
One of those will be the Carnegie Hall concert; another takes place in October 2007 for the Harvard Music Association in Boston.
The program for Austin and New York is a bit out of the ordinary, according to pianist Nel.
"We thought it would be fun to put together a program that is not too common," he says. "The magnificent Brahms A major is the least played and longest of the composer's three piano quartets. Mendelssohn's quartet in F minor, his opus 2, was composed when he was 13 or 14. I think it's an unsung masterpiece, with brilliant writing — especially for the piano. It's astonishingly mature for someone so young."
The concert's opening number, the 1931 quartet in A minor by Spaniard Joaquin Turina, is, according to Nel, "a delight — very much a 'rhythm and color' piece, full of wonderful Spanish flavors. We love playing it!"
In talking about the school of music's two banner-bearing quartets and their place in the life of the University of Texas, Freeman displays more than a touch of burnt orange: "There are other big public universities that are kind of like UT," he admits, then adds, "but we can say to University of Michigan, for example, 'We can not only beat you at the Rose Bowl (which we did), we can beat you at string quartets — or piano quartets!' "
"The New York City thing I put together," he concludes, "is just meant to put down a sort of marker that what comes out of Texas, while it may have been provincial 50 to 100 years ago, sure isn't any more. There is a world-class arts establishment at the University of Texas in which Texans can take great pride."
