Weekend Reviews

Promising quartet unbalanced in sound

Classical: Texas Piano Quartet
Painting: Ali Fitzgerald
Choral music: ASO and Chorus Austin's "Messiah"

Web updated: Dec. 8, 2005

Classical music

As School of Fine Arts Dean Robert Freeman announced at a break in the quartet's debut performance in Bates Recital Hall on Friday, this was a first run of a program to be presented in Carnegie Hall's secondary Zankel Hall on Dec. 19.

Minor flaws marred the quartet's emphatic premiere concert.

Joaquin Turina's Quartet in A minor and the Quartet in F minor by 14-year-old Felix Mendelssohn (with his first masterpieces, the Octet for strings and the Overture to "A Midsummer Night's Dream," two years in the future) interested me but struck me as grade-B pieces that gave these artists little room to demonstrate their artistry as individuals or as an ensemble. Then, in Brahms' Quartet in A major, the group tipped the balance between forward motion and contemplation of the moment sharply toward contemplation. It was a leisurely reading that felt like way too much of a good thing.

Whether due to their instruments, how they used them, or where they chose to sit, the balance among the strings strongly favored Lewis' brilliant violin. For the first time ever, I had trouble hearing Tsang's cello, and the viola was almost equally veiled. While Nel demonstrated marvelous control of the piano with the lid fully open, his full-throttle moments covered the strings.

World-class chamber ensembles achieve parity of tone color and volume among their players. Once the Texas Piano Quartet works this out, they'll be far more ready to take Manhattan.
— David Mead

Painting

WILD WEST SHOW MEETS POP CULTURE

Bold, brassy, bawdy — Ali Fitzgerald's colossal "On Virgin Land" is an opera of unstretched painted canvas now sprawling floor to ceiling at Art Palace. What better way to express her fascination with the grandiose mythology of the Wild West than to take her vision outside the confines of the picture frame, let it ripple all the way around the gallery and even splash off the canvas and directly on to the wall.

A University of Texas graduate student, Fitzgerald was one of 36 out of more than 600 artists to be selected this year for the Texas Biennial.

"Michelangelo meets Mad Magazine" is how the artist describes her expressive, Pop-informed figurative style. And that's apt. Her cast of characters — among others, a buxom pistol-toting gal, a grim-faced American Indian family, a bikini-clad female bronco rider, a toothless old cowboy — all boogie together, jumbling on top of each other like some crazy cowboy comic book or else a vast Renaissance painting. Or both.

There's an irresistible energy in Fitzgerald's paintings. Really, it's manic. Grotesque and comic, the oddballs who populate "On Virgin Land" seem to be in constant motion. A million stories ripple across their kinetic faces or shoot from their intense eyes. It's a brilliantly theatrical effect.

But don't let all that opera fool you: On each of two exposed gallery windows, Fitzgerald has painted a portly male tourist — complete with Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian shirt and a camera covering his face.

OK, so just who exactly is — or who isn't — the tourist in Fitzgerald's Wild West?

"On Virgin Land: Ali Fitzgerald" continues 7 to 9 p.m. Thursdays, noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and by appointment through Dec. 15. Art Palace, 2109 E. Cesar Chavez St. Free. 496-0687. www.artpalacegallery.com.
— Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

Choral music

GENTLE WAKE-UP CALL FOR 'MESSIAH'

How can Austin Symphony Orchestra and Chorus Austin escape the molasseslike lethargy that attended their performance of Handel's "Messiah" on Tuesday? Please forgive the gently mocking tone of my suggestions.

1. Give Kenneth Sheppard yoga lessons for Christmas. That way the conductor could employ more than two stiff gestures during most of the oratorio. No one doubts Sheppard's musicianship, but as Mr. Michael once sang, wake me up before you go-go.

2. Decorate the scores in bright colors. So the symphony's instrumentalists will respond with more energy and pleasure to Handel's 53-part masterpiece.

3. Spare some oxygen for the male soloists. This is painful to record, but Brett Barnes and Christopher LeCluyse — no exaggeration, two of Austin's finest singers — could not manage balanced phrasing until their final recitatives.

4. Give more work to the women: Wispy soprano Mela Dailey and sultry alto Elizabeth Cass delivered the most consistent performances, and they audibly boosted the shared sound when they joined the choir's anemic efforts.

5. Put Chorus Austin on Friendster.com. These guys need help. I remember when they could raise the rafters with the "Hallelujah" chorus. Tuesday, the 70 or so singers barely raised their voices. A single tenor on the back row got the power of the piece; everyone else seemed to have inhaled a baroque form of ether.

6. Donate $1 million to the Long Center. Oh, hear our holiday prayer: Make it happen sooner. The Riverbend Centre, a lovely, vaulting hall with the most comfortable pews in town, can sound like a big stone cavern, making even the most admirable musical enterprises inert.
— Michael Barnes