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L.A. Studio Musicians Shine Los Angeles
Bing Theater, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
10/01/2000 -
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sonata for Piano and Violin in E flat major, K. 302 (1778)
Haim Shtrum: Toccata for Violin and Piano (1997)(World Premiere)
Gabriel Fauré: Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major, Op. 13 (1876)
Mark Robertson (violin), Brian Pezzone (piano)
It’s often been said about Los Angeles that the best musicians are not all in the Philharmonic. And it is true that many top musicians play mostly in the film and television studios where they can earn considerably more than their Philharmonic colleagues. The satisfaction these musicians derive from playing mindless scores by even the best film composers, however, is another question.
So, whenever they can, they play in orchestral or chamber music concerts outside the studio walls. In the case of this Sunday-night concert at the L.A. County Museum of Art, two instrumentalists and a composer who work often (though not exclusively) in the studios showed that the results in a conventional concert setting can be breathtaking.
The centerpiece of the concert was the world premiere of Haim Shtrum’s Toccata for Violin and Piano. A top violinist himself, Shtrum wrote this 10-minute piece “as an homage to a great and inspirational teacher and friend who touched many musicians’ lives,” the world-renowned pedagogue Dorothy Delay on the occasion of her 80th birthday. The three-movement tour de force mixes western, particularly Baroque, and Middle Eastern musical elements with confidence and a driving sense of pace that carries the listener along in one big sweep from start to finish.
The performance by Robertson and Pezzone was as remarkable as Toccata was brilliant. Both were on top of all the notes, and there were lots of them, but neither neglected the more expressive aspects of the music, either in the obviously legato sections or in the rapid fire passages with which Toccata is so liberally strewn.
The concert began with a gently moving performance of Mozart’s Sonata K. 302, quick and alert without ever being brusque, and ended with a deeply satisfying performance of Fauré’s A Major Sonata, in which sophisticated cool timbres and a cosmopolitan sense of panache were balanced with flashing virtuosity.
Laurence Vittes
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