French Flavors and Virtuosic Variations highlight week two of Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival

Mark Gresham | 17 JUL 2024

The mountains of western North Carolina, with their cool, refreshing air and stunning scenic beauty, are a favorite summer vacation destination. Among the highlights of this region is the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival, a cultural gem that draws music lovers from near and far to the towns of Highlands and Cashiers.

Set against the natural beauty of the majestic Blue Ridge Mountains, the Festival offers an enchanting series of chamber music performances amid the charm of the surrounding landscape and the in-town boutique shopping and dining experiences, affording an ideal retreat for those seeking a blend of relaxation and cultural enrichment.

This past weekend was the second week of the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival. This reviewer was present for the late afternoon concerts in Cashiers on Sunday at Village Green Commons and in Highlands on Monday at the Highlands Performing Arts Center.

“Bastille Day celebration – Vive la France!”

The Fête nationale française, legally known as le 14 juillet—or Bastille Day among anglophones—inspired Sunday’s program. Performed on the holiday and dedicated to French music, the concert featured four masterpieces that exemplify the elegance and innovation of French composers.

Cellist Sara Sant’Ambrogio and pianist Jasmin Arakawa opened the proceedings with an impressive pairing of Claude Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, in a convincingly articulate performance full of impressionistic textures and evocative colors, followed by Gabriel Fauré’s Élégie, a poignant and lyrical exploration of melancholic beauty. And yet, Sant’Ambrogio gave it a bit of forward motion that evoked some emotional strength and vibrancy instead of a more typical somber tone, offering new insight into a piece that is too often played in a well-worn manner.

Violinist Yuriy Bekker then took the stage to perform Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano with Arakawa, with a modern, jazz-influenced perspective to characteristically French expression, blending clarity and complexity in a seamless dialogue between the instruments.

After intermission, Bekker, Sant’Ambrogio, and Arakawa were joined by violinist Helen Kim and violist Yinzi Kong for Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 14, concluding the program with brilliant and vibrant musical interplay that showcasde the composer’s classical roots and flair for dramatic expression.

“Variety is the Spice of Life”

MOonday evening’s program centered on “variations,” exploring the form through the works of four different composers.

Violinist Yuriy Bekker and pianist Jasmin Arakawa, who had played in Sunday’s concert, returned to the stage to participate in Monday’s performance, joined by clarinetist Jesse McCandless and flutist James Zellers—although the four did not all play together in a single ensemble; the selections were all duo or solo works.

McCandless and Arakawa opened with Giacomo Rossini’s Introduction, Theme and Variations,” which showcased the composer’s signature wit and melodic inventiveness. Zellars and Arakawa then performed Franz Schubert’s “Introduction and Variations, D.802,” which, with its lyrical and virtuosic dialogue, highlighted his remarkable gift for melodic transformation.

Bekker closed the first half of the program with an unaccompanied work: Niccolò Paganini’s famous Caprice No. 24 in A minor, a staple of violin repertoire that demonstrates the art of variation through dazzling technical demands and inventive variations. But compared to his most excellent performance of Ravel’s Sonata the previous evening, the Caprice seemed more of a challenge for Bekker, and it felt a little rough in sports to this listener.

After intermission, it was Arakawa’s turn to perform solo. She concluded the concert with Robert Schumann’s Études symphoniques (“Symphonic Etudes”), blending complexity and emotion in a series of intricate variations that push the boundaries of the piano’s expressive capabilities. It was also Arakawa’s best playing of the evening, more akin to her collaborative work with cellist Sant’Ambrogio on Sunday than with the earlier pieces on this program, in which her playing seemed more expressively reserved by comparison. But Schumann’s music was her showpiece. ■

EXTERNAL LINKS:

• Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival: h-cmusicfestival.org

About the author:

Mark Gresham is publisher and principal writer of EarRelevant. He began writing as a music journalist over 30 years ago, but has been a composer of music much longer than that. He was the winner of an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music journalism in 2003.

Read more by Mark Gresham.

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