Young Artists in Concert
by
Lyn Bronson
As California Summer Music enters its final week we will be
enjoying a continuing series of student concerts. Although most of these have
been in Keck Auditorium at the Stevenson School, this year marks an experimental
turn in the series as CSM branched out to new locations and scheduled two
concerts at All Saints Church in Carmel. Yesterday afternoon we experienced the
most adventurous venue yet in a student concert hosted by Sarah & John Krasznekewicz in Big Sur. This concert took place in a dramatic location high
above the Pacific Ocean in a charming rustic barn with beautifully resonant
acoustics. This concert came about because the Krasznekewicz’s son, Peter, a
cellist, is enrolled in CSM this summer, thus this lovely new place for a
concert became available. Since there was no piano available in the barn,
another CSM student Genevieve Micheletti came to the rescue and provided for the
occasion the very nice Yamaha grand piano belonging to her sister, Gabby.
Opening the concert was a work few of us had ever heard
before – the Serenade, Op. 10 by Ernő Dohnányi, performed by violinist
Cory Lee, violist
DJ Cheek and cellist
John Heroy. Irene Sharp told the
audience that this piece was written in 1925 and was a light composition. Well,
it may not have been a large pretentious work, but it was exciting and it was fun –
full of gypsy influence and very entertaining. Violinist Lee dazzled us with
some fine playing, as did violist Cheek, who had a lovely solo in the second
movement. Cellist Heroy provided a solid bass line and some very effective
pizzicato.
Cellist Peter
Krasznekewicz played another relatively unknown work,
Tarentella by William Henry Squire, a
British composer who wrote several highly regarded miniatures for cello and
piano. Irene Sharp put aside her cello and stepped to the piano and provided a
very nice accompaniment, and Krasznekewicz treated us to a lot of charm in this
piece.
Pianist Stephanie
Ou performed for us the last two movements of the Brahms Klavierstűcke Op.
119. Especially impressive was her exciting performance of the concluding
Rhapsodie in E-flat Major.
The concert closed with a performance of the first movement
of the Schumann Piano Quartet in E-flat
Major, Op. 47. The performers were violinist
Genevieve Micheletti,
violist
Farrah O’Shea,
cellist
Kerry Takahashi and pianist
Angela Hwang. This was an energetic
and musical performance that left us wishing we could also hear the other
movements.
The music students, faculty and invited guests
were treated to a nice reception of wine and desserts following the performance.
