The first day, Jan. 23, of the Pender Harbour Music Society’s winter chamber music weekend drew superlatives from the audience at the music school in Madeira Park. The programme of sonatas from Johannes Brahms and Robert and Clara Schumann was given life under the violin of Gary Levinson and the piano of Baya Kakouberi.
On Sunday, the two distinguished musicians were joined by cellist Andres Diaz and the trio attracted a full house to the intimate venue.
Brahms Sonata No. 2 in A Major, a personal favourite, opened the concert on Sunday. Written while Brahms was in Switzerland, it was inspired by his surroundings and seemed an appropriate piece for Pender Harbour’s natural setting. Schumann’s Fantasiestücke for cello and piano was exquisitely performed but somewhat sombre. Schumann, who was the rock star of his day, drew crowds to performances of his music, but he was undergoing personality changes late in life when he composed the piece and suffered periodic attacks of depression, reflected in the music.
Many of his pieces were composed for his wife of 15 years, the pianist Clara Schumann. The three musicians played her most famous piece for chamber music, the Piano Trio in G minor, that held none of her husband’s gloom. Brahms and the Schumanns were contemporaries and the story, as told by Sunday’s musicians, is that she was instrumental in saving some of Brahms’ best music from being thrown into the fireplace.
The three artists value teaching. Kakouberi, who is the artistic director of a music series in Texas, always makes time in her program to feature young students – a practice adopted by the Chamber Music Festival last summer with their innovation of the Rising Tide performance by gifted Sunshine Coast emerging musicians. (On Sunday the page turner for the pianist was young Coast student Emily Picard.) When the summer festival returns this year, Aug. 18 to 22, it will feature three students as well as a selection of renowned artists under the direction of Alexander Tselyakov. For a full lineup see: www.penderharbourmusic.ca
