Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
Each summer, talented violists, violists, cellists and pianists travel from around the country to attend The Emerging Artist Fellows summer season program at Garth Newel Music Center in Hot Springs, Virginia.
The musicians are divided into trios and quartets as they learn chamber music composed by some of the most lauded composers of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
By the end of the summer, they have perfected the pieces and are ready to perform at community concerts in August. Prior to that, however, they make a special trip to the Green Bank Observatory to share excerpts from the pieces they’ve learned.
Last Wednesday evening, one trio and three quartets performed for an enthusiastic crowd at the GBO.
Garth Newel executive director Steve Wogaman introduced the performers and welcomed the crowd and invited everyone to attend the full performance at the center in Virginia.
“It feels very strange for me to welcome you to the Green Bank Observatory because this is the first time I’ve ever been here in my life,” he said.
“Actually, tomorrow is the two-month anniversary of my first day on the job, so I’m also brand new at Garth Newel.”
Speaking of the GBO, Wogaman admitted he “nerded” out during the tour and enjoyed the technical details he learned about the telescopes and equipment at the observatory.
“It’s amazing to discover that such a place exists in the neighborhood,” he said. “If you have a similar feeling of discovery when you come and visit us at Garth Newel, we’re even.”
The evening of entertainment was opened by the trio of Aubrey Williams on violin, Lindsay McKenna on cello and Ashley Lee on piano.
“We’re going to be playing for you Anton Arensky’s first piano trio,” Williams said. “Anton Arensky was a Russian composer who had crossed paths with [Pyotr Ilyich] Tchaikovsky and was also friends with Tchaikov-sky, so his writing is influenced by him. He would also go on to mentor composers such as [Sergei] Rachmaninoff and [Alexander ] Scriabin.”
The trio performed the third movement of Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 32. The movement is titled Elegia, or elegy.
“Arensky dedicated this to a friend of his, a cellist, who had passed away,” Williams explained. “That cellist was Karl Davydov who was the principle cellist at the St. Petersburg Opera. There’s a lot of really lush, beautiful cello writing in this trio.
“I think this movement expresses grief, but also really sweet memories and reminiscing,” she added.
Next, the quartet of Lucy Nemeth and Aubrey Williams on violin, David Lawrence on viola and Lindsay McKenna on cello, performed two movements from String Quartet in B-flat Major, K. 589 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
“This string quartet is in a set of quartets that Mozart wrote that are known as the Prussian quartets as they were dedicated to the King of Prussia, who was also an amateur cellist,” McKenna said. “This quartet in particular has some really beautiful cello melodies that I’m very excited to share with you today.”
While the Mozart piece was more lighthearted and airy, the next quartet performance was much more chaotic and somber.
The Lyra String Quartet – Lucy Nemth and Jessica Tovey on violin, Husdon Maness on viola and Ellamay Mantie on cello presented two movements from the String Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Op. 73 by Dmitri Shostakovich.
“This is a piece that he events of the Second World War, which was a very hard time for many people,” Mantie said. “Artists in the Soviet Union were undergoing a lot of censorship with their writing. Originally, Shostakovich had entitled the two movements that we’re going to play – the first one is titled Force of War Unleashed and the second movement is called Remembrance of the Dead.
“These movements are solemn,” she continued. “They are quite potent works. You’ll hear a lot of aggressive sounds. You will also hear a lot of sorrowful sounds, mostly from the violins. We’re excited to present it here to you today.”
The final performance continued the theme of grief and anxiety with a piece by Felix Mendelssohn titled String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80.
The quartet of Jessica Tovey and Amelia Cannavo on violin, Hudson Maness on viola and Monica Grady on cello presented the final movement of the piece.
“This piece is significant in that it was written in response to Felix Mendelssohn’s sister’s sudden and unexpected death, so it’s really an expression of grief, of loss and just represents a reckoning with all kinds of emotions that come and go with the loss of someone very dear and close to you,” Grady said. “The movement we’re playing, in particular, is the fourth movement, the final movement. It’s marked allegro molto which means very fast and rather than being about melody or even about harmony, for me what this music is really about is this pervasive and inescapable sense of anxiety.
“You’ll hear it right from the very beginning, the cello starts with this oscillating and very restless, anxious figure, and you’ll hear it passed around the instruments as the movement progresses,” she continued. “At a certain point, we have these two words in our music – con fuoco – which means with fire and at this point, for me, what happens is this sense of anxiety kind of starts to spiral out of control into something more angry, more unstable and perhaps even a little hysterical.
“So I think it will keep you on the edge of your seat. I know it keeps us on the edge of our seats. It’s definitely an exciting dash toward the finish line at the end of this piece.”
The performance was followed by a reception where the audience could mingle with the musicians.