Tag Archives: Phillip Bush

CP’s Connor Series Signs Off With Two Powerhouse Piano Quintets

By Perry Tannenbaum

September 17, 2023, Charlotte, NC – Even before the Connor Chamber Music series began six years ago at Tate Hall, Catherine and Wilton Connor were among the strongest advocates of chamber music in the Metrolina area. They had previously helped to give the St. Peter’s Chamber Music series extra reach beyond Uptown church by hosting Living Room Concerts in their Myers Park home. Furthermore, they had opened their doors to violinist Rosemary Furniss and her chamber trio when her husband, Christopher Warren-Green, was the Charlotte Symphony’s music director.

So it was bittersweet to hear Mr. Connor announce that the latest concert on the Central Piedmont Community College campus, showcasing piano quintets by Béla Bartók and Antonín Dvořák, would be their last. Connor hastened to console us, hyping the recent and future concerts of Chamber Music for All, led by Charlotte Symphony concertmaster Calin Lupanu. And in fact, the program we were soon to hear had already been performed a week earlier at the Lancaster Cultural Arts Center, the climactic event of the inaugural Historic Lancaster Music Festival. Future CM4A concerts are already scheduled there, at Sedgefield United Methodist Church, and at the Steinway Piano Gallery.

Not nearly as renowned, recorded, or as frequently performed as his six string quartets, Bartók’s Piano Quintet in C Major is one of the composer’s earliest works, written in 1903-4, a mere 17 years after Dvořák’s quintet was premiered and 35 years before his own final string quartet. Often in its outer movements, the opening Andante and the concluding Poco Vivace, the music has an anthemic openness that you might expect from a 19^th-century piece written in the shadows of Liszt, Strauss, and Brahms, before Bartók leaned more toward folk music and modernistic experimentation.

At the keyboard, Phillip Bush resisted the temptation of steering the joyousness of the piano part into stentorian jubilation, resulting in more ensemble cohesiveness and more contemplative edge. Lupanu could stay more within himself to match Bush’s fire without ever flattening the peaks and valleys of the volatile music where Bartók abruptly changed tempos and dynamics. Marcus Pyle, who had inched onto our radar earlier this year as a preview speaker for Opera Carolina’s production of Porgy and Bess, impressed almost instantly on viola with his lush tone and sleek double-bowing.

The inner movements, a Vivace-Scherzando followed by an Adagio, are more forward-looking. The Scherzando did not lack for quirkiness, but Bush could have been more provocative and eccentric in the second movement. With cellist Marlene Ballena and second violinist Monica Boboc making valuable contributions, the quartet sounds were dominant in the Adagio, though the 2019 Alpha Classics recording, captured live at the Lockenhaus Chamber Festival, dares to be more raucous and astringent. When Lupanu’s quintet surrendered more fully to the closing Vivace, they delivered more of its fire and madness.

Competition among recordings of the Dvořák Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major not only increases exponentially compared with the sparse field of Bartók recordings, so does the name recognition of the pianists, violinists, and string quartets who have entered the fray. On the other hand, the musicians onstage at Tate Hall must have had so many more opportunities to glean master classes from this immense discography – and likely more opportunities to rehearse and perform this perennial favorite before bringing it to CPCC. The electricity and sound quality of live performance, the familiarity of the audience with the piece – particularly when it settled into the dreamy Dumka movement after the rousing Allegro opener – brought the Connor concert experience into gratifyingly close alignment with the best CDs available.

Bush played with confident élan, pliant and at ease navigating the tempo shifts of the opening movement, charming and lyrical in the gorgeously pianistic Andante passages that make the Dumka so memorable, and unbridled with the onset of the folksy interludes. Lupanu also played with loose and spontaneous abandon, slashing boldly with his bow at the quick tempos and delicately caressing the strings in the lovely soft passages. Ballena shone most with her cello as she introduced the first theme of the Allegro, and Pyle was equally convincing introducing the second. Everybody seemed to be having a jolly time as the sober ending of the Dumka gave way to the penultimate Scherzo. Lupanu and Bush mischievously frolicked on the left side of the Tate stage, answered to humorous effect by Ballena and Pyle with their suave mellowness.

Boboc had her most memorable spot in the Allegro Finale when we jumped away from the spirited interplay between Bush and Lupanu into a fugal section where Ballena and Pyle also got a taste. There were also harmonious sections that reminded me of the uniqueness of Dvořák’s string quartets. Yet it was Bush who was most dominant at the concert’s climax, trilling and ding-a-linging merrily before he ramped up the speed and intensity toward the very end. Obviously relishing the encounter, Lupanu matched him note for note as they raced to the precipice.

Lupanu and Friends Feed off Audience Energy in Return to Live Performance

Review: Connor Chamber Series at Tate Hall

By Perry Tannenbaum

While orchestral performances have sadly languished during the COVID pandemic, recently reviving in Charlotte and elsewhere in prudent baby steps, chamber music has flourished in online productions. Back on Memorial Day weekend, while the youth choir and orchestra remained sidelined for a second consecutive season at Spoleto Festival USA, chamber music restarted at Dock Street Theatre in Charleston, running a full slate of programming and replaying edited versions on YouTube. Not surprisingly, it has been principals of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, cellist Alan Black and concertmaster Calin Lupanu, who have most dramatically stepped forward to fill the void, each of them spearheading a series of chamber music concerts while the larger ensemble remained mute or muted. More encouraging, then, for those of us who love the intimacy and verve of chamber music, is that neither of these initiatives is in retreat now that audiences are vaccinated.

Thanks to the Connor Chamber Series, Lupanu could be seen at Tate Hall on the Central Piedmont Community campus while Symphony is returning to full strength, its mainstage classics series slated to launch at Knight Theater on October 15. Lupanu hosted the concert of works by Brahms and Anton Arensky, starting off together with Phillip Bush at the piano playing the Brahms Scherzo movement from the F-A-E Sonata, which was originally premiered by pianist Clara Schumann and violinist Joseph Joachim, for whom the piece was written in 1853. After this lively opening, Lupanu yielded the violin part for the Arensky Piano Trio No. 1, replaced by fellow Symphony musicians Monica Boboc and cellist Marlene Ballena. Lupanu returned after intermission – inserted to give Bush a rest, he jested – for the finale, the Brahms Piano Trio No. 1, written just a year after his Scherzo.

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The Tate immediately proved hospitable to Lupanu’s violin in the Brahms Scherzo, which also drew movements by Robert Schumann and his pupil, Albert Dietrich. On the other hand, the treble breathed more freely from the Steinway than the bass end of its keyboard, perhaps because of its nearness to the upstage wall. The music, Lupanu’s placement downstage, and the excitement of playing chamber music for a live audience after 18 months of performing for mics and cameras (if at all) were all good reasons for the violinist to excel more than usual. Coming out and masking up, seeing the masked musicians onstage taking up their share of the pandemic risk and responsibility, the audience was also primed to be exceptionally receptive. Lupanu may have seen the enthusiasm in the audience’s eyes as he looked out on us, but he couldn’t help feeling the free, propulsive spirit of Bush behind him, very much inside the music, spurring him on to be better and better.

Arensky’s trio has been on my radar ever since pianist Yefim Bronfman headlined a Sony recording of the piece over 25 years ago (paired with an even more electrifying Tchaikovsky trio), so it was not surprising to see Bush assert more leadership. Yet both of the string players acquitted themselves admirably in each of the D minor’s four movements. A beautiful violin melody from Boboc at the top of the opening Allegro moderato was echoed in more abbreviated form by Ballena’s cello, yet it was likely that hearing Ballena’s cello so much more clearly in live performance put me in mind of Dvorak’s chamber pieces. Boboc captured the lightness of the ensuing Scherzo, but it was Ballena who became the prime advocate when that movement slowed to its more luxuriant Meno mosso tempo.

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Bush’s sound, at times downright impressionistic, was the most distinctive element in the elegiac Adagio. Yet Boboc was also disarming, playing low enough on her violin to be mistaken for a cello if you weren’t watching. Not to be outdone, Ballena played even lower when we arrived at her spot. It was in the Allegro finale that Arensky finally matched the turbulence we had heard from Brahms. Bush assaulted the Steinway with a barrage of three-chord phrases while the strings stirred up the heat. Then he turned down the volume and the tempo in a poignant passage of four-note phases. Now it was the strings’ turn to dominate, Boboc and Ballena vying in eloquence as they demonstrated how lyrical and affecting those same phrases could be that Bush had played so feverishly.

Looking at the attentiveness of Bush and Ballena throughout the Brahms B Major trio, we could assume that Lupanu held the reins, yet there was admirable parity between the parts. Ballena’s cello sang out introducing the theme of the opening Allegro brio, and she had a transporting spot in the penultimate Adagio. Bush was pre-eminent in setting the tone, restless amid the shifting tempos of the opening movement, dreamy in his intro to the Adagio before the strings interceded with their sacramental harmonies, but most mischievous in the even-numbered movements. The second-movement Scherzo suddenly pivoted from a beguiling waltz tempo to a manic chromatic outburst that presaged Shostakovich, up in the treble where the Steinway fared best, and the grandeur he imparted to the Allegro con brio finale was star-spangled American. For Lupanu to dominate amid these exploits from his partners, projecting the joy of the Scherzo and the triumph of the Finale, was quite impressive.

Three Rousing Piano Trios Keynote “A Beethoven Celebration” at Davidson College

Review: “A Beethoven Celebration”

By Perry Tannenbaum

2020~Beethoven Celebration-1 Although Beethoven’s 250^th birthday is still 10 months away, orchestras and classical concert series began falling over each other in bringing forth the birthday boy’s music almost as soon as the clock struck midnight on December 31 – a scant two weeks after his 249^th. Last weekend, Christopher Warren-Green led the Charlotte Symphony in their third Beethoven orchestral piece since the calendar flipped, the Symphony No. 8, after breaking out the Leonore Overture and the “Emperor” Concerto last month. Then, skipping over the Missa Solemnis and Symphonies Nos. 4 and 6 still remaining on this season’s schedule, Warren-Green confided that next year’s schedule will include three symphonies, three concerti, and an overture, stretching CSO’s Beethoven birthday bash past December 17, until at least spring 2021.

With that in mind, credit the Davidson College Concert Series with showing some restraint in waiting until mid-February to present “A Beethoven Celebration.” Series artistic director Alan Black cryptically promised more Beethoven later this year before claiming the cellist’s chair for a program of piano trios, including the highly-revered “Archduke” Trio No. 7. Joining Black at the Tyler-Tallman Hall in the Sloan Music Center were violinist John Fadial and pianist Phillip Bush.

A program of Beethoven piano trios offers the ripe opportunity for musicians to begin their celebration at the beginning – Op. 1, No. 1 in E-flat – and for Black to point out how much the composer would evolve from the Haydn disciple of 1795, when he wrote his first published work, to the pioneering master he had become 21 years later when he published his Op. 97. Yet in the opening Allegro, Bush showed us he was not necessarily playing along with the idea of sharply contrasting early and middle-period Beethoven. Or he did when the musicians belatedly embarked on the same page. For some reason, Fadial hadn’t absorbed the whole Op. 1, No. 1 concept and thought that the concert would begin with the B-flat Allegretto for Piano Trio, a gaffe that had Black doubled over in his chair with laughter.

Once members of the trio were literally on the same page, Bush was dominant in the Allegro, throwing himself into its Haydn-like playfulness and charm up in the treble yet almost always emphasizing the incipient thrust and rigor of Beethoven’s incipient maturity when he punctuated the placid surface with chords. Worries that Fadial had been chastened into submissive diffidence vanished when he took the lead in launching the Andante cantabile, and Black was equally persuasive repeating the theme as Fadial hovered above for awhile before swooping in to take over. Bush insinuated himself before seizing control, sometimes completely unaccompanied, only slightly foreboding in tone. Everybody played sweetly in this even-handed movement, even in handing the final notes back and forth.

Haydn held sway in the trio’s performance of the Scherzo, for the players didn’t adopt the faster pace that evokes Beethoven in the Beaux Arts Trio recording, nor did they emphasize the abrupt shifts in dynamics that the Barenboim-Zukerman-Du Pre trio applied – at a tempo noticeably slower than the marked Allegro assai. Bush was the only player here who occasionally pointed us toward Beethoven’s future. The mischievous opening bars of the Finale, recurring over and over at the marked Presto tempo, are the essence of jollity we find so abundantly in Haydn and Mozart – so far from the “Joy” Beethoven would ultimately redefine in his “Choral” Symphony. Handing the melody back and forth, Bush and the string players had a merry time with this music, and both Fadial and Black acquitted themselves well when they eventually had their opportunities to hold the reins at this galloping tempo. A few of the digressions that intervened as we approached the midpoint of the movement wafted in hints of the intensities Beethoven would sustain later in his career.

Though they didn’t speak, the smiles exchanged between the string players said it plainly: Now was time for the Allegretto. Once again, Bush resisted the urge to demonstrate a radical difference between Piano Trio No. 8, written in 1811, and the prior composition, emphasizing its prettiness and its waltzing 3/4 meter. Even when the string players drew perfunctory passes through the melody, Bush’s piano accompaniment upstaged them. Far more parity, resourcefulness, and expansive ambition were on display after intermission when the trio returned with the B-flat “Archduke.” Accompanying the lovely theme of the opening Allegro moderato, Fadial and Black were noticeably more assertive here in responding to Bush’s statements of the theme, dealing admirably with scoring that reflected the advances Beethoven had made in his string quartets. The violinist and then the cellist had opportunities to voice the themes on their own, and it was enjoyable to hear Bush fading from lead to accompaniment and then ramping up at the keyboard to partnership with the strings. Pizzicato interplay between Fadial and Black late in this movement was the most modernistic music we had heard thus far, and when we returned to the opening theme at the end, Bush proved that he had been holding its full majesty in reserve.

On the ensuing Scherzo, the trio took a lighter and more jocund attitude, de-emphasizing the tendency of the strings to lurk ominously behind the gamboling piano and suddenly pounce out of ambush. That somewhat passive line did not deter Bush from bearing down where the piano might have been startled by an ambuscade. Nor were we deprived of Beethoven’s devious misdirection, the surprising sparseness near the end of the movement, and his depths. Like the middle Largo movement that gives the “Ghost” Piano Trio No. 5 its name, the slow Andante cantabile is the longest movement of the “Archduke.” The first five or six notes, solemnly repeated over and over, inevitably transport me to Sabbath at my synagogue when the torah scrolls are returned to the ark. Bush played with gorgeous lyricism here, a true adoration of the melody, and the subsequent speed-up of the strings sounded inspired by the eloquence from the keyboard. The trio probed more deeply and achingly as the movement turned back toward reflection.

Without so much as a breath between movements, the trio brought on the jollity of the concluding Allegro moderato. Bush communicated all of its cascading merriment as he cruised along, Haydn and Mozart still in his rearview mirror, but he didn’t hesitate when Beethoven’s misdirection took the music offroad into a region of mystery. We were unmistakably on Beethoven turf thenceforward. Black was the more assertive of the string players during the turbulence that followed Bush’s excursion as the trio fused busily together. The ride was bumpy to the end, slow and fast, soft then loud, with a brief episode that sounded like a rollicking cello sonata. Bush ultimately broke free from the roar of an equally-shared hubbub, taking over the driver’s seat as they sped home. Yes, it felt like a celebration when we arrived.