Mendelssohn 200th Anniversary Gala
Rutgers University May 26, 2009 Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie HallTo honor the bicentenary of Felix Mendelssohn’s birth, the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University’s Boyd Foundation (under the direction of piano Professor Min Kwon) mounted an extravaganza presenting practically all of the composer’s Songs Without Words as played by the piano department’s artists—most of them graduate students there; a few undergraduates; and for a final flourish, the Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream Music in a four hand piano version (source unspecified; not the ubiquitous Rachmaninoff solo arrangement) with two faculty members, Min Kwon and Daniel Epstein doing the honors.
A similar concert fielded by Rutgers “et al” was built around the Grieg Lyric Pieces in tribute to the hundredth anniversary of the Norwegian Minor Master’s death on December 14, 2007. That event at Steinway Hall was favorably reviewed by Edith Eisler in Volume 15 No.2 of this journal. Assessing diverse performances of short pieces can be a temptation for a critic to make comparisons and pass subjective value judgments (and my compliments to my colleague Ms. Eisler for elegantly avoiding potential but unwarranted opinion!). With so many pianist involved there are of course variations in interpretations, tone, temperamental style and technique to be conjured with; but Mendelssohn ’s Songs Without Words, diverse as they are, do not offer amazing leeway that (say) Chopin’s Mazurkas can potentially bring to the fore. Mendelssohn’s idiom, in keeping with Grieg, calls for a similar German Romanticism whereas Chopin is particularly prone to many “specialists” who will never agree about ways to apply or shape a rubato and the result will often bombard the listener with “authentic” interpreters who are—well—Poles apart!
The protagonists offered an intriguing array of artists harking from Australia, Tbilisi, South Korea, Costa Rica, Japan, Taiwan, Poland and Brazil. And before coming to Rutgers, many of the players graduated from Mannes College, the Manhattan School of Music, Juilliard, Boston University and Toronto (New England Conservatory, University of Toronto) in America.
One particularly gratifying aspect of this marathon was the wonderful; sense of camaraderie. Ms. Eisler comment about the aforementioned Grieg concert deserves to be quoted appreciatively:
“In today’s competitive musical world, the concert was remarkable for its freedom from egotism and rivalry; in a true spirit of homage to the composer, the performers and never called attention to themselves of to their technical and musical gifts, but focused entirely on the music.”
In retrospective, this was a heartwarming and satisfying evening of music. Bravo to everyone connected with it!
