Samantha Cho at Old First Concerts

Screen shot of Samatha Cho at the piano keyboard in Old First Church

Last night I live-streamed the latest recital to be presented by Old First Concerts. The recitalist was pianist Samantha Cho, who is currently on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The second half of her program was devoted entirely to four-hand performances, for which she was joined by Alison Lee.

Her program began right off the bat with a world premiere performance. This was “Tether” by Monica Chew, currently based in Oakland. Sadly, as this piece wended its way, I could not shake the frequent reminders of my composition teacher to beware of “noodling.” If there was little sense of direction, then one could appreciate Cho’s failure to provide a particularly compelling account of the music. However, she muddled her way through the rest of the first half of the program with little to draw attention to composers that were definitely worthy of it: Toru Takemitsu, Edvard Grieg, and Earl Wild.

Things picked up a bit for the duo performances. These began with chorale preludes from two of Johann Sebastian Bach’s best-known cantatas, BWV 147, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, and BWV 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme. The chorales themselves came from the final movement of BWV 147 (“Jesus bleibet meine Freude”) and the middle movements of BWV 140 (“Zion hört die Wächer singen”). These are some of the most familiar excerpts from Bach’s sacred music, and they were both given perfectly satisfying accounts. Cho and Lee then concluded with music actually written for four hands, Claude Debussy’s Petite Suite, consistently catching the upbeat spirit of their selection.

Over the course of the evening, however, that spirit was a sometime thing, coming across more as an obligation to perform a recital, rather than an opportunity to engage with the audience.