Late yesterday afternoon at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, Music at the Mishkan wrapped up its 22nd season, delayed by a year due to pandemic conditions. The instrumentalists were The Bridge Players, led by violinist Randall Weiss, who founded the concert series. His colleagues for this recital were violist Natalia Vershilova, cellist Matthew Linaman, and pianist Amy Zanrosso.
The entire ensemble played only the concluding work on the program, Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 15 (first) piano quartet in C minor. The first half of the program was devoted primarily to the first of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 70 piano trios, composed in the key of D major and subsequently given the name “Ghost” by Carl Czerny about fifteen year’s after the composer’s death. This was preceded by Alexander Krein’s “Elegie,” also scored for piano trio. There was also a “bonus” opening, preceding the works listed on the program, a Chassidic dance for violin and cello composed by Zikmund Schul, one of the casualties of the Theresienstadt Ghetto, built by the Nazis as a way station to their extermination camps.
While the Schul and Krein offerings reflected the spirit of the synagogue venue, the two multi-movement compositions, written at either end of the nineteenth century, provided the best platform for The Bridge Players. Zanrosso’s keyboard work captured all the high spirits of Fauré’s quartet, whose structure also involved an abundance of imaginative interplay among the three string players. The Beethoven performance made it clear that Czerny’s nickname deserves to be forgotten. Both of the Opus 70 trios present Beethoven in his highest spirits, and there is no shortage of humorous gestures. In the first of the two trios, Beethoven’s wit is most evident in the last of the three movements; and yesterday’s trio players allowed that wit to register with all the necessary impact. Any darkness on the part of Schul and Krein was quickly dispersed by both Beethoven and Fauré.
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