SFCM guest artist violinist Melissa White (from the event page for her chamber music recital)
Last night in the Barbro Osher Recital Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), the spring semester installment of the Chamber Music Tuesday concert series got off to a disappointing start. The guest artist was violinist Melissa White; and her approach to the music she was performing, not to mention the students and Faculty Pianist Julio Elizalde, left much to be desired. Whether she was playing familiar works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (piano quartet in G minor, K. 478) and Johannes Brahms (third violin sonata in D minor, Opus 108), the less familiar Max Bruch (string quintet in E-flat major, Opus posthumous), or a movement from the first string quartet by contemporary Wynton Marsalis, it was hard to avoid feeling that she lacked any sense of engagement with the music itself.
The fact is that there was not very much expressiveness in her playing. Furthermore, when she approached the slower movements, her sonorities began to sound thin. Establishing interplay with her fellow performers was also problematic. The opening movements of the Bruch quintet sounded so much like mush that I bailed during the second movement.
I shall not attempt to conjecture (let alone diagnose) why last night was so consistently disappointing; but I hope that, by next month, Chamber Music Tuesday will be back on a reliable track again.
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