Copious Notes

The musicians of the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington perform Antonin Dvorak's "Quintet for piano and strings in a minor" Aug. 29, 2009 at the Fasig-Tipton Pavilion. Photo by Rich Copley.

Clancy Newman’s Dream Sequence sounded like a nightmare.

The piece, which had its world premier Saturday night at the UBS Chamber Music Festival of Lexington, started with about as much racket as a piano quintet can make, the piano sounding like it had been tossed down the stairs and the string quartet sonically stabbing in the dark.

After the violent outburst, the piece settled into screeches, wails and trills, Alessio Bax’s piano often rumbling right under the surface. As the Dream went on and parts jumped among the four string players, violinist Nathan Cole’s eyes darted around the group seeming to search for a goon with a knife.

Dream Sequence may not have been melodic, but it was definitely evocative, seeming to live up to its name, taking the listener from the terrifying midnight and wee small hours to glimmers of the sunrise in its jazzy conclusion, anchored in Bax’s smooth piano and a groove by the lower strings — cellist Priscilla Lee and violist Burchard Tang.

This is the three-year old festival’s second world premier, an ambitious undertaking that also puts a lot of faith in the young audience to try an untested work.

Last year’s effort went pretty well, as Daniel Thomas Davis’ Book of Songs and Visions won the 2009 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. Time will tell if Newman’s piece will get as good a ride. But the last two nights had to tell the young composer this: He couldn’t put his new work in better hands.

Friday night’s insightful, skilled playing endured Saturday in two demanding works that bookended the evening and a performance of George Enescu’s Sonata No. 3 in a minor for violin and piano. Last night, we were talking about Cole’s selfless artistic direction of the festival. But this piece certainly gave him and Bax a a showcase for their skills from a very sensitive reading of the first movement, with its wild mood swings to the athletic second.

Enescu created serious suspense in this piece putting demands on the violinist you had to wonder if he’d be able to meet. But Cole did, and he and Bax repeated what made Friday’s performance of Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Quintet so awesome: they cut to the emotional core of music many would consider difficult.

Taking the first violinist chair for the concert opener, Franz Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in D, Akiko Tarumoto certainly didn’t have an easy time, but navigated it flawlessly. And anyone who did think Dream Sequence was a nightmare had to be comforted by the concert closing performance of Antonin Dvorak’s Quintet for Piano and Strings in A.

It was a energetic closer that exemplified this festival’s strength: Though these five musicians only get together once a year, they play like they’re on stage night after night.

Now that might be a dream come true for music fans. In Lexington, people are responding as the festival’s audience is growing. Fest president Charlie Stone said Friday’s concert attracted a record 359 paying customers, and Saturday’s crowd appeared to be bigger.

The festival concludes Sunday with a live and multimedia program in the first half that will put Sir Edward Elgar’s Quintet for piano and strings in a minor in musical and historical context. The festival’s musicians will perform the piece in the second half of the show.

Nathan Cole and his wife and fellow Chicago Symphony violinist Akiko Tarumoto perform at the UBS Chamber Music Festival of Lexington Aug. 28, 2009. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

This could have easily been the Nathan Cole Show.

That was what the UBS Chamber Music Festival of Lexington hung its first edition in 2007: Hometown guy made good Nathan Cole, a violinist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, came back to Lexington to launch  the chamber fest in the tres horsey venue of the Fasig-Tipton Pavilion, which usually hosts horse auctions.

But from the beginning, Cole, the festival’s artistic director, has made the event an ensemble effort, and that’s why it’s great.

Friday’s opening night concert gave the quintet of Cole, violinist Akiko Tarumoto, cellist Priscilla Lee, violist Burchard Tang and pianist Alessio Bax its best chance yet to show the depth of their skills with Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Quintet.

Bax opened the piece with great use of a verbal introduction, talking about the quintet’s painful origins. It was inspired by the tragic death of Schnittke’s mother who fell and froze to death in the streets of Moscow. Knowing the story gave the audience an on ramp to the quintet which challenged listeners with its quiet, menacing tones that provide lots of emotion but little conventional beauty. This is tough music to play, throwing the musicians little they are used to with abrupt starts and stops and challenging blends.

Cellist and composer Clancy Newman played with the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington's string quartet on Franz Schubert's "String Quintet."

But, led by Bax, the group executed it flawlessly, allowing the listener to focus on the music’s mysterious allure.

The first half of Friday’s concert was bookended by smaller efforts, Bax and Tarumoto teaming to open the show with a spirited rendition of Johannes Brahms’ Sonatensatz: Scherzo in c minor, and guest composer and cellist Clancy Newman closing the first half with his solo composition Pizzicato Piece.

The cello work was a fun little jam, seeming to have roots in Newman’s rock band days. Saturday night, the festival’s core group will present the world premier of Newman’s new piano quintet Dream Sequence.

The funny thing watching the musicians play the distinctly modern Schnittke and Newman was knowing they would turn around and play Franz Schubert after intermission. Newman joined the string quartet for Schubert’s Quintet for Strings in D. While it was a return to traditional melodies and harmonies, the piece tapped some of the same emotions of the Schnittke and even gave Newman more pizzicato to play.

Though this group only assembles once a year, they are stunningly unified, and you have to think the next time they come town they ought to get into a recording studio.

The Chamber Music Festival of Lexington started on the strength of Cole’s talent as a violinist. It has become a testament to his humble skill as an artistic director.

The festival continues Saturday and Sunday.

Violist Burchard Tang, right, talks to 17-year-old Geoffrey Britton during a master class at First Presbyterian Church on Aug. 26. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Before the musicians in the UBS Chamber Music Festival of Lexington take the stage at the Fasig-Tipton Sales Pavilion this weekend, they held class.

In addition to rehearsals and other events surrounding the third annual festival, four of the players took time to give master classes on their instruments Wednesday night in Downtown Lexington. Lexington native and Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Nathan Cole led off with a 6 p.m. class in the chapel at First Presbyterian Church, and at 7:30, violist Burchard Tang, cellist Priscilla Lee, and pianist Alessio Bax held classes within a few blocks of one another.

UBS Chamber Music Festival of Lexington artistic director Nathan Cole demonstrates a passage during his master class at First Presbyterian Church.

“We all have fun playing together in the chamber group,” Cole said, after his class. “But we each have our own way of doing things, so this is a chance for us to be seen as individuals, talk about our own approaches to the instruments, and share some of that with other musicians and the audience.”

For the instrumentalists who signed up for the master classes, the sessions were a chance to get another perspective on their playing, in addition to the private teachers, orchestra directors and other directors they already study under.

“”I felt like I learned a lot,” violinist Maria Wu, 15, said after her session with Cole, which focused on bow strokes.

Sadie Meyer, 15, said she didn’t expect to spend so much time talking about trills when she worked with Cole.

“I thought, what an opportunity,” said Meyer, who even plays violin in the marching band at Franklin County High School. “I was really nervous, but it was a lot of fun.”

Each student came in with a piece prepared, which they played for the Chamber Festival musician and an audience, and then the teacher stepped in and started working through it.

Cole said one of the challenges was making sure he had different things to say to each student, and that he said them in ways the student and the audience could understand. If he had an inner Simon Cowell, he kept it in check, saying he would only reprimand someone, “If I could tell they were really good but they hadn’t put in the work.”

A common theme running through Cole, Tang, and Lee’s lessons was the physicality of holding the instrument.

“You have the most amazing posture I’ve ever seen!” Tang exclaimed after Geoffrey Britton, 17, finished playing in the viola master class. Tang said Britton’s style of holding the instrument up and out was, “like Heifetz.”

He proceeded to work with the Lafayette High School student, breaking down the piece to draw a stronger interpretation from him.

At one point, Tang advised Britton to try singing through the piece to help get a deeper sense of it, which was something his wife, Lee, also advised one of her cello students to do.

Cellist Priscilla Lee, right, listens to 16-year-old Paul Laurence Dunbar student Chongho Jean during a master class at ArtsPlace Gallery.

“My teachers have always made me to sing,” Lee said. “People normally phrase things more distinctly when they are singing.”

Like the others, she also talked about physical aspects of playing, pointing out, “It’s very important to focus on your technique, because if you develop bad habits, they can really keep you from playing well.”

For Tang and Lee, it was their first time offering master classes. The first year of the festival, 2007, Cole offered a master class, and last year, Bax joined the fun.

For a first time around, Lee said she was really impressed with Lexington’s student players.

“They all came in with challenging concertos and played them really well,” Lee said.

Cole, a former Lexington music student himself, was also pleased with what was happening back home.

“I’m always impressed with students here,” Cole said. “I’m impressed with the talent and the enthusiasm.”

With that kind of enthusiam, a few of the festival musicians’ students may be giving the master classes someday.

The Lexington Philharmonic’s new music director, Scott Terrell, is going to start his tenure with more marquee names on the season schedule than the orchestra has had in quite a while. In addition to Evelyn Glennie, probably the best-known classical solo percussionist in the world Sept. 25, the Phil will also present:

Ronan Tynan.

Irish tenor Ronan Tynan in a concert that will be part of the Alltech Fortnight Festival Oct. 10. Tynan came to fame as one of the Three Irish Tenors and has been a ubiquitous presence at New York Yankees games in the past decade singing the full version of God Bless America. Terrell says this concert will probably tell him a lot about possible directions in which to take a revived Philharmonic Pops season.

World-renowned violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg will join the orchestra for an April 17 concert benefitting UK HealthCare. Terrell says Sonnenberg will be playing Astor Piazolla’s take on The Four Seasons.

Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg. Photo by Grant Leighton.

The violinist added for the Feb. 12 Masterclassics concert is also a bit of a get: Arnaud Sussmann, who won a prestigious Avery Fisher career grant in April along with Alessio Bax, who is the pianist with the UBS Chamber Music Festival of Lexington, Aug. 26-30.

Also added to the full schedule, which will be released next week, are family concerts on Oct. 25 (a Youth Arts concert that will feature members of the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras playing with the Phil and other young artists) and Dec. 13, which will bring Paragon Music Theatre director Ryan Shirar back to the Philharmonic podium.