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.

Morihiko Nakahara accepts a standing ovation following his concert conducting the Lexington Philharmonic. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Morihiko Nakahara has only been in Columbia, S.C., for half a season. But Friday night in Lexington, he showed he’s already getting the hang of SEC cities.

Complimenting the Lexington Philharmonic Orchesrtra, which he was in the middle of conducting, he said it was holding up well for being in the middle of a conductor search.

“Having a new conductor every cycle is like your basketball team having a new coach every game,” Nakahara said to the audience in the Singletary Center for the Arts. He also threw in a knock against Florida for good measure, assuring the audience he would be long gone by the time the UK Wildcats play the University of South Carolina Gamecocks next (Jan. 31).

Soloists Daniel Mason, violin, and Deborah Lander, viola.

Friday night though, he was the man in the hot seat, the eighth conductor to step onto the podium and audition to succeed George Zack as the Lexington Philharmonic’s music director.

Before the concert, the sign outside the President’s Room at the Singletary Center said “Concert Preview,” but it felt more like Nakahara and moderator Joe Tackett’s floor show.

Fielding Tackett’s regular question as to when the maestro might program a bass concerto, Nakahara said, “I have done a tap dance concerto . . . never going to do that again. I wasn’t planning on a bass concerto, but there’s always a price.”

He also had a little fun with LOVE, the name of the viola ensemble that played in the lobby before the concert. Told the name was an acronym for Lexington’s Original Viola Ensemble, Nakahara asked, “There are unoriginal viola ensembles? It sounds like there’s some competition in this town.” (LOVE, by the way, played an appropriately love-ly pre-show set.)

It was a night for the chocolate of instruments (Joe!) and Nakahara talked about how the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, played by concertmaster Daniel Mason and UK viola professor Deborah Lander, spotlighted the viola section in addition to the viola soloist. He also talked about an underlying theme of dance in the concert, which included Dvorak’s Symphony No. 6 and opened with Ballata Sinfonica by Japanese composer Akira Ifukube.

The Ifukube, by the way, seemed to be a big hit with the audience.

“That was awesome,” the woman sitting next to me said. “I was not prepared for how wonderful it was.”

Others, during intermission, commented on being pleasantly surprised by the piece by Ifukube, best known for scoring Godzilla movies.

On stage, Nakahara was the first of seven male conductor candidates thus far to break from the traditional white tie and tails ensemble. He opted for a tuxedo jacket and open-collar shirt, which made him look very comfortable.

Further reading:

~ Loren Tice’s review (including a Mamma Mia! reference.)

~ Our profile of Morihiko Nakahara, including audio of our interview.

~ Tell the Philharmonic what you thought of Nakahara.