Reflective Barber and rousing Schumann close CMSFW season in style
The Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth featured works by Robert and Clara Schumann, Reinhold Gliére, and Samuel Barber in their season-closing program Saturday afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art.
Artistic director and violinist Gary Levinson was joined by the husband-and-wife team of pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine and violinist Chloé Kiffer as well as violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Bion Tsang.
Levinson and Tsang initiated the program with four selections from Gliére’s Eight Duos for Violin and Cello, Op. 39. Tsang began the Prelude with a pensive melody in the lower register while Levinson provided a gentle accompaniment of double stops. Both players maintained a full, rich tone as they exchanged roles in the brief initial selection. The Gavotte that followed featured a delicate, dance-like character that abruptly shifted to droning double stops from both Tsang and Levinson to mark the rustic musette of the middle section.
The Canzonetta saw Levinson evoke the lyrical song of a gondolier over gently rocking arpeggios from Tsang. The final selection, the Scherzo, proved to be a rhythmic tour de force marked by syncopations within a rapid tempo that Levinson and Tsang deftly executed with aplomb.
Kiffer, Tsang and Moutouzkine took the stage for the Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17, of Clara Schumann. All three players imbued the graceful opening of the first movement with a subtle intensity, but Kiffer’s violin was especially fervent, taking a leading role even as she traded melodies with both Moutouzkine and Tsang. The Scherzo exchanged the intensity of the first movement for a frolicking playfulness that still saw Kiffer taking the lead before passing the principal role to Moutouzkine for the trio section.
In the Andante, Tsang’s lyrical solo soon merged into a dialogue with Kiffer, culminating in an expressive unison between the two before returning to a reprise of Tsang’s melody. The finale recalled the intensity of the first movement, ultimately embroiling the three players in a series of fugato passages. Moutouzkine took the lead in the coda, propelling the texture forward with a succession of sparkling arpeggios leading up to the closing cadence.
After intermission, baritone Daniel Uglunts was heard as vocalist in Barber’s Dover Beach. The poem, a rumination on the apparent futility of existence, is suffused with imagery describing the sea, and Barber captures this imagery with softly undulating figures in the string parts as they accompany the voice.
Although occasionally overshadowed by the quartet (Levinson, Kiffer, Tsang and Pajaro-van de Stadt), Uglunts effectively captured the fatalism of Arnold’s text with his resonant baritone. He was well-matched by the often ambiguous and wandering harmony of the quartet accompaniment.
For the program’s closing selection, Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E flat Major, all the instrumental players came together, boldly stating the opening fanfare figure. Moutouzkine excelled in this piece; whether sounding full chordal passages or sparkling melodies, his playing consistently shaped the character of the music going forward. Tsang and Pajaro-van de Stadt shone in the lyrical moments, particularly as they traded bits of the secondary theme in the first movement’s exposition and recapitulation.
The three upper strings contributed to the somber march figure of the slow movement, buoyed by the piano and cello. The solemnity of this march was broken by three contrasting episodes, two of which featured Levinson providing a song-like melody over shimmering accompaniment from his fellow strings and the piano, and a central agitato episode in which the strings provided rhythmic and harmonic punctuation to a rapid, angular melody from Moutouzkine.
The brisk theme at the heart of the Scherzo included syncopated triplet rhythms that blurred the downbeat, not unlike the Gliére scherzo heard earlier. The faster tempo and greater number of players in the quintet made for a much busier texture as each player contributed their relentlessly ascending or descending scales to the main theme.
The finale of the quintet functioned as an apotheosis for both the piece and for the afternoon’s performance. All of the players executed their busy parts flawlessly, navigating their way through the twists and turns of the finale’s succession of themes with controlled rhythmic precision as they built momentum toward the climactic coda. Here, the ensemble embarked on a double fugue built not just on the principal theme of the finale, but also the principal theme of the first movement, bolstering the symphonic scale of the piece even as it provided a rousing conclusion to the quintet and to the afternoon’s performance.
The Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth’s 2025-2026 season opens September 13 with a performance featuring the Dohnányi Sextet. cmsfw.org.
