Music Fest serves up healthy romance

With spring near, Charleston Music Fest offered a healthy serving of "Romance" at Ashley Hall's recital hall Thursday evening.

Three talented performers tackled with dexterity and understanding four examples of bracing romantic music which, incidentally, is rarely heard live.

Gabriel Faure's Nocturne No. 2 in B Major sprang to life under the energetic and disciplined fingers of pianist Monique Duphil. Faure followed a strict classical elegance. Duphil's interpretation was solid and exciting, with the music's implied melancholy well under control.

Violinist Almita Vamos joined Duphil for the short Schubert Sonatina No. 3 in G Minor, D. 408. It was an early work, and Schubert had not reached the peak of his creative imagination. But the final movement did offer a foretaste of the future. Vamos and Duphil characterized this simple, Mozartian music with genuine affection.

At the age of 19, Frederick Chopin was despondent over unrequited love but took a short vacation at an estate where two charming young princesses lived. He returned to Warsaw inspired and created a Polonaise Brillante, Op. 3 for cello and piano. Cellist Leonardo Altino, with Duphil, presented a bold, sweeping reading with dramatic flamboyance.

The three artists played to the manor-born Antonin Dvorak's final Piano Trio, Op. 90, "Dumky." A dumka is a Slavonic folk ballad, and the six-movement work with alternating slow and fast sections, remains extremely popular. The Charleston Fest trio played it for all it was worth.