Spotlight focuses on fine 'Dance!'

As part of the Piccolo Spoleto Spotlight concert series, violinist Lee-Chin Siow, cellist Natalia Khoma and pianist Volodymyr Vynnytsky played with high theatrics before an audience packed into the City Gallery at Waterfront Park.

The title of their program, "Dance!" is a bit misleading. Although Handel's "Passacaglia" began as a concert dance, J. Halvorsen has transformed it in an expansive number that exploits the musical ranges of both the violin and the cello. Bela Bartok's collection of "Romanian Folk Dance" is a showcase for a talented cellist such as Khoma.

After Khoma's Bartok turn, Lee-Chin Siow has her star moment, playing a "Polonaise Brillante" by Henryk Wieniawski, filled with an amazing number of cadenzas and other extravagant musical patterns.

As an accompanist, Vynnytsky is polite and self-effacing, not the sort to upstage Lee-Chin Siow and Khoma. As Vynnytsky takes the stage for the "Mephisto Waltz" No. 3 after Lenau's "Faust," his personality seems to take on qualities of the composer Franz Liszt, the first great solo performer, with flashing eyes, fingers that dance and pound to meet the demands of the music and hair that spikes.

Lenau composed one of the more forgettable Fausts but Liszt packed the "Mephisto Waltz" with demonic thrills and chills, and Vynnytsky nicely pushed the piece into over-the-top musical melodrama. All three performers joined together for a brisk, exciting rendering of Smetna's "Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 15." This piece is filled with lots of folk dance melodies but more important is the exclamation point after "Dance!" as the symbol of the concert's success.