Chamber series offers delightful interpretations

Spoleto 2010 News, stories and reviews

The venerable Charles Wadsworth, artistic director and host of the Spoleto USA Chamber Music series, was in fine fettle in his white linen suit Saturday morning.

The program, will be repeated today at 11 a.m. It consisted of some unlikely musical stablemates: Georg Philipp Telemann, Claude Debussy and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Telemann's "Trio Sonata in A Minor" was a perfect platform for Tara Helen O'Connor, flute; Daniel Phillips, violin; and Christopher Costanza, cello. They gave a lively reading of this Baroque bon-bon.

Clarinetist Todd Palmer was joined by pianist Stephen Prutsman for Debussy's "Premiere Rapsodie." With jazzy riffs played appropriately in style by Palmer and Prutsman's dreamy impressionistic accompaniment, this rarely heard work came across as a minor masterpiece.

Spanish Composer Enrique Granados suffered the unfortunate fate of drowning while trying to save his wife during a 1916 U-boat attack on their ship in the English Channel. Fortunately, he composed some marvelous music before that, including a hauntingly beautiful song, "The Maiden and the Nightingale." Soprano Courtenay Budd with Wadsworth, on piano, presented it. Budd was in exquisitely radiant form and Wadsworth was impeccable.

Shostakovich composed his "Quintet for Piano and Strings, Op. 57" in 1940 when he was atoning for his misstep with the opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District." It had offended Soviet Dictator Stalin's peculiar sensibilities. Wadsworth called this one of five or six greatest piano quintets ever written.

Prutsman, on piano, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet played this intensely felt music with formidable insight into Russian tragedy and triumph.