by Kevin T McEneaney
A Memorial Day celebration at Bennett Park opened with the roving Concert Truck at 1 pm. Krista Thorne delivered a short talk on the current renovation of The Thorne Center on Franklin Ave, noting that there will be a music concert space, theater, digital arts lab, dance studio, art studio and gallery, culinary center, music recording studio, and community garden.
Susan Zhang, pianist and co-founder of The Concert Truck, along with local pianist Sophia Zhou, founder of The Millbrook Music Salon, opened with Three Slavonic Dances (1878) by Antonín Dvořák in its original four-hand duet arrangement. All three movements sound as if they were adaptations of folkloric dances, yet they are all thoroughly original compositions, not based on any known dances. The first set, based on Bohemian rhythms, offers rollicking jubilance. The second set is an original somber Serbian composition, and the third is a roaring Slavonic exploding ruckus that evokes astonishment. The duo dug into these dances with zest and faultless coordination.
The duet next performed three of the forty scenes of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1875)with music by Edvard Grieg: a theme of children playing, then dancing, and entering the Hall of the Mountain King, which offered a charming, simple contrast to the preceding thundering dances. “The Hall of the Mountain King” remains the most popular tune of Grieg’s numerous compositions, which here was played with sophisticated panache.
Maurice Ravel’s La Valse (1920) is a thundering early monument to Modernism. In general, it is a dramatization of Ravel’s experience as a soldier during World War I, dramatizing the fate of many soldiers, and so an appropriate choice for Memorial Day. This performance was the climax of the concert, a memorable and decidedly unnerving work as dialogue descends into the cannons of warfare and mounting deaths. The work dramatically commemorates the destruction of civilization, with Susan playing sensible, argumentative treble and Sophia playing dynamite bass.
In relief contrast, Susan performed “Summerland” (1935) by William Grant Still, one of the three parts of the orchestral composition Three Visions, yet “Summerland” was originally composed on piano. This is a marvelously contemplative work, transcendental in its memorable melody. These five and a half minutes were welcome healing. ( Still is a great composer whose works should be performed more often than it is.)
For the finale, the duet played George Gershwin’s monumental Rhapsody in Blue (1924) in its delightful four-hand version (although originally composed for solo piano). This composition remains a singular hallmark of American optimism and communal sensibility, played here with disarming zest! The crowd of a hundred or so gave a well-deserved standing ovation….
