Arts & Events

Music: Berkeley Symphony & Friends--Chamber Music in Piedmont

Ken Bullock
Friday September 25, 2015 - 11:46:00 AM

The Piedmont Center for the Arts was packed early evening last Sunday, the crowd spilling through the open doors into the warm, still air outside the hall where violinist Stuart Canin, pianist Janet Guggenheim--later joined by cellist Jonah Kim--played the opening program of the third season of Berkeley Symphony & Friends chamber concert series with brilliant acuity, particularly apt for a concert dedicated to the memory of Robert Commanday, dean of Bay Area music critics, who died at his nearby home September 3, age 93. 

"Bob Commanday was close to Stuart Canin, a friend of the City of Piedmont and the Center for the Arts," said Rene' Mandel, violinist and executive director of Berkeley Symphony, who introduced the program. "He'd been to these concerts and of course to the Berkeley Symphony. He was one of the great music critics of the world." 

Canin and Guggenheim played Stravinsky's Duo Concertante with great, sweeping energy, sprightly and playful, intense at moments, especially ending the final section--Dithyrambe--and the piece with sharp illumination. The middle Eclogue sections brought to mind poet Bertolt Brecht's praise of Dante's verse as being like the classical pastoral poets: "You can read it aloud outdoors"--only Canin and Guggenheim brought a breath of the outdoors into the crowded, rapt hall. 

After the Stravinsky, demonstrating what Erik Satie called his "Mozartian transparency," the pair essayed Prokofiev's Sonata in D Major, angular and peripatetic, by turns expansive and insistent--and at times a little frenetic. There was spontaneous ap[plause at the end of the Presto, second section of four. 

After intermission, Canin and Guggenheim were joined by the excellent young cellist Jonah Kim to play Anton Arensky's familiar Piano Trio No. 1. often broadly lyrical, with cello answering violin, then the two joining together.  

Bill Quillen, associated with some Cal Performances programs, spoke briefly before each piece, giving a good, condensed perspective, remarking they were all composed within about 50 years, from the end of the 19th century to the midst of the Second World War. 

Stuart Canin, co-founder of the New Century Chamber Orchestra, former concert master of the San Francisco Symphony under Seiji Ozawa and the Los Angeles Opera under Kent Nagano (who he's also worked with in the Berkeley Akademie and with NCCO), where he worked with Placido Domingo. He was the first American to win the Paganini Competition. Canin's debut on the international stage came when he served with the US Army after the Second World War in Germany, when he gave a command performance for Harry truman, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin at the Poitsdam Conference. 

Berkeley Symphony & Friends will present further chamber concerts November 15 of this year and February 21 and April 10, 2016 at the Piedmont Center for the Arts. The next Berkeley Symphony concert--featuring pieces by Berlioz, Saariaho and Ravel, conducted by music director Joana Carneiro, will be at Zellerbach Hall on Thursday, October 14. berkeleysymphony.org