Just before the pandemic shut down both sports arenas and concert stages, recitals at Spivey Hall south of Atlanta already had me relating chamber music to team sports. Then a Weekend Edition sports reporter, mourning the cancellations of March Madness, compared sports to music: both bring us together with joy.
Though I get no joy from competition, I do treasure some sports memories of teamwork and personal prowess. One is the vivid memory of a high school football game in rural Mississippi, circa 1983. Junior Eric Bluntson, a little guy built like a fireplug, clutched the ball. While his teammates ran parallel to create a barrier on Eric's right, Eric weaved, dodged, deflected, and jumped over opponents eighty yards for a touchdown.
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center was like that. They performed at Spivey Hall February 23. Especially in the finale of the D major woodwind quintet by Anton Reicha, contemporary of Mozart, each player took a turn with a different musical phrase while the rest of the team followed a few beats away in parallel. Throughout the set of pieces, we sensed joy and camaraderie as players kept their eyes on each other to match tempos and to attain clean cut-offs. For pauses and humorously understated endings, Gyorgi Ligeti's piece Six Bagetelles demanded most team coordination and got the most laughs.
"The Voice of the Guitar" February 29 featured guitarist Milos Karadaglic with string players of 12 Ensemble. Milos sometimes played solo, sometimes shared the stage with the strings, and sometimes gave the stage to strings alone. He was the star player, the one telling us how he fell in love with the guitar's voice, and how his appreciation developed through exposure to pioneering virtuosos, how he learned the repertoire, and how a hand injury gave him impetus to listen and learn from composers in the realm of pop music - Paul Simon, Radiohead, and the Beatles. Throughout the program, verbally and with smiles and nods, he expressed confidence and pleasure in his teammates.
Sometimes, in sports, it's an individual's superhuman feat that transcends the score. I remember an overheated gym, an overheated crowd screaming, the home team down by two at the buzzer in double overtime, when home team sophomore Brad Teague hurled the ball the full length of the court: swish for three!
Angela Hewitt's piano recital March 8 certainly qualified as a superhuman feat of precision, control, sensitivity. She played Bach's Four Duets, Eighteen Little Preludes, the Fantasia and Fugue in A minor, and, after intermission, the French Overture in B Minor, followed at last by the Italian Concerto in F major.
Even at this solo recital, there was a team aspect to the music that her playing brought out to us. That left hand so often danced around the right hand, sometimes following in parallel, or, like the basketball player guarding the one with the ball, the left hand hopped this way and that to cover the right hand's surprising pivots.
For a lovely encore, she chose the serene "While Sheep Safely Graze."
Little did we suspect that would be the final concert of the season. But the pleasure of individual virtuosity and teamwork keeps on.
- Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
- Michael Brown, Piano
- Tara Helen O'Connor, flute
- Stephen Taylor, oboe
- Sebastian Manz, clarinet
- Peter Kolkay, bassoon
- Radovan Vlatkovic, horn
Spivey Hall
Sunday February 23, 2020, 3 pm
- Milos: The Voice of the Guitar
- Milos Karadaglic, classical guitar
with members of
12 Ensemble - Eloisa-Fleur Thom, violin
- Alesaandro Ruisi, violin
- Matthew Kettle, viola
- Max Ruisi, cello
- Toby Hughes, double bass
Spivey Hall
Saturday, February 29, 2020, 3 pm
Angela Hewitt, Piano
Spivey Hall
Sunday, March 8, 2020, 3 pm
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