Concert showcases Zukerman's taste and intelligence
Posted on Fri, Jun. 20, 2008
By LAWRENCE A. JOHNSON
With the instrument's inherent qualities of elegance and nostalgia, a flute recital is perfect summer fare and just the thing to banish the miseriesde la humaine.
Eugenia Zukerman brought her singular blend of lightly worn musicology, gentle humor and relaxed musical personality to Coral Gables Community Church Thursday night presented by the Community Arts Program.
Zukerman has been before the public for several decades, and while she has never been one for spell-binding virtuosity, her taste and intelligence provide considerable rewards. Not everything was equally successful, but her thoughtful program, aided by the excellent support of pianist Craig Ketter, breezily traversed the centuries and musical styles.
The evening got off to a shaky start with a rather free transcription of Mozart's Violin Sonata in F major, K.376. As with most early Mozart violin sonatas, the music is weighted towards the keyboard, plus the fiddle writing doesn't transfer well to the flute. Zukerman's bland performance didn't make a convincing case for the confection, missing the music's charm and joie de vivre and, given the rough-hewn coda, sounding under-rehearsed.
Bartok's Suite Paysanne Hongroise (arranged by Paul Arma) was a venturesome choice. But in these tart Hungarian folk melodies, Zukerman's amiable style diluted the chromatic edge and harmonic bite with a mild take on the dervish finale that missed out on the music's unhinged frenzy.
The flutist came into her own in the French repertoire. Francis Poulenc wrote his Flute Sonata in 1957 for Jean-Pierre Rampal, contemporaneous with The Dialogues of the Carmelites. While the central Cantilena breathes that opera's vein of spiritual rumination, the Parisian finale is Poulenc at his most joyful and cheekily uninhibited.
This is music that Zukerman clearly loves, and her engaged and responsive performance was in sync with the limpid, long-breathed Cantilena as well as Poulenc's Boulevardier wit, with Ketter providing glovelike support. Similarly, Zukerman's poised, elegant playing nicely conveyed the elliptical languor of Paul Taffanel's Andante Pastorale et Scherzettino.
Among sonatas for solo flute, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's Sonata in A minor is only exceeded in popularity by his father Johann Sebastian's work in the same key. Typically unorthodox in CPE Bach style, the work is cast in an introductory slow movement followed by two faster sections. Zukerman's graceful performance had the requisite poise, but other artists have plumbed deeper emotions in this music, and her take on the dance-inflected sections sounded cautious and rhythmically stiff.
Otar Taktakishvili is not a household name, but the Georgian composer's Flute Sonata is a wonderfully tuneful and engaging work that deserves to be better known. Zukerman and Ketter served up first-rate advocacy, throwing off this delightful music's jaunty charm and angular lyricism with worthy panache.
In addition to her fine musicianship, Zukerman showed infinite patience with the audience, whose behavior included cell phone rings, premature applause, slammed doors and loud conversation by exiting patrons. The flutist's beautifully floated solo Faure encore was accompanied by impromptu rhythmic counterpoint as two walker-aided seniors slowly trudged up the aisle and back, providing clickety-clack obbligato support.
Lawrence A. Johnson is The Miami Herald's classical music critic.
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