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“La Belle Musique”
At A.C. Pianocraft, Inc.
La Belle Musique
www.la-belle-musique.com
(A.C. Pianocraft, Inc. Website)
(See an Interview with Ted Kostakis and Tour of A.C. Pianocraft, Inc.)
(See May 11, 2005 Review of La Belle Musique)
Francisco Salazar and Steven Zynszajn, Violins
Whitney Lagrange, Viola
Rafal Jezierski, Cello
Heidi Torvik, Flute
Steven Graff, Piano
Frank Daykin
June 23, 2005
Every so often, the custom piano rebuilders at A.C. Pianocraft (located on West 52 Street in Manhattan) take advantage of their soaring loft-like showroom to present intimate concerts of chamber music. The owner of A.C. Pianocraft, Alexander Kostakis, is both engaging and knowledgeable. He inherited the business and many fine points of piano construction knowledge from his Steinway-trained father, who had become dissatisfied with Steinway’s introduction of mass-production techniques into what he felt should remain a highly refined hand-crafted art. Kostakis offered a pre-concert tour of the workrooms, below street level, a sort of hospital ward of pianistic ailments, with each “patient” awaiting the reviving touch of either Kostakis or one of his hand-picked work staff.
Thursday’s concert featured the enthusiastic young members of “La Belle Musique,” an ad hoc international assemblage of Juilliard-trained players whose affinity for working together and enjoying the music was obvious. The type of concert offered was the sort one might have encountered quite often 100 years ago: a medley of concerti, chamber music, solo piano, even a string quartet “reduction” of one of the pillars of the string orchestra literature.
Standout performances of four of Bartok’s “Duos” for two violins were given by Salazar and Zynszajn. Their hearty accentuation and beautiful string tone elevated these neglected little gems. I thought of Bartok, in his poverty-ridden last years, who died just five blocks from where the concert was being held, and how pleased he would have been.
In two duos by Wieniawski, music written by a show-off violinist for other show-off violinists, their approach was precise but didn’t quite have the egotistic joy in virtuosity, that tossed-off quality, that would have made it world-class.
Three strings were joined by the animated and ingratiating flute playing of Ms. Torvik for one of Mozart’s Flute Quartets. These pieces are some of the last unalloyed optimistic music Mozart ever conceived, and the sunny quality was evident in this rendition. Greater attention to relative harmonic weightings would really have added the extra degree of quality. Younger musicians beware: Even in passages of music marked with only “one” dynamic marking, there must always be rise and fall, or some appropriate shape within the section.
Special mention must be made here of the extremely musical playing of Steven Graff, a pianist previously unknown to me, who offered two intimate solos after intermission. He possesses a beautiful tone and a very individual sense of rubato and phrase, a pleasure to hear in an age of homogenization. His Schumann, the beloved Arabesque, Opus 18, had the fantasy and yet the simplicity of this Romantic composer longing for the imagined ease of childhood.
Mr. Graff’s second piece was the rarely played Second Nocturne (B Major, Opus 33, #2) of Gabriel Fauré. In this sensuous, elegant work, Graff’s organization of the filigree never lost sight of the long line, even though he employed rubato lavishly, in a sort of non-“French” way. A transitional passage at the end of the middle section, a long trill in the right hand that ushers in the return of the main theme, was gorgeously rendered. This kind of attention to detail is what sets Graff apart from many pianists.
The concert concluded with a passionately committed, brave rendition of Tchaikovsky’s celebrated Serenade for String Orchestra, Opus 48, in a version for string quartet (one on a part only). It was instructive to hear the melodic lines of this great composition restored to their sinewy purity, after years of hearing only the plusher full-orchestra version, which nevertheless has its charms. In this performance, the four players really communicated not only with each other, but also with the music’s message, delivering high-energy passages and lyrical musings with beautiful color and detail. The audience loved it. May “La Belle Musique” continue to provide midtown New York with “belle musique”!
La Belle Musique Musicians
Photo courtesy of Roberta Zlokower
Alex Kostakis with La Belle Musique
Photo courtesy of Roberta Zlokower
Guests, Mira, Lourdes, Frank, with Steven Graff
Photo courtesy of Roberta Zlokower
Francisco Salazar and Steven Zynszajn
Photo courtesy of Roberta Zlokower
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