By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • January 24, 2012

Washington has had a slightly awkward relationship with Joshua Bell ever since that morning five years ago when — in a now-famous social experiment dreamed up by Post columnist Gene Weingarten — the violin superstar spent a morning busking for coins at the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station, only to be ignored by virtually everyone who passed. Bell, happy to say, took it all in stride, and on Monday night returned to Washington for a more venue-appropriate concert at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, where he showed that — commuter indifference notwithstanding — he’s one of the most imaginative, technically gifted and altogether ­extraordinary violinists of our time.

Bell is in his mid-40s now, but there’s still a sort of elfin quality to his playing. There’s the trademark untucked shirt, the dancing on the balls of the feet, the mop of flying hair. But in a program that ranged from Mendelssohn to Gershwin, it became clear that there’s also an almost effortless freshness in his playing: It sounds utterly spontaneous, while underpinned with a flawless sense of drama and narrative line. Brahms’s Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 108, for instance, can sound a bit gelatinous in more ordinary hands, but Bell made it as lucid and weightless as thought, playing (as he did all evening) with an impossibly light touch, evocative tone and pinpoint accuracy — particularly in the closing movement, the Presto agitato, which blew by at something beyond warp speed.

Mendelssohn’s Sonata in F, with which Bell opened the program, brought a warm dose of sweetness to the evening, and a Jascha Heifetz arrangement of Gershwin’s Three Preludes gave Bell room to display his considerable musical charm. More interesting, though, was the austere and technically daunting Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 27, “Ballade,” a work for solo violin by Eugene Ysaye. Bell negotiated its complex passage work and double- and triple-stops with aplomb, in a gripping, deeply felt performance.

To these ears, though, the most perfect moments of the evening came in Ravel’s Sonata in G for Violin and Piano. Accompanied by the very astute pianist Sam Haywood, Bell turned in a ravishing reading, a marvel of evanescent colors, shimmering light and the compelling, elusive beauty of a dream.

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • January 22, 2012

Does it take a village to raise a cellist? Steven Honigberg — a highly regarded member of the National Symphony Orchestra’s cello section — might well agree. In an intriguing and deeply personal recital Saturday at Georgetown’s Dumbarton Church, Honigberg presented an evening of music that reflected the varied influences other cellists have had on his path, from mentors Maurice Gendron and Mstislav Rostropovich to performer-composers such as Marin Marais and Gaspar Cassado. The result was an unabashedly affectionate homage to the cello itself — its deep-voiced intensity, its dark and brooding sonorities, its infinitely subtle beauties — that favored conviction and intimate expression over flashy virtuosity.

Accompanied by the always-engaging Audrey Andrist on piano, Honigberg opened with Marais’s “La Folia,” playing with a lean, almost sinewy tone that fit the baroque style well while avoiding the astringency that period hard-liners often adopt. That was followed by an almost confessional reading of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” and two songs by Dvorak, whose sweeping melodic lines soared with precise, dramatic control.

Honigberg showed off his spectacular technique with Cassado’s mischievous, highly caffeinated “Dance of the Green Devil” before returning to the lush romanticism of Schumann’s Five Pieces in the Popular Style, Op. 102, when he seemed most happily in his element.

With each of the works linked in some way to another cellist, it almost seemed as if Honigberg were mining a kind of collective cello unconscious the rest of us barely knew existed. But in the closing work on the program — Brahms’s quietly epic Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 8 in B Major, with James Stern on violin — Honigberg seemed to weave the disparate roots together, balancing passion with reflection and virtuosity with eloquent simplicity; a taut, tightly focused performance that shimmered with intensity.

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • January 18, 2012

Never heard of Joaquina Lapinha? Don’t worry. She was an obscure Brazilian soprano who briefly lit up the concert halls of Lisbon in the early 19th century. The closest she came to immortality was when a passing Swede caught her act and wrote, with admirable Scandinavian reserve, that she had a “good voice.”

But Lapinha had a bigger claim to fame: almost single-handedly, she introduced Europeans to the music of little-known Brazilian composers of the time. And in an intriguing — if trouble-prone — concert on Sunday at the National Gallery of Art, the musicologist Ricardo Bernardes, soprano Rosana Orsini and the early-music Americantiga ensemble resurrected much of Lapinha’s actual repertoire, shining a light into a forgotten corner of 19th century musical life and showing just how far Europe dominated the cultural life of its colonies.

There was nothing, in fact, noticeably “Latin” about any of the evening’s music. Two late 18th century works by Antonio Leal Moreira were wrought in “classical” European style — think ersatz Mozart and you have the idea — but were skillfully done with touches of real imagination and fire. Orsini herself proved to be an engaging interpreter. She has a light, agile voice that, though it tended to vanish in the low end and could get brittle in fast passages, suited the works perfectly, and stood out well against the soft-voiced period instruments of the Americantiga players.

But to Orsini’s evident chagrin, things began to fall apart during an aria from Valentino Fioravanti’s cantata “L’Imene trionfante.” Conducting from the harpsichord, Bernardes seemed to lose the plot for a minute, and — as Orsini and bassoon soloist Anna Marsh exchanged alarmed looks — the music nearly derailed before lurching back on track. That may have rattled the ensemble, for the players then got so tangled up in an aria from Jose Mauricio Nunes Garcia’s “Triunfo da America” that Bernardes was forced to completely stop the music and reboot.

Orsini — a drop-dead beauty who looks like she just stepped out of a Helmut Newton photograph — appeared ready to strangle the lot of them by that point, but came back strong in a dramatic aria from Bernardo de Souza Queiroz’s opera “Zaira.” It was a heartfelt performance and a fine climax to the concert — even if you did sense she was looking over her shoulder at Bernardes, steeling herself for the next disaster.

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • January 8, 2012

When you’re named after one of the biggest constellations in the night sky, the pressure is on to display a little star power — and the young pianist Orion Weiss did exactly that in a high-powered and often ferocious recital Saturday afternoon at the Terrace Theater. Weiss has been racking up an impressive string of triumphs lately (he filled in at the last minute for an ailing Leon Fleischer last summer, turning in a raved-about performance with the Boston Symphony), and Saturday’s recital showed why. Just 30, the pianist has an exceptionally clean technique with virtuosity to spare. And although Saturday’s program — which revolved around a selection of demanding toccatas — sometimes fell a little flat emotionally, it showed Weiss to be a gifted musician well worth keeping an eye on.

The recital (part of the Hayes Piano Series presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society) didn’t open on a particularly strong foot. Weiss’s take on Bach’s Toccata in C Minor, BWV 911 can only be described as ordinary, and he didn’t seem to be particularly involved in the music, tending to just underline Bach’s phrasing rather than find real meaning in it. But the pace quickly picked up. Weiss turned in a vivid account of Liszt’s Toccata, S.197a — a little dervish of a piece that bursts into life, whirls madly for a minute, then vanishes — followed by an intriguing work written for the pianist by composer Michael Brown. Titled “Constellations and Toccata,” it contrasts a “human” perspective on the heavens with a “scientific” one; the first section proved to be a sort of spare, slowly turning nocturne from which a sweeping theme emerged, while the hard-driving toccata took an ecstatic, data-driven look into the fiery heart of stars. Weiss kept everything in perfect alignment, and Brown could not hope for a more convincing account of his work.

The afternoon went on in that vein, as introspective pieces alternated with extroverted ones to varying effect. Weiss didn’t delve very deeply into five pieces from Schumann’s Bunte Blatter, Op. 99, which came off as so much Romantic mirror-gazing, but his no-holds-barred reading of the composer’s Toccata, Op. 7 more than took up the slack. And in the second half of the program, Weiss seemed to finally unleash the full reach of his talent. Brahms’s “Variations on a theme by Schumann, Op. 9” is a sort of love letter to Schumann’s wife, Clara, written when Brahms was still quite young. It’s a fascinating revelation of lovesickness and grief, emotionally subtle beyond the composer’s years, and Weiss gave it a poignant and empathetic reading.

Even more impressive, though, was Bohuslav Martinu’s Fantasie and Toccata, which closed the recital. Written in 1940 as the Czech composer fled Paris ahead of the invading German army, it’s an edgy and relentlessly gripping work, as well as a pianistic tour de force — the sort of music that elbows its way into your brain and takes over for a while. It seemed to bring out the best in Weiss. Not only did he handle its virtuosic demands with ease, he made the work into a riveting and unforgettable human experience — and isn’t that what concert-going is supposed to be about?

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • December 20, 2011

Andrew Arceci and John McKean — a youngish duo playing viola da gamba and harpsichord, respectively —  have been building a name for themselves lately as thoughtful interpreters of historically informed early music.  They arrived in town with augmented forces on Sunday afternoon, putting on an imaginative program at the Phillips Collection that veered off the beaten Baroque track to explore rarely-heard gems from the likes of Johann Jakob Froberger and La Sieur de Machy.

Adriane PostNot exactly a gem — but intriguing anyway — was Handel’s “Sonata Op. 2 No. 2,” written when the composer was only 14.  Angsty it’s not. Handel seems to have been as stately an adolescent as he was an adult, but the willowy Adriane Post, awash in Botticelli curls, did wonders with the lead violin role, drawing a beguiling sound out of her instrument and trading lines deftly with the less willowy but similarly gifted violinist Benjamin Shute.  John Armato on the theorbo and Daniel Swenberg on Baroque guitar rounded out the ensemble, weaving spare, delicately plucked accompaniments on this work and others by Johann Rosenmuller, Dietrich Buxtehude, Marin Marais and Arcangelo Corelli.

The playing was detailed and beautifully balanced throughout the afternoon, though a sense of caution often seemed to prevail; the players never really summoned the kind of propulsive, edge-of-the-seat electricity that can make Baroque music so exciting.  Arceci and McKean each took a solo turn, though de Machy’s “Suite in G” for solo gamba  came off as constricted and often awkwardly phrased, while McKean turned in a reading of Froberger’s “Suite XXX” for harpsichord that was intelligent, precise and well-behaved to a fault.

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • December 5, 2011

It’s not often that you come across a singer who works his brain cells as energetically (or as skillfully) as his vocal cords, but the young British countertenor Iestyn Davies did exactly that Sunday at the Phillips Collection.

As a fast-rising star in the vocal universe, Davies might have been forgiven for dishing out pyrotechnics and crowd-pleasers; instead, he showed himself to be an unusually thoughtful and perceptive musician, presenting a program of mostly British music titled “History Repeating” that explored the complex ties among composers as diverse as Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten, weaving Bach, Handel and the mildly eccentric Peter Warlock into a fascinating whole.

It was clear from the first notes that Davies has an absolutely superb voice — supple, agile, beautifully controlled and effortless throughout its entire range. Opening with three songs by Purcell (in imaginative arrangements by Britten and Sir Michael Tippett), Davies handled the technical complexities of “Lord What Is Man” and “Sweeter Than Roses” with impressive ease. But it was his directness and authenticity with the emotional complexities of the music that really made the afternoon. It’s no easy trick to bring off Purcell’s “In the Black Dismal Dungeon of Despair” — a work as cheerful as it sounds — in a countertenor voice, but Davies turned in an utterly gripping account, pared to the bone and all the more powerful for it.

That was the tone throughout the afternoon, from Bach’s “Geistliche Lieder” to the songs by Franz Schubert (“Der Tod und das Maedchen”), and from Brahms to Herbert Howells’s luminous “O My Dear Heart” and the achingly beautiful Christmas carol “Bethlehem Down” by Peter Warlock.

A musician’s musician, Davies trimmed each song to its essentials, revealing unsuspected beauties and subtle details. The only (mildly) disappointing aspect of the recital, in fact, was Kevin Murphy’s accompaniment on the piano, which was fine but never quite up to the singer’s sniper-like technical precision and exceptional depth of thought.

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • December 4, 2011

Washington audiences had a chance to hear the British pianist Kathryn Stott four years ago when — thanks to the Washington Performing Arts Society — she accompanied cellist Yo-Yo Ma in the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall. Stott returned to the Kennedy Center on Saturday afternoon, but this time for a solo recital in the more intimate Terrace Theater, where, with no distracting superstars cluttering the stage, she proved to be an extraordinarily interesting and incisive interpreter in her own right.

Stott is an unabashed musical Francophile and devoted much of the afternoon to impressionistic works by Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Fauré— music full of evanescent colors and shimmering, elusive light. Her playing was, as you might expect, luminous and delicately shaded — her technique is superb, and she’s a master of subtle emotions and telling details — but was never merely atmospheric. Stott stayed refreshingly clear-eyed even in the depths of Debussy’s darkly gorgeous Nocturne in D-flat, and Ravel’s “Sonatine” radiated intelligence, power and playful logic. Cesar Franck’s Prelude, Chorale and Fugue was less of a pleasure; it’s a rather stern and self-important work which, coming on Debussy’s dreamy heels, felt oddly like a rebuke.

Stott shifted into higher gear in the second half of the program with a riveting account of Alberto Ginastera’s Sonata No. 1, Op. 22, a wildly colorful piece of early Latin modernism. Heitor Villa-Lobos’s “Valsa da Dor” lent a touch of poignancy to the program, but it was “Relent” by British composer Graham Fitkin that stole the show. Commissioned by Stott in 2000, this driving, insistent, almost physical piece charges out of the gate and never looks back: a high-octane performance from one of the most impressive pianists heard here in years