Fort Worth — Twentieth-century duos inspired by popular and folk dance idioms set the stage for an outstanding performance of one of chamber music’s greatest monuments, as artist faculty members of the Mimir Chamber Music Festival at Texas Christian University settled in for an afternoon at the Renzo Piano Pavilion of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.
First up, violist Joan DerHovsepian, a member of the music faculty of Rice University and associate principal viola of the Houston Symphony, joined cellist Brant Taylor of the Chicago Symphony for twentieth-century Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski’s Bucolics, a set of five succinct, Bartokian movements based on Polish folk songs. Here, the naturally mellow qualities of the viola and cello set off the lively, pungent melodies in an appealing marriage of the raw power of folk music and sophisticated compositional technique. of the composer. Besides energetic intensity, this music requires a strong personal instinct for the tempo and pacing of folk music; DerHovsepian and Taylor impressively communicated the natural liveliness of this music through its many swift mood changes as they journeyed toward a final moment in which an almost comically dissonant penultimate chord glides to a cheerful resolution.
Lutoslawski’s American contemporary, Samuel Barber, supplied equally intriguing material in his Souvenirs for piano duet, a set of six movements including “Waltz,” “Schottische,” “Pas de duex,” Two-step,” “Hesitation Tango,” and “Galop,” performed by pianists Rieko Aizawa and John Novacek. A frequently humorous, evocative, and deliberately derivative tone here invites the listener to not take this music seriously—until Barber shifts, sometimes catching the listener off-guard, to a more serious level. The eclectic style (the opening “Waltz,” for instance, echoes Johann Strauss, Ravel, Richard Rodgers, and Shostakovich) made a for a pleasant effect on a hot summer afternoon, with Aizawa and Novacek maneuvering effectively through the delightful maze of moods and styles.
As occasionally occurs in well-planned concert programs, one could sense a sort of conversation among the styles represented here; the inspired frivolities of Barber and Lutoslawski prepared the listener perfectly for the arrival, after intermission, of Beethoven’s “Razumovsky” Quartet in F. Violist DerHovsepian and cellist Taylor returned, joined by violists Stephen Rose (principal second violin of the Cleveland Orchestra) and Jesse Mills (of the Horszowski Trio). These musicians clearly grasped the combination of the intimate and the epic in this work, beginning with the smoothly fluid introduction from the lower instruments, from which the first violin seizes the theme and soars.
Indeed, the performance had the aura of an opera squeezed into a string quartet, with constantly effective expression of pure musical character and emotion from all four performers, collectively and indivicually. For this listener, the brilliant energy of the conversation among the instruments in the Allegretto second movement evoked the operatic ensembles of Mozart, while the proto-romantic passion of the Adagio likewise emerged powerfully, and with full resonance from this wonderful ensemble drawn from across America. The final Allegro movement, in which Beethoven explores a “Thème Russe,” subtly echoed the Slavic accents of the concert’s opening works, bringing a superb musical event full circle.
SCHEDULE
Mimir continues with the following concerts:
CONCERT 4
7:30 p.m. Wednesday July 5
PepsiCo Recital Hall, TCU
Mimir Emerging Artists Concert 2
7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 6
PepsiCo Recital Hall, TCU
CONCERT 5
7:30 p.m. Friday, July 7
PepsiCo Recital Hall, TCU 
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