SummerFest opener enlivened by Cho-Liang Lin and Moszkowski

Cho-Liang Lin. Photo Paul Body.
Cho-Liang Lin. Photo Paul Body.

La Jolla Music Society SummerFest 2012

When: Continues through Aug. 24


Admission: $45-$75

Phone: (858) 459-3728


Friday’s La Jolla Music Society SummerFest opener at Sherwood Auditorium had music director Cho-Liang Lin’s fingerprints all over it.

Lin loves nothing more than finding some forgotten masterpiece by an overlooked composer, and the program-opening Suite in G Minor for Two Violins and Piano by Moritz Moszkowski proved to be that always surprising first-rate work by a second-rate composer.

Lin also programmed Villa-Lobos’ beloved but too-rarely performed “Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5.” Lin apparently figured as long as he had the eight cellos the No. 5 requires (plus soprano), he might as well do the longer, even more obscure “Bachianas Brasilieras No. 1.”

But he planned the program so that no matter what you thought about Moszkowski and Villa-Lobos, or the Rachmaninoff “Vocalise” that opened the second half, you’d leave happy after hearing the original two-piano version of Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances.”

Lin made his part of what turned out to be an oddly flat program work. In the Moszkowski Suite, Lin, violinist Augustin Hadelich and pianist Henry Kramer had you wondering how history dared to pass over this Polish-German turn-of-the-century composer.

His may not be the most profound work in the repertoire, but it might be among the most congenial. Hadelich and Lin’s relaxed performance captured just the right balance between seriousness and spontaneity.

Unfortunately, cellists Desmond Hoebig, Trevor Handy, Joshua Roman, Han Bin Yoon, Felix Fan, Chia-ling Chien, Mihai Marica and Meta Weiss’s reading of

the “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1” was uneventful. Some pieces are able to survive a “good enough” performance, but this particular work requires considerably more nuance, rhythmic flexibility, and particularly in the second movement, forward motion, than they were prepared to give.

They fared better with soprano Ying Haung in No. 5, a more tightly structured, compact piece. Haung was also notable in the Rachmaninoff “Vocalise,” even if she downplayed the work’s dark, expressive qualities and made it into a vocal tour de force.

In the “Symphonic Dances,” pianists Jeffrey Kahane and Jon Kimura Parker did the unthinkable: they made this inspired, energetic score seem dull. Their monochromatic interpretation was rigid and by-the-book to the point where you could have set a metronome to their playing. It made you pine for more Moszkowski.


