Reviews: Italy

Musical Pearls and a Bit of Humor

The American Kent Camerata, Eclectic and Smiling

The Kent Camerata, the American quintet featured in a beautiful concert in Nibbiano at the seventeenth century church of St. Peter for the Val Tidone Festival, is an unusual creation (starting at its origin formed by soprano Sylvia Villarreal, mezzo-soprano Mary Sue Hyatt, Katharine Gerson DeBolt on viola, her husband David DeBolt on bassoon and pianist Jan Meyer Thompson), at the same time exemplary as far as a musical approach, typically (and happily) American.  First of all, for eclecticism.  For the smiling informality of these middle-aged professors.  For a sense of humor which transpires through the name (which draws proud Florentine recollections to Kent State University in Kent, Ohio where the group is based).  For the originality of the complex, which unites a typically Anglo-Saxon love of fragile and precious sonority to an almost jazz-like approach of the kind which seems to say “We are friends, we work well together, let’s put our talents together.”

The ensemble’s spirit manifests itself in the opening  piece:  an entertaining arrangement for the five of them of  The Whirling of the Spinning Wheel, a signature chamber piece by Haydn from his London period.  This is followed by a Mozart composition presented as the Sonata in B-flat  Major which is actually the Quartet for oboe and strings in F Major K368b transcribed for bassoon and  piano: an arbitrary operation of such impartiality, yet played with amazing elegance by the agile bassoon of DeBolt and by the  refined pianistic accompaniment.

Villarreal is the perfect singing polyglot as is Hyatt, displaying an impeccable Venetian dialect in the vivacious  Anzoleta avanti la Regata by Rossini.  But the concert reaches the summit of lyrical form with a moving performance for viola and piano (with a truly skillful
Gerson) of the Märchenbilder  Op. 113 by Schumann.  The soprano and the mezzo-soprano then gift us with some pearls, four beautiful duets by a young Brahms: Klänge Op. 66 No. 2, Phanomen Op. 61 No. 3, Die Schwestern Op. 61 No. 1,  Weg der Liebe Op. 20 No. 1.  But the most moving surprise was entrusted to Hyatt’s voice, with the intense Charles Martin Loeffler’s Le son du Cor and Serenade  (from his Quatre Poémes Op. 5)  The bassoon and the piano unite to capture the familiar and stirring melodies of Alborada del Gracioso by Maurice Ravel.  Next are four Tonadillas  by Enrique Granados:  three witty, sensually animated songs  (La Maja de Goya, El Tra la la y el Punteado, El Majo Discreto) alongside a brief, dense, pathos-filled song (having the marked Spanish capacity of giving pain a theatrical projection) as does La Maja Dolorosa.

The finale just as the beginning sees the ensemble regrouped and geared for a delightful version (repeated as an encore) of a Tarentelle by Fauré, a composition in which Fauré more than captures the exciting, feverish character of the dance, indulges – with his very own composer’s wisdom – to that taste for the exotic and picturesque for which nineteenth century France had an authentic genius.

The Val Tidone Competition is organized by the Pianello municipality and  by the Piacenza and Vignano Foundation under the artistic direction of Livio Bollani in collaboration with the Gruppo Alpini, Piacenza Tourism, Pro Loco of Pianello, Tetracordo and with the municipalities of Agazzano, Borgonovo, Castel san Giovanni, Nibbiano and Sarmata (besides the sponsorship of the Region, Province, and the Bank of Piacenza and through the support of a long list of local sponsors.

Translation by Sylvia Villarreal