Reviews

Final Charleston Music Fest concert uplifting

BY LORETTA HASKELL
Post and Courier Reviewer
Monday, March 30, 2009

If the balmy weather Sunday wasn't enough to lift one's spirits, those attending the final concert of the season for Charleston Music Fest had couldn't help being uplifted and inspired.

Violinist Lee-Chin Siow, cellist Natalia Khoma and pianist Volodymyr Vynnytsky performed Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio in A minor and Paul Schoenfield's Cafe Music in the acoustically vibrant Ashley Hall Ballroom to a rapt audience, against the backdrop of a perfect spring afternoon.

The three-movement piano trio was a grand work, and the passionate playing of the trio made each note meaningful. Tchaikovsky covered every expressive technique available in this romantic work but never without balancing harmony and melody, variation and simplicity, soft and loud. It would have been impossible to perform this piece without full commitment from the prodigious musicians, and this ambitious and physically demanding work of nearly fifty-five minutes held our attention throughout.

Schoenfield composed the three-movement Cafe Music as "high class dinner music," incorporating early American, Viennese, gypsy, broadway and Hasidic influences into the composition.

While being musically sophisticated and beautifully suited for the trio, it was an exciting and entertaining ending to a perfect Sunday afternoon. We look forward to more impressive performances from Charleston Music Fest and more chamber music in the Ashley Hall Ballroom.