Jennifer Orchard, Violin
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Reviews
Classical recordings
Sunday, August 12, 2007
By Andrew Druckenbrod, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Shostakovich wrote "Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok" for some of the titans of the Russian music scene of the 1960s: Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Galina Vishnevskaya and David Oistrakh. Talk about intimidating for subsequent performers. But the flip side is that Shostakovich didn't have to hold back on complexity and subtlety in this opus, leaving a group like the Pittsburgh Piano Trio ample room to discover new interpretations.
Soprano Natalya Kraevsky joins the trio -- Jennifer Orchard, violin; Mikhail Istomin, cello; and Igor Kraevsky, piano -- for a deeply felt reading. With a remarkably dark timbre and with lingering legato phrasing, the soprano Kraevsky layers another level of pathos to those already intrinsic to the poems and music. The last poem, "Music," is particularly touching as, below her reflective intoning, the trio shifts from lugubrious strains to nervous tremolos and then to a stark epilogue.
Georgy Sviridov was a slightly younger Soviet composer who studied with Shostakovich and died in 1998. His Piano Trio, Op. 8, shows that influence but harbors more innate, positive energy. Orchard and Istomin play with verve, but Igor Kraevsky clearly has a bead on Sviridov's aesthetic, barnstorming through the runs of the first two movements, creating bell-like tones in the Funeral March third and precisely articulating the passagework of the finale
Scenes from the Arts-Burgh
By Mark Kanny
TRIBUNE-REVIEW CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Smart programming and brilliant performances made Pittsburgh Piano Trio's concert at the Frick Museum in Point Breeze on May 8 a worthy complement to an exhibition of drawings by George Bellows.
The arch of color and energy in Joaquin Turina's three-movement "Circulo" was served with tasty style by violinist Jennifer Orchard, cellist Mikhail Istomin and pianist Igor Kraevsky. Paul Juon's passionate one-movement Litaniae, for a lost love, received a powerfully mature interpretation, with surging string tone that was a striking and apt contrast with the Turina.
The boisterous vitality of American music, with the influence of many jazz styles, in Paul Schoenfield's three-movement "Cafe Music" provided an exhilarating resumption of the concert. The performers drove the music in tempo and feeling.
Yet another aspect of the group's stylistic versatility was on displayed in "Fall," "Winter" and "Spring" from tango-master Astor Piazzolla's "The Four Seasons." The arrangement and performance were more idiomatic and enjoyable than that offered by Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica last month for Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society.
The first encore was Russian Waltz by Frank Bridge, offered in honor of the late Mstislav Rostropovich, who was a friend of Bridge's most famous student, Benjamin Britten, whose "Billy Budd" was just presented by Pittsburgh Opera.
Piano Trio plays seamlessly at Frick
Thursday, May 10, 2007
By Burkhardt Reiter
Illustrator George Bellow's drawings provided the backdrop, but Tuesday night, all eyes were on the Pittsburgh Piano Trio. At a packed Frick Art Museum in Point Breeze, the group provided a memorable and, at times, raucous conclusion to the "Music for Exhibitions" concert series. In an all-20th-century program, the trio provided musical commentary for the Frick's current exhibition of Bellow's depictions of American life.
Throughout the concert, violinist Jennifer Orchard and cellist Mikhail Istomin traded their musical thoughts seamlessly. Pianist Igor Kraevesky displayed remarkable and consistent awareness for the piano's specific musical role. His artistic pendulum swung smoothly throughout the concert, from making the piano an accompanying instrument to an equal partner with the strings, and to a leading role.
Infused with French harmonies, Joaquin Turina's "Circulo" opened the concert. Illustrating a single day, the trio showed magnificent ensemble playing, adeptly handling the first movement's halting musical gestures. Russian composer Paul Juon's "Litaniae" confirmed the trio's penchant for Romantic compositions. Their conviction for the music was conveyed through tight ensemble work, employing all of the dynamic contrast and rhythmic precision required for a performance in this style to succeed. In each piece, they projected a strong sense of security, with the music and with each other.
The same security got the better of them in Paul Schoenfield's "Cafe Music," a potpourri of popular American styles of the early 20th century. Though at moments they resembled a classical ensemble traipsing through a not-so-classical work, the trio played everything notated on Schoenfield's pages. As admirable as this is, missing from the performance were the nonwritten subtleties they were able to evince in the rest of the night's program. Schoenfield is partly to blame. He titled each movement with bland, generic Italian musical terms. Allegro con fuoco does not do justice to the American Rag style he referenced in the first movement. Especially in the presto finale, the group was too safely tied to the page, never realizing the reckless abandon of the dance hall at which the music hinted.
The evening's highlight was the exciting performance of three movements from Astor Piazzolla's "The Seasons." Arranged for piano trio by Piazzolla's cellist, Jose Bragato, Istomin introduced the abridged performance (there are four seasons) with his recollection of meeting Bragato during a PSO tour of South America. Admitting that Piazzolla's music gets his "blood boiling," Istomin and company's performance had the same effect on the audience. In quintessential Piazzolla fashion, the trio played with crisp articulations and turn-on-a-dime tempo shifts. It found the musically authentic colors and flavors left wanting in Schoenfield's "Cafe."
Two encores, a palate-cleansing "Russian Waltz" by Frank Bridge, performed in memoriam to Mstislav Rostropovich, and a short, well-balanced tango summarized the evening's highlights.
Radio Interview on WQED-fm with Stephen Baum about US premiere of "Episodes Concertants" by Paul Juon
By Alexandra Baych
for "HIGH 5"
Alexandra Reviews Pittsburgh Piano Trio at Carengie Hall
Classical music isn't for everyone. Some people can't stand the elongated notes, the complex rhythms, or even the piano accompaniments. But for me at least, it's really a privilege. Maybe its my own attempt at playing the violin that gives me such respect for those people who train their whole lives to simply perform for this occasion. In any case, try it out, once, because who knows? It just might blow you away.
The trio in Carnegie Hall didn't blow me away...well, not until the last few pieces. They played extraordinarily well and very smoothly. The one complaint I did have was that the cello player breathed so deeply that sometimes it detracted from the actual musical piece. But then again, it's those moments that made the music human and gave it life.
Personally, I didn't appreciate the opera piece sung (in Russian, with translations written in the playbill) because I could not relate to the dramatized notes, screeches and vibrations when she sang. I definitely would agree that this singer, Natalya Kraevsky, knew a thing or two about singing, but it just didn't affect me.
My best suggestion for anyone wanting to try out some classical music for the first time is to stay till the end. The first few pieces that were played were good, but the last left me with a feeling of real emotion. They were so lively and well played that they made the evening just that much better. Overall it was a good night, well spent, and hey I even felt an air of culture seeping into my teenage skin... and who knows maybe you will too.
Piano Trio has strong followup with 'Encore!'
By Mark Kanny
TRIBUNE-REVIEW CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Encores are the answer when music lovers want more. Now the Pittsburgh Piano Trio has followed up its superb album of music by Frank Bridge with a second disc this year devoted to those short musical delights. The group brings fresh imagination and zest to its programming and performances of tangos, waltzes, ragtime and other popular miniatures.
Before recording "Encore! Encore!," the musicians performed the same repertoire at "Concerts of Note" earlier this year around town organized by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's development department. Violinist Jennifer Orchard and cellist Mikhail Istomin are members of the orchestra. Pianist Igor Kraevsky was a valued member of the local music community -- along with his wife and soprano Natalya -- until they left two years ago when he became director of music at the Berkeley Carroll School in New York City. He occasionally returns to the city to perform or record.
The boldly contrasted sonorities of the CD's opening selections draws upon the musicians' doubling skills on percussion as well as special sounds on their own instruments. Orchard, for example, uses an idiomatic strong, quick, upward slide as effectively as Latin singers do, and makes brusque percussive sounds by scratching the strings behind the bridge of the violin.
If most of the arrangements, which reach their wildest in music by American rag-time master Scott Joplin, exemplify the freedom and lively rhythms of contemporary classical crossover sensibility, the final encore is old-time grab 'em-by-the-heart music making. But the same unified nuance and intensity of emotion is what carries all the performances, however more gritty the attitude is in most earlier selections. Istomin's richly sonorous cello is as moving in "Orteno Porteno" from Astor Piazzolla's "Four Seasons" as in Mikhail Glinka's "Doubts."
These musicians have a lot more fun and generate more passion with this repertoire than many -- as yet? -- more famous ensembles, such as the Eroica Trio on EMI. Next season the Pittsburgh Piano Trio will tour the Ukraine in December and make its Carnegie Hall debut March 19. The quality of sound on the new CD is a substantial improvement over the Bridge disc in both vibrancy and balance. The realism of piano sound lets one fully appreciate Kraevsky's remarkable artistry as a true ensemble player with personality -- even soft, low notes have body.
"Encore! Encore!" is collaborative project of City Music Center of Duquesne University and WQED-FM. It costs $15 and is available from Curtain Details: (412) 392-3313 or www.pittsburghsymphony.org/curtaincall.
Mark Kanny can be reached at mkanny@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7877.
For the Record
March, 2004
By Andrew Druckenbrod, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
CLASSICAL
PITTSBURGH PIANO TRIO
"PHANTASIE" (MINSTREL)
This disc is a shining example of how well self-produced discs can turn out. As the castles of the big labels continue to crumble, the more small-label projects that step up to the plate the better. The Pittsburgh Piano Trio -- violinist Jennifer Orchard and cellist Mikhail Istomin, both Pittsburgh Symphony musicians, and pianist Igor Kraevsky. But more than their skill, their choice of repertoire is what makes this disc hard to take out of the player. The program is chamber works of Frank Bridge: a violin sonata, a cello sonata and his "Phantasie" for piano trio. These relatively obscure pieces are rich, melodic, (but not sappy) and emotional works by the British composer who lived from 1883-1941. How quick we were to dismiss anyone writing romantic music in the 20th century, with these works and others the casualties.
There is an attractive spontaneity when these three musicians perform. The ensemble is good, but not rigid nor strictly controlled. They trust their common musicality to connect to each other, rather than the absolute melding of a full-time quartet. It was that way when I heard them perform in a salon concert last month in a house of music lovers in Squirrel Hill. Pittsburgh Piano Trio smacks gloriously of old school music-making. Kraevsky is a risk-taker and Istomin a deeply emotional player. Orchard, however, really impresses in the chamber medium, a mark of her earlier career in the Lark Quartet.
The recording
February, 2004
By Mark Kanny, Tribune Review Classical Music Critic
What: "Phantasie"; Chamber Music of Frank Bridge
By: Pittsburgh Piano Trio
Label: Minstrel MLCD 0301
The music of Frank Bridge is far more compelling on a new CD by the Pittsburgh Piano Trio than one might expect from a composer best known as a teacher. His student Benjamin Britten went on to become one of the most important composers of the 20th century, whose operas Pittsburgh Opera gradually - and certainly belatedly - is introducing here.
Bridge was respected in his time, but exemplifies the notion of a third- or fourth-tier composer. Yet the inspired performances on a new CD make his music a compelling experience, which is the treshold for value and relevance.
Violinist Jennifer Orchard, cellist Mikhail Istomin and pianist Igor Kraevsky reach passionate intensity while fully serving the rich musical textures of Bridge's early "Phantasie" Trio, written in 1908.
Three years earlier, Bridge began but did not finish a Violin Sonata. Orchard and Kraevsky grab the ear with the forceful start to the first movement, whose broad romantic expression - akin to Cesar Frank's style - is served so well by their nuanced phrasing. Fragments of another movement were completed by an editor, but do not adequately follow up on the emotional qualities of the first movement. Perhaps that's why Bridge didn't finish the piece.
Istomin and Kraevsky are equally well-attuned to the strength and dreamy melancholy of Bridge's Cello Sonata, which was also memorably recorded by Mstislav Rostropovich and Britten playing piano - but the recording is long out of print.
Cellist, violinist enchant crowd at Duquesne's faculty recital
By Mark Kanny
TRIBUNE-REVIEW CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC
Tuesday, November 5, 2002
The dusty old title "Faculty Recital" doesn’t even begin to suggest the excitement of Sunday night’s concert at Duquesne University.
Mikhail Istomin is a cellist in the grand Russian tradition, with great technique and sonority. He draws exceptionally rich sound from his lowest string, even when playing softly, and never loses an appealing, slightly juicy quality all the way up. He’s a graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and was a member of the St. Petersburg String Quartet, among other positions, before joining the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1992.
Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu’s Variations on a Theme by Rossini offered Istomin the opportunity to exercise his virtuosity within a neo-classical aesthetic to open the concert.
The music of English composer Frank Bridge passed out of fashion before he died, and for many decades he was known mainly as the teacher of Benjamin Britten. The Duquesne concert featured two of his compositions, showing — as if we need a reminder — that contemporary values of any time distort perception of quality.
The Bridge Cello Sonata was written from 1913-17 and shows Romanticism’s crushing encounter with World War I. Istomin and pianist Igor Kraevsky embraced the music’s passion while remaining sensitive to the sophistication of the writing.
The concert became even stronger after intermission with the addition of violinist Jennifer Orchard. She became second violin of the Lark String Quartet upon earning her master's degree from the Juilliard School of Music and joined the Pittsburgh Symphony last season as assistant principal of the second violins.
Inner voices are important, but in reality Orchard is a fabulous lead violinist. She is an inspiring virtuoso with imagination, soulfulness and taste.
Orchard and Istomin opened the second half with Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello, great music that is almost never encountered in concert because its challenges rightly scare off most string players. In addition to demands for virtuoso techniques, its harmonic sophistication and totally exposed textures place extreme demands on intonational accuracy.
The performance was spell-binding. The first movement’s spare lines and imaginative harmonic combinations were performed with the poise to realize the music’s cool sensuality. The second movement, both droll and sardonic, had tremendous drive. Ravel’s imaginative sonorities in the slow movement were realized with great sensitivity, ending with a perfectly evocative harmonic from Orchard. Not surprisingly, shouts of "Bravo!" followed the excitingly on-the-edge finale.
Bridge’s "Phantasie" for Piano Trio played by the Pittsburgh Piano Trio completed the program. This summer Orchard became violinist of the ensemble, whose other members are Istomin and Kraevsky. They teach chamber music at City Music Center at Duquesne University and the Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill. The musicians made the strongest possible case for Bridge’s neglected masterpiece.
The encore was Two Tangos by Astor Piazzola, one slow, the other fast, that made a delicious conclusion to a great concert. |