Bella Muzik

Part of Tuckamore Music Festival, August 5-18, 2024
Reviewed by Maggie Burton

Chamber music is one of the most intimate art forms. Every line is a conversation between equals, between intimates. It is democratic and uncertain, no one player is dominant over the others, and each depends on the other. 

Tuckamore Music Festival is a unique musical experience that Newfoundlanders are lucky to have on the calendar each August. I have spent many happy hours listening to chamber music by some of the world’s greatest performers thanks to Tuckamore, which is a surreal experience for a classical musician on a rock in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. It’s like watching the Olympics in my hometown, and it happens every year. 

I attended Bella Muzik, a concert featuring two of the more challenging and poetic pieces in the repertoire, Schubert’s E-flat piano trio and Bartok’s second string quartet. On first glance, the two pieces have about as much in common as a potato and a violin. Hearing the concert, however, I was struck by how the compositions complemented each other. The link between the two was most obvious in the mood: the extremes of human experience, the depths of emotional suffering and joy that we are capable of. Schubert’s trio opened me up emotionally, preparing me for the violence and devastation of Bartok’s second quartet. If the programming had been Bartok first and Schubert second, I feel it would not have worked as well. As it stood, however, it was perfect.

Schubert wrote his Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat major for piano, violin, and cello, D. 929, in the last year of his life, when he was on a roll, artistically. The cello line from the second movement is perhaps the most recognizable in the canon, a soaring melody based on the Swedish folk song, Se solen sjunker, “The Sun is Going Down.” I guarantee you that if you heard it, you would immediately start racking your brain for what film you’ve heard it in. 

Performing the trio was violinist Nancy Dahn and pianist Timothy Steeves of Duo Concertante, along with cellist Vernon Regehr. The three of them are Tuckamore faculty artists, and have been performing together for over twenty years. I love the tension present in their performances, you can sense the give and take that is happening, you can feel their success when they land a particularly difficult section. Now, as a graduate of Memorial’s School of Music, I have spent hundreds of hours with each of these players, and I could almost read their minds as they were playing. But I suspect the other audience members felt the same, as the trio communicated beautifully. The violinist inhabited the spirit of Schubert with fluency and ease, and the pianist seemed to lead the trio’s journey up and down the soaring melodies. The cello melodies were superb, especially in the tender second movement. It was a pleasure to listen to their performance. 

By the end of the forty or so minutes of Schubert, I was vulnerable and open, ready for Bartok, performed by the Ying Quartet. Mercifully, there was an intermission between pieces, which gave me time to seal up the gaps formed in the epicardium of my heart and prepare myself for one of my favourite pieces in the string quartet repertoire. For those of you who do not know it, I suggest clearing your schedule, putting on a pair of good headphones, and sitting down on a particularly uncomfortable chair. You can thank me later. Bartok wrote his second quartet, Op. 17, in the midst of World War I. It is a tremendously sad and terrifying piece of music, one that translates so unfortunately well to the global unease and suffering experienced by so many in our contemporary world.

Decades of experience playing together is a fact that the Ying Quartet shares with their programmatic predecessors–they’ve been performing since 1988. And wow, did it ever show. Their lines melted into each other effortlessly, I could scarcely tell who was playing what. Three of the musicians in the quartet are siblings, and you could feel the subliminal level of communication between them, particularly amongst the lower strings. 

It was a faultless performance, one that I will remember for a long time. They received a standing ovation and played an encore, the first movement of Dvořák’s American Quartet, his String Quartet No. 12 in F Major. The cellist spoke briefly from the stage, explaining that they did not want to leave us sad, that they would play us out with something more uplifting. It was lovely. 

Tuckamore ran from August 5th-18th, and will be back next August. Whether or not you “like” classical music, you will be guaranteed to enjoy the intimate, flawless performances of Tuckamore faculty and guest artists.