Gut Instinct Trio
CHAPEL HILL, NC – The start of the 2024-25 concert season saw the premiere concert of a new chamber music series in North Carolina: Gut Instinct.
Held at UNC in Chapel Hill, the three concerts in this season will offer music lovers several out-of-the ordinary opportunities. One is the programming featuring a lesser-known female composer whose music should be heard more, alongside near contemporaries whose works are already in the canon. Another is the opportunity to hear UNC’s classic keyboards, one of which dates from 1843. The keyboard heard in this concert is a 1990s replica of a Graf instrument from earlier in the 19th century. Perhaps most striking is that the string instruments, both also from the 19th century, will be played throughout the series on strings made from gut. This was the norm for many centuries, supplanted only in the 20th century by metal. Playing on gut strings yields a markedly different tonal quality than most people today have probably had. (It is also part of where the word “gut” in the series title came from.)
The creators of the series and its principal performers are Nicholas DiEugenio, violin, and Mimi Solomon, here playing fortepiano; they are a husband-and-wife team who met playing chamber music. Both are on the faculty of UNC. They came together in this concert with guest cellist Raman Ramakrishnan, who is based in New York.
The atmosphere of this event was enhanced by having both fortepianos on the stage, as well as two replica harpsichords, painted with baroque adornment. As if all of that were not enough, this concert, meant to be accessible to everyone, was free.
The concert was a wonderful musical experience. The opening work was the well-loved set Fantasiestücke by Robert Schumann, his Op. 73, played here on the gut-stringed cello with fortepiano. Perhaps it was once heard this way in Robert and Clara’s home in Leipzig, a gathering place for some of Europe’s leading musicians where music was frequently played for the assembled guests. Here the sense of engagement and intensity was palpable instantaneously, literally with the first notes. The three movements were played with impeccable beauty of phrase and tone. The Graf fortepiano is not as powerful an instrument as the modern piano, and its dynamic peaks are lower. That is the case also with gut strings, and the two musicians balanced flawlessly with each other.
Moments that stood out to this listener even with the overall beauty were a fine rubato at the return in the second movement, and lovely tapered phrasing in the cello in the third. This was the first section where the listener could hear the stronger tone of the instruments, and the crescendos worked well. Here there were also two spots that sounded thick on the keyboard, as though they had been overpedaled. But in this original instrument performance, one would follow Schumann’s original pedal markings. The sustaining of a certain note could have been important to the composer, and not all instruments sustained tones equally well. (Pianophiles will know the remarkable passage that opens the third movement of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” sonata, for example.)
The next work was by Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann’s well-known wife, whose career as a leading concert pianist for a time eclipsed his as a composer. Known by now also as a hugely gifted composer herself, Clara Schumann’s piece was Three Romances for Violin and Piano, with DiEugenio playing the violin. These were lovely essays in tone, reminiscent of the Song without Words style made famous by Mendelssohn. This was especially true in the first movement, beautifully lyrical as it was. The violin stood out here with its long, long lines, and sometimes soaring phrases. There was an unexpected slide at the end, again suggesting adherence to original markings. The fortepiano had a lush chordal sound, very rich.
The second movement continued the gentle mood but moved more quickly. The middle section had a pastoral quality, something beloved in the 19th century. Again the sustained violin lines stood out with very full cantabile. The still-gentle third movement, the quickest of the three, had some lovely special moments on the fortepiano. There was a finely shaped solo accompanied by violin pizzicato, and then an unpedaled passage articulated with a plucked effect like a guitar. Tonal subtleties like these just added to the artistry already present everywhere.
The final work on this one-hour program played without intermission was the Piano Trio in E-flat by Amanda Maier-Röntgen (1853-1894). Maier was a well-known Swedish violinist who played over 100 concerts around Europe in her short performance career that largely ended with her marriage to her violin teacher’s son, also a musician. Her performance peak may well have been the tour with her own violin concerto, which she premiered with the then-as-now famous Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Her compositions were noted by Grieg and Brahms among others, and several were published, an exceptional accomplishment for a woman at that time.
Maier’s music has been in a process of rediscovery for about the past decade. This trio was remarkably found by chance among family papers. Happily for us of following generations, these things do happen; not too many years ago a manuscript of Beethoven was discovered in a drawer in Pennsylvania.
The trio is a well-built piece with interesting ideas worked out effectively. The style is reminiscent of that from thirty of forty years before, without the chromatic developments of Liszt or, for the most part, the rhythmic elaborations of Brahms. The prevalence of unison passages for the violin and cello means that there is limited contrapuntal interplay between the instruments. Nonetheless, at almost a half hour, the piece sustains successfully and deserves the place it may be finding in the repertory. The high artistry of this performance made a persuasive case for it.
The design of the piece ranged from a vigorous, motivically based first movement, to a rhythmic second movement in the minor mode based on a Swedish dance, through the lyrical third movement also in minor, and ending with a rapid and lively Finale. High points for this listener were two fine violin solos in the first movement that led beautifully to the cello. The second movement had a lovely pastoral trio section. The third movement had a rich piano solo with full chords and in general highly expressive sustained lines. The somewhat bittersweet mood was darkly emotive. The last movement had rapid, well-articulated passages in the piano and an excellent strong crescendo in the strings. The conclusion had a certain restrained jubilation, creating a satisfying ending to the concert.
The performances of all three works bore out the title of the series. Gut Instinct refers to playing on gut strings, as mentioned above, and to the intent to offer music-making of visceral immediacy (“from the gut,” one could say). In that, the performances were unequivocally a success.
The other two concerts of the series will be on Friday 15 November of this year, and Saturday 1 March 2025. The March concert will be co-presented by Mallarmé as part of the NC HIP festival. It will be free to UNC and MYCO students, and all those with a HIPSTER pass which can be purchased through the Mallarmé Chamber Players website. All performances will be at 7:30 in Person Recital Hall. Again, in another boon to the musical public, they are free. The concert locale, it should be mentioned, is small. With 70-80 attendees, it was approaching full for this event. If word gets out, Gut Instinct is going to need a larger hall.
