NY Concerti Sinfonietta Delivers Double Dividends

NEW YORK—On Oct. 29 at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, the New York Concerti Sinfonietta (NYCS) presented its 2017 International Shining Star Competition winners in concert, to a sold-out audience. The recipient of the Grand Prize was a remarkably gifted musical switch-hitter who took top honors in both the piano and violin categories.

The Carnegie concert featured the cream of the crop, selected from recent auditions held at Ireland’s three leading conservatories: the CIT Cork School of Music; the DIT Conservatory of Music, Dublin; and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Also appearing were star performers trained at the Hochschule für Musik, Cologne; and the University of Music, Vienna. Featured from the United States were soloists from The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music.

In addition, a number of previous winners made return appearances with fresh repertory. Emphasis was also placed on musical families: two of the Irish Grand Prize winner’s sisters appeared as pianists, and two sisters from another family performed on cello and flute, respectively.

Making his debut with the NYCS was an outstanding Irish conductor, Conor Palliser—a faculty member at Cork School of Music who is also an experienced professional French horn player and pianist. He is already slated to lead encore performances of the NYCS next June.

Such was the abundance of talent revealed by the auditions that two supplemental concerts in Midtown Manhattan locations were necessary to display all the Shining Star winners. One, the day before the Carnegie concert, was dedicated to solo and chamber music. The other, the day after, was devoted to concertos with the NYCS.

I know of only one other prominent performing artist who has exhibited equivalent versatility. Julia Fischer, who studied piano in her childhood before concentrating on the violin, was persuaded to perform on both instruments at a New Year’s Gala in Frankfurt in 2008. After soloing in the Saint-Saëns Third Violin Concerto, she played the piano in public for the first time at age 24, mastering the Grieg Piano Concerto, an occasion documented on a Decca DVD.

In his performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37, Kevin took immediate command of the first movement, displaying vivid dynamic contrasts as well as beautifully modulated and articulated phrasing, culminating in a stormy cadenza. When playing accompanying figures in the second movement where pianists usually hog the limelight, Kevin sensitively dropped back in volume so that the melodic phrases in the woodwinds could predominate. In the finale, his sparkling technique was a delight, particularly his playful, chiseled crystalline scales, ornaments, and trills.

As a violinist, Kevin traversed the last movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64 with total security and at a vertiginous tempo approaching that of Jascha Heifetz. “Allegro molto vivace” indeed! At the supplemental concerts, Kevin deftly played unaccompanied Bach, the Franck Sonata, and a Rachmaninoff Trio, plus the first movement of the Mendelssohn Concerto.

If forced to choose the instrument on which Kevin demonstrates the greatest proficiency, based on these concerts I would say that he is a highly accomplished violinist, but an exceptional pianist. Notably, his debut CD of solo piano music ranging from Liszt to Ligeti has recently been released by a major Swiss label, Claves Records.

Ellen powered her way through Prokofiev’s finger-twisting complexities as if they were a nursery rhyme. The lyrical passages pulsed with emotion, while her dazzling octaves at the close were spectacular. Ellen generated massive sonorities, producing a particularly rich, resonant bass register on Carnegie’s 9-foot Steinway Grand. She is a major talent.

Thirteen-year-old Gerry Yang, from the DIT Conservatory of Music in Dublin, played the opening movement of Mozart’s early Piano Concerto in C Major, No. 8, K. 246. Yang is only seven years younger than Mozart was when he composed the work. Despite his youth, Yang was fleet and stylish, using very little pedal in a nod to historically informed performance practice. He exhibited both facility and maturity.

Tiffany Qiu, 16 years old, from the Royal Irish Academy, presented a shimmering, fluid, and sonorous account of Maurice Ravel’s impressionistic tone painting, “Ondine,” from “Gaspard de la nuit.”

Oliver Neubauer, age 18, last appeared with NYCS in May 2017 in Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1. He returned to play the first movement of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K. 216, at Carnegie. His was a captivating performance, fully bringing-out the shifting moods, wit, and lyricism of Mozart’s music. Neubauer currently studies at The Juilliard School Pre-College Division.

David is also expert at drawing; his charcoal portrait of a pensive Dmitri Shostakovich adorned the reverse side of the Carnegie Hall program.

It was an inspired combination of three generations of performers, but a true collaboration of equals. Rarely have I heard the trio performed with such sensitive attention to the interplay of its instrumental voices, both individually and jointly. The players phrased the work like a living, breathing organism, completely revealing Brahms’s compositional genius.

The final soloists to perform with the NYCS at Carnegie were a group of seven elementary school string players from New Jersey impressively naming themselves “Violin Virtuosi.” They performed Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins in A Minor, Op. 3, No. 8, RV. 522 (from “L’estro armonico”), with three players taking the violin one part and four players on violin two.