Stellar trio a NOVA delight

NOVA CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES, Utah Museum of Fine Arts Auditorium, Sunday.

Under music director Barbara Scowcroft, the NOVA Chamber Music Series strives to program a broad spectrum of composers and style periods. The series' concerts have invariably been a showcase for some three centuries worth of chamber music.

Adding to NOVA's appeal is the fact that the series is also a venue for local musicians, many of whom are members of the Utah Symphony.

Now in its 26th season, the series' formula of combining the best in chamber music with the best among local artists has proven highly successful.

Sunday's matinee concert in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts auditorium brought together a trio of exceptional musicians in a program of 20th century music by three traditionalist composers. Pianist Jed Moss from the Paradigm Trio, Utah Symphony French horn player Ron Beitel and violinist Jennifer Bogart from the Utah Chamber Orchestra played works by Paul Hindemith, George Rochberg and Lennox Berkeley.

The concert opened with Hindemith's Sonata in F for Horn and Piano from 1939. The three-movement work, which at times is strident but always melodic, is a study in lucidity and clearly defined phrasings within a lean classical framework. Beitel and Moss gave a dynamic and forceful performance with their decisive playing.

Before intermission, Bogart came onstage and gave a stellar performance of Rochberg's formidable Caprice Variations for Solo Violin. Written in 1970, the work takes Paganini's famous A minor Caprice from the op. 1 set and transforms it into what seems to be every imaginable configuration and contortion.

Rochberg's imaginative and original work breaks Paganini's theme down to its bare components and reassembles it in his own unique style, which occasionally (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) pays homage to earlier composers. The 50 variations, of which the number and order is left to the performer, are a technical and musical challenge for the violinist.

Bogart showed that she is more than up to the demands placed on the soloist. She gave a fabulously articulate, perceptive and vivid performance of this kaleidoscopic work. It was in fact sheer pleasure watching her wend her way through the intricacies of the score.

The final work at Sunday's concert united the three artists in Berkeley's accessible but trifling 1953 Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano, op. 44. Bogart, Beitel and Moss gave a sparkling performance that captured the lightness of the lively outer movements and the studied earnestness of the Lento.

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