Concertmasters display virtuosity

NOVA CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES, Utah Museum of Fine Arts auditorium, Saturday.

Music director Barbara Scowcroft scored a coup when she talked the four concertmasters of the Utah Symphony into appearing together for Saturday's NOVA Chamber Music Series concert. The concert marked the first time that the four (concertmaster Ralph Matson, associate concertmasters Gerald Elias and Leonard Braus, and assistant concertmaster David Park) have performed together outside of the Utah Symphony, and the evening was an unqualified success.

The four violinists are remarkable musicians of the highest caliber, and it was sheer pleasure hearing them, first individually in solo pieces during the first half of the concert, accompanied by pianist Marjorie Janove, and finally together in one of the 19th century's great chamber masterpieces, the Mendelssohn Octet.

Park opened the concert with Pablo de Sarasate's devilishly demanding showpiece the "Carmen Fantasy," op. 25. His performance also offered the sold-out audience a moment of unexpected drama when the G string on his violin broke about halfway through the work. Undaunted, Park walked offstage to replace it, and when he returned, he resumed the piece without losing his stride. He made short work of the technical demands that Sarasate places on the violinist and dazzled the audience with his playing, demonstrating remarkable artistry in the process.

Not to be outdone by his colleague, Braus was equally mesmerizing in the diabolically difficult "La Ronde des Lutins" ("The Round of the Goblins"), op. 25, by Antonio Bazzini. The composer includes every conceivable violinistic trick in this piece, rivalling rivaling Paganini's music for its pyrotechnics. But Braus played it with deceiving ease, tossing off the double and triple stops, and harmonics, effortlessly.

Braus preceded the Bazzini with one of Paganini's most charming and straightforward pieces, the Cantabile in D.

Elias' contribution to the first half was a perceptive and sensitive performance of University of Utah composer Morris Rosenzweig's "Partita Intrecciata" for violin and tape. Elias gave a compelling interpretation of this introspective yet electrically charged work.

Finally, Matson concluded the first half with a delightfully fluid performance of Jascha Heifetz's arrangement of George Gershwin's "Three Preludes."

For the Mendelssohn Octet, the four concertmasters were joined by symphony colleagues Christopher McKellar and Roberta Zalkind, violas, and Ryan Selberg and Meeka Quan, cellos.

The eight artists played the work wondrously, capturing the youthful spirit and unbridled enthusiasm that courses through the music from beginning to end with their sparkling performance.

As an encore, the concertmasters played the Bazzini in Elias' hilarious arrangement for four violins.

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