September 9, 2022
Emerson Hall, Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, Atlanta, GA
Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta, Cooke Noontime Series
Emily Daggett Smith and Jessica Shuang Wu, violins; Yinzi Kong, viola; Guang Wang, cello; William Ransom, piano.
R. SCHUMANN: Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44
GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue
Mark Gresham | 13 SEP 2022
Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta reached a milestone in opening its 30th anniversary season this past Friday: its first-ever Cooke Noontime Concert in Emerson Hall. Typically, ECMSA performs the short midday programs in Ackerman Hall on the top floor of the Michael C. Carlos Museum.
Pianist William Ransom and the Vega String Quartet (violinists Emily Daggett Smith and Jessica Shuang Wu, violist Yinzi Kong, and cellist Guang Wang) and pianist William Ransom kicked off the concert with Schumann’s Piano Quintet.
The sonic difference between Emerson Hall in the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts and Ackerman Hall in the Carlos Museum is considerable. I also usually sit much farther back in Emerson Hall than I did on Friday, four rows back from the stage, dead center. It was enough to be revelatory.
The immediacy of the Vega Quartet’s sound, along with the audible detail, was a decisive factor in the effective delivery of the group’s astute musicianship. The balance between strings and piano was also quite excellent. The overall result was a compelling performance of Schumann’s quintessentially Romantic Quintet.
The ensemble takes a bow. (courtesy of ECMSA)
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue rounded the program. Because of the Vega Quartet performing in the program’s first half, I was fully expecting to hear an arrangement for piano and string quartet that has been making the rounds among chamber groups recently (along with another one for piano and string quintet). Frankly, I don’t particularly care for these chamber arrangements and was dreading it somewhat. Thankfully that was not the case, despite the Vega Quartet’s demonstrated acumen. Instead, we got Ransom playing the solo piano version.
Before sitting down at the piano to play, Ransom told the story of when he was around 12 years old, hearing the music of Joplin and Gershwin for the first time and getting very excited about it. “I learned some,” he recounted, “and brought it to my teacher, who shook her head and said, ‘this is NOT classical music!!!’ So I just played it on my own and have always believed it is the beginnings of true AMERICAN classical music.”
Pianist and ECMSA artistic director William Ransom. (courtesy of ECMSA)
That personal vestment was borne out in Ransom’s performance. He traded some precision for flexibility and personal expression — thus genuinely rhapsodic. It was neither the usual cookie-cutter approach so frequently heard in classical halls nor like some of the more artificially jazzy takes that bear little resemblance to (or understanding of) Gershwin’s music or his own manner of piano playing.
This was not ECMSA’s only concert this past weekend. Although EarRelevant could not be present, the Society mounted a Family Series performance at the Fernbank Museum on Sunday afternoon, entitled Dinosaurs and Other Musical Creatures. The concert featured Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals, narrated by WABE radio voice Lois Reitzes, with Ransom and Julie Coucheron as pianists. The concert also featured Mark Schultz’s T Rex, Sauropods, and Raptors for French horns and piano (with hornists Brice Andrus and Susan Welty).
However, the official ECMSA 30th Anniversary Celebration concert is yet to come. That will take place this Saturday, September 17, at 8 pm at Emerson Hall. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta: chambermusicsociety.emory.edu
Mark Gresham is publisher and principal writer of EarRelevant. he began writing as a music journalist over 30 years ago, but has been a composer of music much longer than that. He was the winner of an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music journalism in 2003.
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