July 20, 2025
Lewis Hall, Village Green Commons
Cashiers, NC – USA
“Rites of Spring”
Chee-Yun, violin; Elizabeth Pridgen, piano; Julie Coucheron, piano.
Antonio VIVALDI: “Spring” from The Four Seasons
Edvard GRIEG: To Spring
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: Sonata in F major, Op. 24
Igor STRAVINSKY: The Rite of Spring (piano 4-hands version)
July 21, 2025
Lipscomb Theatre, Highlands Performing Arts Center
Highlands, NC – USA
“Musical Stories”
Richard Prior, narrator; Chee-Yun, violin; Julie Coucheron, piano; Jesse McCandless, clarinet; Eleni Katz, bassoon; Omar Lateef Lyons, trumpet; Gabriel Colby, trombone; Jonathan Colbert, contrabass; Scott Pollard, percussion.
Alan RIDOUT: Ferdinand the Bull
Francis POULEMC: The Story of Babar, The Little Elephant
Igor STRAVINSKY: L’Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale)
Mark Gresham | 24 JUL 2025
The Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival offered a rich tapestry of seasonal themes and musical storytelling last weekend, pairing the freshness of spring (though the calendar was already well into summer) with the intrigue of fables and folklore in two thoughtfully curated programs. Across consecutive evenings in Cashiers and Highlands, audiences were treated to performances that highlighted both the lyrical and the dramatic sides of chamber music — from Vivaldi’s cheerful evocation of nature to Stravinsky’s sharp-edged parables of transformation and temptation.
The first concert, held Sunday, July 20 at Lewis Hall in the Village Green Commons, opened with the sunlit optimism of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Spring” from The Four Seasons in a version for violin and piano. Violinist Chee-Yun, joined by pianist Elizabeth Pridgen, captured the work’s rustic charm with crisp articulation and buoyant phrasing, conjuring birdsong, murmuring streams, and the distant rumble of a spring thunderstorm. Their interplay conveyed not only technical assurance but also a palpable sense of joy in music-making.
That spirit carried through to Edvard Grieg’s To Spring, a compact yet expressive solo piano work that Julie Coucheron delivered with both grace and sensitivity. Its gentle undulations provided a poetic contrast before Chee-Yun joined Coucheron for Beethoven’s Sonata in F major, Op. 24 — nicknamed the “Spring” Sonata. Here, elegance met clarity in a reading that leaned into the sonata’s genial lyricism without sacrificing rhythmic vitality. Chee-Yun’s warm tone and singing lines were matched by Coucheron’s deft balancing of support and spontaneity.
The second half took a dramatic turn with Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in the composer’s own arrangement for piano four-hands. Pridgen and Coucheron tackled this condensed version of the revolutionary ballet with fearless commitment. Stripped of orchestral color, the piano version brought the work’s jagged contours, driving rhythms, and brutal harmonic clashes into sharp relief. However, the duo also clearly revealed melodic and motivic elements within that context, which many duo pianists often overlook in it.
Despite this stark and visceral format, it’s harder to convey to modern audiences the ritualistic intensity and dynamic layering that shocked Paris audiences in 1913. But here — with the added benefit of the hall’s new Steinway B, which was inaugurated in June — they brought it forth with impressive cohesion and fire. The climactic “Sacrificial Dance” was especially compelling, delivered with hammering precision and a sense of mounting inevitability.
The narrative thread continued on Monday afternoon, July 21, at the Highlands Performing Arts Center’s Lipscomb Theatre, where the festival’s musicians turned their attention to chamber works featuring narrator and instruments. The program began in lighthearted fashion with Alan Ridout’s Ferdinand the Bull, a musical retelling of Munro Leaf’s beloved children’s book. Chee-Yun’s violin brought both capricious virtuosity and gentle lyricism to Ferdinand’s peaceful nature, while narrator Richard Prior emphasized the story’s whimsy and quiet moral with understated charm.
Francis Poulenc’s The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant followed, featuring pianist Julie Coucheron in a lively and colorful role that paralleled Prior’s spoken text. The piano part alone is no simple background accompaniment — Poulenc’s music is richly illustrative, veering from lullaby to circus march in the span of a few phrases. Coucheron captured the changing moods deftly, offering a vibrant counterpart to Prior’s narration.
The concert concluded with Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat (“The Soldier’s Tale”), the most musically and theatrically ambitious work of the weekend. Scored for narrator and a mixed chamber septet of winds, strings, and percussion, the piece recounts a Faustian fable of a soldier who trades his fiddle to the devil for wealth and misfortune. This hybrid work — part concert suite, part morality play — demands tight coordination between the musicians, and the ensemble delivered with incisive timing and crisp ensemble playing.
Chee-Yun took on the central violin role, her playing vividly capturing the soldier’s voice: impetuous, lyrical, and ultimately tragic. Clarinetist Jesse McCandless, tasked with some of the most exposed and virtuosic writing in the score, handled his part with fluency and flair, cutting through the textures with just the right balance of bite and beauty. Trumpeter Omar Lateef brought a clean but sardonic edge to Stravinsky’s challenging part for that instrument, lending extra punch to the work’s ironic dances and fanfares.
But more than individual excellence, it was the collective effect that made this Histoire memorable. The ensemble succeeded in creating a theatrical arc, shaping Stravinsky’s fragmented, jazz-inflected rhythms and sudden stylistic turns into a coherent drama. Prior’s narration maintained clarity and momentum throughout. The performance drew the audience into the soldier’s ill-fated bargain and imbued the story’s conclusion with a chilling sense of inevitability.
Together, the two programs exemplified the festival’s versatility and ambition, drawing on a roster of new and returning artists to present music that delights, provokes, and ultimately tells a story, whether of spring’s awakening or the cost of human desire. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival: h-cmusicfestival.org
Read more by Mark Gresham.
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