Yachats music marathon a classical gas!

Review
by Burney Garelick
July 2008

It wasn’t that drink before dinner and you weren’t seeing double. There really were identical twins sharing the grand piano, twenty fingers scrambling for eighty-eight keys, arms akimbo in sibilant sibling rivalry.

So began the 28th annual Yachats Music Festival, four classical music concerts from July 11 through July 13.
The twins, mature gentlemen Richard and John Contiguglia performed Grainger’s sprightly Country Gardens while the festival performers processed to the stage at the Yachats Community Presbyterian Church. The two-hour concert that followed included eighteen instrumentalists and vocalists performing short selections from a variety of composers including Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Barber, Debussy, Ravel, Schumann, and Chopin.

The festival, presented by Four Seasons Concerts in San Francisco, is like a gala wine tasting event where the sommelier pours a small glass allowing you a moment to inhale the bouquet and sip before presenting another selection to savor. Four Seasons books the festival artists and selects their performance pieces and configurations providing four brilliantly paced eclectic shows.

July 11 highlights included Flamenco guitarist Rene Heredia dazzling listeners with flying fingers transporting listeners on a gypsy caravan through Spain. The Contiguglia twins returned with four pieces from Ravel’s Mother Goose, and you could imagine the two in the nursery building blocks with their five siblings including another set of twins! Splendid pianist Leon Bates delivered Barber’s Excursions delightfully with a cool, languorous jazzy bounce. Isabelle Courret of France plucked an altogether too short Albeniz Serenata on her very tall golden harp, surely the torch of the Statue of Liberty, while violist Amadi Hummings and cellist Wendy Law collaborated on a luscious lullaby.

The evening concluded with the creme de la creme—Belgian pianist Jeanne Stark-Iochmans’ rendition of Chopin’s Ballade. An unobtrusive presence, a ghost of a chance, until she took the keyboard where Jeanne crescendoed over and over with all the passion of French novelist George Sand for her composer Frederic. Truly magnificent.

In addition to the concerts, festival performers offer patrons four seminars. One titled Opera For People Who Hate Opera was presented by soprano Louise Toppin of North Carolina. Louise said her popular lecture had actually converted opera haters to lovers. With assistance from festival colleagues soprano Ilya Martinez and baritone Rafael LeBron, Louise illustrated opera as drama in the movie Moonstruck which incorporates music from La Boheme. Louise also taught seminar listeners to speak-sing character themes from Madame Butterfly. Finally, she sang and acted a recipe for chocolate cake by legendary chef Julia Child. All in all, an engaging, amusing hour.

After which a plate of lip-smacking smelt was in order at the 38th annual Yachats Smelt Fry. Alas! Yachats Smelt Sands Beach is smelt free. There hasn’t been a smelt run there for four or five years. The celebratory smelt were imported from Crescent City, Calif., and they were tasty, although one couldn’t help wondering what Julia Child would have done with them.

July 12 was a singer’s night to howl—two disparate sopranos, two booming baritones, and one elegant tenor. Louise’s lyrical phrasing flowed like Carolina molasses over Rodrigo’s Amatorios and Bellini. Ilya’s forthright operatic aria took an ironic twist in a Magic Flute duet with Rafael. Their chemistry suggests they have worked together and not just in Louise’s Moonstruck illustration. As if fated, Ilya returned to lament Verdi’s aria from The Force of Destiny along with Isabelle’s belle harp. Rafael soloed valiantly as Verdi’s Troubadour and sang a kind of buddy duet from Bizet’s Pearl Fishers with elegant young tenor Anthony McGlaun, who also sang a declamation of love from The Magic Flute. Baritone Anthony Turner whose facial expressions mirror his musical mood begged heartily for Handel’s forgiveness and then smiled his gorgeous smile.

The instrumentalists also took every opportunity to display their prowess. Rene kicked off the show with a steamy Rumba, devastating the strings and beating the box. Wendy and Amadi continued to give new meaning to their instruments, Leon tickled Brahms, and Bryan Young made his woody, resonant bassoon dance rondo after rondo. Jeanne once again thrilled with festive airs, her left hand becoming an entire orchestra. Isabelle appeared twice more concluding the evening in a blonde duet with Irina Lande, who took an impressively fierce approach to the piano.
On Sunday afternoon, July 13, a heavy fog attempted to tie up at Yachats until the soaring music drove it back out to sea. Concert heroes included Rene whose whirlwind guitar displaced another rumba and his fingers picked a drum roll. Sweet tenor Anthony sang wistful words by poet A.E. Houseman accompanied by a string quartet and piano. Bryan blew a nocturne with Isabelle whose harp twinkled with stars in his warm, dusky night.

Violist Amadi gave the show a jump start with Paganini’s quirky Caprice. Anyone who doubts the raison d’etre for viola has only to hear Amadi. As for fiddle, Mariana Green-Hill was a wizard, sculpting a playground jumping with ADD youngsters. Leon’s Juba Dance, a wild schottische, sprang a tricky ending, and baritone Austris Paige surprised Cindy, that old folk song, with comic lyrics. Isabelle charmed her golden strings three times, and Irina who hails from Russia concluded the program with a few of countryman Tchaikovsky’s Seasons, after which she refused to smile.
The final concert Sunday evening in which most of the artists participated (alas, not Rene) offered stellar performances. Shubert’s love songs formed a leitmotif engaging vocalists and instrumentalists including Rafael and Ilya who gets the costume award for beautiful and colorful gowns all weekend. The Contiguglia twins returned for a song without end, and Jeanne played a breezy Impromptu with power surging beneath the surface.

Bloch’s Concerto Grosso was a show-stopper with three violins, viola, cello, bassoon, and piano. Avant-garde sounds somehow snuck in when pianist Joseph Kubera puckishly played Coleman’s East Orange, a witty, dissonant piece too convoluted to fathom. Mariana fiddled a sonata unaccompanied that rocked the bow with grand obsession. La Belle Isabelle caressed her strings for a stunning etude, and Leon rocked the house with Rachmaninoff.
After some sweet and lowdown spirituals troubling the water by Louise, the two Anthonys, and Austris, a string quartet filled the stage to play Dvorak as if it were a symphony for a new world—Mariana, Amadi, Wendy, and violinist David Burnett. It was a magnificent conclusion to an exceptional program.

A really big finale concluded the festival. The entire company, instrumentalists and vocalists, took the stage to sing a Broadway song, The Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha. Of course this festival continues to prove that a first-rate classical music event on the Oregon coast is not impossible. That’s why they call Yachats the Gem.

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The Yachats Music Festival is dedicated to the memory of its founder, Dr. W. Hazaiah Williams, who began the Festival in Yachats in the summer of 1981.

Individual tickets at $19.00 each can be purchased at the Adobe Resort Motel (541-547-3141) and at the Fireside Motel (541-547-3636), both located in Yachats. For further information, call 510-601-7919, go to www.fourseasonsconcerts.com

or www.yachats.info/ymf.

Publicity Department Contact:

Norm or Joanne Kittel
541-961-8374
Jnkittel@peak.org

 

 

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