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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
February 26, 2012
"This is not a concert, it's a party!" So announced Gary Karr partway through Sunday afternoon's, er, party.
"Right," I thought, "that lets me neatly off the hook".
This, therefore, is not a review, it's - well, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what it is. Perhaps that will emerge as we go along.
I first encountered the Karr-Lewis Duo almost twenty years ago. I was, of course, dazzled by Karr's extraordinary bass playing - as a former (very bad) bass player I did at least have some vague idea of just how difficult it is to do what he does - and Lewis's always-sympathetic pianism.
Since when, I have attended virtually every concert the two have participated in locally and, if I may slightly misquote The Bard: age cannot wither them nor custom stale their infinite variety.
Although their names were presumably the main draw to Sunday's VCM benefit concert, it is typical of their generosity that they insisted on having four of the conservatory's students also participate. (And what a thing to be able to put on your resumé!)
Cellist Ethan Allers partnered Karr in Rossini's Duo for Cello and Bass (which Karr also played at that recital back in 1992). After the solemn opening work - "Albinoni's" Adagio (actually composed by Remo Giazotti, allegedly based on a fragment by Albinoni) - the first movement of the Rossini brought the afternoon's first smiles and chuckles.
Neither part of the duo is easy to play and Allers was excellent throughout, perhaps most of all in the slow second movement, where the cello plays the melody over bass pizzicatos.
Heitor Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras No.5 is best known in the version for soprano and eight cellos; what we heard was the composer's own arrangement with guitar accompaniment.
It was most unusual to see on stage together the two instruments at which I am least incompetent, but Razvan Bezna is clearly a better guitarist than ever I was; indeed, his playing was excellent, refined and clearly audible (less easy than it sounds). Karr, playing the soprano line, was, of course, his inimitable self.
If there is one piece which established the name of Gary Karr in the mind of the general music-loving public, it is surely The Swan from Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, which he played in a 1962 TV New York Philharmonic Young People's Concert under that baton of Leonard Bernstein.
Harpist Christina Chwyl played the accompaniment beautifully in both this and the Gounod-Bach "Ave Maria". My notebook entries for both pieces simply say "lovely".
Bottesini's Grand Duo Concertante is a Karr staple; I have heard him play it (I think) four times, twice with violin and twice with another bassist - although it is harder to find another bassist who can play it anywhere near as well as Karr.
After a wonderful piano introduction by Lewis, violinist Nelson Moneo and Karr played the piece in the only way it can be played - completely over the top. To take this music too seriously is to risk sending the audience to sleep. Both Moneo and Karr provided the requisite virtuosity while never losing sight of the music's more amusing aspects.
The second half of the programme was exclusively Karr-Lewis and included a couple of K-L staples, including Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei, which amply demonstrated those qualities for which the duo have, rightly, become famous: wonderful phrasing, ensemble so sharp you could cut yourself on it and a total unanimity of approach. Lewis played the accompaniment on the Conservatory's Casavant organ, which certainly added depth to the sound - perhaps a little too much on occasion; with the 16 foot stops employed there was an ominous rattling sound coming from somewhere behind me, which I hoped was not a signal that the building was about to fall; it wasn't.
It is a rare treat to hear Lewis play the organ solo and his performance of Hermann Schroeder's Preludes and Intermezzi could not but make one regret this.
Schroeder's four pieces were all brief and entirely to the point and Lewis's playing of them superb; his registration (choice of stops) was exemplary.
George Gershwin's Prelude No.2 was magical, with a wonderfully louche sound underlined by Karr's subtle glissandos on the "blue" notes counterpoised against Lewis's crystalline pianism.
Until the recent revival of interest in his entire oeuvre, it must have been decades since any of the music from Rossini's opera Moses was heard outside of Niccoló Paganini's Fantasy.
Even Paganini might have been taken somewhat aback to hear his violinistic fantasy played by the doublebass - and spectacularly at that - but then Karr has spent the last half-century confounding people's expectations of what the doublebass should be and could do.
Well, this does, after all, seem to have turned into something approximating a review. Old habits die hard....but this was certainly more fun than many a party I have attended.
There is little, if anything, that can be said about Gary Karr and Harmon Lewis that has not already been said. We are beyond fortunate to have their musical talents in our midst.
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