Reviews
Amerigo Trio: Wedding for three
By Andrew L. Pincus, Special to The Eagle
Updated: 05/27/2011 12:46:15 PM EDT
Friday May 27, 2011
NEW LEBANON, N.Y. - Nobody can accuse these partners of rushing into a marriage. The spark was ignited in 2007 when a cellist in a sextet was injured and a replacement was called in. The replacement and two other members of the group - a violinist and a violist - fell in love musically. Two years later, they took the vows as the Amerigo Trio. Now, two years after that, the Amerigo comes to Tannery Pond to open its concert season.
Rewind to 2007. Glenn Dicterow, concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, and his wife, Karen Dreyfus, a Philharmonic violist, were performing and teaching at the Bowdoin International Chamber Music Festival in Maine. When one of the two cellists in a Brahms string sextet canceled, the couple recommended their New York neighbor Inbal Segev as a replacement.
"I actually first met Inbal a couple of years before that when she became a substitute player in the New York Philharmonic," Dicterow recalls. "I had heard her play and knew she was a very special musician."
"We were not yet a trio when we played at Bowdoin," says Segev, "but the chemistry was obvious, and that is what led to the formation of the trio."
Saturday night at 6, the ensemble comes to the former Shaker tannery with pianist Alon Goldstein in a program of Dohnanyi's Serenade for string trio, Debussy's Sonata for violin and piano, and Brahms' Piano Quartet No. 1. The group takes its name from Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer. It considers itself an explorer of the repertoire for string trio.
There was a Tannery Pond precedent for Segev's rescue mission in Maine.
In 2006, a different cellist canceled at the last minute when different group was scheduled to play Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" at the tannery. A frantic call a few hours before the concert brought Segev, then seven months pregnant with twins, up from New York as a replacement.
The heroics earned her a return visit for a 2008 recital with pianist Benjamin Hochman. For Saturday, she promises "a program that we rehearsed well in advance for the wonderful audience, surrounded by the beauty of Tannery Pond."
Dicterow and Dreyfus are freshly back from a two-week tour of Europe with the Philharmonic. They're both members of the Lyric Piano Quartet as well as their trio.
By email from Vienna, where the Philharmonic played two concerts in honor of Mahler on the centennial of his death, Dicterow reported: "I am able to play in both groups because I am given several weeks off from the Philharmonic every season to perform chamber music and make solo appearances. I also teach at Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music. This makes for an extremely busy life but I love every aspect it."
Dreyfus also pursues a solo career. She teaches at the Juilliard, Manhattan and Mannes schools in New York.
The performances in Vienna, where a Philharmonic delegation placed a wreath on Mahler's grave, held special resonance for both cities. Mahler served as director of the Vienna opera and the New York orchestra in the years leading up to his death.
The Amerigo players say they don't feel constrained by the repertoire for string trio, which lacks the vast range of works for string quartet. Works by Beethoven and Dohnanyi anchor the trio repertoire. The Amerigo has just paired them on a recording.
"It's pure," Dicterow says of the repertoire in the current issue of Chamber Music magazine. "There's nowhere to hide, no way to cover it up. It makes an honest musician out of you."
To vary the diet, the trio sometimes brings in other musicians, such as Goldstein, to perform with it.
Dicterow didn't set out to become a concertmaster. Starting out in Los Angeles, he planned on becoming a soloist. But after he played a few concertos with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, then its director, asked him to join the orchestra and soon named him concertmaster. Dicterow spent eight years in the position.
Mehta moved to the New York Philharmonic in 1978 as director. Two years later, his concertmaster followed him. When Mehta left the Philharmonic in 1991, Dicterow stayed on. He says extensive chamber music experience prepared him for leadership responsibilities, even though he had had little orchestral experience when Mehta tapped him. He appears as a soloist with other orchestras as well as the Philharmonic.
At Tannery, Pond, the Debussy sonata will return the violinist to a soloist's role.
"It is an amazingly colorful and exciting work that is equally demanding of both violin and piano," he said. "It happens to be Debussy's final work. The premiere took place on May 5, 1917, the violin part played by Gaston Poulet, with Debussy himself at the piano. It was his last public performance."
It doesn't take an S.O.S. to bring the Amerigo Trio to Tannery Pond. The players also have a personal connection: All three enjoy a long friendship with photographer and pianist Christian Steiner, the artistic director.
Who: Amerigo Trio with Alon Goldstein, piano
What: Music by Dohnanyi, Debussy, Brahms
When: Saturday 6 p.m.
Where: The Tannery, Mount Lebanon Shaker Village and Darrow School, Darrow School Road, New Lebanon, N.Y.
Tickets: $30, $25