Baltimore Sun, October 14, 2003
By Tim Smith
Sun Music Critic
October 14, 2003
Last week's concerts included a memorable one at the Peabody
Institute by the Aspen Ensemble, the first group to bear the
name of one of America's most venerable enterprises, the Aspen
Music Festival in Colorado. All the members are on the Aspen
faculty.
The makeup of this quintet -- flute, piano, violin, viola and cello -- provides for interesting programming choices. For this occasion, on Wednesday, that meant two pieces with the flute at the center, one with strings alone, and one with keyboard and strings. The latter, Faure's surging Piano Quartet, inspired a taut, gripping performance by violinist David Perry, violist Victoria Chiang, cellist Michael Mermagen and pianist Rita Sloan (whose playing was especially warm and colorful).
Perry, Chiang and Mermagen tapped remarkable lyrical strengths in Beethoven's G major String Trio, Op. 9, No. 1, and tore into its finale with great panache. Flutist Nadine Asin wasn't terribly convincing as a jazzy stylist in David Schiff's After Hours (neither was Sloan), but she was all limpid-toned elegance for Mozart's Flute Quartet, with admirable supple partnering from the string players.
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