Pianists Angela Cheng and Alvin Chow got the musical portion of this week's "Italian Nights" festival off to a brilliant start Wednesday at the Temple Square Assembly Hall. Though if it hadn't been for welcoming remarks by festival organizer Massimiliano Frani and the visiting Italian vice consul, I don't think you'd have known this particular night was supposed to be Italian.
At least one of the pianos was, the gleaming Fazioli sitting to the left of the lidless Steinway. And that gleam carried over to the performances, beginning with a four-hand rendition of Schubert's Fantasy in F minor (D. 940).Certainly this was no namby-pamby Schubert, whether in the clarity they brought to the more lyrical pages or the ringing conviction of the climaxes. In short, both husband and wife played with strength, without compromising the music's flow.
Chow was on his own in the piece that followed, American composer George Crumb's "A Little Suite for Christmas, A.D. 1979." Which, as Chow explained to the audience, contained the program's one Italian connection in that this modernistic "aural tableau" was inspired by a group of frescos in a chapel in Padua.
Maybe so. But amid the angular dissonances, plucked strings and strummed glissandi - all of which kept Chow busy both inside and outside the piano - the one musical reference I was able to pick up on was to an English tune, "The Coventry Carol."
Elsewhere the "Berceuse for the Infant Jesu" emerged as something of a pointillistic lullaby and much of the rest had about it an Oriental flavor, from the hard-driven "Nativity Dance" to the insistent clangor of the concluding "Carol of the Bells."
Nor was Cheng particularly reserved in her solo stint, Chopin's Op. 61 Polonaise-Fantasie, the last and by far the most complex of his authorized works in this form.
Which is to say I have heard more grandly scaled performances. On the other hand, her speed and limpid articulation did a lot to unify this sometimes sprawling opus. Take the way she glided from the proclamatory opening chords to the arpeggios that follow, sweeping the listener along in the process. And the same was true of the polonaise itself, at first boldly songful, then hauntingly wistful in its final recollection.
Before that, with both again at the Fazioli, we heard brightly animated renditions of two of Dvorak's "Slavonic Dances," impressive technically but perhaps not quite relaxed enough (and this from someone who likes the Op. 46, No. 2, to move).
Then, with the two at opposite keyboards, the program concluded with a similarly high-powered treatment of Ravel's "La Valse," maybe a bit short on intoxication per se, but wonderfully ominous and alive, a real tour de force.
Were that not enough, they encored with the opening movement of the piece they had axed at the outset, Poulenc's 1918 Sonata for Four Hands. Given the excitement of "La Valse," I think I'd have opted for the lovely middle movement ("Rustique") as opposed to the edgy scamper of this. But at least they showed us how the evening might have begun. And, wouldn't you know, it would have been even more brilliant.