PRIMROSE MEMORIAL CONCERT, Madsen Recital Hall, Brigham Young University, Provo, Thursday.
PROVO — This past week, Brigham Young University was the place to be for violists, as the Primrose Competition, which attracts promising young violists from around the world, came to the Provo campus for the first time.
The competition is named after the Scottish violist William Primrose, who was the first true virtuoso of the instrument. That the competition finally came to BYU is only fitting, given that Primrose taught here in the last three years of his life, from 1979 to 1982. He also left his extensive library of viola music to the school.
In addition to competition side of the event, BYU also hosted a festival, in which a number of violists, including several judges, held recitals.
At Thursday's concert in Madsen Recital Hall, two members of the Utah Symphony were spotlighted — violist Brant Bayless and pianist Jason Hardink. The two presented a wonderfully diverse program that displayed their musicality, technical skills and artistry to the fullest.
The first half of their recital was devoted to 20th and 21st century music and included the world premiere of a piece by symphony colleague Corbin Johnston.
Johnston, who is the Utah Symphony's associate principal bass, showed a hitherto unseen side of himself Thursday. His "Viola and Piano (One Application)" revealed him to be an innovative composer. The brief piece, a bravura outing for both performers, is a wonderful free-for-all, virtuosic and delightfully compelling.
The recital opened with Paul Chihara's Sonata. Chihara is an unabashedly romantic and tonal composer, not unlike Alan Hovhannes in that regard. His two-movement sonata, written in 1996, is almost cloyingly sentimental and without any real substance. Bayless and Hardink, however, gave a fine performance that was lucid and articulate.
Two fairly short elegies rounded out the first half.
Elliott Carter's "Elegy" shows the composer at his most melodic. The piece is poetic, and the two performers captured the work's poignancy and luminous character with their sensitive playing.
Igor Stravinsky's "Elegie" is written for solo muted viola. Bayless' reading brought out the plaintive mood of the piece wonderfully. With its long, drawn out tones, it's almost austere in its simplicity, yet Bayless managed to create a rich palette of colors with his playing.
There was only one work on the second half of the recital — Johannes Brahms' Sonata in F minor, op. 120, no. 1.
Bayless and Hardink gave a radiant performance of the sonata that captured the wide range of emotions, from the wistfulness of the opening movement and the poignancy of the second, to the lighter and more animated expressions found in the final two movements. The two musicians displayed their artistry to the fullest here with their impassioned and eloquent playing.
As an encore, they repeated Johnston's piece.
E-mail: ereichel@desnews.com