South Florida Classical Review

Flutist Sooyun Kim performed with the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach Wednesday night. Photo: Eva Ravel

The composer and pianist Sergei Prokofiev once remarked that, in defiance of conventional wisdom, he could quite easily play a piano recital without any music of Chopin.

It’s also possible, as demonstrated by the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach, to put on a concert of Baroque music without Bach, Handel or Vivaldi.

The program Thursday in Palm Beach included composers, such as Henry Purcell, François Couperin and Georg Philipp Telemann, who must have been familiar to many audience members. It also included two, Johann Gottlieb Janitsch and Jean-Féry Rebel, who probably were not.

Whether well-known or not, the 18th-century music seemed right at home in the ornate Gothic interior of the hundred-year-old Church of Bethesda By the Sea in Palm Beach, where Donald and Melania Trump had been married in 2005.

The guest star of the evening was the Korean-American flutist Sooyun Kim, whose instrument had been custom-made from 18-karat gold. Throughout the concert, her playing was marked by a warm tone and the lyrical, effortless manner with which she shaped even the fastest passages. The combination of her flute with violinists Alexander Sitkovetsky and Grace Park, cellist David Requiro and harpsichordist Kenneth Weiss produced a rich, glossy sound that showed the works in their best light.

Photo: CMSPB

One of the most interesting pieces was Les Élémens by Jean-Féry Rebel, court composer to Louis XIV, which portrays the Biblical account of the creation of the world, a small-scale predecessor to Haydn’s The Creation. 

To illustrate the chaos at the start, the work starts with crashing dissonances, the sort of sounds that wouldn’t be heard on concert stages for another 180 years or so. Violent tremolos on the violins’ lower strings set a tense tone, as Kim played ascending notes on the flute. The chaos calmed and order started to form, as the movement ended in a recognizably major key.

Although nothing quite matched the shock and drama of the first movement, subsequent movements gave a picturesque account of the formation of elements and life, with Kim picking up the piccolo to portray birds and gamely alternating with cellist Requiro on the tambourine.

Another highlight was Purcell’s Sonata No. 6 in G minor, a single movement of variations on a repeated harmonic progression called a chaconne. (For this work, the flute was not involved.) The cellist started a descending bass line, and the violins took up a haunting series of variations, with intense harmonies, sighing cadences and a procession of styles from that of a courtly dance to a singing legato, at one point bouncing their bows rapidly across the strings in bursts of virtuosity. The music grew in volume and intensity, then faded away.

Less interesting were some of the other works. Johann Gottlieb Janitsch’s Quartet was pleasant enough, buoyant, upbeat, melodious. So were François Couperin’s “L’espagnol” from Les Nations and Georg Philipp Telemann’s “Paris” Quartet No. 1, which was notable for a Presto that demanded real virtuoso flute playing.

The musicians gave lively accounts of these works, with the string players bowing vigorously and bringing modern levels of vibrato to the performance that filled the church with plush sound. But these compositions felt more busy than memorable, despite the excellent performances.

The next concert by the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach will be at 7 p.m. February 26 at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach. The program, which will feature guest cellist Gary Hoffman, includes Schubert’s String Trio in B Flat Major, D. 581, Mozart’s Duo for Violin and Viola in B Flat Major K. 424, and Beethoven’s String Trio in F Major, Op. 9, no 1. cmspb.org

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