For most of the 19th century, the viola, big sibling of the violin, smaller sibling of the cello, was pretty much ignored as a solo instrument - only a handful of major pieces for viola and orchestra, about an equally small number of chamber works.
Violist Jennifer Stumm and pianist Elizabeth Pridgen managed to combine the best of both genres Thursday night at Little Rock’s Trinity United Methodist Church, with their absolutely amazing performance of Hector Berlioz’s Harold in Italy, essentially a cross between a concerto and a symphony with viola obbligato, in Franz Liszt’s titanic viola-piano reduction.
Under the auspices of the Chamber Music Society of Little Rock, Stumm, playing a 400-year-old instrument by Italian master Gasparo da Salo, more than filled the sanctuary with sound and lovely tone throughout the recital.
Stumm’s approach to the music - Liszt left Berlioz’s solo line alone and packed pretty much all the orchestral notes into that piano part (which Pridgen handled masterfully) - was perhaps a bit more cantabile (song-like) in some spots than I have heard it taken in concert. And I missed a lot of Berlioz’s orchestral color (especially the throaty third-movement English horn solo).
I was a little leery, until I heard it, about Stumm’s idea of inserting between Berlioz’s movements segments of Robert Schumann’s Marchenbilder (Fairy Tale Pictures) and two Liszt songs: Romance oubliee, Liszt’s only work for piano and viola and an homage to Harold’s second-movement “Pilgrims’ March”, and his viola-ized version of the art song “Oh! quand je dors” (“Oh while I sleep”).
But Stumm played them all with gusto and skillfully tied them all together thematically, musically and with the help of some narration (Berlioz based the piece on Lord Byron’s epic poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimmage”). Separating the Harold movements also allowed the audience the rare chance to applaud enthusiastically between them, something they’d have been less likely to do in the concert hall.
Arkansas, Pages 16 on 02/21/2014