Concert review: Bowdoin International Music Festival

For those who have not yet encountered the music of Amy Beach, a starry ensemble offered a passionate corrective, finishing the evening with her Piano Quintet (1908), a seldom-played work that deserves to be far better known. In the lush first movement, the five players swept through the opening with passion and meticulous care. The Elgarian long lines of the second movement are the equal of any slow idyll one might recall. In the finale, the cooperation and virtuosity – including fizzy tremolos near the end and dreamier echoes of the earlier movements – served as a reminder that this is what chamber music is all about. The alert, suave players were violinists Ayano Ninomiya and Janet Ying (respectively, former and current members of the Ying Quartet), Rebecca Albers (principal violist with the Minnesota Orchestra), David Ying (cellist of the Ying Quartet) and Shanghai-based pianist Tao Lin.

Beethoven’s String Trio op.9 no.2 opened the evening with an equally expert threesome: violinist Renée Jolles, violist Maiya Papach and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, nimbly threading the lines with crisp bow strokes, awareness of proportions and well-judged balances – a dessert at the beginning of the programme.

In between came a delightful palate cleanser, Electric Aroma (2017) by Viet Cuong, inspired by words from Picasso: ‘An electric aroma, a most disagreeable noise’. Far from disagreeable, an agile foursome – Linda Chesis on flute, Luke Rinderknecht on percussion, Jingrui Liu on clarinet and Dominic Doutney on piano – made the most agreeable noise imaginable.

BRUCE HODGES