Alexei Kornienko

The Moscow RSO is an odd mixture of seasoned players and green youngsters, and the result was some pretty erratic playing. Some of the principals were masters of their instruments: The principal horn played with maturity and a sweet, round tone. Others, including most of the young wind principals, were gifted players but sounded like recent conservatory graduates. One or two of the cellists and at least one of the violists had a hard time playing in tune, at times making their respective sections sound notably below par. The concertmaster’s solo in the Mozartiana was sprawling and off-pitch. At times the players seemed at war with the man on the podium.

Perhaps some of this can be attributed to the orchestra’s American tour schedule: 52 cities in two and a half months. Without hearing the group on its home turf under optimal circumstances, it’s hard to gauge the extent to which fatigue was a factor. But the fact remains that, as wonderful as this music is, it only occasionally sounded like it here. Tchaikovsky is a shining hero of Russian musical heritage, and an orchestra of his countrymen should be carrying that message proudly.

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.

One of the most electrifying pianists I’ve heard recently is a 19-year-old college student right here in Our Town. Uzbek-born Behzod Abduraimov, a protégé of Van Cliburn Competition gold medalist Stanislav Ioudenitch at Park University, is quickly garnering international renown. On March 5th at the Folly Theater, pupil and teacher will perform a joint recital on Cynthia Siebert’s Friends of Chamber Music series: They’ll each play solo selections (Behzod will offer Chopin’s complete Op. 28 Preludes, in honor of the composer’s 200th birthday), then join forces for Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 2 for Two Pianos.

Behzod’s bracing victory at the London International Piano Competition last year has resulted in invitations to perform with the Royal and London Philharmonics and at Wigmore Hall. “Almost levitating with excitement, he combined unbridled joy with a hugely impressive technical control,” wrote a critic in that “other” Independent (UK) of his competition performance. Last year Behzod also toured China and Malaysia with the Sydney Symphony and the great conductor/pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy.

What is it about Uzbekistan? Formerly a part of the Russian Empire, later a Soviet republic and now an independent state of 27 million inhabitants, mostly ethnic Uzbeks, this proud Central Asian nation has a long and impressive musical tradition, particularly where classical piano is concerned. Not only is Stanislav himself a Tashkent native, but so is his Van Cliburn predecessor Alexei Sultanov, who won the Cliburn gold in 1989 and grew up studying with the teacher who taught Behzod as a youth — the legendary octogenarian Tamara Popovich. (Alexei died tragically in 2005 at the age of 35, after a series of debilitating strokes.) American pianist Yefim Bronfman was also born in Tashkent and lived there until his family immigrated to Israel when he was 15. Other pianists from Uzbekistan include Lola Astanova, Gulnora Alimova and Eldar Nebolsin, not to mention Stanislav’s wife, Tatiana, and his mother, Marina Sultanova.

The Friends’ Special Event recital is only $10 and free for subscribers. Call 816-561-9999 or go to chambermusic.org. Watch two astonishing minutes of Behzod’s London Competition finale, performing Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, here.

IN BRIEF
* March 5th through the 6th: Kansas City’s own professional Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company presents On the Edge, an intimate evening of small-scale works by choreographers Joshua Beamish, Mary Pat Henry, DeeAnna Hiett, Tiffany Loney, Amber Ann Perkins, Tiffany Sisemore, and Susan Warden. It’s at The Foundation in Our Town’s 18th & Vine District, and each evening includes an after party with a live DJ (tickets at 816-235-6222 or at the door).

* March 5th through the 6th: Groovaloo! is a dynamic combination of modern dance, athleticism, hip-hop, and spoken-word poetry that won NBC’s Superstars of Dance competition in 2008. They’ll rap and dance their way onto the Yardley Hall stage for two nights only, as part of the Performing Arts Series of Johnson County Community College (913-469-4445 or jccc.edu/theseries).

* March 5th through the 7th: Pianist Robert Levin is among those who have revolutionized our view of Classical-period performance. He’ll play Beethoven’s Concerto No. 1 with Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony, on a program at the Lyric (March 5th through the 6th) and Yardley Hall (March 7th) that includes Copland’s Symphony No. 3 and A Haunted Landscape by American composer George Crumb, who celebrated his 80th birthday last year (816-471-0400 or kcsymphony.org).

* March 6th: The Moscow State Radio Symphony and its music director/conductor Alexei Kornienko present an all-Tchaikovsky program on the Harriman-Jewell Series, live at the Folly Theater. The show includes the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin, the Suite No. 4 (“Mozartiana”) and the Symphony No. 3, known as the “Polish” (816-415-5025 or harriman-jewell.org).

* March 6th through the 7th: The Grammy Award-winning Kansas City Chorale and its conductor Charles Bruffy present Sing to Love, a program of love-themed music including Liebeslieder Waltzes of Brahms, If Music Be the Food of Love by Jean Belmont and Indeed, this Very Love by Ryan Jesperson, winner of this year’s UMKC Composition Competition. The program is March 6th at Visitation Church and March 7th at Asbury Methodist Church (816-235-6222 or at the door).

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.

The playing was tight but not always as clean or vibrant as one might have expected (travel fatigue?). In Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila Overture, the brass found it easy to drown the woodwinds, sometimes the strings too, a problem that continued to arise occasionally throughout the evening. But inelegant playing could strike from any section at any given time, and any harshness was exacerbated by the intimacy of the setting and the lack of warming acoustic blend.

Guest conductor Patrick Summers, music director of Houston Grand Opera, was detailed and authoritative at the helm, even after he accidentally flung his baton into the hall during the Tchaikovsky. Though there was not a strong stamp of interpretation from the podium, tempos for Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony were intelligently seasoned, and Summers found the right bucolic flavor for its carefree Adagio. Still, ends of movements were often clipped and abrupt, and in the slow bit before the symphony’s final bars, the tension of line nearly collapsed. The opening of the Tchaikovsky was marked by surprising lack of finesse and the finale was loud and fast. Two numbers from Tchaikovsky’s music for The Snow Maiden — “Melodrama” and “Dance of the Tumblers” — made tidy encores, the first a doleful song for strings, the second a virtuosic romp.

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.

The dancers have adeptly assimilated Caniparoli’s hybridized vocabulary of balletic turns and leaps flavored with exotic twists, leg-arches and shimmies. Adam Rogers is disarmingly limber in his almost Fosse-like solo, and Luke Luzicka and Deanna Doyle elude each other coyly in a tender duet. At times, Caniparoli strives to express Bach’s counterpoint almost literally, with dancers moving in fluid canonic imitation in pairs and threes. In one striking number, Laura Wolfe and Marcus Oatis dance in counterpoint from a distance, one upstage and one downstage, and the five horizontal guide-marks on the stage suddenly look like lines on a musical staff, with dancers as “notes.” (Casts vary throughout the run.) Caniparoli’s movement is a fluid amalgam, at times frankly balletic but infused with a sense of freedom and flow, echoing the social dances of the Africa that inspired the music. The choreography even manages to remain inventive, for the most part, at moments where the music grows mind-numbingly repetitive.

The rest of the program was less engaging. Robert Hill’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which I found likeable enough when the Ballet first presented it in 2005, seemed overlong and conventional this time around. The pas de deux slow movement, in which a haughty Kimberly Cowen is wooed by Luzicka with increasing abandon, was a highlight: Its spinning lifts signaled her consent to his advances, letting us know that despite her final rebuff, things might still be negotiable. But the literalness of the lifts in the first movement, timed to explosive orchestral chords, seemed too predictable, and the exuberant finale felt like it was still cohering among the dancers. Lowell Liebermann’s Second Piano Concerto, heard on recording here as with the rest of the program, felt limp and tepid.

José Limón’s The Moor’s Pavane had its strengths, in particular the glowering, explosive snaps of jealous anger by Christopher Barksdale, a recently retired company dancer who was invited to return to reprise the role he danced in 2007. His Othello-like petit mals sent Catherine Russell (the Desdemona figure, though not named such by Limón) into matching paroxysms of bewildered terror, which punctuated their restrained but strongly conveyed love-duets. Charles Martin danced the part of the Moor’s Friend (=Iago) and Stefani Schrimpf was the Friend’s Wife (=Emilia). This piece seems to thrive on Baroque grandeur and nobility of gesture, and here it felt busy and overwrought with exaggerated facial expressions. The Moor’s ungainly maroon robe — part of the original costume design by Pauline Lawrence — looked dated and out-of-place, and moreover it was frustrating for the viewer in that it hid much of Barksdale’s movement.

One can only hope that those who attend this program to see the piece around which the Ballet has built its marketing campaign — Lambarena, which is performed last — will stick it out through the two initial works and two intermissions beforehand. Those who do will be rewarded.

The Ballet’s winter program continues through February 28 at the Lyric Theatre downtown. For more information go to kcballet.org or call 816-931-2232.

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.

"Lambarena" forms part of the Kansas City Ballet's winter performances February 24-28.

It’s an irresistible image, almost like a scene from a Werner Herzog movie: the aging Albert Schweitzer — theologian, musician, philosopher, physician, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Johann Sebastian Bach biographer — sitting in his bungalow playing Baroque organ music, while outside his windows the sounds of Africa buzz and sing. Such was the inspiration for Lambarena, an ingenious CD released in 1995 that infused the music of Schweitzer’s beloved Bach with the flavors and rhythms of equatorial Africa — a kaleidoscopic “soundscape” created as a tribute to Schweitzer by French composer Hughes de Courson and Gabonese singer-composer Pierre Akendengué. Based on a concept by Mariella Berthéas, the disc took its name from the village in Gabon — Lambaréné, nowadays a small city — where Schweitzer established his famous hospital.

Val Caniparoli

Choreographer Val Caniparoli was electrified by the disc when a friend sent it to him from Paris, and he knew it was perfect for a new piece he’d been asked to create featuring San Francisco Ballet prima ballerina Evelyn Cisneros. “I just fell in love with it. There was no question that I wanted to use it,” the 58-year-old choreographer said on the phone recently. Thus was born Lambarena, one of the most inventive, ambitious, and at times, controversial attempts to bring African and traditional Western styles of dance together. It received an acclaimed premiere at San Francisco Ballet in 1995 and since then has been performed by as many as 20 companies worldwide. Lambarena forms part of the Kansas City Ballet’s winter program February 25^th through the 28th, together with José Limón’s Moor’s Pavane and Robert Hill’s Piano Concerto No. 2.

“It’s just a celebration of the joys of dancing, music, cultures, collaborations,” Val says of the piece. “There’s no hidden meaning.” One critic called Lambarena “a bold and heady cocktail of classical ballet and West African dance forms” that “breaks all the rules while simultaneously revitalizing classical ballet’s canonized repertory.” Unlike the CD, Val’s piece was not intended as a piece about Schweitzer. Nevertheless he was delighted when no less of an authority than Rhena Schweitzer Miller, Schweitzer’s daughter, came to see the ballet in San Francisco and rushed backstage afterward to congratulate him. “She was in tears,” Val says. “She told me, ‘you’ve never been there, but you captured the tone and the mood and the spirit of my father and of Lambaréné perfectly.’ That was exciting, a true stamp of approval.”

Not all critics have embraced the piece as warmly, and the nature of the discussion has raised interesting issues. Some have found the mixture of styles disconcerting; others have balked at the use of clapping, chanting and African drumming in Bach. “I hit a wall with many Bach purists, as you can imagine,” Val says with a laugh. The piece is not just about African dance, he says, it’s about varying styles coexisting peacefully. The score is a mix of classical and Africa styles, he says, “and I wanted the choreography to be the same thing: I wanted to show that you can do either kind of movement to both kinds of music.”

That mixture has been underscored by Sandra Woodall’s brilliant scenic and costume designs, with warm glowing colors and fabrics that place the patterns of African textiles on the shape and cut of classical design. The dance itself is an amalgam of Val’s ballet training and dance straight from Africa: In creating the movement, he worked side-by-side with Senegalese choreographer, ethnomusicologist and dance expert Zakarya Sao Diouf and dancer-teacher Naomi Gedo Johnson-Washington. This heady mix of cultural elements has spawned a useful educational component: Lambarena has been taken up by school programs across the country aimed at young people “who might not have been exposed to dance otherwise,” Val says. “It has become “an agent for learning about African dance, musical instruments, textiles, and culture.”

Lambarena is just one of countless examples of the versatility and breadth of Val’s outlook and choreography. Born and raised in Renton, Washington (outside of Seattle), he began college with the intention of studying music and theater, but the moment he took his first dance class his whole world changed. This relatively late start in dance “made it difficult as a dancer, but I think it helped me as a choreographer,” he says. “My eyes were more open.” He joined the San Francisco Ballet in 1973 and served as a resident choreographer there during the 1980s.  Thirty-seven years later, he remains under contract with the company he considers home. He says he fell in love with choreographing early on. “The bug hit me right away. Even as a dancer, when I wasn’t dancing in a ballet, I’d be hanging around watching all these different choreographers work. Christensen, Béjart, Kylián. I was lucky to be in a company that did a lot of variety.” Val has created pieces for dozens of the world’s leading companies, including Pacific Northwest Ballet, Boston Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Ballet West (resident choreographer 1993-1997), Washington Ballet, Israel Ballet, the State Theatre Ballet of South Africa, and Tulsa Ballet (resident choreographer since 2001). His work fuses ballet with modern dance, ethnic dance, social dancing, and ice skating.

Christopher Barksdale

The Moor’s Pavane, also on the Ballet’s winter program, will offer a treat to followers of the company. José Limón’s searing piece based loosely on Othello will feature longtime local favorite Christopher Barksdale in the title role. Christopher, who retired from the Ballet at the end of the 2008-2009 season, has kept busy with a career as dancer, actor and singer — yes, he’s a gifted tenor, and in addition to musical theater has starred in operatic productions. A protégé of the late Todd Bolender, Christopher began dancing at ten and studied at New York’s School of American Ballet before joining the Kansas City Ballet. It’ll be great to see him back!

The Ballet’s performances are February 25^th through the 28th at the Lyric Theatre. For tickets and information call 816-931-2232 or go to kcballet.org.

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.

Marc-André Hamelin

Pianist Marc-André Hamelin has an uncanny ability to convince you, through the sheer force of his musical personality and will, that whatever he’s playing at the moment is the greatest music on earth — even music whose genius you might later, upon reflection, decide you’re not as sure about as he is. But at the moment he’s playing it, you believe in it. Thus the Montreal-born artist has managed to persuade untold numbers of listeners of the greatness of Charles-Valentin Alkan, a 19^th-century French composer whose reputation among the musical public worldwide can be said to have measurably benefitted from Hamelin’s championing of it over a quarter-century.

Alkan’s extraordinary Symphonie for solo piano was the culmination of Hamelin’s Folly Theater recital Friday on the Harriman-Jewell Series, and it was an experience that convinced me more than ever of the validity of music that as a younger man I sometimes found equal parts fancy and bombast. That’s a powerful endorsement for any artist: that he can reconnect us, as Bernstein did for Mahler, with music that we perhaps should have held in high regard all along. Hamelin, long esteemed for his bevy of recordings of everything from the Classics to the most demanding Romantic and modern scores, now stands firm as one of the leading keyboard artists of our time.

A Hamelin recital is a unique experience. Friday’s moved from the intimacies of one of Haydn’s most enigmatic scores (the F-minor Variations) to the theatrics of Mozart’s A-minor Sonata (K. 310) and the extravagances of Liszt’s Venezia e Napoli — then after the pause “reigned in” for Fauré’s perfumed Nocturne before diving headlong into Alkan’s knuckle-crushing monument. The evening had a wholeness to it, a dramatic line that felt satisfying on multiple levels, like a meal in which each course has been gauged precisely to play off the previous. There was even a dessert: a tart, lightly-whipped Nocturne of the pianist’s own invention, played as an encore.

Haydn’s curious F-minor Variations began from nothingness, with each detail of the theme exquisitely crafted. Hamelin walked a fine line between “preciousness” and simply making Haydn’s filigree continually interesting, and he did not stint on the use of pedal. But he never obscured the inexorable musical line, and one was almost lulled into a feeling of understatement until the final operatic outburst, milked for all its startling force. Operatic, too, was the Mozart Sonata, approached with unabashed Romantic sensibility. The program’s first half concluded with deftly colored Liszt, unshowy despite this music’s formidable difficulties. Gondoliera evoked, with a gorgeous blur, the mists rising off Venetian waters; the Canzone was milked for its almost clichéd melodrama; and the Tarantella showed off Hamelin’s otherworldly technique.

Fauré’s Nocturne No. 6 is a discursive and ethereal piece that seems to be moving toward Impressionism; in Hamelin’s hands it had a wildness to it, which lent it a more modernist feel than usual. The pianist acknowledged applause afterward but immediately took his seat again, with the interesting result that Fauré’s strange nocturnal mood felt like a prologue to the Alkan.

Hamelin’s conviction about Alkan’s Symphonie was apparent from the emphatic first theme, delivered with straightforward verve: This Allegro moderato is like Liszt on speed, with dashes of Schumann and Berlioz, yet it felt logical and whole, even Classical. The Marche Funèbre had an oddly obsessive drive to it, more martial than funereal. The madcap Minuetto pays homage to Berlioz but perhaps also Saint-Saëns; it is like a “Minuet Macabre,” and is offset with a dreamy central trio section. Alkan skirts at the edge of excess in the Finale, with ferocious left-hand octaves that storm and rave. Hamelin was, however, able to make it sound like music throughout.

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.

Luca Lombardi

Italian composer Luca Lombardi has admired the artistry of flutist Emmanuel Pahud since he first heard him play years ago. “I was very impressed not only with the beauty of the tone, but with the musical intelligence and sensitivity,” the 64-year-old composer said in a recent phone chat. “I like his earnestness but also his humor, his irony.” The two seemed a good musical match: “I’m a fairly serious person myself but also have that touch of humor,” the composer says. Thus it was with pleasure that Luca and Swiss-born Emmanuel agreed to create a new Flute Concerto through a commission by the Kansas City Symphony, with a grant from the Miller Nichols Charitable Fund. This week Emmanuel, the Symphony, and Music Director Michael Stern will present the world premiere of Luca’s new Flute Concerto, the third of three premieres the Symphony performs this season.

“Luca Lombardi is a fascinating composer,” Michael has said of the commission. “He writes music of extraordinarily interesting textures. He understands the possibility of what a wind instrument can do as a solo instrument.” Currently in his fifth season as the Symphony’s music director, Michael has placed the concerto in a context of works highlighting Italian culture: The program also includes Rossini’s bubbling Overture to The Silken Ladder and Tchaikovsky’s searing Francesca da Rimini with its tale of doomed love. “I feel very lucky and honored Emmanuel agreed to come to Kansas City, and that he chose our orchestra to partner with in premiering this new music,” Michael says of the flutist. “It’s an incredible opportunity for us — one of the greatest experiences of my professional life is making music with him.”

Flutist Emmanuel Pahud

Composing for flute and orchestra presents its specific challenges, Luca says, which he has welcomed. “Of course one must take care not to drown the flute” — yet one of the aspects of the instrument that attracts him is its very fragility. He has attempted to imbue his solo part not only with virtuosity and lyricism but also with something of that fragility. Luca has dedicated his concerto to Emmanuel, and he has woven the flutist’s name into the fabric of the music: The first page of the score is inscribed For EmmAnuEl pAHuD, and each of the appropriate vowels of the composer’s name has been exploited for its pitch on the musical scale: E-A-E-A-H-D. In fact, the first of the concerto’s three movements is built from an almost obsessively worked-out three-note motif (E-A-E) heard initially in the solo part and reiterated throughout. (Here Luca has built on a long-beloved practice: Numerous composers have treated the pitches B-A-C-H to pay tribute to the great German master, for example, with “B” as German for B-flat and “H” for B-natural; more arcane in nature, D-Es-C-H was Dmitri Shostakovich’s famous distillation of his own name.)

Born in Rome, Luca studied there and in Vienna, Florence, Pesaro and Cologne. As a young composer, he was strongly influenced by his contact with key figures of the avant-garde such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, and Mauricio Kagel; his interest in socially committed music drew him to Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau. Since then his musical outlook has remained free, open and eclectic — a far cry from his avant-garde days when tonality was shunned and sentimentality was a bad word. “I believe variety is very important. I am against fundamentalism — political, aesthetic, or artistic. Composers are individuals: Each has a duty to follow his own path. I find ‘schools’ of composition horrible. Ask Beethoven, to what ‘school’ did he belong?”

Luca has composed prolifically for the most important European orchestras, opera companies and festivals, and he has received prizes and awards including Italy’s prestigious Goffredo Petrassi Prize in 2006. “By addressing the social and political issues of his time, his oeuvre is pervaded by a kind of humanism that makes him a worthy successor to his colleagues (Luigi) Dallapiccola and (Luigi) Nono,” Michael Kurtz has written. “His works (150 thus far) show mastery in handling diverse stylistic elements, whereby the musical language results largely from the tasks and the themes confronted by the composer; it ranges from expressive cantilenas, violent outbursts and meditative contemplation to alienation and deconstruction, with constant flashes of wit and irony.” Luca has gained prominence for several theatrically savvy operas, most notably Faust — Un travestimento (1990), the Shakespeare-inspired Prospero (2006) and a comic opera Il re nudo (2008). Born of a Jewish mother, recently the Roman-based Luca took on Israeli citizenship, partly he says “as a small sign of solidarity with a land whose very existence stands in question.”

Luca says he still believes in the responsibility of composers to be witnesses to the world around them. “Composers speak for, and represent, their time. But they don’t necessarily have to do it in a straight political manner. They are composers: They have to write good music. Writing a good string quartet is more important than writing a bad political piece.” In this vein, Luca’s new Flute Concerto — which joins his Viola Concerto and two works for two pianos and orchestra — is a piece of “pure music,” with no extra-musical statements. Deliciously orchestrated, it interweaves modernist and fully tonal styles — with a dynamic opening movement, a dreamy, lyrical slow movement that ends with a series of large tone-clusters, and a finale that pulls out the stops. It does not use a lot of “special effects” on flute, he says, beyond flutter-tongue and multiphonic passages, “because I think that one can articulate musical ideas using mostly normal sounds.”

The concerts are February 19th and 20th at the Lyric Theatre, with a matinee on February 21st at Yardley Hall, Johnson County Community College. Call 816-471-0400 or go to kcsymphony.org. In addition, on February 18th at the Lyric Theatre the Symphony’s Education Department will present a free master class featuring Emmanuel and several gifted local students. It is open to the public, but reservations should be made in advance by calling Jedd Schneider at 816-218-2609.

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.

In only its third appearance in Kansas City in its 32-year history, Quink — two sopranos, an alto, a tenor and a bass — performs music of Byrd, Finzi, Vaughan Williams and others on February 6th at Visitation Catholic Church, as part of the Visitation Fine Arts Society’s prestigious concert series. The program, titled Sacred and Profane, is a rare opportunity to hear a group The New York Times praised for “elegant phrasing, impeccable intonation and … purity of tone.”

Quink might be Dutch in origin — and its members all trained in Holland’s incomparable musical culture — but its outlook is as international as Holland itself. It has toured the world for three decades and has performed more that 300 times in the United States alone. “Holland was a trade nation from the 16^th and 17^th centuries,” said tenor Harry van Berne, a member of Quink since 1982, on the phone from Holland recently. “And during those centuries an incredible number of people came from all parts of the known world to settle in the Netherlands.” Holland has retained its cosmopolitan outlook, with a culture containing elements from all over the world.

Quink’s program on its current U.S. tour is a reflection of that outlook, with music from England, the Netherlands and Hungary. The quintet’s repertoire is vast, spanning several centuries and also including folk, gospel and popular music. The inspiration for their formation in 1978 was the six-voice British ensemble, the King’s Singers, founded a decade earlier — but instead of the typically British all-male sound they decided to use women for the treble parts.

The first half of Sacred and Profane consists of the five movements of William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices, interspersed with sacred and secular five-voice motets and partsongs related to the corresponding movements of the Mass. The Kyrie Eleison movement, for example (“Lord, have mercy”), is followed by a partsong by the 17^th-century English composer Robert Johnson titled “Save me, o Lord.” Some of the pieces are in a style similar to that of the Mass, Harry van Berne says, others are consciously different. But all are performed in a manner that transcends the purely religious connotations of the texts. “If they are performed in an authentic way, convincingly and with a feeling for the deeper meanings, then they should make for good listening for anyone.”

Striking the right vocal blend is critical for an ensemble like Quink: Five voices are especially “exposed,” and each time there is a personnel change, great care must be taken to find just the right voice. “The blend of the group is very important for Quink,” Harry says. “We always look for a kind of ‘bridge’ from one voice to the other, and the kind of color that matches the rest of the voices.” The group has had numerous members through the years, including Harry’s wife, Machteld Van Woerden. They have benefitted from the rich tradition of Dutch artists such as Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, with whom they have worked directly through the years. “The focus on early music was always very big in Holland, and it still is,” Harry says.

Contemplating touring brings to mind the vicissitudes of the road, Harry says, and the exciting and alarming things that can happened. He remembers one moment when a cold-and-cough remedy he took had an unexpected result. “I had this terrible dry cough; my throat was itching all day. So I bought something at Wal-Mart that said it would kill this itch. And it really worked, and I was very happy. But then I had to sing some very high parts in sort of a falsetto, and suddenly it felt like my whole larynx was paralyzed. I couldn’t get a sound out. It was a very awkward feeling.” Surprisingly, Harry says that in 32 years the group has only canceled two or three concerts, “and that was not just because one of us was sick, but when more than one of us was sick. We don’t stop when one of has a cold, because we’re very experienced singers and we know what to do.”

The current members of Quink are Marjon Strijk, Mariette Oelderik, Elsbeth Gerritsen, Harry van Berne, and Kees Jan de Koning. The concert is February 6th at 8 p.m. at Visitation Church in Midtown. Call 816-235-6222. For more information, go to visitationfineartssociety.com.

To contact Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.

Pianist Benedetto Lupo

The Kansas City Symphony has an intriguing array of soloists lined up for the spring, from superstars to newcomers, and the first one I’m looking forward to is Benedetto Lupo, a marvelous Italian pianist with a substantial European career who only recently has begun to attract due notice on these shores. Odd, considering that his career was initially kick-started with a bronze medal at the 1989 Van Cliburn Competition, followed by a New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall in 1992. In any event he’s made sort of an American come-back in the last couple of years: He’ll appear here January 15^th through the 17th at the Lyric Theatre with Quebec-born guest conductor Bernard Labadie, whose baton skills are known to Kansas City audiences.

Lupo has been greeted with unstinting critical praise for his recent U.S. performances. “Lupo’s crystalline yet emphatic performance helped draw out the piece’s deeper meaning,” wrote Alex Ross in The New Yorker of a performance of the same piece the pianist will play here, Mozart’s K. 456 concerto, “Mozart’s own underlying conflict between the imperatives of festive public pomp (as seen in the opening theme’s martial strut) and the inner compulsions of personal expression (which Lupo brought out with dark-hued vehemence).” John von Rhein wrote in the Chicago Tribune of a performance with Labadie (again, of the same piece) that Lupo’s pianism was “never less than gracious, the musical sensibility behind it generous and true. Labadie’s supportive accompaniment had a similar feeling of naturalness, as if he and Lupo were breathing the same pure Mozartean air.” And Scott Cantrell, writing in 2007 in the Dallas Morning News of a Fort Worth recital that included Schumann’s Kreisleriana, called Lupo a musician of “depth and warmth” who “savored, and subtly underlined, the music’s harmonic unpredictability.”

Labadie, a known specialist in the music of the Baroque and Classical periods, will also lead the orchestra in Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 and Franz Schubert’s Mozart-inspired Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major. For information and tickets, call 816-471-0400 or go to kcsymphony.org.

IN BRIEF:

* Man, I miss Gregory Hines, who died of cancer in 2003 at a youthful 57. If ever there was a mega-talent, he was one: dancer, actor, singer—an almost-too-big-for-Broadway showman. Who can forget The Cotton Club, or the breathtaking dance sequences with Mikhail Baryshnikov in the 1985 movie White Nights? Or (a favorite of mine) his surprising, quiet presence in Waiting to Exhale? Among all of his talents, though, it was tap that raised the New York-born Hines above “mere” brilliance into something resembling pure genius. On January 16th at Yardley Hall, the Performing Arts Series of Johnson County Community College presents Thank You, Gregory: A Tribute to the Legends of Tap, in which eight world-class tappers pay tribute to Hines and other legends of tap. One of Kansas City’s own master tappers, Ronald McFadden, will lead an Artist Insight discussion an hour before the show. For tickets, call 913-469-4445 or go to jccc.edu.

* Next up with the Kansas City Symphony is the dazzling Gil Shaham, one of the most significant violin talents of our time, who has been praised by Strings Magazine for his virtuosity and his “innate musicality and beautiful, expressive tone, which can glow like bronze and shimmer like gold.” Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, multiple Grammy Awards and the 2008 Avery Fisher Prize, Shaham presents not one but two violin concertos, by Barber and Prokofiev (the Second), both of which were part of an outpouring of great violin concertos during the 1930s—a repertoire that Shaham has highlighted recently through performances of works by Barber, Berg, Stravinsky, Bartók, Prokofiev, and others. The program, conducted by music director Michael Stern, also includes Stravinsky’s Baroque-inspired Pulcinella and the bubbling Symphony No. 1 by the precocious 19-year-old Shostakovich. The concerts are January 22nd through the 24th at the Lyric Theatre. For information and tickets, see the contacts in the entry at the top.

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.

If you are looking for just one holiday event to attend, the Kansas City Ballet’s The Nutcracker might not be the most inexpensive offering in town, but it’s probably the most solidly satisfying aesthetically. With Balanchine-inspired choreography by late artistic director Todd Bolender and delicious scenic and costume design by veteran Hollywood designer Robert Fletcher, it’s one of the better Nutcrackers you’ll find in America. It also serves as an annual showcase for this gem of a ballet company and school located here in the middle of the country. The two-week run of the classic ballet that opened December 16 — a run shortened by the musical Wicked, which cannibalized part of what is usually a month of Nutcrackers in the Music Hall — was energetic, rich in dimension and at times humorous. There were of course opening-night jitters and bloopers, more than usual in fact, but I felt nicely rewarded by several top-drawer performances by the company dancers, and by a portrayal of the young Prince that I believe was the most accomplished, if not the best, that I’ve seen here. (Mind you, I haven’t seen them all.)

Kim Cowen was her usual exquisite self as the Sugar Plum Fairy, a role she has honed to sharp precision over many years. Other moments from the professional dancers stood out as well. (Cast vary through the run.) Angelina Sansone was the cool, delicately detailed Snow Queen, supported by Juan Pablo Trujillo as a quietly present King. Deanna Doyle was a wonderfully controlled Dew Drop, her whiplash turns a model of grace and speed. Adam Rogers delivered remarkably fluid leaps in the Chinese Dance, and Marty Davis was an assertive lead in the Russian Dance. Nadia Iozzo was captivatingly nuanced in the Arabian Dance, and Laura Reed gave off girlish charm as the head Reed Pipe. When we were told that a woman (Stayce Camparo) would play Mother Ginger — usually performed by a male dancer in drag — I wondered why the company would remove a beloved humorous element. Yet I found myself grateful I was able to focus on the busy activity all around the Mother, for a change, instead of being distracted by her shtick.

The evening began with a surprise: Artistic Director William Whitener came onstage to announce that Ballet board chair Julia Irene Kauffman would take to the orchestra pit to conduct Tchaikovsky’s brief Overture (opening night only), in recognition of the largesse that Julia and her late mother, Muriel McBrien Kauffman, have shown to the Ballet over the years. But there was another reason Julia took to the podium: Her granddaughter, 13-year-old Brittany LaPointe, was making her role debut as Clara, the young girl around whom swirls this fantastic tale of Snow Queens, battles with giant mice, and a Nutcracker/Prince who shows her a land where everything is made of sweets. There was sweetness, too, in Brittany’s performance, which was graceful and delivered with an appropriate sense of fragility. (Again, casts vary.)

Her Prince, 14-year-old Durante Verzola, showed uncommon poise throughout, delivering his famous pantomime with fluid elegance and a sort of maturity we’re not accustomed to seeing in this role. Often the youthful Prince moves like a boy, gently and with a certain caution; Durante dances like a young man. The third young lead, Zachary Boresow, 12, showed spontaneity and comic agility in the role of Fritz, Clara’s hyperactive brother. (The other cast features Elena Loyacono-Bustos as Clara, Riley Horton as the Prince and Connor Horton as Fritz.) Of course there was no shortage of cute, well-organized kids playing angels, bunnies, party children, sentries, mice, soldiers, forest creatures and gingers, as well as more advanced students dancing as snowflakes, reed pipes, Russians and flowers. The Kansas City Symphony performed capably in the pit, under the baton of Ballet music director Ramona Pansegrau, and the choir of Ballet School students singing the wordless choral line in the Snow Forest scene was excellent.

Another dramatic surprise awaited us at the end. The Prince and Clara exited stage right, on cue, in order to climb into the sleigh that will spirit them away to — well, wherever. But instead of getting to see them fly across the stage in the sleigh, waving farewell to the assembled company, the curtain fell with no sleigh apparent. After a few seconds, the curtain rose to show the sleigh’s tail end as it was just exiting stage left. Oops, we missed them! Such is the nature of live theater.

The Kansas City Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker runs through December 27 at the Music Hall. Call 816-931-2232 or go to kcballet.org. To reach Paul Horsley send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net. For a feature story about the students performing in the lead roles, see the December 19 print edition of The Independent, available at select local bookstores and cafes. All photos by Steve Wilson.