Concert review: Various artists at the Bowdoin International Music Festival

To start this entertaining Bowdoin evening came Paul Wiancko’s Toy Bricks (2013), a smart study for strings that’s alternately alluring and impertinent – an ideal opener. Renée Jolles (violin), Abigail Leidy and David Ying (cellos) and Anthony Manzo (bass) were on rip-roaring form for an eager audience.

Elizabeth Ogonek, who teaches composition at the Eastman School of Music, drew from her childhood for Falling Up (2013), and it alternates between nostalgia and manic energy. Corinne Foley on cor anglais got the ball rolling, soon picked up by flautist Ben Smith and clarinettist Katelyn Waffer Poetker, with violinist Zhengnan Wang and cellist Claire Eurim Kim. For everyone who recalls their childhood with conflicting feelings, Oganek’s brief ode – light-hearted on the surface – had an appealing bittersweet undertone. 

Erwin Schulhoff’s Duo for violin and cello dates from 1925, but is no less powerful a century later. Violinist Robin Scott and cellist Amir Eldan showed the piece in a scintillating light, navigating the composer’s complex bowing demands with ease. In particular, the moments of left-hand pizzicato – strikingly intermingled with bow strokes – were impressively handled, as were the delicate harmonics at the end of the opening movement. The myriad tempos and mood shifts seemed to energise both performers, along with the audience.

Eldan returned for Smetana’s Piano Trio, joining violinist Ayano Ninomiya and pianist Tao Lin in a bravura reading. Though it has fireworks aplenty, it is essentially a sorrowful work, written after the death of the composer’s daughter. The threesome found the right tone, with even the sprightlier portions being tempered with melancholy. 

BRUCE HODGES