Concordia Players rehearse the Taylor Clarinet Quintet
Frank Huang, Carmit Zori, Anthony McGill
Michelle Djokic and David Cerutti
By Roy Ziegler
Photo Ray Kinlock
The rapt audience at the Concordia Chamber Players concert on Sunday, November 16, owed a great debt to one of their own members who had suggested Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet to Concordia’s Artistic Director, Michelle Djokic, for the performance. It is a work written by Taylor about a hundred years ago while he was a student at the Royal College of Music. Rarely heard, this composition was brought to life by Concordia’s ensemble. The Metropolitan Opera’s principal clarinetist, Anthony McGill’s brilliantly bubbling clarinet in the first movement stirred the strings to a profound contemplative state before ending in a kind of Halleluiah chorus in the scherzo. Frank Huang and Carmit Zori, violinists and Michelle Djokic, cellist with David Cerutti, violist, presented a triumphant finale that was a prime example of how music can stir the deepest feelings of expression.
In the Gideon Trio, Djokic, Zori and Robert Rinehart, violist with the New York Philharmonic, began with a frenzied, almost aimless rush that suddenly lost energy ending in a deep, pensive state. Then, the second movement suddenly became energized before bestowing peace through Zori’s hauntingly stirring violin. Finally, spirits are revived leading to an ultimately joyful conclusion.
The Concordia Chamber Players concluded the afternoon concert with a sparkling performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Quintet in B flat Major led by Carmit Zori, a long-time favorite of Concordia audiences. She demonstrated forcefully why orchestras around the world continue to seek her out for their programs.
On January 11, 2009 the Concordia Chamber Players’ season continues with selections from Carlo Gesualdo, Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The concert will be presented at the Trinity Church in Solebury at 3:00 PM. Tickets for the concert are $25 and can be purchased at the door or at www.concordiaplayers.org