Posted on February 20 2016
Check out the full showcase here
CMO’s first showcase of the year occurred this past Friday February 5th at 7pm in the Logan Penthouse. The night began with Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio in E flat Major, movement 2. The movement, which was deceptively in C minor (how dare Schubert! False advertising!), was presented by Simone Brown on cello, Aakaash Rao on piano, and Pranav Subramaniam on violin. It was a performance of spirited character to start off the night.
Second was a performance of Bohuslav Martinu’s Piano Quartet No. 1, movement 1. If you’ve never heard of this piece, that’s OK—we haven’t either, and neither did any of the performers’ chamber music coaches. One wonders which of them—Riena Yu (violin), Isabel Bolo (viola), Andrew Molina (cello), or Kevin Ren (piano)—had the audacious and hipsterish idea to pick this particular piece for them to work on. But unlike some other audacious and hipster things like tight pants or indie records, this piece was riveting and fascinating, and the performance was technically and musically superb, gripping the audience.
The third performance was a piano four hands piece. Because neither Phillip Lo nor Sarah Lo have four hands themselves, they teamed up together to play Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 6 Morceaux, Op. 11, Barcarolle. They delivered a charming and lyrical performance, proving that though the piece was written by a man with large hands for a person with four, you didn’t necessarily need either of them to perform it beautifully.
The night’s final performance was by the Rubicon Quartet, the only group of the night with a name. Phillip Lo performed again, but this time on violin, and Shirley Zhang represented the CMO board by playing cello. They were joined by Kai Smith on violin and Erin Hagood on viola. They presented the ubiquitous and popular first and second movements of Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No.8. It was a rousing and energetic finale to a memorable night.