Washington Classical Review

Wolf Trap artistic advisor Daniel Hope opened the chamber music series Sunday afternoon by performing alongside the celebrated young pianist Maxim Lando in the first of two programs dedicated to music of the Gilded Age.

This first installment of the fall series focused on the works of European composers who took inspiration from their American counterparts, and featured both beloved and little-appreciated works for violin and piano duo.

George Enescu’s Impromptu Concertant opened the program with unsteady fire. The work is passionate and lives up to its name, giving the impression of spontaneity. At the outset, violinist Hope did not sound entirely settled, with some uneasiness of pitch and difficulty managing dynamics against the piano. Fortunately he warmed up to form by the end of the piece, and delivered particularly clear and ringing notes in the high register. Despite his colleague’s shaky start, Lando played with exceptional sensitivity from the start.

Next, the pair turned to Maurice Ravel with a pair of violin sonatas. The first, an 1897 conservatory work entitled “Sonate posthume” due to its late discovery decades after the composer’s death, is a rhapsodic single movement with a harmonic color palette that looks ahead to the composer’s later fascination with jazz. Hope performed more securely here, skillfully varying vibrato to emphasize the melody. The snowy, sparkly piano opening was gorgeous, though here it was Lando who seemed ill at ease with awkward and frantic ascents of the keyboard in the work’s middle climax.

This was followed by the “Blues” movement of Ravel’s more famous second sonata, written nearly thirty years after the first. As Hope explained from the stage, it was criticized at its early performances on this continent for making jazz “too intellectual” and for seemingly being “performed badly on purpose;” despite this, it became a frequent encore piece for Ravel.

Extended segments of plucked violin, on its own and as accompaniment to the piano, certainly have an inelegant quality, but it feels completely intentional and stylistic. Hope and Lando played in lockstep together, even through the work’s mischievous syncopations. Lando’s easygoing piano evoked the sound of Gershwin, and Hope fully threw his bow into the weighty scoops and slides used to ornament the melody.

The two men next moved on to a pair of gentle chansons by Elgar, exploring the composer’s more intimate and salon-appropriate side. The celebrated Salut d’Amour, was written in response to a love poem by Elgar’s sweetheart, and it dripped with as much honey as one might expect. Hope seemed to revel in the shifting tempo and heavy expression.  Likewise he made the most of the lovely violin tune in Chanson de Nuit, but it was Lando’s delicate piano playing that stayed in the memory.

Hope and Lando ended the program on a high note with César Franck’s Violin Sonata in A major, which has been in their repertoire as collaborators for a decade.

The opening movement treated audiences to more of the same attentive and emotional playing enjoyed all afternoon, but at an even higher level, with a pleasant back-and-forth between instruments. The second movement brought a fast tempo and refreshing intensity to a predominantly languid program. Hope’s violin projected easily and clearly over the piano even at a fortissimo dynamic. The quick, lively, finger-twisting technique of this movement drew applause from the audience before continuing with the work’s restless and melancholic third movement.

The rondo finale built on the foundations of the preceding by showcasing the piano in open dialogue with the violin, as the movement unfolded a canon for its main theme, and driving to an energetic, carefree conclusion. As always Hope and Lando played perfectly in sync regarding their tempi and dynamic ebbs and flows, and it was wonderful to end on a piece wherein the piano shone as an equal collaborator with the violin rather than mere accompaniment.

After a brief audience Q&A, Hope and Lando offered a selection from Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s 1927 opera Das Wunder der Heliane as an encore, its soulful decadence contrasting with the exuberant coda of the Franck sonata.

Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe performs with pianist Ryan McCullough at Wolf Trap 3 p.m. December 6. wolftrap.org