Washington Classical Review

Dolce Suono Ensemble performed Saturday night at the Library of Congress. Photo C. Downey

Dolce Suono Ensemble, the Philadelphia-based chamber group led by flutist Mimi Stillman, performed at the Library of Congress Saturday evening. Their invigorating program, devoted almost exclusively to American composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, was part of the Library’s ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States.

The concert opened with Ned Rorem’s Trio for flute, cello, and piano, which the late American composer, who passed in 2022, wrote in 1960. Stillman’s silvery low range featured beautifully in the mysterious opening of the first movement, over tense sonorities from piano and cello. After a thrilling, soaring cadenza from Stillman, the performance exploded with fleet lightness in the bubbly Allegro section.

Pianist Charles Abramovic played crushingly loud, dissonant chords as background to the forlorn duet of flute and cello in the second movement. Cellist Gabriel Cabezas had his own intense solo moment at the start of the third movement, a reflective introduction to a pulsating Andante. All three musicians maintained an ideal balance with one another, including in the scampering fourth movement, with its twitchy, neurotic theme.

The same performers presented some rarely heard music by Irving Fine, one of the composers of the Boston School. Dolce Suono’s arrangement of two songs he composed for a production of Lorca’s Doñna Rosita, the Spinster showcased the composer’s charming Spanish idiom. Flute and cello traded the vocal melody back and forth in the first song, with rhythms reminiscent of a Habanera. Pizzicato accompaniment in the cello made its role in the second movement sound like a guitar. Later in the program, Abramovic provided a brief palate cleanser with Fine’s elegant Homage à Mozart, a tribute that led into the evening’s final work.

Given Mozart’s reported disparagement of the flute, his Flute Quartet in D Major is an impressively graceful work. At the end of a taxing program, Stillman’s playing remained impeccably poised, noteworthy for its near-perfect intonation up to ringing high notes, and crystalline accuracy in melismatic passages.

The second movement’s lonely flute melody shone limpidly, accompanied by the delicate pizzicato notes of violinist Juliette Kang, violist Che-Hung Chen, and Cabezas. Although the flute is the obvious star of this affair, the three string players handled their challenging parts in the third movement with alacrity as well. Kang’s cadenza, in parallel lockstep with Stillman, proved a highlight.

Of the most recent works on the program, the upper hand went to the world premiere of David Serkin Ludwig’s The Woman in Gold, a new work for flute and string quartet co-commissioned by Dolce Suono and the Library’s Verna and Irving Fine Endowment. Ludwig, the grandson of pianist Rudolf Serkin, wrote the piece for Dolce Suono’s 20th anniversary last year. It tells the story of Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, its theft during World War II, and restoration by lawsuit to her family, as told in the book and movie of the same title.

Stillman’s flute incarnated Adele, heard first off stage in a chant-like solo that continued as she walked slowly to her seat and joined the other musicians. The rest of the first movement consisted of a vibrant, slightly off-kilter dance, beginning with the four string instruments in a harmonium-like drone. The terror of the Nazi incursion into Austria came across in the harsh dissonance and distortion at the movement’s end.

A solemn flute cadenza opened the second movement, which cited a Hebrew song. The strings, at first with heavy mutes, echoed the flute melody in a warm incantation of resistance. Some of the melodic material heard earlier returned in the last movement, a bubbly tribute to the joy of the painting being returned to Adele’s family. Ludwig’s pleasing harmonic and melodic style, mostly tonal but without cloying neoromanticism, made the piece a worthy addition to the limited repertoire for this combination.

The other recent piece, Zhou Tian’s Irises, did not quite mesh with the rest of the program. Adapted in 2023 from the Chinese-born American composer’s flute concerto for Stillman, the work offered yet another blockbuster showcase for the flutist’s immense technical gifts, including endless breath support and extravagant virtuoso fireworks. Abramovic gave the piano arrangement an orchestral breadth, but the style clashed with the more collaborative chamber music spirit in the rest of the program.

Countertenor Reginald Mobley performs music by Purcell, Morelli, and Dowland, accompanied by baroque instruments, 8 p.m. April 21. loc.gov