Grief Cannot Defeat West Mt. Airy Pianist

by MICHAEL CARUSO

For musicians who spend hours, days, weeks and months practicing at their instrument to perform a certain score in concert, the reward goes far beyond a round of applause and a well-earned paycheck. Channeling the essence of one’s own heart and soul through the efforts of mind and fingers often works to shine a light on what seemed like unrelieved darkness.

For West Mt. Airy’s Marja Kaisla, her Saturday, May 7 performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor with the Central Jersey Symphony Orchestra has fulfilled just such a role. After surviving what could have been a catastrophic heater malfunction at her home, the Finnish-born concert pianist and pedagogue learned of the unexpected death of her 49-year-old sister back in her homeland.

The concert engagement, arranged months ago, came about as a result of Kaisla having previously collaborated with conductor and violinist Michael Avagliano. Wanting to expand the forum of their working together, Avagliano invited Kaisla to be the soloist with his orchestra in a concert dubbed “Second Impressions.” The “other” second will be Brahms’ Symphony N. 2 in D major.

“Because this was to be my first performance of the concerto,” Kaisla said, “I had intended to start learning it months ago. But due to the things that have happened — the problem with the heater and then my sister’s death, which has left me so sad — I didn’t get started until five weeks before the date of the concert. I decided that I would just get going learning the notes and then take it from there. I gave myself a cut-off date. If I couldn’t physically play the score by that point, then I would have to bow out.

“But it’s absolutely amazing,” she continued, “how the necessity of having to learn such a complex score can focus all your attention and concentration on accomplishing the task you’ve set before you. And the adverse conditions of my own life at the time actually helped intensify the process because it gave a much deeper emotional meaning to the music as I was learning it. I felt that I could express the emotions of my life as I was playing the music, as though my having lived so much more intensely than usual in so short a time made the experience of learning to play the music all the more meaningful.

“And, no, it’s not an escape,” she assured. “It’s an avenue for seeing and feeling things in a way that’s like no other way in your life.”

Saturday’s concert will take place in Bridgewater, New Jersey, just north of Trenton. Curtain time is 8 p.m. For more information, visit www.cjso.org.

PA. BALLET

The Pennsylvania Ballet brought beauty, challenge and comedy to local lovers of dance this past weekend when it opened its mounting of “The Concert” in the Merriam Theater. It was one of the most intelligently conceived and successfully performed programs in the company’s history and a testament to the ongoing development of the troupe under the artistic direction of Erdenheim’s Roy Kaiser.

The evening got underway with a lovely rendition of Balanchine’s Raymonda Variations. It’s one of those ballets that explain the reverence with which ballet lovers view Balanchine’s choreography. It’s admirable for him to have created great ballets to scores composed by such geniuses as Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, but that’s not unheard of from other choreographers. What is unheard of is for a choreographer to have regularly been able to produce such stunning dance over such sentimental drivel as the score of Raymonda by Alexander Glazounov.

If you close your eyes and just listen to the music, it takes you nowhere because it’s earthbound by its own mediocrity. But once you open your eyes and see Balanchine’s choreography, all of a sudden the mysteries of life are made clear to you by Balanchine’s clarity of vision. Every individual gesture and every group movement coalesce into a picture-perfect visual enhancement of the music.

OPERA TIMES TWO

I spent a day and a night at the opera this past Sunday. In the afternoon I took in the Opera Company of Philadelphia’s production of Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. Then, in the evening, I caught the Academy of Vocal Arts Opera Theater’s mounting of Puccini’s La Boheme.

Seeing and hearing an opera in AVA’s tiny Warden Theater has its good and bad points. The latter include a level of stuffiness that verges on the suffocating, and having to struggle to hear the singing over the far-too-loudly played orchestral part led by Christofer Macatsoris. The former include a theatrical intensity that is impossible to experience in a larger opera house (such as the Academy of Music) and the chance to hear some of the most promising young opera singers in the world. In regard to Puccini’s first masterpiece, that’s all the more important since the opera is about the life and death of young people.

AVA seems to have found the key to producing excellent young tenors. Over the past few productions, I’ve heard glorious singing from tenors such as James Valente and Stephen Costello. It was Derek Taylor’s turn Sunday night as Rodolfo, the starving young poet who falls in love with Mimi, the doomed seamstress. Blessed with remarkable good looks, Taylor also possesses a naturally beautiful timbre that’s clear and unforced, a sure feel for the dramatic arch of the vocal line, excellent Italian diction and a focused dramatic flair that projects the essence of the role without fuss or affectation.

Soprano Cristina Baggio warmed vocally to the role of Mimi, losing the hard edge to her tone that characterized her early singing, but her acting remained superficial. She failed to delineate Mimi’s odd combination of outward flirtatiousness and inward piety. Soprano Manon Strauss Evrard, however, perfectly balanced the hard exterior and gentle interior of the character named Musetta. Baritone Markus Beam made a warm and passionate Marcello, Jason Switzer sang well as Schaunard and Keith Miller showed impressive vocal and dramatic development as Colline, most especially in his final act aria as he prepared to sell a beloved old coat to buy medicine for the dying Mimi. One felt him attain new stature as he sang this gorgeous music with tonal beauty and dramatic depth.

La Boheme continues through May 14; Die Fledermaus runs through May 15.