The Globe and Mail, December 6, 2002

Short-notice stand-in doesn't miss a beat

Music Toronto Chamber Society, Jane Mallett Theatre

By Robert Harris

So violinist Lara St. John thought she would be spending a few quiet days visiting her brother Scott when she arrived in Toronto last week. It wasn't to be. Because of a cycling injury to violist David Harding, Lara was pressed into service on 36 hours notice to perform with her brother and colleagues Annalee Patipatanakoon, Roman Borys and Marc-André Hamelin in the inaugural concert of the Music Toronto Chamber Society. And perform she did, as did all of her colleagues, brilliantly.

Lara filled in at the first-desk position for a performance of the rarely heard, indeed, rarely heard of, Piano Quintet in G Minor by the Russian composer Sergei Taneyev. This work turned out to be a full-blooded 19th-century exercise in chamber music that, unfortunately, was written in 1911, the year after The Firebird, thus consigning it to the remaindered bins of classical music more or less from the time of its birth. But what a fine piece of music it is -- deeply Romantic, extremely well constructed, spacious and passionate -- if somewhat derivative and conservative in its language.

And, given the short rehearsal time to prepare this 45-minute opus, the musicians of Music Toronto Chamber Society did a superb job. Both St. Johns -- Lara on fiddle and brother Scott moving from violin over to viola -- attacked the work with real fire, and allowed us to hear the many structural motifs of the work clearly and effectively. Violinist Patipatanakoon and cellist Borys added strong support to the mix, and guest pianist Hamelin proved that he as effective as a chamber player as he is as a solo artist. He negotiated the many challenges of the Taneyev with style and grace.

Hamelin was also the featured performer for the first work on the program, an even more obscure Russian piece of chamber music, Piano Quintet of Nikolai Kapustin. Kapustin is a Russian composer, now in his mid-60s, who specializes in melding classical music with some of the rhythms and accents of jazz. The result, at least in this work, was a charming trifle, as much salon music as jazz, but infectious and fun nonetheless. If George Gershwin had written a piano quintet, it might have sounded much like this. And we discovered that Hamelin, among his many other accomplishments, might be able to play a passable set of jazz as well. Although everything in the Kapustin is written down and nothing is left to improvisational spontaneity, classical players often are notoriously inept in translating the rhythms and feel of jazz from the printed page to the concert stage. Hamelin was the exception, making sections of the work sound jazzy, not oafish. And his colleagues weren't far behind.

Scott flashed a big smile at the end of the Kapustin -- reminding us that the concerts of Music Toronto are the best value in town, providing imaginative programming and just an overall sense of joy in music making that is as infectious as it is profound.