Review from La Sicilia

April 4, 2003

Our local hero, pianist Epifanio Comis, along with the visiting Ciompi Quartet, presented a concert at Teatro Massimo Bellini that was a great event. The Ciompi Quartet is from America, but is of international stature. Their understanding of music is entirely European. The Quintet Op. 81 of Dvorak, thanks to its lucid keyboard part, received a suave, velvet texture; at times it seemed to hint at Chopinesque origens: drops of melody within a vast resonance. Given the lucid contrast of sonority and harmony, it is insufficient to praise the perfect ensemble of the group and its technical mastery: even more impressive is the shimmer of the sound, its clarity, the impalpable lightness of the notes, and the intimacy of the pianissimo. While being a work from the end of the 19th century with the suggestion of the more complex harmony of the next era, the quintet in question appeared perfectly classical in essence, and also in its performance. Following warm applause of the attentive listeners, a movement of the Schumann quintet was offered as an encore. 

But the polish of the pianist must not make one forget the notable accomplishments of the Ciompi Quartet. As if to distinguish their own style from that of the Romantic Dvorak, the Ciompi presented one of the most intricate scores of Janacek, the second quartet, a piece of impetuous expression and restless spiritual charge. The performance followed this spirit: the instruments broke out in rough dissonances: while the first violin mounts chromatic explosions, the other instruments maintain the sense of melody; and while the first violin designs classical calligraphies, the rest of the ensemble bursts out in a tempest of sound. 

The intention is transparent: love and hesitation alternate in the composer as he translates his inner turmoil into musical staves. The four members of the Ciompi were able to render with impeccable precision even the most complex points of the text: beauty in the midst of the storm which in its many manifestations reaches the serenity of art. Technical precision, cleanliness of sound, mastery of the bow. A page from the tumultuous early 20th century, indicative of the anxieties and crises of the times.