liebestraum: A Concert at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

It is a tradition to have a chamber music concert on the Saturday of our conference, and most other CSHL conferences. This has also become a local attraction for many music lovers from neighboring communities. I heard that CSHL has been keeping good relations with its rich neighbors through different ways (including offering free concerts) in order to do fund-raisers. In any case, it is a very nice thing to be able to attend a good concert.

This time we had a young violinist named Timothy Fain as our soloist. He was indeed very young (and good-looking), yet his music was great. In the 90 minutes long concert, he played Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor, Beethoven’s Sonata for violin and piano in A major, and a contemporary piece called Arches by Kevin Puts (born 1972). The concert exceeded my expectation for it was a really good one, and I really enjoyed it.

Bach’s music is simply elegant. The last movement Ciaccona has gone through so many different emotions to arrive at its end. Just beautiful.

Beethoven’s violin sonata in A major is not as famous as his Spring sonata, but just like Mr. Fain introduced, it is very beautiful, almost Schubertanian. Beethoven liked to write music based on simple and short music motifs, and people tend to forget that he was completely capable of writing long, romantic, and beautiful melodies. This violin sonata is a very good example of his other side. The pianist, Ieva Jokubaviciute, was also a very good concert pianist.

I had thought that the third piece would be some kind of music that I won’t be able to enjoy, just because its composer is so young, and I knew how modern music tend to be abstract and empty (sorry, my ears are not adapted to those weird tune systems yet). Much to my surprise, it was a very sweet one. It started slow, with jumping “arches” of notes over the violin strings. Then the speed picked up, getting faster and faster. At some points Mr. Fain was playing very high pitches at a fast pace. That must be very difficult, as a slight shift on the string would make a wrong note. He played it very well.

Mr. Fain gave brief introductions to the music he was going to play. I found this very helpful. As for the audience, most of the locals were elderly. It is a little sad that young people don’t find classical music enjoyable. But at least we have young musicians like Mr. Fain and Ms. Jokubaviciute who love the music they are making and also share this love with their audience.