Critically acclaimed Russian string quartet performs here

By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing arts critic

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 31, 2000

An excellent string quartet makes a return visit to the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg this weekend. The St. Petersburg String Quartet, graduates of the Leningrad Conservatory who are now the quartet-in-residence at the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, will play an all-Russian program.

The quartet's first performance at the museum was one of the musical highlights of 1997, with an especially bracing rendition of Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8. Shostakovich is again on the program -- this time it's his second string quartet -- along with Glazunov's Five Novelettes and Prokofiev's Sonata in F major.

The St. Petersburg String Quartet is in the process of recording a complete cycle of Shostakovich's 15 string quartets. Its first volume (Quartet Nos. 3, 5 and 7 for Sony Classical) was nominated for a Grammy, and the recently released second volume (Quartet Nos. 4, 6 and 8 for Hyperion) has been getting rave reviews.

"Once again it's not so much the technical excellence of their full-blooded playing that really strikes home as their ability to project the subtext that lies behind the notes," critic Erik Levi wrote in this month's BBC Music magazine.

The performance is at 2 p.m. Sunday in MFA's Marly Room. Tickets are $15. Call (727) 896-2667.

FESTIVAL -- A Festival of Living Music continues in St. Petersburg. The highlight of the festival, put on by the Tampa Bay Composers' Forum, is tonight's concert of three prize-winning works. The first-prize winner ($750) is Whitening Fury, a piano quintet by Daniel Kellogg, a graduate student at Yale. Second prize ($500) went to Geode, a work for alto flute, bass clarinet, cello, piano and percussion by Cindy Cox, an associate professor of music at the University of California-Berkeley. The third-prize winner ($250) is Maniwaki for tuba and percussion by Robert LeMay, a freelance composer from Montreal.

The winners were chosen from 121 submissions, with composer and bassoonist Arthur Weisberg serving as final adjudicator. Weisberg's Clarinet Sonata is also on the program of the concert at 8 tonight in Room 117 in the Humanities Building on the St. Petersburg Junior College Gibbs Campus at 6605 Fifth Ave. N.

At 1 p.m. today, music by forum members Sandy Ross, James Weaver, Joan Epstein, Jason Miller and Nick Zajac-Batell will be performed at HS 117 at SPJC. That will be followed by a roundtable discussion on issues between contemporary composers and performers.

The experimental music of composer Armando Tranquilino, who teaches at Florida International University, is showcased at 2 p.m. Saturday, also at HS 117 at SPJC. Festival performers include bay area professionals and Florida Orchestra members. Tickets are $3 and $5.

BRASS -- Solid Brass, a 10-member brass and percussion ensemble from New York, plays a wide-ranging program -- from Cabrielli to Wagner to Ellington -- at 8 tonight at Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $13 and $15.

Sunday afternoon at 3, Tarpon Springs mayor Frank DiDonato will unveil the center's new Baldwin 9-foot concert grand piano.

MORE MUSIC - The self-styled maverick of British classical music, Kennedy -- the violinist formerly known as Nigel Kennedy -- is on an East Coast tour. With the Bamberg Symphony Chamber Orchestra of Germany, he'll play selections from his new album, Classic Kennedy, plus concertos by J.S. Bach and Beethoven at 8 p.m. Saturday at Ruth Eckerd Hall. Tickets are $30 and $38.

Also on Saturday, resident conductor Thomas Wilkins leads the Florida Orchestra in a casual "blue-jeans classics" program of Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Dvorak and Rimsky-Korsakov at 7:30 p.m. at the Coliseum in St. Petersburg. Tickets are $15.

The USF Faculty Chamber Players play trios by Poulenc and Brahms, the chamber version of Copland's Appalachian Spring and other works at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Friday Morning Musicale in Tampa. Tickets are $4 and $6.

FREE - Soloists and chamber groups from the Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School perform in a free program at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Lewis House on the Eckerd College campus. Call (727) 864-8297.

Electric guitarist Jerry Outlaw is featured in a free concert by the Spectrum Contemporary Ensemble at 8 p.m. Thursday at Plant Hall at the University of Tampa. Outlaw, leader of the Frank Zappa repertory band Bogus Pomp, will perform Penguins for electric guitar, bass, cello, contrabassoon and percussion. Also on the agenda are works of Keiko Abe, William Kraft and Erwin Chandler.

TITANIC -- It will be interesting to see how Titanic has been downsized for the road. On Broadway, the ship went down at a 45-degree angle to the stage, but Maury Yeston's opulent score -- not hydraulics -- was always the star of the Tony Award-winning 1997 musical. The touring production opens Tuesday and continues through April 9 at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $$22.50-$63.50.

JOSEPH -- Brace yourself for an Andrew Lloyd Webber deluge, with a revival of Jesus Christ Superstar due on Broadway. Wednesday, a new film version of the first Lloyd Webber- Tim Rice collaboration, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, airs at 8 p.m. on WEDU-Ch. 3. Donny Osmond stars with Joan Collins.