Cellist’s Borrowed String Keeps High Spirits Alive

Zephyr Friday at The Met

Friday’s audience for Zephyr’s “Danzas and Tangos” almost missed the last tango. Cellist Darrett Adkins was to join pianist Kendall Feeney for Astor Piazzolla’s “Le Grand Tango” for the program’s finale. But in the previous work, Adkins had broken the A string on his instrument, and he didn’t have another to replace it.

In storybook fashion, Spokane Symphony cellist John Marshall happened to be in the audience, rushed home and within minutes, Adkins was on stage quipping, “Most of you have heard this string before,” as he attached Marshall’s substitute string to his own cello.

The wait was worth it. Adkins and Feeney made “Le Grand Tango” take off with that exotic combination of rhythmic verve and haunting melancholy unique to Piazzolla’s style - a blend of the erotic sensuality of the traditional tango and the complexities the Argentine master drew from his classical training and experience in jazz.

The evening’s other performances of Latin American chamber music showed similar high spirits.

Feeney, conducting an ensemble of percussionists from the Spokane Symphony and from Eastern Washington University, began the concert with Carlos Chavez’s sizzling Toccata for Percussion. Feeney and her six players showed just how skillfully Chavez could make music without relying on tunes or harmonies. Chavez produced a huge range of tone colors and sonorous densities from the interplay of drums and the ring and roar of bells and gongs.

Later in the program, Feeney delivered a sensitive and sprightly reading of Alberto Ginastera’s guitar-inspired Argentine Dances for piano solo.

The string-breaker preceding “Le Grand Tango” was Adriana Verdie’s “Jira che Tango,” an unaccompanied cello solo compendium of nearly every sound a cellist can extract from the instrument just short of smashing it to pieces. Adkins tore into the piece like a daredevil. Much as I admired his playing, much as I was amused by Verdie’s lavish display of effects, I did not find much musical substance in it. But then, not every piece is required to have substance; sheer technical bravura offers its own pleasure.

I enjoyed both the musical substance and the technical exuberance in another unaccompanied work, Verdie’s “Flute 3.2.4,” brilliantly played by Bruce Bodden. In this three-movement work, Verdie uses the inspiration of the sounds of the panpipes to spin out tunes based on musical intervals contained in the work’s title. Bodden breezed through the work’s maze of technical problems to find the music beyond. Equally fine was his and Adkins’ virtuoso rendition of “Asso bio a Jato” (The Jet Whistle) by Heitor Villa Lobos.

At concert’s end, The Met audience rose, stamping and whistling, in a display of enthusiasm rare in classical concerts. Rightly so, for Zephyr’s season finale showed the zest of music-making at its best. , DataTimes