Tartu College was host Saturday Nov. 29 to a delightful evening of music for flute and piano. The audience was treated to compositions by old masters and contemporary works, including one written specifically for the young flutist, Kaili Maimets. Kaili was accompanied with exquisite precision by Angela Park, recent garduate from the U. of T. Master of Music programme. Angela has a number of performance credits in the USA as part of her credentials.
Kaili Maimets, turning 19 this month, is blessed with a sense of musicianship that includes emotionality as well as marvellous technique, considering the fact that she had just entered the performance programme at the Faculty of Music at U. of T. Her body language contains none of the distracting flourishes which often accompany showy performers. Yet her face and demeanour reflect the movements of the music.
One of her numbers, A Cynic’s Dream, written for her by Alan Torok, had a sense of communication with the implied text that happened to coincide with the ambiance of the hall still bedecked with paintings from the art exhibit preceding the concert.
Mr. Torok, who was part of the enchanted audience, taught music at Earl Haig Secondary School while Kaili was a student in the well-known school’s Claude Watson Program for the Arts. His creation was primarily a four-part musical painting of a cynic’s life, divided into A Cynic’s Heart, Sullen Muttering, Rising Dawn and Sun’s Out. Written in comprehensible musical language, the composition, in Kaili’s inspired interpretation, managed to share feelings from the grey sullenness of dulled suspicion to the orange red of syncopated joy.
Kaili Maimets revealed something of her sense of spontaneity combined with a sense of showmanship, totally reversing the programme as printed. She began with Mozart’s Concerto no. 2 in D major, K. 314 and established her mastery over her instrument through Allegro aperto, Andante ma non troppo and the final Allegro.
Last on the programme was Paul Hindemith’s four-part Sonate. One could theorize that as the ear becomes more educated during a performance, one’s enjoyment of non-traditional intervals and rhythms increases as well. In any case, for the ear of this listener, expected interpretational difficulties did not appear. And, of course, there were none for the performers. The piece was intriguing but tonal and therefore in keeping with the rest of the programme. The third part, Sehr lebhaft, was rhythmically exacting, but not for these performers. The brisk allegro was broken directly by a surprisingly slower exotic sounding motif, a most intriguing musical interval. The final part, Marsch, was brimming with elements demanding technical virtuosity. Both Kaili and Angela responded admirably.
Kaili’s chosen encore, Debussy’s short composition about Pan’s pangs of love and longing for a chance encounter with a nymph, was rendered a cappella. A fitting comment on the artistic life.
Without the otherwise enjoyable distractions of vocal text or the complexities of harmony and orchestral polyphony, flute music, for the semi-literate listener, is an excellent conduit to the composer’s heart. To say that this was accomplished is an appropriate tribute to the evening’s performance.
The audience for this youthful set of artists - and we should include third-year music student Margarita Zimina as a most unobtrusive page-turner for Angela - was composed of young and old, which speaks well for the organizational appeal of the Tartu College Cultural Arts Programme. The total design of the evening, Johannes Tanner’s art exhibit preceding the concert, along with elegant refreshments, was a reflection of the collaboration between the organizers, artist Anne Remmel and musician Asta Ballstadt, who set up the concert.