Concertante play the strings despite inclement weather

Last Saturday evening, Concertante Performed at VCU’s Singleton Center for the Performing Arts. Students and concert subscribers braved the ice storm to see the six Julliard alumni play the strings.

Who are Concertante? They are a group of chamber musicians who have won critical acclaim, nationally and internationally.

At Saturday’s two-hour concert, they played three pieces: “String sextet from Capriccio, Op. 85” by Richard Strauss, “Verklarte Nacht, Op. 4” by Arnold Schoenberg and “Sextet for Strings in G major, Opus 36.” by Johannes. Each piece was preformed using two violins, two violas and two cellos.

Concertante members Ittai Shapira, and Xiao-Dong Wang played the violin. Sophie Shao and Alexis Pia Gerlach played the cello. Rachel Shapiro and Ara Gregorian played violas for the evening.

Turnout for the concert was rather low Saturday due to the bad weather. Bruce Cauthen, the man in charge that evening, said, “The hall seats 500, we have 400 subscribers, we keep 50 seats available to students and sell 50 seats to the public.”

Of the audience in attendance, there were mostly concert subscribers – people who pay a fee and come to all the shows. Students looking for extra credit also came out.

When six of the best string performers in the world come together you can expect the show to be high quality. Their music was so relaxing. One of the highlights of the performance was Ara Gregorian, whose emotional commitment to the piece was quite intense.

Gregorian said that while performing, “it gets dramatic and crazy.” That’s one way to put it. At one point in the second piece Gregorian popped a few bowstrings.

The audience seemed to truly enjoy the performance. English Professor Richard Priebe said the show was “terrific,” but was disappointed by its low turn out.

Xiao-Dong Wang, one of the performers, had a more optimistic outlook. “We thought tonight went really well. We were surprised by the turn out because of the ice.”