Spy Concert Review: Concerto Competition Finale by Steve Parks

The fourth Elizabeth Loker International Concerto Competition – and just the second to give all three finalists the opportunity to perform as soloists with a full professional orchestra – brought a marimbist, bassoon player and a pianist front center to the Todd Performing Arts Center stage at Chesapeake College for Sunday’s matinee performance.

As a now-retired lifelong journalist, I hereby confess to what we call in the profession as “burying the lead.” Ordinarily, I would already have announced the winner of this prestigious competition that distinguishes itself from others by the full-orchestra finale as opposed to one with solo piano accompaniment only.

So you can either skip to the end of this review or allow me first to introduce the young finalists, chosen out of 120 applicants from 28 states and four continents – all between ages 12 to 25.

The finalists, in order of appearance:

A Singapore native, Jonah began playing piano at age 4. In 2021, he won the concerto competition in Singapore’s most prestigious conservatory of music. And just last year, along with his duo partner Kennis Ang, he won top prize in the Stecher and Horowitz Two Piano Competition of the Music Teachers National Association.

Born in New York City, Christopher didn’t play his first notes on bassoon until age 15. By that time he was studying music at the Colburn School in Los Angeles. Returning to his hometown he pursued further studies at the Juilliard School. He is a founding member of Sonarsix, a woodwind quintet plus piano. Christopher also took part in the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices, a project to resurrect music suppressed by Hitler’s Nazi regime.

Britton-Rene, also of New York, was the grand prize winner of both the 2022 Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition and the 2021 Chicago International Music event.

Currently, she is generating solo and chamber works for multi-percussion ensembles and marimba. And she is the only percussionist ever to be awarded the Princeton University Mary Mackall Gwinn Hodder Fellowship, hers for 2024-25.

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Jonah Kwek performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B minor, opus 23. From the opening notes, heralded by horns, then fully embraced with a romantic hug by the 22 string players led by MSO concertmaster Kimberly McCollum, everyone in attendance surely recognized the lusciously seductive “First” by the Russian genius who is perhaps more beloved, just barely, for his ballet scores – the “Nutcracker Suite” and “Swan Lake” chief among them. Yet there is so much more to this concerto and Kewk mastered every diversion from the irresistible opening theme. Each solo excursion revealed a new wrinkle, from wistfully meditative passages to the lingeringly poignant cadenza near the end, all the better to appreciate this young pianist’s virtuosic skill.

After intermission, Christopher Chung took us far from the usual European classical music “suspects” to a 20th-century gem (1933) that few of us have on our playlist: Ciranda des sete notas (“Round Dance for Seven Notes.”) written by Brazilian composer Heito Villa-Lobos for solo bassoon and orchestra. (How many such bassoon starring turns have you heard?) Strings established a vibrant template for what follows. Playfully pastoral folk-tune pastiches suggest childlike wonder that matures into virtuosic bassoon explorations – from jazz riffs to emotional lyricism. The final movement in C major takes on an ethereal quality as if discovering a resolution to the previous wanderings, leading to a celebratory bassoon finish with the full orchestra invited to the party, maestro Michael Repper emceeing

For her finalist selection, Britton-Rene Collins performed Sergei Golovko’s Concerto for Marimba, which premiered in 2016 – well after Russia annexed Crimea but before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Golovko was born in Ukraine when there was still a Soviet Union and he studied music in Moscow. Now his Concerto for Marimba has been adopted by the universe of Ukrainians and their free-world supporters. (Golovko’s mother reportedly still lives in Ukraine.) Though the marimba seems far too warm and friendly an instrument to reflect war and peace, much less suffering, the first two movements, with tranquil to thunderous accompaniment by the orchestra, conveys that all is not well. Bursts of Collins’ energetic thrumbing, interrupted by solemn reflection, are succeeded in the finale by a spring-awakening sense of renewal and optimism, suggested in Collins’ tender yet assertive mallet strokes. If only it were so.

As you might have guessed from the preceding performance reviews, Britton-Rene Collins, regal in her glittering gold-lame ensemble, is both winner of the concerto competition and its $5,000 award, plus recognition as the audience favorite by QR code vote. Basoonist Christopher Chung won second place and $2,500, while pianist Jonah Kwek was awarded $1,000 for third place.

The heretofore annual concerto competition – interrupted for two years by COVID-19 – is named for Elizabeth Loker, a retired Washington Post executive who became a devoted supporter of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra after moving to Royal Oak before dying of cancer at 67 in 2015. This event in her name is now top-notch by any measure.

ELIZABETH LOKER INTERNATIONAL CONCERTO COMPETITION

At Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center, Wye Mills, on Sunday, March 23. Next concerts: “Mozart’s Jupiter,” April 3-6 in Easton, Rehoboth Beach and Ocean Pines. midatlanticsymphony.org