Camerata Pacifica’s sold-out season-opening event on September 17 at The Huntington’s Rothenberg Hall featured an entire French composer program showcasing the virtuosic talents of Violinist Paul Huang, Cellist Santiago Cañón-Valencia, and Pianist Gilles Vonsattel.
LNP doesn’t often review classical music performances, but the efforts of Camerata Pacifica deserve special mention. You can find more information about the orchestra in the article by Victoria Thomas featuring Northern Ireland transplant Adrian Spence, Camarata Pacifica’s founder.
Paul Huang is Camerata Pacifica’s Bob Christensen Chair in Violin and recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists. Columbian cellist Santiago Cañón- Valencia was named a 2022 BBC New Generation Artist, Silver Medalist and “Audience Favorite” at the 2019 XVI International Tchaikovsky Competition.
Huang and Cañón-Valencia, experts in asking their instruments to virtually leap around the stage, created a perfect major/minor duality in the Ravel Sonata for Violin and Cello reminiscent of a forward-advancing locomotive, culminating at last at the station where the audience is allowed to disembark from the invigorating train ride.
Recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and winner of the Naumburg and Geneva competitions as well as the 2016 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, Vonsattel continued the program with Debussy, Images, Book II. This piece reinforces Debussy’s moniker of being the first ‘impressionistic’ musician, where he is described as painting tones and symbols into music.
Close your eyes, and the often-wistful piano music takes the listener on a lazy boat ride through Monet water lilies and an art gallery of light and color to capture the moment.
All three artists took the stage for the four movements of the Ravel Piano Trio in A Minor. This piece represents a seemingly incompatible pairing of instruments but allows them to soar like an airplane, transitioning to a rocket. Houston, we have ignition. All the artists did justice to the increasingly dynamic take-off but with a soft and safe landing.
Camerata Pacifica’s 2024-25 schedule, from now through May 2025, is available online.
