Washington Post: Performance of Ulysses Kay's 'Five Portraits' 'was proof that this neglected piece of American chamber music should be heard more often.'

Ulysses Kay
(G.D. Hackett/Pictorial Parade)

[Ulysses Kay (1917-1995) is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a comprehensive Works List and a Bibliography by Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma, www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com.]

The Washington Post

Joan Kwuon and company take on Mozart and Brahms at the Library of Congress 

By Tom Huizenga, Sunday, March 23

Two predominantly stern Germanic piano quartets monopolized Friday evening’s concert at the Library of Congress. Violinist Joan Kwuon, violist Joel Smirnoff, cellist Sharon Robinson and pianist Sergei Babayan (all Cleveland Institute of Music professors) were engaged to play Mozart’s Quartet in G minor, K. 478 and Brahms’s Quartet in G minor, op. 25.

That the two pieces are both in the same stormy key is one of many similarities in these iconic, densely woven chamber works that arguably are best left programmed in separate concerts. Even for those who crave their protein and starch, it made for a heavy meal, mercifully offset by Ulysses Kay’s colorful Five Portraits, a 1972 Library of Congress commission.

...

In the midst of it all stood Five Portraits (for violin and piano) by Ulysses Kay. Kwuon and Babayan’s irresistible performance, deftly pivoting between Kay’s smoldering, lyrical lines, animated angles and whiffs of dance, was proof that this neglected piece of American chamber music should be heard more often.