A quartet of Boston musicians, proudly featuring in their ranks Brandeis music professor and Lydian String Quartet violinist Daniel Stepner, performed a charming collection of beloved classic songs before a lively and appreciative audience in the Slosberg Recital Hall last Saturday night.
So many of us live in fear of being too "out there." It's safer to keep doing the same things we've always done, leaving others to push boundaries and take the risks-and the world of classical music is not exempt from this compulsion.Fortunately for concert-goers, there are musicians like Arum Chun '08, whose commitment to century-spanning music proved her artistic courage Saturday in the Slosberg Recital Hall, and whose skillful musicianship and deep understanding of her program made sense out of what, in less sensitive hands, might have sounded like simple noise.Chun opened her junior recital daringly, selecting a piece by Arnold Schienberg, considered by some to be the father of atonal music.
Brandeis' Slosberg recital hall is covered with photos of musicians and their instruments-a trumpet here, a violin there-but most passersby who see them never guess that the building also contains virtuoso players of such unconventional instruments as the lute, the vielle and, most obscurely, the rauschpfeiff, a 400-year-old ancestor of the bassoon.
The audience was whooping, whistling, cheering and screaming at the top of their lungs, blowing kisses to the backup dancers and dancing to the rhythm of a chest-thudding bass beat.
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