Every year the music department of Mills College in Oakland presents a concert prominently featuring the music of Darius Milhaud, in celebration of the long and fruitful association between the college and the composer, who was in residence there for many years. On Friday, violinist Graeme Jennings and pianist Christopher Jones performed two early sonatas by Milhaud, concluding their program with pieces by Stravinsky and Carter, both of whom were among Milhaud's friends and admirers.
Milhaud's Sonata for Violin and Piano Op.1, No.3. was composed in 1911, when he was 19. A violinist himself, Milhaud wrote for the instrument with ease and fluency, but relegated the piano mostly to accompanimental support, underpinning the violin line with lush, modal harmonies reminiscent of Faure's music. The Sonata No. 2 was composed six years later and is listed as Op. 40 by the famously prolific Milhaud.
In this piece we find the composer gradually coming into his own style. Moments of polytonality, pentatonic scale patterns, tone clusters, and more extended counterpoint make this a much more sophisticated and interesting composition. It points the way to a musical career that would lead to Milhaud's becoming one of the most original and preeminent French composers of the 20th century.
The highlight of the evening, Stravinsky's Duo Concertante for Violin and Piano, dates from 1932, and is one of the most potent and appealing chamber works of his neoclassical period. Its five fairly brief movements provide a wealth of contrast, from the serenely lyrical Eclogue II and the bouncy, effervescent Gigue that follows it to the expansively meditative Dithyramb, which concludes the piece with an echo of the opening movement.
Jennings and Jones often played with all the tenderness, grace, and virtuosity Stravinsky demands, though occasionally a warmer, more emotive tone from Jennings would have been welcome. He plays in a cool, rather detached style, and this piece needs some visceral engagement to get beneath its neoclassical sheen. There is hearty good humor in the Gigue, and a kind of questing fervency in the slower movements that has to come out in order to fully realize the music's expressive range.
By contrast, Jones is an excitable, energetic pianist who should restrain his tendency to bang the keys in some of the lively passages. In this performance the instrumental balance sometimes suffered because of a certain brashness from the piano, especially since its lid was fully raised, perhaps in response to the hall's dry acoustics.