The sound of music echoed through the halls of the packed auditorium last Thursday when the music department presented its faculty recital.
For the last six years, the bi-yearly recital has given the music department the opportunity to showcase its talent on the auditorium’s mainstage stage in front of students and other faculty members.
The professors played to a full house during college hour. The show was launched with a rendition of “Hermit Songs,” a collection of songs written by Samuel Barber with lyrics taken from poems by Irish monks.
Performing the vocal part was adjunct music professor and soprano Catherine Card. Peter Green, head of the music department, accompanied her on piano. He also accompanied Card on a piece from the opera “Rusalka.”
Kasha Fernandes, a music major, had never heard Card sing before.
“I’ve seen her in the music lab, and I knew she was a music teacher, but I was amazed at how graceful her performance was,” she said.
Theodora Primes, an adjunct music instructor, performed a movement of Chopin’s “Nocturne” in d-flat major, a dreamy piece as a mesmerizing solo.
“We have a wonderful music department,” she said. “They are great people to work with.”
The longest and most vivid performance was by Marine Ter-Kazaryan, a soprano and piano instructor who sang four pieces in Armenian with Green accompanying her on the piano.
Green described the Armenian piece as “big and dramatic.” The soaring vocals and the constantly changing dynamics of the piano, sounding soft and gentle in certain parts and like cataclysmic thunderstorms in others, reflected Green’s description.
The performers each chose their own pieces, all of which, according to Green, were incredibly complex and “took months to learn.”
“Summertime” from the 1935 opera “Porgy and Bess” by George and Ira Gershwin was sung by soprano Anita Protich with Gayane Simonyan on the piano. The duo also played “Dirait-on” from “Les Chanson des Roses” by Morten Lauridsen.
For the final piece, Green accompanied violinist Gail Acosta, who started with a brief history of the composition Johanne Brahms’ Sonatensatz.
“He wrote it as a birthday present to a friend,” she said.
The lively and brisk tempo of the piano may have reminded some listeners of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which Brahms paid homage to in the piece.
When the final note faded, all of the performers returned to the stage and bowed to a thunderous applause.
“Inspiring,” “breathtaking,” and “beautiful” were common adjectives uttered by audience members as the left they auditorium.
“I loved the way the vocals were executed in their performances” said Natalia Bardawil, a business major. “They really conveyed emotion and it made the music feel real.”
Bryon Delto, a music instructor who did not perform at this semester’s recital, called it “fantastic.”
