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If you love Beethoven, then The Society of the Four Arts is the place to be this week. A mini-festival celebrating the composer's birthday opened Sunday with an outstanding concert of piano trios by Beethoven, and the festival will end tonight with a performance of his Triple Concerto with the Palm Beach Symphony. The featured ensemble is the remarkable Goldstein-Kaler-Peled Trio: pianist Alon Goldstein, violinist Ilya Kaler and cellist Amit Peled. Though formed only a few years ago, the trio plays with the assurance and precision of much more established ensembles. All three musicians are respected soloists, and Kaler and Peled hold distinguished teaching positions, at DePaul University (Chicago) and Peabody Conservatory (Baltimore), respectively. Their phrasing is elegant, their attention to dynamics is scrupulous, and their approach is slightly understated. If you love Beethoven, then The Society of the Four Arts is the place to be this week. A mini-festival celebrating the composer's birthday opened Sunday with an outstanding concert of piano trios by Beethoven, and the festival will end tonight with a performance of his Triple Concerto with the Palm Beach Symphony. The featured ensemble is the remarkable Goldstein-Kaler-Peled Trio: pianist Alon Goldstein, violinist Ilya Kaler and cellist Amit Peled.
Though formed only a few years ago, the trio plays with the assurance and precision of much more established ensembles. All three musicians are respected soloists, and Kaler and Peled hold distinguished teaching positions, at DePaul University (Chicago) and Peabody Conservatory (Baltimore), respectively. Their phrasing is elegant, their attention to dynamics is scrupulous, and their approach is slightly understated.
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On Dec. 16, 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany. The rest, as they say, is history. Once Beethoven hit his composing stride, he changed the world with his pace. Whether during his lifetime or for the current concert season, it's impossible to think of a time when Beethoven's music didn't enjoy the highest respect.
So the Palm Beach Symphony accomplished two goals in its concert Tuesday at The Society for the Four Arts: It celebrated Beethoven's 238th birthday, while opening its 35th season. The Highland Park Strings is thriving under its new music director Francesco Milioto. The ensemble gave the first concert of its 30th anniversary season Sunday, Oct. 12 in Elm Place School and showed a fresh clarity and precision that is a direct result of Milioto's exacting hand.
To enhance the opener three guest artists, the Goldstein-Kaler-Peled Trio, took part in the concert. Violinist Ilya Kaler, the only person ever to win the Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Paganini competitions, was soloist in "Autumn" from Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons." The piano trio is a very interesting chamber music formation: It offers plenty of opportunities for virtuosic display by its members, although the presence of an instrument of such inflexible tuning as the piano often results in unbalanced performances.
Therefore, apart from having good ensemble coordination, members of such groups must be technically flawless in order to deliver the exciting classical and romantic piano trios in a satisfactory manner. Flawless and exciting are two words that aptly describe The Tempest Trio in the opening concert of The Society of the Four Arts Sunday Concert Series. Pianist Alon Goldstein, violinist Ilya Kaler, and cellist Amit Peled offered a program that highlighted their individual strengths and close musical affinities. This year, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Robert Schumann’s birth, the festival programmed his three piano trios. What first-rate idea. His last trio was performed Sunday. The work was written as the composer was slowly losing his rational powers, although he had moments of genuine lucidity. This trio in G Minor (Op. 110) is from 1851, three years before his death. Other music was to be written afterwards but little has the imagination and verve of this trio. It proponents were violinist Ilya Kaler, cellist Amit Peled and pianist Alon Goldstein, who have become a piano trio, said Peled from the stage. After hearing their reading of the Schumann, it is not hard to understand they are going to join forces on a more formal basis. The three have an impressive sense of ensemble and extraordinary balance. No one dominates unnecessarily. Kaler has a rich sound with gleaming high notes. (He plays a 1735 Guarnerius del Gesu on loan from the Stradivari Society of Chicago). Peled has a big, handsome sound, surely due, in part, to his 1689 Andrea Guarneri. Even without that glorious old instrument, he would succeed. Glodstein is an incisive, articulate musician. They all have resourceful techniques and innate musicality. Together, with Schumann’s genius, they made a huge impression, one that combined ebullience and insight.
R.M. Campbell, Special to TGN on February 1, 2010 Pianist Alon Goldstein also spoke before the performance of Schumann’s Trio in D Minor for violin, cello and piano, putting it in context. Earlier, instead of the preconcert recital, he gave an illustrated lecture on Schumann whose 200th birthday is this year. Goldstein, violinist Ilya Kaler and cellist Amit Peled are performing all three of Schumann’s trios in the festival. Kaler is new to SCMS but not new to Seattle. Those who remember the International Chamber Music Festival here in the 1990s may remember him as concertmaster of the European orchestra brought here by Dmitry Sitkovetsky, and he is a frequent chamber music collaborator with Goldstein and Peled.
The sweep of the trio allows plenty of work for violin and cello but this is a pianist’s piece. The three played with intensity and passion, urgency and propulsion, with a gentle mourning feel to the slow movement, where Kaler’s warm silken tone shone, and happiness in the last. There was complete silence in the audience between movements, intent on the compelling performance. Philippa Kiraly on January 30, 2010 The Friends of Chamber Music of Reading opened its new season at the WCR Center for the Arts on Friday night with one of the greatest concerts I have heard in my life.
You must understand that the Friends' concerts are of impeccable quality, and wonderful music has been made in that venue over many years. But Friday's event, featuring the recently formed Tempest Trio, was something special indeed.  The Tempest Trio offered an afternoon of bracing, high-wire chamber music performances Sunday afternoon at the elegant auditorium of Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach. Pianist Alon Goldstein, violinist Ilya Kaler and cellist Amit Peled are all distinguished soloists, and collectively they ignited a musical fuse, producing refreshingly untraditional interpretations of repertoire both rare and familiar.
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