A Classical Connection

Review: Ensemble Connect at Skidmore’s Arthur Zankel Music Center on Friday, October. 24, 2025

Young music students of the Ensemble Connect fellowship program connected a near-capacity audience (admitted free) to four modern chamber-scale short pieces Friday; each of two halves establishing different moods and atmospheres.

Two ensembles took the Zankel stage at first; both in business-like black. A string quartet opened with “Da pace Domine” (Give peace, Lord) Arvo Part’s solemn near-dirge mourning the 2004 Madrid terrorist attack. Its minimalist power packed the same poignant punch as the great rocker Willie Nile’s outraged/sad tribute for the same victims, with his harrowing line “Cellphones ringing in the pockets of the dead.” Part’s slow, low chords rose and grew more complex before subsiding, with little rhythmic development to build quiet, hypnotic effect.

Part’s earlier (1964) “Quintettino”(little quintet) packed woodwinds around French horn in a lighter, more varied three-movement miniature; like “Da pace Domine,” it was only five minutes long. This built in deliberate momentum from a staccato start, almost nervous in its restlessness, into slower, sparser passages with solos springing up from the familiar blended feel.

Then the stage was re-set for Leos Janacek’s nostalgic sextet “Mladi” (Youth); written at 70 in a sentimental evocation of his homeland and family. This began with a hearty bustle, the feel of a city in its kinetic counterpoint. A bass clarinet dialog with the other winds evoked the melancholy of parting from home and family to study music, but a lively march-style Vivace with bright oboe and piccolo restored the piece’s fundamental sentiment. Animated low passages spurred the slower finale before density and tempo increased, rose and fell, quietly resolving.

After intermission, the “Piano Quintet in G Minor” of Dmitry Shostakovich set a more emotive and expressive tone. The three first-part pieces all presented confident precision to be expected from elite Conservatory players; this single composition that comprised the second brought something more personal and propulsive. 

All the players wore black in the first half, while those in the second – who had all played in the first half – wore bright colors. Their body language was more expressive, leaning and shifting in rhythm, raising their bows after bravura phrases.

The piece offered plenty of opportunity for such expression, and for smiles; as a slow Prelude with stratospheric violin passages and plaintive feel flowed into a slightly faster Fugue that flowed low and sparse through exposed piano and cello solos, slowing and growing more solemn as the quintet reassembled. The Scherzo built on blend, syncopation and brief pizzicato energy, the piano pulsating emphatically.

The lovely Lento, lyrical and light, set up a spirited finale alternating quiet, gliding, dance-like passages with assertive piano, then subsiding into serene, sparse, valedictory farewells. Another spry dance of piano and violin brought things home.

A standing ovation, a curtain call; then the players left the stage to chat in the aisles with Skidmore music students.

“Connect” is quite correct; a complicated pedigree as a program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education; with support from the family of Beverly Sanders Payne (Skidmore 1959) and her late husband David B. Payne.

A two-year fellowship program, Ensemble Connect unites students of elite music programs including the conservatories Colburn, Eastman,, Juilliard, Curtis, Manhattan, New England, Peabody, Shepherd, Stony Brook, USC and Yale.

Friday’s performance culminated a weeklong residency with numerous community concerts and workshops at Skidmore and elsewhere.

Future events of the Skidmore Music Department and Office of Special Programs include the Skidmore and Bennington Folk Festival Nov. 8, SURROUND: Julie Doiron Nov. 9 and a dozen additional performances through mid-December by both student and professional touring artists.