Classics Meet Bluegrass in Mandolin Performance
(first published in The Cincinnati Post Oct. 8, 1991)
Pickin' and singin' on a Cincinnati Chamber Music Society concert?
Yes, ma'am. It happened Sunday afternoon at Corbett Auditorium before a crowd more used to Mozart than Bill Monroe.
The pickin' was by the Modern Mandolin Quartet, whose final "Bill Monroe Suite" drew whoops and hollers from the audience
and a standing ovation. The singing was by soprano Blythe Walker, whose dreamy rendition of the Aria and Martelo from Villa
Lobos' "Bachianas Brasilieras" No. 5 was pure class.
The quartet - Mike Marshall and Dana Rath, mandolins; Paul Binkley, mandola; and John Imholz, mandocello - is one of
the hottest new groups around. "In case you haven't guessed, we're on a crusade," Marshall said. Their mission? To take the
techniques of the great bluegrass and jazz mandolinists and apply them to the classical repertoire.
Happily, they succeed. Their arrangements - most by Binkley and Imholz - include music originally written for string
quartet, piano, orchestra, you name it. It is the instrument's limitations, not their own - the mandolin's delicate voice
and inability to sustain without tremolo - that make some pieces work better than others. Many of the nuances in their opening
Overture from Mozart's "Magic Flute" were inaudible, and they were unable to capture the expansive sound of the conclusion
of Ravel 's "Mother Goose" Suite.
They scored, however, in the moto perpetuo finale of Haydn's String Quartet, Op. 64, No. 5 - "proof," Marshall quipped,
that "bluegrass music was invented at least 200 years ago." "The Empress of the Pagodas" from the Ravel fit well, too, abetted
by the mandolin's ability to re-create the hard metallic sound of Oriental instruments.
They offered a finger-snapping "Cool" from Bernstein's "West Side Story," an exquisite miniature in Debussy's "Maid
With the Flaxen Hair."
"Are you kidding? We'll never get a gig in Cincinnati" (read: "legit" venue), Marshall said when Rath proposed formation
of the group six years ago. Well, they highfalutin' did.