On a cool Saturday afternoon, a few dozen people turned out for the penultimate free concert of the year at Bargemusic on November 20. The eponymous barge, located in the Fulton Ferry Landing along the East River, played host to a concert by Olga Vinokur on piano and Bargemusic President, Executive and Artistic Director Mark Peskanov on violin, for four pieces: Mozart’s Sonata in G Major, #301; Bach’s Sonata in G Minor, Adagio and Fugue, Mozart’s Sonata in E minor, and the first movement of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata.
Unlike the off-beat location of the concert, the performance was on-beat and well done, with great synergy seen between Vinokur and Peskanov. The pieces were, save for the Bach sonata, light and upbeat, a shrewd choice for an concert on a bright, sunny afternoon. They were also short, generally two movements, save for the single “Kreutzer” movement, allowing for more pieces to be performed within the hour.
Vinokur and Peskanov served as perfect foils for one another, throughout the concert the piano weaved well with the violin; it should be noted that the pieces were written for those instruments specifically, making the choice of program even more shrewd. However, the performance of the Bach sonata, while well done, was out of place with the rest of the concert. It was a slow piece, as an adagio is supposed to be, which broke from the faster-tempo pieces played during the concert; further, it was Peskanov alone on violin, which took away the wonderful piano playing of Vinokur. While this, when judging the concert as a whole, was not an especially egregious problem, it did serve as a point to be improved upon for the next free concert on December 20th.
