First Light opens the Artists-in-Residence series

On October 16, Rabia Brooke, cellist Haddon Kay, and pianist Tamila Salimdjanova open Nova Linea Musica’s Artists-in-Residence series at The CheckOut with an evening of French and Russian color, Romantic drama, and one dazzling showpiece.

The program is built as a conversation among three players, each taking a turn at the center. Tamila opens with Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, water music for the piano, all glitter and motion, and returns later in the evening with Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in G minor, one of the great storytelling works of the Romantic piano.

Rabia and Haddon meet as a duo in Glière’s Eight Pieces for violin and cello, Op. 39: short, songful character pieces that let two string players trade melodies back and forth. Haddon and Tamila then take up the second movement of Franck’s Sonata in A, the sweeping Allegro, heard here with cello in place of violin.

The evening closes with Bazzini’s La ronde des lutins, the “Dance of the Goblins,” a virtuoso scherzo that has delighted violinists and audiences for more than a century, played by Rabia and Tamila. One more work joins the program on the night, announced from the stage.

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