GREENSBORO − Composer-pianist David Feurzeig came to the Greensboro United Church of Christ Friday evening, July 18, to give a concert and help support the Greensboro Land Trust. Feurzeig, a professor of music at the University of Vermont has been touring and giving free performances in all Vermont towns, since 2022, as part of his personal effort to reverse the negative effects of climate change. Greensboro was the 84th of the 252 municipalities he intends to visit in his admirable project, “Play Every Town.”
By bringing a varied program of classical, jazz and popular music to a local level, he hopes to expand the audiences for great music, to build community through shared, live experiences and to stimulate awareness of the increasing inescapability of severe weather due to human caused damage to the planet.
He began with a piece by Elizabetta Gamborini, “No. 11 from Songs and Lessons Op. 2,” written in 1748, a short but bright and lively tune. Domenico Scarlatti (1668-1757) wrote numerous sonatas for the harpsichord, and his “Sonata K. 84 in C minor” was typical of his airy style with interesting rhythms and textures that almost suggest visual images of Portugal and Spain, where he lived for much of his life after leaving Italy. The “Twelve Variations” on the simple tune better known today as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was composed in 1781, the same year that Greensboro was chartered. The work started with a statement of the melody and then flowed on to more rapid multiple notes a movement in a stately pace, one with more rococo flourishes, a section with jazzy elements, runs up and down the keyboard, overlapping notes, rolling rhythms, a slower tempo with more feeling and finally an upbeat finale. Mozart himself was known for his ability to play spontaneous improvisations.
Frederick Chopin (1810-1849) was a master of solo piano pieces with engaging melodies, and his “Nocturne in E minor, Op. 72, No. 1” had an appropriate darker, moody ambiance of late night meditations, written in 1827, the same year that the Congregational Church where the concert was being held was constructed. Feurzeig was joined by Laila Kromash, a young violinist living in Greensboro, in two numbers: the “Perpatuo Mobile” of Carl Bohm (1894-1981) and “Over the Rainbow” from the 1938 film, “The Wizard of Oz,” composed by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg, which coincided with the 1938 hurricane that devastated New England in general and Vermont in particular.
Kromash demonstrated impressive skill on her instrument in both tuneful works. “La Cathedral engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral)” by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), based on a Breton legend of a drowned church off the coast of France from which one could hear music at low tide, was written in 1910. The piano takes one on a dreamy journey evoking this mysterious place, with rising volume and strong chords that then subside, having fine harmonic passages, juxtaposing the high and low registers of the piano.
Bela Bartok (1881-1945) was an early collector and recorder of Central European folk music at the beginning of the Twentieth Century and his “Six Romanian Folk Dances” breathed the freshness and energy of those indigenous traditions. They ranged from melodies with a certain longing feeling to them, to dances one could visualize peasants enjoying, to more ethereal realms, culminating in the last selection which was quite wild.
Feurzeig’s own work, “Bela’s Blues,” was a homage to Bartok cast in a slower jazz mode. The “Kitchen Rag” by Steve Sweeting had imaginative variations in the style of Scott Joplin.
Feurzeig’s wife joined him on violin with a great tune in the Polish mazurka form, in which the audience participated in singing along with the players. The last offering of the concert was “Happy Birthday Martin,” written by Cliff Jackson and David Feurzeig in celebration of the life of Martin Luther King. It had a jazzed up version of “We Shall Overcome” in the score. For an encore, he gave “The Jungle Drums” by James P. Johnson, one of his favorite pianists.
Feurzeig very generously gave all the donations to this concert to the Greensboro Land Trust.
His next concerts will be at the Ryegate Corner Presbyterian Church, 48 S. Bayley Hazen Road August 17 at 2 p.m., the Old South Church, 146 Main St., in Windsor Friday, August 22 at 7 p.m. and the Norwich Congregational Church, 15 Church St., Saturday, August 23 at 3 p.m.
David K. Rodgers
David K. Rodgers is a writer, mason and card carrying dilettante, who dabbles and babbles in art. He has lived in East Craftsbury for the past 40 years.
