Newport Classical Summer Festival held its Festival Finale Sunday in the Breakers Mansion, closing the series with fiery notes of bravura from the Harlem Quartet alongside the Resident Festival Artists. The foursome of Ilmar Gavilán and Amy Shroeder violins, Jaime Amador viola and Felix Umansky cello, debuted at NMF in 2021, also at the Breakers Mansion, but outside in a tent on the lawn due to Covid. First violinist Ilmar also appeared with his composer-pianist brother Aldo-López Gavilán in 2022, celebrating their reunion after years of separation due to the political situation between Havanna and the West. Last evening’s event featured unknown and rarely heard gems by Fanny Mendelssohn, Dimitri Shostakovich, and the Gavilán patriarch, famed composer and symphony conductor Guido López Gavilán del Rosario, b. 1944 in the Cuban province of Matanzas, the concert closing with the epic Octet in E-flat Major Op 20 by Felix Mendelssohn.
In the String Quartet in E-flat Major H 277 (1834) by Felix’s sister, the ensemble shared an unabashed sentimentality that brought out the newly married Mrs. Hensel’s inner passions for her compositional art, at war with the conventions of her time that would not allow her to flourish as a composer, relegating such creative musical pursuits to a mere dalliance not to interfere with presiding over home and family. She developed the work from unfinished sketches and movements from a Piano Sonata in E-flat Major from 1829, within which was contained a fugal theme from her ‘Easter’ Sonata of 1828, only recently discovered from lost manuscripts and letters. This theme immediately hits the listener with its poignant sadness in a movement that defies formal convention in its extended contrapuntal development and its elements of recitative recalling the Passions of Bach and the recitative and arioso-like sections of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in A-flat Major Op 110, while also following the rhythm of the phrase scheme of Beethoven’s ‘Harp’ Quartet No 10 Op 74. The Harlem took a more relaxed pace in the Allegretto, also taken from the aforementioned sonata, only increasing the tempo for the fugal section that follows, which was missing from the earlier sonata version. The third and fourth movements of the quartet were newly composed, bearing no relation to the piano sonata, which itself sat unfinished, its fourth movement never written. The beautiful quote from the opening of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, present in Fanny’s piano sonata, is missing from the third movement of the quartet, with only the barest hint of the theme though much of the same aesthetic in the newly composed Romanza movement. In the Allegro molto vivace, the players aggressively attacked with vigor and bravura.
Remembering the ecstatic reunion of the Gavilán brothers in 2022, it was especially moving to hear a work by their father, who is widely recognized in Cuba and abroad. His he wrote Guaguancó (pronounced wah-wan-ko) for orchestra in 2005 and re-scored it or the Harlem Quartet in 2016. Guaguancó is both a dance and the rhythm associated with it, a type of Rumba that originated from Afro-Cuban roots going back to the 1800’s. As a musical expression it kept evolving to the present time, but is basically characterized by two distinctive elements: the first a syncopated polyrhythm of three parts often played by high, medium, and low conga drums – these all have their own specific terms but generally are classified as subdivisions of the basic syncopated rhythm called clave to which are added various clappers and sticks (also called claves) tapped on the sides of the drums; the second a melodic element that goes back to the exhortations of West African peoples, deeply passionate in the celebrations of joyous life events in spite of the hardships of being uprooted from their homes and brought to the New World to serve as slaves alongside the indigenous Taino and their sub-groups. The vocal elements represented themselves in the quartet version by the beautifully crafted lyric lines of the strings, lushly harmonized, while the rhythmic complexities were produced using pizzicato (plucked strings) pitched so as to emulate the three timbres of drums (high, medium, and low) further enhanced by extended techniques such as tapping and rapping with the bow or on the wood of the instrument with hands, knuckles, or fingers. (Read more about the Guaguancó’s complicated history, development, and related genres HERE.)
For the second half, Resident Festival Artists Joshua Brown and Cherry Choi Tung Yeung violins, Joseph Skerik viola, and Leland Ko cello joined the Harlem players for Shostakovich’s Two Pieces for String Octet (Prelude and Scherzo) Op 11. He composed these in Leningrad in 1924 and 25 respectively, and given a hearing at the conservatory in 1926, along with the composer’s own arrangement for piano solo, but the work was not formally premiered until 1927 along with a first piano sonata (also from 1926). Originally planned as a five-movement work, Shostakovich dedicated the two standing movements to his friend the poet Volodya (Vladimir) Kurchavov who died of cancer in 1925, though the score was not published until 1928, simultaneously by Moscow publisher Musgiz and Vienna’s Universal Edition. The work was briefly banned for a time after the war under Stalin, and though the ban soon lifted, the work was largely ignored until the latter half of the 20th century. Shostakovich considered this composition to be “the very best thing I have written” (~ quote taken from an article by Stefan Hersh in Guarneri Hall, digital resources), regarding it as a break away from the rules and regulations of the conservatory, and the beginnings, along with his First Symphony (also from 1925), of his “modernist style.”
The searing rhapsodic melody of the Prelude and its second motive which turns in upon itself, contrasts with descending chromatic lines, first bowed, then plucked, against muted triplets, like gentle waves. There is also a fugal theme based on a galloping rhythmic motif, to which Shostakovich would return frequently in later works, most notably his iconic fifth symphony where this motif serves as a unifier. For the Scherzo the melodic contour of the fugal motif is stretched to form a more grotesque melody emphasizing the augmented fourth rather than the more stable and tonal minor third. It too is treated contrapuntally, though more as if Shostakovich is mocking his counterpoint class with a sense of comedic anger. The full ensemble of eight characterized these conflicting moods in a brilliant display of technical virtuosity.
Mendelssohn’s brilliant Octet in E-flat Major Op 20, forming a fitting frame to his sister’s opening quartet in the same key, formed a fitting closer. A 16-year-old Felix had already completed 13 string symphonies before setting this octet in 1825, conceived not as a double quartet playing against one another but rather symphonically, as an eight-voice texture. Written for and dedicated to his violin teacher Eduard Rietz, its first violin part displays of stunning virtuosity which Ilmar Gavilán recounted with aplomb and energy, as a richly rewarding tone emanated from his instrument. This listener also found the fourth violin part rather intriguing, having several solo lines that could have easily been buried by the thick and active parts surrounding it, but aptly handled by Resident Festival Artist Cherry Choi Tung Yeung, a late substitution in the last week of the festival for Nathan Amaral. Yeung, currently Associate Principal Second Violin of the San Diego Symphony with degrees and diplomas from The Juilliard School and Curtis Institute of Music, sat squarely in the middle, sometimes blending in with the four violins while at other times carrying the melodic line atop the lower strings. (One might wonder if the composer took that part for himself…perhaps?) Mendelssohn’s writing experiments with a variety of techniques and sounds, from the rising arpeggiated opening that for its penultimate note leaps up and then settles back, the motive repeating itself in various instruments surging forward like a cascading waterfall but in reverse, to stunning virtuosic passages in unison, and in between a gentle chorale-like melody with a tinge of the chromatic, sweeping scales across several instruments going from the lowest notes to the very highest, hushed tremolos, and a driving frenetic fugal finale for the final movement with just a hint in longer notes of the opening arpeggiated chord reversing itself and coming back down.
Given the clean, crisp, and refined playing of the various string groups throughout the festival, the Harlem Quartet and its resident counterparts played with total abandon, forcefully attacking the strings, aggressively pushing tempo, exaggerating the fortes and pianos (as per the composer’s directions), playing phrases with a generous amount of freedom and rubato while placing emphasis on the highest notes of a phrase ― altogether made for a dynamic, often wild and thrilling ride and a deeply emotional and heartfelt performance, and a rousing finale to a grand festival of moving music of the highest artistic caliber.
Newport Classical presents its annual Free Children’s Concert at the Newport County YMCA (792 Valley Rd.), on Saturday, August 15, 2026, at 4pm. The wind members of Frisson will present an interactive, family-friendly performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf in a playful retelling. Newport will announce its Chamber Music Season for 2026-2027 on July 28th.