Mariela Patron
Staff Writer
The music department presented a faculty recital featuring Danielle Rosaria Cummins on violin, Benjamin Coyte on cello and Vernon Snyder on piano who played a sonata and trio Friday in Morgan Auditorium.
The violin sonata was by German composer Johannes Brahms and the Piano Trio by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
In the first movement, “Vivace ma non troppo,” Snyder began Brahms’ sonata in G major, with soft chords and was soon accompanied by Cummins’ smooth notes on violin.
Throughout the movement, the rhythm would speed up to build suspense and then go back to the tender melody that it began with.
Both Snyder and Cummins’ fingers looked like crawling caterpillars as they effortlessly moved their fingers back and forth on their instruments.
In comparison to the first movement, the second movement, “Adagio,” had a sinister marching sound that began with the piano playing dark chords that progressively got louder.
The sonata concluded with “Allegro molto moderato,” where the violin briefly played the main theme of the first movement.
Throughout the sonata, the violin and piano would often sharing similar rhythms but they would soon separate and go on their own melodies.
“The sonata is lyrically beautiful and it’s such a romantic work,” Lamkin said. “She (Cummins) played with sensitivity and grace.”
After the intermission, Cummins and Snyder were joined by Coyte to play Batholdy’s Piano Trio in D Minor.
The trio opened with a grand epic sound from the cello.
In the movement, “Molto allegro agitato,” all three instruments were featured with their own variation of the main melody.
At times, the movement would play a waltz-sounding melody for short measures.
Coyte would constantly sway back and forth throughout the movement.
“It was really cool to see how they got into the music,” Kristen McClellan, senior liberal studies major, said.
McClellan, who is taking Music 100, said that the musicians’ passion for music was visible in their facial expressions.
The second movement, “Andante con moto tranquillo,” began with a peaceful piano melody that could have been used as the background music of a nature scene in a movie.
In the middle of the movement, the piano and violin played together, as the cello acted as the backbeat when Coyte plucked the strings.
In the third movement, the trio played an animated melody where Snyder played the piano in a rapid speed while Cummins and Coyte plucked their instruments, and made it sound like somebody was tiptoeing around the auditorium.
During the piece, the musicians would constantly look at each other and played with such unity and consistency that the three instruments resembled a family; the violin as the mom, cello as the dad and the piano as the son.
“I really enjoyed it, it was very professional,” said Malorie Saldwell, a homeschooled high school student who plays cello, piano and guitar. “They make me want to go home and practice.”
Cummins, Coyte and Snyder have been performing these pieces since spring of this year at various colleges.
Cummins said all three of them would love to come back and play at Morgan Auditorium because they enjoy the acoustics.
“This is a very special place,” she said.
Mariela Patron can be reached at mariela.patron@laverne.edu.
