Fanfare, November/December 2005 (Mostly Sonatas)
Violinist Michael Antonello follows in the footsteps of Charles Ives in
making his living by providing financial services; but both his education
at the Curtis Institute and Indiana University and the technical polish
and sensitive nuance of his playing bespeak an assurance that, like Ives’s,
makes his musical statements coherent and his communication convincing….he
has created a sumptuous showcase for his recently acquired 1720 ex-Rochester
Stradvari.
If Arnstein doesn’t linger in the shadows of Franck’s opening ninth chords,
he plays the rippling figuration of the Allegro that follows with an etched
clarity that makes their forward momentum all the less resistible—Antonello
and Arnstein soar in this movement….if the canonic finale’s rapt mysticism
has come to sound disappointingly perfunctory in many performances, it
soars in Antonello’s and Arnstein’s intense reading. Engaging sonata readings
by partners that consistently fire on all cylinders, in recorded sound
that holds the instruments in dynamic balance and represents the full
timbral range of each.
Reviewed by Robert McColley
EdinburghGuide.com August 13, 2003
Scottish Fantasy was a delightful piece, crying out to be heard over again,
an American eye on Scottish music….It was a wonderfully bright, spanking
new musical tartan compliment. Though 2003 is the Trio’s debut performance,
Michael Antonello and Peter Arnstein received rave reviews in the 1995
Fringe. They truly deserve rave reviews this year, too….The whole programme
was a real delight.
Reviewed by Pat Napier
Three Weeks; The Edinburgh Festival Online
Michael Antonello plays with an intense energy and passion that has filled
me with inspiration….Pianist Peter Arnstein’s performances were marked
by a mixture of sensitivity and extreme emotion which was most apparent
in his own composition, the quirky “Trio Jazzico Nostalgico.”
The Trio di Vita is mellow, with violinist Mike Antonello, Peter Arnstein
at ease with his eighty-eight keys, and Scott Adelman playing the cello.
Those who have started to cringe at a non-stop rock-and-roll binge will
want to sample a trio that plays classics with brio--The hit of the Festival
Fringe.
Reviewed by Online reporter
The Scotsman (Edinburgh), August 26, 1995
Antonello/Arnstein - For those that like their classical music light and
schmaltzy, the formidable duo of Michael Antonello on violin and Peter
Arnstein on piano will not disappoint. The two Americans were unafraid
to take a conventional work like Handel’s Sonata No. 3 in F and give it
the Liberace treatment. The piano parts written by Arnstein proved that
improvisation was alive and well as his fingers raced up and down the
keyboard. While this looked fun, his self-indulgence at times threatened
to overwhelm Handel’s straightforward violin melody.
Arnstein’s own composition, Three Virtuoso Gospel Fantasies galloped through
a variety of styles and well-known American tunes, with Antonello’s sweet-sounding
Stradivarius stealing the show.
In fact it would be hard to better Antonello’s violin playing anywhere
on the Fringe. His formidable technique was evident in Kreisler’s arrangement
of Mozart’s Rondo and other fiendishly difficult works by Kreisler, the
violin virtuoso. And not only is Antonello a joy to listen to, but also
to watch, especially when he rises on tiptoes to reach the top notes.
Reviewed by Susan Nickalls
Fanfare Magazine, July/August 1999 (Fanfare, Salut d'Amour)
Antonello’s playing is of that professional level...it is fluent, cleanly
articulated, and warmly spirited playing of no little accomplishment…the
violin playing is…graceful, expressive, and animated…Arnstein’s own composition
/Grasshopper Suite/is worth mining for recital encores. …by no means unworthy
of your attention. Arnstein is a proficient professional, a composer,
pianist, and harpsichordist. Arnstein’s own composition, as wacky and
agitated as one would expect from the source and the title, is worth mining
for recital encores.
Reviewed by David K. Nelson
Stradivarius And Steinway
Michael J. Antonello, violin, and Peter Arnstein, piano, MJA Productions.
CD review in Fanfare magazine, Vol 16, September/October 1992
Purchase the CD
Mr. Antonello sells life insurance in Minneapolis, but he’s no Walter
Mitty on the Fiddle. On the contrary, he’s a Curtis and Indiana University-trained
violinist who studied under Franco Gulli, and who served as concertmaster
of the Grand Rapids Symphony and as a member of the Minnesota Orchestra.
Now, joining even the best orchestra’s string section means exploiting
a technique honed on solo repertoire so as to be able to reproduce the
standard repertoire, in endless repetition, with the fewest possible errors,
and the least possible individuality. To say that it generates unhappiness
and dissatisfaction in the troops is to put it mildly. Antonello has said
to hell with it, keeps his chops in shape, and can show these tangible
benefits: he’s playing on his 1736 Strad, is recording on his own label,
and is accompanied by an excellent pianist and composer, also Minneapolis-based,
who studied with Robert Goldsand, and who has improvised here a marvelous
accompaniment to the very familiar Leclair Sonata. Best of all, from the
standpoint of a former member of the tutti, Antonello can use rubato to
his heart’s content, and can play at any tempo he pleases. Freedom!
Antonello is a poetic player (Charles Ives and Wallace Stevens certainly
proved that insurance and artistic impulses needn’t be incompatible).
[He is] at his most persuasive when he can wrap his warm, rich tone around
a Kreisler piece. Liebesleid is particularly wistful and tender. He and
Arnstein provide some novel readings of the rhythms in the Saint-Saens,
and Arnstein cleverly fills in some gaps in the piano part. Antonello’s
dexterity is fully professional, and often quite admirable, but in moments
of highest technical stress the tone suffers: he’s working hard, and isn’t
tossing off the difficulties like great soloists can. For all its rough
edges it is a propulsive rendition. Now and then a sour note or blurred
passage mars the Leclair, but I was enchanted by Arnstein’s ornate, new
accompaniment.
Reviewed by David K. Nelson
Stradivarius And Steinway II
Michael J. Antonello, violinist, and Peter Arnstein, Pianist
Review from Fanfare magazine, Vol., May/June 1993
Purchase the CD
Except for the most taxing portions, where execution can get a bit rough,
difficult works like Zigeuenerweisen, the “Haffner” Serenade, “Rondo,”
and Caprice Viennois testify to the durability of Antonello’s fine training
at Curtis and Indiana. He excels in lyrical “salon” pieces, and I doubt
if you’ll hear a more impassioned account of “Adoration,” a popular parlor
work of fifty years ago. Newer works, like Arnstein’s Godowsky-like rewrite
of Danse Macabre, present a few more difficulties.
Arnstein’s tinkering with the piano parts goes beyond what he did in the
first release. Available gaps are filled with rapid notes and double-dotted
passages, in the manner of the French Baroque, as if the piano had the
harpsichord’s lack of sustain. But Arnstein admits that recording on the
“Horowitz” Steinway (during its 1992 tour of the country) is his major
inspiration here. During the Bach Bouree and the last movement of the
Handel Sonata, he outraces Antonello, flying up and down the keyboard
with rapid scales, flourishes of thick-textured chords, and a variety
of other virtuoso devices that call Horowitz’s own arrangements to mind.
Meantime, Antonello plays his parts absolutely “straight.” The effect
is like standing outside of two practice rooms at a music school. In the
third movement of the Handel, Arnstein throws harmonic caution to the
winds, with a zany mix of pure Handel and Scriabin. Whatever MJA’s commercial
intentions here (there’s no bar code or copyright notice), as a party
record the truly inspired vandalism on Bach and Handel will see much use
at my house.
Reviewed by David K. Nelson
The Scotsman (Edinburgh), November 2, 1988
ARTFUL RECITAL DELIGHTS. To Edinburgh University yesterday, the young
American pianist, Peter Arnstein, brought a programme which looked chaotic.
Music by seven composers, starting with Debussy, working through Schubert
and Skryabin and ending with the performer’s own Jelly Roll Fantasy, was
crammed into a recital at the Reid Concert Hall lasting less than an hour.
But the result, far from being a muddle, was thoughtful and fascinating.
Debussy’s Poissons d’Or from his keyboard Images was played so delicately
and was so lightly pedaled, that it could have been an introductory Scarlatti
sonata. Instead of clashing with Schubert’s A minor sonata, Op. 143, which
followed, it led subtly into the skeletal octaves with which the Schubert
opened.
Here, too, Mr. Arnstein’s severely pared-down approach to the music paid
dividends. He emphasized the mysterious half lights and spaces of the
first movement, and made the whirling finale look simultaneously backwards
to early Beethoven and forwards to the finale of Chopin’s Funeral March.
The succeeding four pieces by Chopin, Schumann, Skryabin and Liszt maintained
the Schubert’s sense of mystery, but, also, through unexpected thematic
connections, formed an integrated group. Mr. Arnstein convincingly treated
them as reflective, exploratory sketches, and conveyed the ambiguities
of Liszt’s brilliant La Leggierezza particularly tellingly.
All four were as scrupulously articulated as the Schubert and Debussy,
and the same could be said for Mr. Arnstein’s own neo-Lisztian fantasy
on themes by Jelly Roll Morton which completed the programme. It sounded
like extemporization but it was artfully and wittily controlled.
Reviewed by Conrad Wilson
The Scotsman (Edinburgh), 1985
The extraordinary physical composure of the Minneapolis-based Peter Arnstein
on Friday night was in its way only matched by his formidable technical
assurance, his sensitivity, his adroit choice of programme and his versatility.
In this second of his three keyboard recitals in the St. Cecilia Hall,
he alternated between Sir Donald Tovey’s mellow if ageing Bosendorfer
grand piano and the modern, single-manual Morton Gould harpsichord normally
housed in the Reid School of Music. His was therefore a double-barrelled
concert, opening with a selection of English and Scots pieces for virginals,
mostly Galliards, and dominated, almost inevitably by William Byrd, particularly
by the performance of Hughe Ashton’s Grownde.
If Dr. Arnstein’s fingers were nimble, his perceptions were crisper still,
as he subsequently demonstrated in his harpsichord arrangement of a Vivaldi
guitar concerto in D. He would no doubt have preferred a larger, double-manual
instrument for such a work. As it was, he had to content himself with
the provision of a lute stop in the Largo, a movement that accumulated
an astonishing emotional intensity. Its release came in the pyrotechnical
brilliance of the concluding Allegro, with its firecracker vivacity and
its whizzing scales.
The recitalist’s juxtaposition of Studies by Chopin and Debussy, plus
a wild card by Rachmaninov, underlined his artistic acumen, but it was
in Liszt’s Vallee d’Obermann that he produced his pianistic piece de resistance.
Reviewed by Christopher Grier
Minneapolis Star & Tribune, December 11, 1984
Peter Arnstein gave his wife sympathetic but rhythmically subtle accompaniment
in all these works. And playing alone just before intermission he delivered
a persuasive reading of Liszt’s “Vallee d’Obermann” (from Book One of
the “Annees”) that was both brilliantly virtuosic and sensitively nuanced.
It was the rare sort of Liszt performance that avoids both sentimentality
and the sense of virtuosity for its own sake.
Reviewed by Michael Anthony, Staff Writer